I care about Wonder Woman
Okay, I've decided to do a reaction to this thing, not because I care about this girl's opinion, but because these opinions are probably widely held up as facts, but they ARE WRONG.
I'm talking about
http://www.toplessrobot.com/2008/08/10_reasons_no_one_cares_about_wonder_woman.php
First, saying nobody cares about Wonder Woman when she's been around sixty years, had a TV show and is a cultural icon is laughable. But I digress.
See? The shorts have become more a star-spangled leotard and the bustier designs are slightly different, but that’s it. This is something of a problem.
While the original, Golden Age Wonder Woman comics expressed little more than a wistful desire for something like a feminist movement (with spankings!) to happen, Feminism has become a real-world concept between then and now. Women dress differently now, for different reasons, and ideas about what a woman’s outfit expresses have changed.
In the '40s, a woman in short-shorts was telling you she was no housewife! She was going to go out and do all kinds of unladylike things that involved exercise and possibly building muscle. In the 90’s, a woman who’s rolling into battle wearing a leotard resembles… um… nothing so much as an extremely angry underwear model.
First of all, the feminist movement was happening in the nineteen forties. It's been happening for a while. Granted, the costume is a problem. It's silly, and contradicts the message a bit. I don't like it. But, it's not like she never wears other outfits, often cool armor and such, and it's not like Greek people didn't mind showing off their bodies. And I'd equate it more with a leotard (which gymnasts wear, wow!) or a swim suit than underwear.
9) There Are No Great Wonder Woman Stories
If a friend of yours is getting interested in superheroes and asks for some really great story recommendations, what kind of thing are you going to tell your buddy to read? You’ll probably recommend stand-alone, influential stories featuring minimal continuity and big-name creators at the top of their game. If you buddy likes Batman, you’ll send him to The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year 100, or The Killing Joke. If it’s Superman, you can point your pal at Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow, Red Son, or Secret Identity. If it’s Wonder Woman… uh...
… shit. The best Wonder Woman ever manages is coming along for the ride in big universe-wide stories like Kingdom ComeNew Frontier, or weirdo costume dramas like Wonder Woman: Amazonia. In terms of stories that would actually make you think Wonder Woman is a great character? Apparently DC’s got absolutely nothin’.
Has this person read George Perez's relaunch? Or Greg Rucka's run? That's who I'd point to for good Wonder Woman stories. And Gail Simone is promising to deliver an epic story arc soon, and her runs been damn good so far. I've got trades I can point my friends too, fer sure. I can even point them to
bluefall's "When Wondy Was Awesome" posts.
Sure, there do need to be more awesome stand alone epic stories about Wondy. She's gotten a short shrift compared to Batman and Superman, and she's underrated. But to say she had no great stories is plain insulting. I for one, would not point my friends to The Killing Joke for a good Batman story, btw.
Where Wonder Woman has seen the bulk of her superhero action has been in her solo comics, and as a member of assorted Justice clubs over the years. When she’s hanging around with a team, Wonder Woman tends to just be a bruiser who’s also good at restraining and extracting information from people. In an anthology, her solo stories could be a bizarre if welcome change of pace.
In her monthly comic, which DC doggedly struggles to keep in publication, Wonder Woman tends to be at her worst. There have been good runs, most modern and heavily revisionist, by the likes of George Perez, Greg Rucka, and the aforementioned Gail Simone… but the vast majority of classic Wonder Woman comic book stories are absolute dreck, and often to a far greater degree than your run-of-the-mill bad comics. I mean, just look at some of this shit. It’s like DC was hiring twelve-year-olds, and not talented ones like Jim Shooter, either.
What the hell? Apparently they DO know of Perez, Rucka and Simone, and are just doggedly choosing to ignore it for some reason. And are pulling out forties comics to show WW was silly. OF COURSE SHE WAS SILLY. That's like pulling out comics from the 50's to prove Batman and Superman were silly! Jesus! WW was no more ridiculous than her counterparts at the time! It's the modern stuff that matters! All of Batman's good runs are modern and heavily revisionist as well! What do you call DKR if not that? The logic, it burns.
Oh, but apparently Golden Age Batman and Superman are crude but recognizable. That makes no sense. I still don't see what effect this has on the modern populace, who know nothing of Golden Age WW.
Wonder Woman’s signature weapon is her magic lasso, which modern writers desperately struggle to make interesting. It’s unbreakable, and can compel you to tell the truth, and would be appropriate for roughly a 4th-level campaign in D&D. Sometimes it’s almost sad how eager modern creators are to get more martial, interesting-looking weapons like swords and spears into Wonder Woman’s hands.
I can’t blame them, though. We covered a lot of the god-awful goofy baggage Wonder Woman’s terrible Silver and Golden Age comics saddle her with, but the Golden Lasso is probably the worst. You see, in the Golden Age, the Lasso compelled you to obey Wonder Woman’s commands. In part, this is because Wonder Woman was an agent of Aphrodite tasked with ending violence, and in part because her creator William Moulton Marston had some incredibly unusual ideas about world peace.
You see, “Charles Moulton”, as he signed his comic, had some very loving relationships that involved women he adored tying him up and probably spanking him. Somehow he moved from his own personal enjoyment to deciding that if the entire world could adopt a similar domination/submission fetish, the result would be world peace. Everyone would either have loving subbies to lovingly dominate, or be lovingly vice versa.
...It's a super strong unbreakable lasso that makes you tell the truth. Not only that, it makes you see the truth about yourself. She can use it to whip, tie, trip and choke.
That seems really interesting and useful to me. A lot more so than a batarang or...Superman has no weapons, does he? Fancy that.
And Jesus Christ, nobody cares about the Golden Age. The lasso isn't a conduit for someone's bondage fetish anymore. LET IT GO.
Okay, I lied. The Golden Age saddled Wonder Woman with something even more irritating than the damn Lasso. There’s also her idiotic Invisible Plane, which is also a robot plane that pilots itself and only responds to Wonder Woman’s voice and breaks all the laws of aerodynamics. The Invisible Plane is just a bad idea, but since it’s an old bad idea, generations of comics creators have tried to force it into stories and desperately struggled not to make it look idiotic. I don’t know why, because I’ve never read an Invisible Plane scene that wasn’t awkward as hell, and it’s not like there’s any great potential inherent in the idea. I mean, check out the way Wonder Woman acquires her Jet in her origin story from Golden Age Wonder Woman #1.
It is a plane that is invisible. I fail to see how being invisible is not useful, as well as it's ability to carry passengers and cargo. Also, it looks damn cool.
Just about every superhero still in print at DC is still mostly fighting the villains they were fighting in the Golden or Silver Age, or at least villains patterned after their “original” style of baddie. This leaves Wonder Woman in a bad way, since she never fought anyone worth giving a damn about to begin with. Occasionally one of her better modern authors will salvage something usable out of the original shit villains I’m about to show you, but nothing that’s given her an equivalent to the Joker or Lex Luthor (and no, Circe in the current run doesn’t count - she sucks).
Yeah, Gail Simone says she's working on the rogues gallery. Thanks for the input there. I mean, come on, though, Wonder Woman fought the GOD of WAR. She fought MEDUSA. She fought the DEVIL. She fought a like thousand armed bodyguard to Zeus! I think that's a lot more badass than anything Lex Luthor can come up with.
Blahblah Steve Trevor is stupid...yeah, well, so was Lois Lane, and don't try to convince me otherwise, I'll whip out some evidence. Steve isn't around anymore, yet a lot of people are vying for him to get back. He must have had something going for him. He's no longer her romantic interest and he's been completely overhauled. For the last time, get over the Golden Age.
Lack of supporting Cast
Wonder Woman? She’s got nothing. Even her supposed sidekick, Wonder Girl (both of them), have quickly become features of Teen Titans moreso than her own book. Generally she spends her modern solo books having transient relationships with people who’ll be written out soon, and even her classic books never managed to find a proper status quo for the character. There are attempts to reinstate classic characters from time to time (especially Etta Candy, above), but they tend to end up going nowhere. It’s like she’s trapped in a James Joyce novel. A really stupid James Joyce novel.
Is Etta Candy going nowhere currently? It doesn't look like it to me. And lets see, supporting cast...doesn't she have like, an entire island of Amazons, including her mother? And currently, she has Sarge Steel, Nemesis, the Gorillas, Etta Candy...Steve, Etta and the Amazons are iconic elements to WW, just like Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen. I don't really see the problem.
Part of what makes Golden Age Wonder Woman stories so lousy is that she’s as close as they could probably legally get to making her a complete Superman ripoff.
NO ONE CARES ABOUT THE GOLDEN AGE STORIES, OH MY GOD. They're amusing, like old Batman stories, but just as relevant as those too. Okay?
The long-term problem this creates for modern storytellers is that, unless they want to flog the Greek myths invoked in her origin really hard, there aren’t a lot of stories you can tell with Wonder Woman that aren’t pretty much distaff, bondage-flavored Superman stories. Change her origins all you like, but the basic concepts involved are still ridiculously Superman-like. She almost comes off as the Sensational She-Hulk to his Incredible Hulk, doomed to be light and comedic for lack of any ability to be taken seriously.
Okay. Flog the Greek Myths to death? There is no such thing. They are a very important part of her origin and who she is. She also comes from an island of all women, where Superman comes from a dead planet. She is a warrior at heart, incredibly skilled in combat and willing to kill, which makes her VERY different from Superman. She's also an ambassador who wants to change the world and promote equality. She has a clear unabashed message of feminism. Superman wants to SAVE the world. Wonder Woman wants to make it BETTER. She comes from a different culture and has a different view of things than Superman. She is skilled in all kinds of weapons. She's a skilled diplomat.
There are SO many differences between her and Superman that I could go on and on. But it's moot. She is different in ideals and mission, and that's very important. She's also an icon for feminism and equality, which is very important
Basically, this person makes a few good points, like need for a more iconic supporting cast and rogues gallery. But she puts this is a cynical article that says the entire concept of WW is stupid and no one cares for her. If that was true, WW wouldn't still be around, and so ingrained in our culture.
So the argument is mostly "The Golden Age was silly!" which is obvious and not important to today at all. It's as important as the Silver Age is to Bat...oh right, Grant Morrison, never mind. But just because something is silly, doesn't mean there aren't seeds of good ideas. A feminist, Greek themed superheroine? Was a good idea. And thanks to some extremely talented writers, the origin has been turned into something NOT silly, and very cool. Stop living in the past, topless robot. Look into the future. The future holds a lot of promise for Wonder Woman.
I'm talking about
http://www.toplessrobot.com/2008/08/10_reasons_no_one_cares_about_wonder_woman.php
First, saying nobody cares about Wonder Woman when she's been around sixty years, had a TV show and is a cultural icon is laughable. But I digress.
See? The shorts have become more a star-spangled leotard and the bustier designs are slightly different, but that’s it. This is something of a problem.
While the original, Golden Age Wonder Woman comics expressed little more than a wistful desire for something like a feminist movement (with spankings!) to happen, Feminism has become a real-world concept between then and now. Women dress differently now, for different reasons, and ideas about what a woman’s outfit expresses have changed.
In the '40s, a woman in short-shorts was telling you she was no housewife! She was going to go out and do all kinds of unladylike things that involved exercise and possibly building muscle. In the 90’s, a woman who’s rolling into battle wearing a leotard resembles… um… nothing so much as an extremely angry underwear model.
First of all, the feminist movement was happening in the nineteen forties. It's been happening for a while. Granted, the costume is a problem. It's silly, and contradicts the message a bit. I don't like it. But, it's not like she never wears other outfits, often cool armor and such, and it's not like Greek people didn't mind showing off their bodies. And I'd equate it more with a leotard (which gymnasts wear, wow!) or a swim suit than underwear.
9) There Are No Great Wonder Woman Stories
If a friend of yours is getting interested in superheroes and asks for some really great story recommendations, what kind of thing are you going to tell your buddy to read? You’ll probably recommend stand-alone, influential stories featuring minimal continuity and big-name creators at the top of their game. If you buddy likes Batman, you’ll send him to The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year 100, or The Killing Joke. If it’s Superman, you can point your pal at Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow, Red Son, or Secret Identity. If it’s Wonder Woman… uh...
… shit. The best Wonder Woman ever manages is coming along for the ride in big universe-wide stories like Kingdom ComeNew Frontier, or weirdo costume dramas like Wonder Woman: Amazonia. In terms of stories that would actually make you think Wonder Woman is a great character? Apparently DC’s got absolutely nothin’.
Has this person read George Perez's relaunch? Or Greg Rucka's run? That's who I'd point to for good Wonder Woman stories. And Gail Simone is promising to deliver an epic story arc soon, and her runs been damn good so far. I've got trades I can point my friends too, fer sure. I can even point them to
bluefall's "When Wondy Was Awesome" posts.
Sure, there do need to be more awesome stand alone epic stories about Wondy. She's gotten a short shrift compared to Batman and Superman, and she's underrated. But to say she had no great stories is plain insulting. I for one, would not point my friends to The Killing Joke for a good Batman story, btw.
Where Wonder Woman has seen the bulk of her superhero action has been in her solo comics, and as a member of assorted Justice clubs over the years. When she’s hanging around with a team, Wonder Woman tends to just be a bruiser who’s also good at restraining and extracting information from people. In an anthology, her solo stories could be a bizarre if welcome change of pace.
In her monthly comic, which DC doggedly struggles to keep in publication, Wonder Woman tends to be at her worst. There have been good runs, most modern and heavily revisionist, by the likes of George Perez, Greg Rucka, and the aforementioned Gail Simone… but the vast majority of classic Wonder Woman comic book stories are absolute dreck, and often to a far greater degree than your run-of-the-mill bad comics. I mean, just look at some of this shit. It’s like DC was hiring twelve-year-olds, and not talented ones like Jim Shooter, either.
What the hell? Apparently they DO know of Perez, Rucka and Simone, and are just doggedly choosing to ignore it for some reason. And are pulling out forties comics to show WW was silly. OF COURSE SHE WAS SILLY. That's like pulling out comics from the 50's to prove Batman and Superman were silly! Jesus! WW was no more ridiculous than her counterparts at the time! It's the modern stuff that matters! All of Batman's good runs are modern and heavily revisionist as well! What do you call DKR if not that? The logic, it burns.
Oh, but apparently Golden Age Batman and Superman are crude but recognizable. That makes no sense. I still don't see what effect this has on the modern populace, who know nothing of Golden Age WW.
Wonder Woman’s signature weapon is her magic lasso, which modern writers desperately struggle to make interesting. It’s unbreakable, and can compel you to tell the truth, and would be appropriate for roughly a 4th-level campaign in D&D. Sometimes it’s almost sad how eager modern creators are to get more martial, interesting-looking weapons like swords and spears into Wonder Woman’s hands.
I can’t blame them, though. We covered a lot of the god-awful goofy baggage Wonder Woman’s terrible Silver and Golden Age comics saddle her with, but the Golden Lasso is probably the worst. You see, in the Golden Age, the Lasso compelled you to obey Wonder Woman’s commands. In part, this is because Wonder Woman was an agent of Aphrodite tasked with ending violence, and in part because her creator William Moulton Marston had some incredibly unusual ideas about world peace.
You see, “Charles Moulton”, as he signed his comic, had some very loving relationships that involved women he adored tying him up and probably spanking him. Somehow he moved from his own personal enjoyment to deciding that if the entire world could adopt a similar domination/submission fetish, the result would be world peace. Everyone would either have loving subbies to lovingly dominate, or be lovingly vice versa.
...It's a super strong unbreakable lasso that makes you tell the truth. Not only that, it makes you see the truth about yourself. She can use it to whip, tie, trip and choke.
That seems really interesting and useful to me. A lot more so than a batarang or...Superman has no weapons, does he? Fancy that.
And Jesus Christ, nobody cares about the Golden Age. The lasso isn't a conduit for someone's bondage fetish anymore. LET IT GO.
Okay, I lied. The Golden Age saddled Wonder Woman with something even more irritating than the damn Lasso. There’s also her idiotic Invisible Plane, which is also a robot plane that pilots itself and only responds to Wonder Woman’s voice and breaks all the laws of aerodynamics. The Invisible Plane is just a bad idea, but since it’s an old bad idea, generations of comics creators have tried to force it into stories and desperately struggled not to make it look idiotic. I don’t know why, because I’ve never read an Invisible Plane scene that wasn’t awkward as hell, and it’s not like there’s any great potential inherent in the idea. I mean, check out the way Wonder Woman acquires her Jet in her origin story from Golden Age Wonder Woman #1.
It is a plane that is invisible. I fail to see how being invisible is not useful, as well as it's ability to carry passengers and cargo. Also, it looks damn cool.
Just about every superhero still in print at DC is still mostly fighting the villains they were fighting in the Golden or Silver Age, or at least villains patterned after their “original” style of baddie. This leaves Wonder Woman in a bad way, since she never fought anyone worth giving a damn about to begin with. Occasionally one of her better modern authors will salvage something usable out of the original shit villains I’m about to show you, but nothing that’s given her an equivalent to the Joker or Lex Luthor (and no, Circe in the current run doesn’t count - she sucks).
Yeah, Gail Simone says she's working on the rogues gallery. Thanks for the input there. I mean, come on, though, Wonder Woman fought the GOD of WAR. She fought MEDUSA. She fought the DEVIL. She fought a like thousand armed bodyguard to Zeus! I think that's a lot more badass than anything Lex Luthor can come up with.
Blahblah Steve Trevor is stupid...yeah, well, so was Lois Lane, and don't try to convince me otherwise, I'll whip out some evidence. Steve isn't around anymore, yet a lot of people are vying for him to get back. He must have had something going for him. He's no longer her romantic interest and he's been completely overhauled. For the last time, get over the Golden Age.
Lack of supporting Cast
Wonder Woman? She’s got nothing. Even her supposed sidekick, Wonder Girl (both of them), have quickly become features of Teen Titans moreso than her own book. Generally she spends her modern solo books having transient relationships with people who’ll be written out soon, and even her classic books never managed to find a proper status quo for the character. There are attempts to reinstate classic characters from time to time (especially Etta Candy, above), but they tend to end up going nowhere. It’s like she’s trapped in a James Joyce novel. A really stupid James Joyce novel.
Is Etta Candy going nowhere currently? It doesn't look like it to me. And lets see, supporting cast...doesn't she have like, an entire island of Amazons, including her mother? And currently, she has Sarge Steel, Nemesis, the Gorillas, Etta Candy...Steve, Etta and the Amazons are iconic elements to WW, just like Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen. I don't really see the problem.
Part of what makes Golden Age Wonder Woman stories so lousy is that she’s as close as they could probably legally get to making her a complete Superman ripoff.
NO ONE CARES ABOUT THE GOLDEN AGE STORIES, OH MY GOD. They're amusing, like old Batman stories, but just as relevant as those too. Okay?
The long-term problem this creates for modern storytellers is that, unless they want to flog the Greek myths invoked in her origin really hard, there aren’t a lot of stories you can tell with Wonder Woman that aren’t pretty much distaff, bondage-flavored Superman stories. Change her origins all you like, but the basic concepts involved are still ridiculously Superman-like. She almost comes off as the Sensational She-Hulk to his Incredible Hulk, doomed to be light and comedic for lack of any ability to be taken seriously.
Okay. Flog the Greek Myths to death? There is no such thing. They are a very important part of her origin and who she is. She also comes from an island of all women, where Superman comes from a dead planet. She is a warrior at heart, incredibly skilled in combat and willing to kill, which makes her VERY different from Superman. She's also an ambassador who wants to change the world and promote equality. She has a clear unabashed message of feminism. Superman wants to SAVE the world. Wonder Woman wants to make it BETTER. She comes from a different culture and has a different view of things than Superman. She is skilled in all kinds of weapons. She's a skilled diplomat.
There are SO many differences between her and Superman that I could go on and on. But it's moot. She is different in ideals and mission, and that's very important. She's also an icon for feminism and equality, which is very important
Basically, this person makes a few good points, like need for a more iconic supporting cast and rogues gallery. But she puts this is a cynical article that says the entire concept of WW is stupid and no one cares for her. If that was true, WW wouldn't still be around, and so ingrained in our culture.
So the argument is mostly "The Golden Age was silly!" which is obvious and not important to today at all. It's as important as the Silver Age is to Bat...oh right, Grant Morrison, never mind. But just because something is silly, doesn't mean there aren't seeds of good ideas. A feminist, Greek themed superheroine? Was a good idea. And thanks to some extremely talented writers, the origin has been turned into something NOT silly, and very cool. Stop living in the past, topless robot. Look into the future. The future holds a lot of promise for Wonder Woman.