Musing on what Artemis likes in a man, but really going on too long about _Requiem_
In a comment you may not be able to see, I said,
"Yeah, I could see Diana with Tasha Teranova (in space), Mala (in the past) or Io (in a self-destructive leading-her-on way), but I never really bought Diana/Artemis, as I've said. I could sorta buy Mike/Artemis, maybe Artemis/some Hellender, but not Di/Temi."
and anyone who knows the Byrne Wonder Woman is entitled to roll their eyes at one part of that.
Mike Schorr & Artemis called Requiem? The craggy runt cop & the scornful Amazon devil-slayer? Really?
Well, I did say, "sorta," & it is sort of cracky on the surface, but yeah, in a weird way it works. Almost.
It might help if you understand that my guide to Artie's character is her own bizarre series Artemis: Requiem. I imagine lots of Wondy fen who think they know Artemis know her from the Wonder Woman series, and from post-Byrne appearances. Reading the Messner-Loebs Artemis stories is not always easy, for the following reasons:
1) Bill Loebs himself. His writing style is pretty wacky, & while he was building up long-term plotlines with delayed payoffs, he definitely was not writing Wonder Woman "to the trade." I imagine that would throw some people off. I think Requiem works decently in one sitting, but it's still William Messner-Loebs, writing apparently by the seat of his pants & tongue in cheek, throwing crazy stuff on the page.
2) The art. Mike Deodato tried to draw Wondy in a "Jim Lee" style, which of course translated to formulaic art with a mix of normal & outlandishly overmuscled men, and strikingly curvy women who were differentiable by their costumes & sometimes hair. On Requiem, a young Ed Benes tried to follow in this vein, & the result was a sort of sketchy Jim Lee look rather than the lush work we'd see from Benes today. Still lots of women's hips, though.
Add to these that Requiem is really obscure. I found it as back issues at a comic shop; I don't remember if I knew it existed. And that was not so long after it came out.
So today, Artemis is likely to be seen as the modern equivalent to Mala in the 1940's, or Paula later, the Amazon who pops up when one wants a sister Amazon from Diana's homeland. Which is of course a bit misleading.
Because what Bill Loebs managed to establish in Requiem, & most Wondy writers since have managed to bullheadedly ignore, is that Artemis is a truly terrifying force in the world in her own right, with her own premise & motives. She isn't just some stupid junior version of Diana, nor is she just the Most Famous Generic Daughter of Themyscira.
When Artie died at the hands of the thing that had been the White Magician, she somehow ended up in, for want of a better term, Hell. Where she was taken as wife, or concubine, of a devil--or a Devil: a Prince of Hell, a mucketymuck of the Underworld, named Dalkriig-Hath. She was stuck with it, so she accepted it. She fought in the armies of darkness, she lived a life of relative luxury in a sea of dark brutality, she accepted that she was damned & this is what there was.
Then Diana showed up looking for her--not dead, just using one of the long list of occasional Wondy powers to project herself into the afterlife. And then Di got herself in trouble, & Artemis felt guilty enough to save Diana from the Devil's wrath, which meant freeing an unconscious Di, then running & running until she ended up clawing her way back to the world of the living.
After that, she fell in with the Hellenders, a bunch of demon-hunters. She joined them in their demon-fighting mission, which gave her a different sort of supernatural milieu than the usual Wondy stuff. She found out that someone had been weakening the bonds between Hell and Earth (which could explain how Artie even got back). And she met up with Dalkriig-Hath again as he invaded Earth--at which point he laughed at her & broke her arm.
So she shot him dead by holding the bow in her good hand & pulling the bow with her teeth. After this, she struck a deal with the hellcreature that took his place as a Prince of Hell, for Artemis's own life & the lives of several other humans killed in Dalkriig-Hath's assault on Earth.
So much for the first & last issues of Artemis: Requiem. But in the middle, we see a couple of relationships that tell us something about Artie.
First, Hank Jessup. Henrietta Sojourner Jessup, the fearless, reckless young woman whom Artemis saved from white supremacists, & sort of adopted. Hank wanted to be a cop, but hadn't gotten her law-enforcement degree. Artemis insisted that the Hellenders take on this erstwhile security guard along with herself, as a package deal. Why? I've wondered about this over the years, but it occurs to me now that looking after a young, courageous, but green girl is an Amazon virtue. Artie had found a "little sister" to look after. Amazons are a sisterhood, not just a random bunch of hot chicks to gawk at.
Second, Sureshot. Sureshot was this generic hot blond guy with, I guess, something like Deadshot or Arsenal's shtick. It's mentioned a couple of times that Artemis was attracted to him but didn't act on it--apparently because being alive again & on the side of "good" or whatever brought back some old Bana-Mighdall hang-ups about not falling in love with guys.
Wait up, you say. Aren't Amazons lesbian by default? Women who need men like fish need bicycles?
Heh. You would think. But they're not. If we accept that sexuality is substantially inborn, then Amazon culture doesn't remove the heterosexual impulse. And Artie seemed to have some access to both male and female slaves as the wife of Dalkriig-Hath--and perhaps took advantage of both. Certainly Dalkriig-Hath was a masculine figure.
In any case, she was having sex dreams about Sureshot, but not making a move for whatever reasons, and then in the final battle, Sureshot freaked out & ran away. The awful power & weirdness of what they were fighting was finally too much. His buddy Deadfall said, "The drugs don't work anymore." Sureshot was able to cope with what he was doing because he was on psychotropics. Learning this apparently made Artemis less attracted to him.
So what can learn about Artemis from Artemis: Requiem? Well, she likes courage. She attaches herself to Hank because Hank is fearless, where some might think Hank was stupid crazy. She likes the Hellenders' courage. She apparently is attracted to men but suppresses it--but she didn't suppress it in Hell.
So, back to Mike Schorr.
Mike is a cop. Hank wanted to be one of these, Mike is. Mike takes leave from his job to go off on a dangerous adventure to protect Cassie Sandsmark. He's protecting a brave little sister, that's familiar. Mike is a good guy.
Mike is not what we think of as a big tough guy. Well, he's tough, but he's kind of short. And ugly. I suspect he was partly modeled on Jack Kirby, who was a short guy but scrappy. But to Artemis, all mortal guys are the weaker sex. She's from a world where women are what men are to us. So an Amazon's perception of Mike is in effect like a Patriarch's world perception of a "tough chick": Short, not pretty, but good lord she has balls for a woman. Short, not pretty, but ye gods he has guts for a man.
He's not Sureshot. He goes through Hell & copes with it. After a while, maybe her defenses might get worn down a bit. For a little while.
Do I think they became a couple? Nah, probably not. But I could see it almost happening. And it's sort of weird enough to work in that cracky-but-justifiable way.
On the other hand, it would be a case of that thing that I think needs a good tvtropes name, where members of the cast get paired off, specifically the consolation prize version. Mike was Diana's friend--and would-be suitor--first, & Artie/Diana, that's a whole ball of painful history right there. So just as well that if anything happened, it didn't last.
Like I said, almost.
This entry was originally posted at http://philippos42.dreamwidth.org/51458.html, where Russian botspam is a rarity.
"Yeah, I could see Diana with Tasha Teranova (in space), Mala (in the past) or Io (in a self-destructive leading-her-on way), but I never really bought Diana/Artemis, as I've said. I could sorta buy Mike/Artemis, maybe Artemis/some Hellender, but not Di/Temi."
and anyone who knows the Byrne Wonder Woman is entitled to roll their eyes at one part of that.
Mike Schorr & Artemis called Requiem? The craggy runt cop & the scornful Amazon devil-slayer? Really?
Well, I did say, "sorta," & it is sort of cracky on the surface, but yeah, in a weird way it works. Almost.
It might help if you understand that my guide to Artie's character is her own bizarre series Artemis: Requiem. I imagine lots of Wondy fen who think they know Artemis know her from the Wonder Woman series, and from post-Byrne appearances. Reading the Messner-Loebs Artemis stories is not always easy, for the following reasons:
1) Bill Loebs himself. His writing style is pretty wacky, & while he was building up long-term plotlines with delayed payoffs, he definitely was not writing Wonder Woman "to the trade." I imagine that would throw some people off. I think Requiem works decently in one sitting, but it's still William Messner-Loebs, writing apparently by the seat of his pants & tongue in cheek, throwing crazy stuff on the page.
2) The art. Mike Deodato tried to draw Wondy in a "Jim Lee" style, which of course translated to formulaic art with a mix of normal & outlandishly overmuscled men, and strikingly curvy women who were differentiable by their costumes & sometimes hair. On Requiem, a young Ed Benes tried to follow in this vein, & the result was a sort of sketchy Jim Lee look rather than the lush work we'd see from Benes today. Still lots of women's hips, though.
Add to these that Requiem is really obscure. I found it as back issues at a comic shop; I don't remember if I knew it existed. And that was not so long after it came out.
So today, Artemis is likely to be seen as the modern equivalent to Mala in the 1940's, or Paula later, the Amazon who pops up when one wants a sister Amazon from Diana's homeland. Which is of course a bit misleading.
Because what Bill Loebs managed to establish in Requiem, & most Wondy writers since have managed to bullheadedly ignore, is that Artemis is a truly terrifying force in the world in her own right, with her own premise & motives. She isn't just some stupid junior version of Diana, nor is she just the Most Famous Generic Daughter of Themyscira.
When Artie died at the hands of the thing that had been the White Magician, she somehow ended up in, for want of a better term, Hell. Where she was taken as wife, or concubine, of a devil--or a Devil: a Prince of Hell, a mucketymuck of the Underworld, named Dalkriig-Hath. She was stuck with it, so she accepted it. She fought in the armies of darkness, she lived a life of relative luxury in a sea of dark brutality, she accepted that she was damned & this is what there was.
Then Diana showed up looking for her--not dead, just using one of the long list of occasional Wondy powers to project herself into the afterlife. And then Di got herself in trouble, & Artemis felt guilty enough to save Diana from the Devil's wrath, which meant freeing an unconscious Di, then running & running until she ended up clawing her way back to the world of the living.
After that, she fell in with the Hellenders, a bunch of demon-hunters. She joined them in their demon-fighting mission, which gave her a different sort of supernatural milieu than the usual Wondy stuff. She found out that someone had been weakening the bonds between Hell and Earth (which could explain how Artie even got back). And she met up with Dalkriig-Hath again as he invaded Earth--at which point he laughed at her & broke her arm.
So she shot him dead by holding the bow in her good hand & pulling the bow with her teeth. After this, she struck a deal with the hellcreature that took his place as a Prince of Hell, for Artemis's own life & the lives of several other humans killed in Dalkriig-Hath's assault on Earth.
So much for the first & last issues of Artemis: Requiem. But in the middle, we see a couple of relationships that tell us something about Artie.
First, Hank Jessup. Henrietta Sojourner Jessup, the fearless, reckless young woman whom Artemis saved from white supremacists, & sort of adopted. Hank wanted to be a cop, but hadn't gotten her law-enforcement degree. Artemis insisted that the Hellenders take on this erstwhile security guard along with herself, as a package deal. Why? I've wondered about this over the years, but it occurs to me now that looking after a young, courageous, but green girl is an Amazon virtue. Artie had found a "little sister" to look after. Amazons are a sisterhood, not just a random bunch of hot chicks to gawk at.
Second, Sureshot. Sureshot was this generic hot blond guy with, I guess, something like Deadshot or Arsenal's shtick. It's mentioned a couple of times that Artemis was attracted to him but didn't act on it--apparently because being alive again & on the side of "good" or whatever brought back some old Bana-Mighdall hang-ups about not falling in love with guys.
Wait up, you say. Aren't Amazons lesbian by default? Women who need men like fish need bicycles?
Heh. You would think. But they're not. If we accept that sexuality is substantially inborn, then Amazon culture doesn't remove the heterosexual impulse. And Artie seemed to have some access to both male and female slaves as the wife of Dalkriig-Hath--and perhaps took advantage of both. Certainly Dalkriig-Hath was a masculine figure.
In any case, she was having sex dreams about Sureshot, but not making a move for whatever reasons, and then in the final battle, Sureshot freaked out & ran away. The awful power & weirdness of what they were fighting was finally too much. His buddy Deadfall said, "The drugs don't work anymore." Sureshot was able to cope with what he was doing because he was on psychotropics. Learning this apparently made Artemis less attracted to him.
So what can learn about Artemis from Artemis: Requiem? Well, she likes courage. She attaches herself to Hank because Hank is fearless, where some might think Hank was stupid crazy. She likes the Hellenders' courage. She apparently is attracted to men but suppresses it--but she didn't suppress it in Hell.
So, back to Mike Schorr.
Mike is a cop. Hank wanted to be one of these, Mike is. Mike takes leave from his job to go off on a dangerous adventure to protect Cassie Sandsmark. He's protecting a brave little sister, that's familiar. Mike is a good guy.
Mike is not what we think of as a big tough guy. Well, he's tough, but he's kind of short. And ugly. I suspect he was partly modeled on Jack Kirby, who was a short guy but scrappy. But to Artemis, all mortal guys are the weaker sex. She's from a world where women are what men are to us. So an Amazon's perception of Mike is in effect like a Patriarch's world perception of a "tough chick": Short, not pretty, but good lord she has balls for a woman. Short, not pretty, but ye gods he has guts for a man.
He's not Sureshot. He goes through Hell & copes with it. After a while, maybe her defenses might get worn down a bit. For a little while.
Do I think they became a couple? Nah, probably not. But I could see it almost happening. And it's sort of weird enough to work in that cracky-but-justifiable way.
On the other hand, it would be a case of that thing that I think needs a good tvtropes name, where members of the cast get paired off, specifically the consolation prize version. Mike was Diana's friend--and would-be suitor--first, & Artie/Diana, that's a whole ball of painful history right there. So just as well that if anything happened, it didn't last.
Like I said, almost.
This entry was originally posted at http://philippos42.dreamwidth.org/51458.html, where Russian botspam is a rarity.