How it is

Not the One

And Entertainment Weekly had a huge feature a couple months ago, in which luminaries including would-be Wonder Woman director Joss Whedon talked about the difficulties bringing the princess to the screen — with Whedon saying that we need more wonder women, but not necessarily more Wonder Woman.

This. I would like to see Warner Bros. bite the bullet & take a chance on a Wondy movie, but it's not something that needs to happen. Just as we don't really need a Mr. Terrific movie or a Captain Comet movie.

But what we do need are good female protagonists. Remember Xena? Buffy? The tv series Dark Angel? Heck, Cleopatra 2525?

And it doesn't have to be fantasy. If The Chicago Code works well, that's perhaps more important than making a movie about some goofy gaudily-clad superchick.

But we need strong women, women who can lead, who can stand tall, who can fight. We need them especially in realistic settings—though if we're doing fantasy we should have them there as well—and we need lots of them.

Wondy can be a sort of female Superman; a silly old concept that's become an institution. But she doesn't need to be, should not be, the One. Anymore than Batman should be the one dark detective or Spider-Man the one superhero with an everyman attitude.

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One more thing. Wonder Woman was created as the ultimate token. Marston threw everything and the kitchen sink into the series in order to make her as cool as possible, as if no woman could be cool enough being just a regular superhero. (Or maybe it's the same thinking that's turned Batman into the damn Batgod.)

We don't need to make characters so uber. Phantom Lady was pretty cool too (and I mean before the super-skimpy costumes).

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DC ditches the CCA

End of an era? Well, DC has been making a mockery of the Code for 20 years. Maybe now it will actually be used by people who care.

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bluefall on JMS's NuWondy (on tumblr, in a response, & screw it I'm moving it to DW/LJ):
"I’ve found the trick, for me, is to read it as an Elseworlds. It has a very similar vibe — you go in expecting a story that has nothing to do with anything you know, and read it as a standalone, all the while looking for references and callbacks and reflections, like “oh they’re doing parents-killed-by-pirates, that’s like parents-shot-by-muggers in this Age of Sail ‘verse” or whatever — and from that perspective it’s reasonably interesting. Kind of a game of “spot the quick references to the Real Diana, and meanwhile enjoy this unrelated story of a lost people’s princess coming of age.”"

That's a good attitude to have.