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The standard Wondy rant, May 2011 edition
May. 13th, 2011 07:31 pm"...the myth that Wonder Woman works as a leading super-hero."
"Oh, how is that? I'm curious to know why a character like her cannot carry a story of her own...."
Well, she can. She's just not as commercial as people seem to expect, and it's not just because she's a woman.
A self-consciously feminist character created by a bigamist (Wm. Marston) & a confirmed bachelor (H. Peter) to cash in on the 1940's super-hero craze? I suppose that such a concept could have had legs despite its origins.
But the creators had so little faith in the idea of a strong woman that they made her come from some male-free fantasy land where the women are amazingly powerful, but can only even have power due to men's absence. This is practically misogynist and misandrist at the same time.
And then they threw several different concepts into the book to try to grab as much audience as possible: She's a superscience hero (like an over-the-top Iron Man/Mr Fantastic), a mythology hero (like Thor), hangs around a college (like Spider-Man), an ersatz Captain America, albeit vaguely foreign, and a card-carrying feminist (like...Tigra?). Also she runs around in a stupid costume which just fails to be an athlete's togs due to the high boots and the evening-gown top (oh, yeah, like Harvey's Black Cat).
Imagine how much better they could have done with a magical-girl line. More titles means more alternatives for the audience if they don't like a given writer or artist. But no, they had to suck as much energy up into one title as possible.
Wondy has done well where elements get stripped out. Unfortunately, those elements don't seem to get attached to new series.
The Holliday Girls disappeared from Wonder Woman in the 1950's, never to return. Want to see college kids whimsically fighting a variety of menaces? You won't get it from DC.
The U.S. military connections have been dropped a few times. Twice they came back. But why not create a new character who has them?
The stupid boyfriend (No, really, he was stupid. I mean he was a stupid person in the text.) was killed off twice, then finally retconned into the husband of a friend of hers to stop the insanity. Fans of superheroines with stupid boyfriends have been whining ever since--but never mind Wondy, rarely do modern superheroines get boyfriends at all.
So many missed opportunities.
And Wondy is left with some mythology stuff, the bizarre gender politics of Paradise Island, some fantastic tech, and sometimes her JLA membership, while the fans of "powerful girl with stupid boyfriend," "superhero with a military day job," & "unapologetic patriotic USA superheroine," are left disappointed. And they'll badmouth the present version & hurt sales. As for the various concepts that have been attached over the years, sometimes by a single writer, such as, "superheroine with a gaggle of sorority girls following her around," "mythology-rooted character with job in a museum of antiquities," "martial artist / boutique owner with a variety of adventures," "superheroine who hangs around mythical monsters &/or nymphs," "superheroine with day job at a government agency dealing with metahuman stuff," or "whimsical superheroine who hangs out with a child version of herself," (Marston/Peter, Byrne, Sekowsky, Luke &/or Moeller, Heinberg, Kanigher, respectively)--those aren't being used elsewhere at DC either.
If you have an idea for a Wondy revamp (especially a new status quo), it might be better served as a new character.
And the Wonder Woman trademark might be more commercial if you rejected much of the cluttered original premise, but which parts do you keep? Maybe it's time to let it go, or at least acknowledge that Wondy as such is just not going to have amazing sales.
Other female characters can.
"Oh, how is that? I'm curious to know why a character like her cannot carry a story of her own...."
Well, she can. She's just not as commercial as people seem to expect, and it's not just because she's a woman.
A self-consciously feminist character created by a bigamist (Wm. Marston) & a confirmed bachelor (H. Peter) to cash in on the 1940's super-hero craze? I suppose that such a concept could have had legs despite its origins.
But the creators had so little faith in the idea of a strong woman that they made her come from some male-free fantasy land where the women are amazingly powerful, but can only even have power due to men's absence. This is practically misogynist and misandrist at the same time.
And then they threw several different concepts into the book to try to grab as much audience as possible: She's a superscience hero (like an over-the-top Iron Man/Mr Fantastic), a mythology hero (like Thor), hangs around a college (like Spider-Man), an ersatz Captain America, albeit vaguely foreign, and a card-carrying feminist (like...Tigra?). Also she runs around in a stupid costume which just fails to be an athlete's togs due to the high boots and the evening-gown top (oh, yeah, like Harvey's Black Cat).
Imagine how much better they could have done with a magical-girl line. More titles means more alternatives for the audience if they don't like a given writer or artist. But no, they had to suck as much energy up into one title as possible.
Wondy has done well where elements get stripped out. Unfortunately, those elements don't seem to get attached to new series.
The Holliday Girls disappeared from Wonder Woman in the 1950's, never to return. Want to see college kids whimsically fighting a variety of menaces? You won't get it from DC.
The U.S. military connections have been dropped a few times. Twice they came back. But why not create a new character who has them?
The stupid boyfriend (No, really, he was stupid. I mean he was a stupid person in the text.) was killed off twice, then finally retconned into the husband of a friend of hers to stop the insanity. Fans of superheroines with stupid boyfriends have been whining ever since--but never mind Wondy, rarely do modern superheroines get boyfriends at all.
So many missed opportunities.
And Wondy is left with some mythology stuff, the bizarre gender politics of Paradise Island, some fantastic tech, and sometimes her JLA membership, while the fans of "powerful girl with stupid boyfriend," "superhero with a military day job," & "unapologetic patriotic USA superheroine," are left disappointed. And they'll badmouth the present version & hurt sales. As for the various concepts that have been attached over the years, sometimes by a single writer, such as, "superheroine with a gaggle of sorority girls following her around," "mythology-rooted character with job in a museum of antiquities," "martial artist / boutique owner with a variety of adventures," "superheroine who hangs around mythical monsters &/or nymphs," "superheroine with day job at a government agency dealing with metahuman stuff," or "whimsical superheroine who hangs out with a child version of herself," (Marston/Peter, Byrne, Sekowsky, Luke &/or Moeller, Heinberg, Kanigher, respectively)--those aren't being used elsewhere at DC either.
If you have an idea for a Wondy revamp (especially a new status quo), it might be better served as a new character.
And the Wonder Woman trademark might be more commercial if you rejected much of the cluttered original premise, but which parts do you keep? Maybe it's time to let it go, or at least acknowledge that Wondy as such is just not going to have amazing sales.
Other female characters can.
