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Wonder Woman: A confused icon

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Posts

  • LucascraftLucascraft Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Batman would have a way better contingency plan for Chris Hansen than just an excuse about her being clay.

    Lucascraft on
  • TexiKenTexiKen Dammit! That fish really got me!Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Having multiple young boys as his wards/partner, the evidence is already set against him.

    TexiKen on
  • LucascraftLucascraft Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Yeah, but having multiple young boys as his wards/partners has also given him a whole lot of time to prepare the most awesome anti-pedophile contingency plan ever.

    Lucascraft on
  • MikeRyuMikeRyu Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Lucascraft wrote: »
    Yeah, but having multiple young boys as his wards/partners has also given him a whole lot of time to prepare the most awesome anti-pedophile contingency plan ever.

    "Your honour... Members of the jury... I realise that this looks bad, and that if I were you I would probably have made my decision to vote guilty half an hour ago. But if you listen to me now I will explain to you why you must not convict me of these terrible crimes, because, you see... I'm Batman..."
    240-14.jpg

    MikeRyu on
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  • psycojesterpsycojester Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Batman's constant underaged wards are all a ruse, so he can sleep with hot jailbait without arising suspicion, because everybody know Batman is into little boys, but can't do anything with Robin because he'd be the first suspect and Superman & the Flash are both constantly checking Robin for signs of rape.

    psycojester on
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • SolarSolar Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Has Batman ever sexed Wonder Woman? I thought it was always a "hint hint they like each other ho-ho-ho!" Because seriously she is supposed to be like the hottest woman in the world and Batman has had sex with nearly every other woman he meets.

    Solar on
  • TexiKenTexiKen Dammit! That fish really got me!Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    During Joe Kelly's JLA run they were really into each other, and even kissed a few times and went on a date or two.

    Then they did a mind meld thing where they saw all the paths being together would take them, from making Bruce not be such a dick and actually making Gotham a great city, to Diana actually making Bruce darker and more violent, to Bruce dying of old age while Diana is still young, and Diana killing Joker after he killed Bruce.

    Then they decide to just be friends, which was BS.

    TexiKen on
  • LucascraftLucascraft Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Batman & Wonder Woman have never been together, no. But the fact that WW has feelings for him has been brought up a couple times in recent issues. Of course, part of the JMS plan for wrecking two of the "big three" is going to be ignoring that fact for the next year.

    The most recent occurrence I can think of is in the Blackest Night: Wonder Woman tie-in. In the issue where she gets the Star Sapphire ring, there's a part where she's in a deity induced hallucination, and part of that hallucination involves her and Bruce being together.

    Lucascraft on
  • TexiKenTexiKen Dammit! That fish really got me!Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Oh yeah, that's right, Bruce saves the day (and he's not even around he planned that much ahead), showing Diana's true love oh yeah bow chik a wow wow.

    TexiKen on
  • SolarSolar Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Fair enough. I remember there was a Justice League episode where they all get reverted to kids and Wonder Woman is all "I'll go with Bruce tee-hee" and Batman is all "whatever." I think Green Lantern actually says "Your girlfriend sure is bossy" to which the response was "shut up!" Also there was that one where Batman is trying to save catch Wonder Woman after she got turned into a pig, which was hilarious.

    Solar on
  • KVWKVW Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    The JLA cartoon had some Wonder Woman/Batman stuff, too. I know offhand that the children JLA episode (Morgana turns them to kid versions) had them with some hints, like Wonder Woman picking the teams to split up with and when Bats opts to go with someone else, she cocks the eyebrow and is like, 'oh no you didnt, your coming with me' type of response and the two go off together scooby doo style.

    Edit: Goddamn you Solar stealing my thunder.

    KVW on
  • SolarSolar Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    KVW wrote: »
    The JLA cartoon had some Wonder Woman/Batman stuff, too. I know offhand that the children JLA episode (Morgana turns them to kid versions) had them with some hints, like Wonder Woman picking the teams to split up with and when Bats opts to go with someone else, she cocks the eyebrow and is like, 'oh no you didnt, your coming with me' type of response and the two go off together scooby doo style.

    Edit: Goddamn you Solar stealing my thunder.

    All your thunders are belong to us!

    Solar on
  • MikeRyuMikeRyu Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Maybe I'm talking out of my rear but I really dislike the Superman/Wonder Woman match up. It just feels lazy, like they're a pair because she's the only woman who can withstand his super thrusting. I just think they're a terrible pairing. The Batman/Wonder Woman thing makes a lot more sense to me.

    MikeRyu on
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  • TeaSpoonTeaSpoon Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    And the Superman/Wonder Woman pairing requires that Lois Lane dies. There is no alternative. And it's not easy to kill of such an recognizable character just to make way for Wonder Woman. It cannot happen without fanfare, so it'll take up the entire book just to deal with it.

    See Kingdom Come, where Superman spent decades in isolation after Lois was killed.

    TeaSpoon on
  • WildcatWildcat Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Admittedly it works better as a second relationship for them both, particularly if Superman is given his often-used slow ageing trait.

    Wildcat on
  • LordSolarMachariusLordSolarMacharius Red wine with fish Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    There's an interesting interview with Gail Simone at Suicide Girls, where she talks about Birds Of Prey, Welcome to Tranquility, Secret Six and of course Wonder Woman.

    Here's the WW part:
    AD :
    You’re also finishing a run on Wonder Woman and you've been talking for years about how much you love the character and how passionate you are about Diana. Why is it time to leave and let someone else take on the character?

    GS:
    It’s odd, but 30 issues is actually considered a long run on the icon books. I did love writing Wonder Woman…it’s an aggravating and inspiring assignment. Aggravating because there are limits placed on what you can do at every turn. I wanted to have Wonder Woman’s mother, Hippolyta, become engaged to marry another woman, the soldier Phillipus. Now, I mean, really. It’s an island of only women, men haven’t been there in 3000 years. Is it really that odd to imagine that they might fall in love and want to marry?

    I do give DC credit, as they have actively supported LGBT content in comics in the past few years. I just feel we could still be doing a lot more.

    But inspiring as well…I talk about this a lot, but I had people telling me endlessly how Wonder Woman had helped them get through some hurdle in their lives, not my stories in particular, just the character in her long history. People who came up and said that they got through chemotherapy with Diana’s help, or out of an abusive relationship, or to come out of the closet. One woman was inspired to become an honest to gosh astronaut. A reader told me his very ill daughter was a Wonder Woman fan, and DC sent her a care package of Wonder goodies and she made a full recovery. I mean, it’s more than just a gig, writing her.

    But eventually you have to pass the torch, and I’m very excited about the next writer, who is a superstar in many different media, James Michael Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5. I think he’s going to do huge things.

    [Continued in Spoiler]
    AD :
    What did you want to do with the Diana during your run and how well do you think you pulled it off?

    GS:
    I wanted to heal some rifts, for one thing. It’s an odd singularity with Diana that every writer tends to write her completely differently. They bring all their sexual politics to it. Some of the previous writers have been, I’ll be blunt, a little messed up, to put it kindly. And then she had magnificent writers like George Perez and Greg Rucka. But she seemed very fractured. Every new writer would ignore the previous run and it got a little neck-breaking. My idea was to say it all happened, and every different version of her was simply an aspect of a complex character.

    Wonder Woman is often asked to represent all women, in a way Batman and Superman are not asked to represent all men. It makes her weighty and often a bit dreary. 

So priority two was to give her a sense of humor. I think we accomplished all of that. She had a tribe of super-intelligent albino gorillas as her roommates. I think that kind of thing lifts the curse quite a bit.

    That said, you always look back and wish you could have reached a bit higher and grasped a little more firmly. There’s a lot I’d have loved yet to make happen. I did want to get her laid, for one thing. Poor girl’s been without for since the 40’s!

    AD :
    You worked on the animated Wonder Woman movie that came out on DVD last year, and I'm curious how much of what we saw on film was you and what you thought of the final product because the film wasn’t bad, but Diana was very different from how you write her in the comic. Rather than just let her be powerful and thoughtful and wise, the way that Superman is usually portrayed, the gender politics of the film really made the character not just weaker, but less interesting.

    GS:
    I did the first two drafts, and a lot of the plot and characters are still mine, and some of the dialogue, but a talented guy named Michael Jelenic came in and did the final draft. He made a much tighter script, and I really love it, but I regret a couple things...I regret the loss of the character humor. My script had a lot of Comedy of Errors type stuff, that fish out of water thing I love, but might easily have been lost on an audience looking for a straight adventure story. And I found the gender politics a little baffling. I just felt it was very first wave. I don't ever write Wonder Woman as man vs. women. I feel Diana is past that.

    And taken to extremes, it's insulting to everyone, it paints women as victims and men as victimizers. I have a pet peeve when women who are enjoying the full fruits of the choices offered purely because of the struggles of early feminists disavow feminism entirely, "Oh, I'm not really a feminist." I find that terribly frustrating.

    But to give the benefit of the doubt, I believe what they are saying is that they reject what they see as some notions of First Wave feminism that they don't believe apply to them or their lives.

    When I took Wonder Woman, I told DC flat out, I will not write any gender war stories. I will not do the man-vs-woman shtick. Because I hate it. And inevitably, that is the first thing people request when they don't understand the character. We actually subverted the idea, by having gods try to arrange a gender war, but the men and women end up respecting each other and choosing to tell the gods to go to hell.

    So while I found some of that stuff a bit off-putting, I still really like the movie. It's sharp and smart and funny. Terrific writer and a great new director, Lauren Montgomery.

    LordSolarMacharius on
  • LucascraftLucascraft Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    She basically says exactly what this thread has been talking about for 32 pages. The character has such a shattered continuity because every time the creative team changes, they have no regard for the previous work.

    More unfortunate than that is that JMS is doing exactly the same thing. He is perpetuating the problem rather than helping to mend it. By telling a completely out of continuity story, he is not doing the character or the mythos any long term favors.

    In all honesty, I hope they put Simone back on the book after JMS has his little hayday. Because while I didn't necessarily care for each individual arc, Simone had a lot of consistency throughout and even the stories I didn't care for still had little nuggets of goodness in them.

    Lucascraft on
  • SolarSolar Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Gail Simone has the shit nailed down tight.

    Solar on
  • KVWKVW Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    "Every new writer would ignore the previous run and it got a little neck-breaking."

    Subtle.

    KVW on
  • LucascraftLucascraft Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Anyone else have an opinion on Wonder Woman #601?

    I actually didn't hate it. I was surprised. It was way better than Superman #701. JMS used enough flashback scenes to Themyscira that this alternate reality worked fairly convincingly. There was even a page where Diana had a dream about herself in the classic WW outfit.

    I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm still annoyed that he's perpetuating the problem of ignoring everything his predecessors have done, but at least the story itself wasn't terrible. It would still work better in an elseworlds type book, but at least I didn't hate it like I hated Superman.

    Lucascraft on
  • HtownHtown Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    I don't actually feel like he's just ignoring stuff that came before; it seems like he's sort of telling an alternate timeline adventure story where the whole point is to get Wonder Woman back to where she was.

    Sort of.

    Anyway, yeah, it was surprisingly good.

    Htown on
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  • WildcatWildcat Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    I think that's exactly right, Htown.

    Wildcat on
  • LuxLux Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Certainly better than Superman 701, and Wonder Woman
    hitching a ride on the tail of a plane for 6 hours is pretty cool if logistically suspect

    It helps that this is probably the best Don Kramer art I've seen - his stuff on the Batman books always looked scratchy and without a mask, Bruce was kind of ugly. It might be the inker.

    Lux on
  • TexiKenTexiKen Dammit! That fish really got me!Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    So what the consensus seems to be is that WW is getting a better story than Superman.

    So JMS is better at writing an alternate Superman than the real one.

    Hmpf.

    TexiKen on
  • wirehead26wirehead26 Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    TexiKen wrote: »
    So what the consensus seems to be is that WW is getting a better story than Superman.

    So JMS is better at writing an alternate Superman than the real one.

    Hmpf.

    What "alternate Superman" are you talking about out of curiousity?

    wirehead26 on
    I'M NOT FINISHED WITH YOU!!!
  • TexiKenTexiKen Dammit! That fish really got me!Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Wonder Woman's origin in this story is similar to Superman's.

    She escaped Paradise [strike]City[/strike] Island as a baby, raised by a foster family in America, etc. Although she's probably more street smarts because she grew up in the hood.

    When JMS wrote that page long article for DC or some website about writing Superman and WW, he wouldn't shut up about Superman, and kind of threw in a paragraph or two of "oh yeah, how about that WW?" It's kind of sad, from a Superman fan's perspective, seeing the guy butcher the one character he seemed to have a greater love for (and a character that desperately needed help), than one that was doing just fine under Simone's watch.

    TexiKen on
  • RingoRingo He/Him a distinct lack of substanceRegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Well he already wrote a bunch of alternate Superman stuff with Hyperion as well. Alternate JLA and everything too!

    Ringo on
    Sterica wrote: »
    I know my last visit to my grandpa on his deathbed was to find out how the whole Nazi werewolf thing turned out.
    Edcrab's Exigency RPG
  • LuxLux Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    TexiKen wrote: »
    Wonder Woman's origin in this story is similar to Superman's.

    She escaped Paradise [strike]City[/strike] Island as a baby, raised by a foster family in America, etc. Although she's probably more street smarts because she grew up in the hood.

    When JMS wrote that page long article for DC or some website about writing Superman and WW, he wouldn't shut up about Superman, and kind of threw in a paragraph or two of "oh yeah, how about that WW?" It's kind of sad, from a Superman fan's perspective, seeing the guy butcher the one character he seemed to have a greater love for (and a character that desperately needed help), than one that was doing just fine under Simone's watch.

    Although they are orphans, I think part of the appeal of Wonder Woman's story is the sense of loyalty she has to the survivors. There are still a few Amazons left, in hiding, and she is doing everything in her (currently) limited power to save them. It's a shift that makes it feel more like its own concept than an alternate Superman.

    Lux on
  • DisDis Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    I hate the new Wonder Woman reboot with 600 and 601.
    It's more like Wonder Girl now.

    Dis on
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • WildcatWildcat Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    It's almost certainly not a reboot.

    Wildcat on
  • LordSolarMachariusLordSolarMacharius Red wine with fish Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Ben Caldwell (who has coincidentally been drawing the current PA comic) has posted a pitch he made to DC for a WW manga over at CBR. It's a lot of art you might have already seen, but he's included some of the story ideas he had as well as some other interesting stuff.
    WWeaglearmor1color1b.jpg
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    safeword1color.jpg

    LordSolarMacharius on
  • TairuTairu Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    That manga looks pretty awesome

    Tairu on
  • jasikamarsheljasikamarshel __BANNED USERS new member
    edited August 2010
    The wonder woman is, with no doubts, the most remembered female comic character,I am pretty sure that almost all of you know her story,so let's stay focus on the character design,I have to say that the point here is not a time line, is just show different looks of a same character,I remembered that when I was a child and liked watching her comic she was more natural, more like a real woman, now she looks too strong, more like a super hero,But that is just my opinion.

    jasikamarshel on
    The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
  • TexiKenTexiKen Dammit! That fish really got me!Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    ww-hughes.jpg

    Adam Hughes' unused design for the new WW costume.

    Basically the new look without the jacket. A stop sign of truth would have been something to get people talking though.

    TexiKen on
  • MunchMunch Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Other than the really muted colors, I dig it. I think it's the more rugged guantlets and shin guards/boots.

    Aside from the dumb jacket, Jim Lee's redesign just looks too dainty.

    Munch on
  • Just_Bri_ThanksJust_Bri_Thanks Seething with rage from a handbasket.Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited August 2010
    The new design has shoulder straps under the jacket.

    Just_Bri_Thanks on
    ...and when you are done with that; take a folding
    chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
  • SolarSolar Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    I think all these new costumes are a little too modern and don't have that ancient greek amazon feel to them. Which would be fine except that the Amazons in DC haven't to my knowledge been shown as advanced the same way that, say, the Asgardians in Marvel have. That Hughes one without the jacket looks cool but is more Wonder Girlish and the black tone doesn't really do it for me.

    Solar on
  • Robos A Go GoRobos A Go Go Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Was her costume some kind of relic or was it specially made when she became Wonder Woman? If the latter, then the situation does kind of call for a more urban look.

    Robos A Go Go on
  • Just_Bri_ThanksJust_Bri_Thanks Seething with rage from a handbasket.Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited August 2010
    It hasn't really gotten into that yet.

    Just_Bri_Thanks on
    ...and when you are done with that; take a folding
    chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
  • Bloods EndBloods End Blade of Tyshalle Punch dimensionRegistered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Man, it is impossible to find a Wonder Woman logo tee in a mans cut. Why they be hatin?

    Bloods End on
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