The Defense of Wonder Woman

Hola!

In my noble and tireless quest to educate the six people who read this blog about our Star Spangled Savior, occasionally I’m going to have to address some misinformation that gets spread throughout the interwebs.

In this case, it’s this blog entry that wound up on Digg last night.

I have no idea who Alicia Ashby is. I’m sure she’s a wonderful person, and she’s clearly a talented writer. But, to be blunt, she don’t know nothin’ ‘bout no Wondy.

In the interest of stemming the flow of ignorance and hopefully stopping people from missing out on some great comics that Ashby completely dismisses, I’m going to address her various claims and see how they stand up to some scrutiny. Let’s begin.

Ashby’s argument is basically that with as big of a push as DC is giving Wonder Woman these days, the fact that she’s not generating much excitement is the result of some fundamental flaws with the character. Ashby writes:

“You’d think people would in a frenzy of Wonder-mania, the same as we were during the great Superman media blitz that preceded the mediocre Superman Returns, or the Batman blitz that predated the total rad Dark Knight flick.”

I’m going to immediately dismiss her contention that a direct-to-DVD movie and co-starring in a weekly comic book should be generating as much interest in Wonder Woman as Dark Knight and Superman Returns did for Batman and Superman, because that’s just... nuts. Obviously a big-budget Hollywood movie is the biggest exposure that any character can get, and nothing will generate that level of excitement. How many people really cared about Iron Man when all he had going for him was being the bad guy in Civil War and getting his own direct-to-DVD movie?

Anyway, Ashby’s complaints begin with Wondy’s outfit. Writes Ashby:

"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."

Okay. On one hand, she’s not wrong. Wondy’s costume is something of an eyesore, and it certainly makes no sense for her character. That much is true.

But does anybody seriously think that putting more clothes on Diana would heighten interest in her? Has anyone seen what other superheroines run around in?

Pants aren’t exactly the order of the day.

Moving on.

And oh boy. You’re gonna want to sit down for this one.

9) There Are No Great Wonder Woman Stories

Oh me, oh my. The thrust of Ashby’s argument here is that Wondy doesn’t have equivalents to Dark Knight Returns or Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow.

First of all, who does? It seems that Ashby is buying into that “trinity” nonsense that DC tries to push, whereby Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman are held up as the most important people in the universe. It’s really stupid, but fanboys absolutely eat it up, so DC has been running with it for the last, like, twelve or so years.

One of the reasons why it’s so stupid is that it puts unrealistic expectations on Wondy. Of course she’s not as popular as the other two. Nobody’s suggesting that. But the mistake that Ashby and others make is going from “There hasn’t been a Wondy-centric equivalent to Dark Knight Returns” to “There are no great Wonder Woman stories.”

"The Return of Barry Allen", despite being probably the best Flash story ever, isn't as good as Dark Knight Returns, but you don’t see anyone talking about how much all Flash stories suck.

At any rate, this is dead wrong. There are lots of great Wondy stories, and any Wondy fan worth her weight in salt can rattle off some gems at a moment’s notice.

I’m going to leave aside Wondy's golden age, since I’ll address that later. But from the Silver Age onward, you’ve got –

The fantastic Diana Prince stories, in which Wondy renounces her powers in order to remain in Man’s World while the Amazons leave this dimension, and becomes a globe-spanning adventuress. Fantastic art by Mike Sekowsky, and fun, exciting stories by Denny O’Neil.

Then there are the "Twelve Labors of Wonder Woman" (unfortunately not collected in one volume). Issues #212 (pictured above) - #222 of Wondy’s first series chronicled the various feats that Wondy had to perform – upon regaining her powers – to be reinstated in the Justice League of America. You’d think just, you know, being Wonder Woman would be enough, but this was a team that thought Hawkman and Green Arrow were worthwhile members, so who knows. Anyway, each issue is narrated by a different member of the Justice League, and the stories are handled by an assortment of writers and artists. They’re tons of fun and showcase a smart, capable, powerful Diana.

Of course, after Crisis on Infinite Earths, we get…



George Perez’s Wonder Woman! For twenty-four issues (and one annual), superstar artist George Perez took Wonder Woman and completely reinvented her for a more sophisticated audience. I have issues with some of the changes he made, but these comics are insanely good. Exciting, fun, and featuring what might be Perez’ greatest artwork ever, these are some of the best comics of the 1980’s. And that’s saying a lot. The highlight of the bunch might be Wonder Woman #20: "Who Killed Myndi Mayer?"



Following George Perez on the book (once Perez left as artist he kept writing the book for a while, but it wasn’t as good), we got William Messner-Loeb as writer, who turned out some absolutely fantastic Wondy stories in his time (which started with Wonder Woman Special #1 and lasted for a while starting with issue #63, although I’d quit reading just before “The Challenge of Artemis” starts up). This period is also notable for Brian Bolland having turned out some of the most stunning comic book covers ever.



Then there’s 2000’s JLA: League of One, written and painted by Christopher Moeller. An interesting story, it highlights Wondy’s place in the Justice League as she has to use all her wits to defeat not only an ancient dragon, but the rest of the League as well.



And let’s round things out with Gail Simone’s first arc on the title, recently released in hardcover. After a couple years of putrid Wondy stories, The Circle was not only a breath of fresh air, it is one of the best Wondy stories ever. Centering around a small group of Rogue Amazons who have been imprisoned beneath Paradise Island since Diana’s birth, the Circle is a thrilling story with gorgeous art courtesy of Terry and Rachel Dodson that demonstrates not only the power and cunning of Diana, but adds new layers of pathos to the Amazons and their Queen (and Diana’s Mother) Hippolyta, and explores the consequences of living on a perfect island of immortals.

That’s a pretty good place to get started. Are any of these things Dark Knight Returns? No. But Dark Knight Returns is one of the great works of the medium; by that standard, Superman hasn’t had his DKR, either. So, is there reason for saying…

8) In Fact, Most Wonder Woman Comics Are Completely Terrible

?

Well, yes and no. The fact is, most comics in general are completely terrible. When you’re in continuous publication for over sixty years, it’s no wonder that some crap is going to find its way in there. But the statement above is misleading. It makes it sound like Wonder Woman comics are particularly bad compared to other superheroes, and that’s bullshit.

You could fill several large libraries with crappy Superman and Batman comics that have been published over the decades. And remember: Superman and Batman, being the most popular superheroes around for decades, get the top-tier talent, which in turn gets them better stories, which keeps them popular, etc.. Wondy has at least as good a track record as heroes like Green Lantern, Flash, Iron Man, and Thor, and a better record overall than some other high-profile heroes like Captain America and the X-Men.

Yes, there were bad Wonder Woman comics in the 50’s. Ever try to read 50’s Batman comics? The ones with Batwoman, Bat-Girl, Bat-Mite, and Bat Hound, in which Batman turned into Zebra Batman and Space Alien Batman, among other Bat-men? I can assure you that they have little to do with what you see in The Dark Knight.

But apparently two entries being wrong about Wondy comics wasn’t enough, because now we move on to…

7) Golden Age Wonder Woman Comics Were Really, Really Terrible

The wrongest of them all! Don’t believe this for one second. There was a reason, after all, that Wondy was one of very, very few characters in the golden age to both star in an ongoing anthology (which is what most comics were) *and* carry her own title (the only other DC characters to do that were Superman, Batman, Flash, and Green Lantern, and only Superman’s, Batman’s, and Wonder Woman’s books survived into the 1950’s and beyond).

Says Ashby:

"Wonder Woman’s Golden Age books are hallucinogenic nightmares of bad plot, arbitrary story, and lots of loving depictions of fetishistic behavior that are just quaint and ridiculous now. From the lousy lettering to the bad writing to the poorly-composed artwork, I’d be tempted to say that Golden Age Wonder Woman comics are just unreadable to the modern fan."

Firstly, of course they’re ridiculous now. They were ridiculous then! That was the whole point! Wondy’s golden age stories were whimsical, light-hearted stories meant to teach the virtues of empowerment (along with writer William Marston’s bizarre ideas of submission). Wondy’s golden age adventures were viewed at the time as subversive, provocative, and potentially *dangerous* precisely because of their off-the-wall nature. That is a strength, not a weakness. Diana and her teachings were incredibly ahead of her time, and that is something to be admired rather than dismissed as hokey.

Quoth Diana:

“It takes real character to admit one’s failures – and not a little wisdom to take your profits from defeat. But remember, this Man’s World of yours will never be without pain and suffering until it learns love, and respect for human rights. Keep your hands extended to all in friendliness but never holding the gun of persecution and intolerance!”

This going on while Superman and Batman are still fighting bank robbers and spies.

I’m also sorry to say that Ashby betrays an ignorance of golden age comics in general if she’s going to call the unique and dynamic art of H.G. Peter “poorly-composed.” I would encourage her to look at some other artwork of the time and compare it with the gorgeous splash pages and panels of stories like “Villainy, Inc.”, in which her greatest foes team-up, or “The Ice-Bound Maidens,” in which Diana helps train young Amazons and fights the Seal Men. Peter was one of the age’s great cartoonists, and Wonder Woman is one of its best looking comics.

She may well be right that modern audiences would have a hard time with Wondy's golden age adventures, but that is hardly a problem specific to Diana. As I've mentioned before, golden age comics are, on the whole, completely unreadable to modern audiences, and are almost all complete garbage. Wondy's comics are some of the golden age books that have aged best, and are infinitely more readable than, say, old Justice Society strories, or certainly any old Flash or Green Lantern stories.

6) Her Lasso of Bondage

Ashby takes issue with Wondy’s lasso next. Eh. It’s a shame that she dismisses one of the most distinctive and cool weapons in superhero-dom just because it’s bourne out of Marston’s bondage fantasies, but there you go. Perhaps she hasn’t read any of Gail Simone’s Wonder Woman issues, where she demonstrates how Wondy's lasso basically turns her into Professor X once she gets it around you? Maybe she's unfamiliar with the Greg Rucka issue in which she braided her lasso into a flail and used it to beat the shit out of Silver Swan?

5) The Invisible Plane

Next on the chopping block is Wondy’s invisible plane. I don’t have much of a dog in that fight, as I can take it or leave it. I will say, though, that Ashby again acts like it’s uniquely absurd among superhero paraphernalia, when in fact it’s downright pedestrian compared to the crazy shit Superman owned in the Silver Age.

4) Terrible Villains

Well, Ashby and I finally agree on something: that Circe sucks.

That said, she’s hardly the first person to point out that Wondy is lacking in fantastic bad guys, and she’s not entirely wrong. The thing is, though, that, again, this isn’t a uniquely Wondy-centric problem.

The modern Cheetah, Dr. Psycho, Ares, Circe, and Giganta aren’t that bad a core group of villains to have. It’s not Joker and Catwoman, no, but almost no DC heroes outside of Batman and the Flash have a rogues gallery worth writing home about. That’s why Superman fights Lex Luthor, Braniac, and General Zod or some other heretofore unknown Kryptonian every other week.

In fact, there are very few superheroes at all who have great rogues galleries. Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and Green Lantern are all about on par with Wondy, and she does better for herself than characters like Aquaman and Hawkman.

3) Everybody Hates Steve Trevor

Well, she’s not entirely wrong there, either. Of course, Steve Trevor has been a retired Air Force officer in his 60’s for, like, the past twenty years, so I’m not sure how much of a difference it makes.

2) No Supporting Cast (Besides Steve Trevor)

Actually, Ashby gets this one entirely wrong. The problem isn’t that Wondy has no supporting cast. The problem is that she has way too much supporting cast that nobody ever uses.

When Wondy rebooted in the 80’s, she hung around people like the Katepalis family (Julia and Vanessa), Myndi Mayer, and the revamped Steve Trevor. When John Byrne took over the book, we got the Sandsmarks (Helena and Cassie, the latter of which is now Wonder Girl) and characters like Micah Rains and Etrigan the Demon. Then there are the reoccurring Amazons like Artemis, Phillipus, and Diana’s mother Hippolyte, with Greg Rucka adding Io to the mix a while back. Diana’s current supporting cast consists of Etta Candy, the secret agent Nemesis, and Sergeant Steel (basically a ripoff of Marvel’s Nick Fury). In between you had characters like the odious Trevor Barnes, Hercules, and the various workers at Diana’s embassy, as well as her former sidekick Donna Troy.

So yeah. The problem isn’t any inherent weakness in Di’s supporting cast; the problem is that writers love changing her status quo, and there aren’t strong editors around to step in and stop them. However, Di has had the same supporting cast since her relaunch, so that’s a step in the right direction.

I do want to point out that Ashby takes Wonder Girl playing a bigger role in Teen Titans than Wondy’s book to be a sign of weakness on the part of Wondy’s character. That is not the case; Wonder Girl as a separate entity was created specifically for Teen Titans (before that, "Wonder Girl" was just what Diana was called when she was young; it was not a separate character), and that has always been her primary home.

1) We Already Have Superman

This final criticism of Ashby’s is one of the most common and fundamental misunderstandings of the character around.

Yes, we already have Superman.

That has nothing to do with Wondy, because they’re completely different characters.



Superman’s entire purpose is to maintain the status quo. When a building explodes, he fixes it. When a mountain crumbles, he puts it back together. When a giant robot invades the city, he repels it.

That’s not what Wonder Woman is about. She’s not just out to save the world – she’s out to change it. Wonder Woman’s superheroics are only incidental to her overall mission, which is to make the world a better place by teaching, through example, the virtues of empowerment and empathy. Wonder Woman’s greatest stories are the ones in which she demonstrates not only her strength, but her compassion and desire to work with and reform the villains she fights.

That was one of the coolest things about Wondy from the onset: Superman sent villains to the Phantom Zone. Batman locked them up in Arkham Asylum. Wondy brought her villains to Paradise Island, where they could learn the errors of their ways and eventually put their talents to use for the good of mankind. That’s something that Mark Waid got right at the end of Kingdom Come, when he has Diana take the surviving anti-heroes back to Paradise Island with her. It’s something that Gail Simone gets when she has Diana drop her defenses against the genetically-engineered gorilla army she’s fighting so that she can talk to them and eventually turn them into friends.

Simply put: a story in which a super strong flying person beats up a giant robot and saves the earth could be an excellent Superman story. But it would be a terrible Wonder Woman story, because that’s not the point of the character. Wonder Woman is not Supergirl. Wonder Woman is a challenging, complex, difficult character to get a grasp on, and if writers have had difficulties with her over the years, it's because of how rich the character is, not because she's just a lot of silly stuff cobbled together.

Basically, the things that Ashby points out are either false, misconceptions (widespread though they may be) based on ignorance, things that apply to pretty much every superhero, or strengths of the character that she takes to be weaknesses for one reason or another.

Keep in mind, for instance, that the things she dislikes most about the character (the invisible jet, the lasso, the costume, Steve Trevor) are all elements that were present in what were by far the character's most popular incarnations (her golden age comics and her 70's television show).

Yeah, it's fun to have a laugh at old Wondy bondage stories, but trying to pin Wondy's relative lack of popularity compared to, say, Batman on some of the most unique and fun aspects of the character overlooks actual phenomena, like the aversion on the part of fanboys to female superheroes in general, or the difficulty DC has had in the past five years promoting any of its monthly titles. Ashby never mentions the Flash, for instance, who has also had a ton of promotion in the last few years and who completely crashed and burned.

I must also briefly address the assertion that...

"In her monthly comic, which DC doggedly struggles to keep in publication (...)"

Wonder Woman routinely sells between 35,000 - 40,000 copies per month. This makes it a solid performer for DC, whose titles range from the 80,000 copies per month mark with Justice League of America, to something like Blue Beetle, which only moves 12,000 copies on a good month. What's more, Wonder Woman is usually the top-selling superheroine comic every month, aside from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Shouldn't that be telling us something about how fandom in general receives women superheroes?

What's more, this figure is up some 15,000 - 20,000 copies from the end of Wondy's last series under Greg Rucka, indicating that the character has generated more interest in the last few years.

And there you have it. I really do encourage anyone who reads this to take a look at some of the stories that I mentioned for yourself.

It's certainly fun to bash old comics for being hokey, but by immediately dismissing them because they are hokey, it's possible to miss out on some really great stuff. Wonder Woman is an important, unique, and extremely interesting character. She's worth checking out.