So I hadn't seen this before.
Okay, we've been through the whole Flashpoint rant a few times already. I do not like this angle for the Amazons, and I think it undercuts Diana's character. With Amazons Attack, it was stupid but I was open to the "mystically manipulated" idea and figured it wouldn't hurt the franchise.
I guess I was wrong, because it seems someone liked that idea and decided they should try it again in an alternate timeline. And now someone will like the idea and decide they should try it again. Because they don't get Wonder Woman. They don't understand how women can withdraw from men and not spend all of their time thinking about men, holding a grudge against men, and plotting to come out and hurt/maim/kill men. They don't get that women might spend their lives away from men and be perfectly happy and not obsessed with men in some way.
They don't get that the point of Wonder Woman is that sexism in our society was holding women back, and that Diana is what a woman who had never suffered institutionalized sexism can be. Instead, Wonder Woman only makes sense if she's lopping off heads and ranting about how terrible men are. For franchise purity, she has to have the moral high ground in her own book but when it comes to crossovers all bets seem to be off.
I know that this is an alternate universe and it won't really immediately affect how she's portrayed in her own book.
I know that the whole point of this timeline is that everything has gone horribly wrong and the heroes (which, coincidentally, don't seem to include Wonder Woman) will have to set it right.
I know that this cover is just there to get us riled up and they probably have an explanation inside that will make Diana sympathetic.
That doesn't make this crossover and everything released about Wonder Woman in it sound any less stupid.
Here's the thing, the best alternate universe storylines are the ones that show us the true measure of the characters. They're the ones that show us that the characters will remain true to their core characteristics in different circumstances.
There's a quote running around somewhere that Batman wasn't changed much because the audience wouldn't accept it. I can pretty much guarantee that Superman will be the same sort of person he always has been. Same for Hal, because they are building up the Green Lantern franchise around him. And of course, Barry will remain Barry because he's the centerpiece here.
For some reason, Diana is getting remade to be much more violent, though. And that suggests to me that they feel the core characteristics of Wonder Woman are her warrior characteristics, and that her kinder nature is only due to circumstances.
To me, that's bullshit. The very first act that this character performed in publication history is an act of mercy. The very first thing that Diana does in All-Star Comics #8 is to save someone from a plane crash. It is an action repeated in every retcon of her origin up until this idiotic JMS reboot. She has a friend with her usually, but it's always Diana's idea to go help the guy. It is an essential part of her origin and the first character trait that was established in her very first appearance. She is merciful.
And not only that, that someone is a man. She's heard nothing about men except that they were violent, enslaved her people, and that they retreated to the island to live in peace from them. She's raised to think that this person will try to hurt her even after she helps him, but she still does. Her instinct to be heroic and merciful is overwhelming. If she does not have that, if that is not a prominent trait, then that is not Wonder Woman.
Really, every depiction at odds with that as her true nature muddies the waters of a character that a lot of people don't seem to know/understand to begin with. People complain that WW is a cipher, a physical presence, a cardboard character and that's because anytime she's outside her own book the writers seem to ignore that she has very specific character traits that were laid out in her appearance. They ignore that her warrior aspects are tempered by mercy and reason. They do this because it's kewler to have her collecting heads than demonstrating a clear head.
A few minutes before I saw this I had been answering a comment on the other day's Steve Trevor post. I was explaining how Steve was more important to the mythos than Batman's first love interest, and this whole Flashpoint thing came to mind. Because with Steve around, we have a reminder that Diana's first act was an act of mercy. We have the basis for her opinion on men standing right by her. We have a guy around that is there because not only did she save him, she actually nursed him back to health and hid him from the rest of her people so he'd be safe.
Steve Trevor is a walking talking example of how good a person Wonder Woman is at heart. And that, more than a desire to see romantic stories around Wonder Woman, more than an affection of the character, is why I feel it's so important they bring him back.
Because this may be another big fakeout, but they are slowly moving towards it crossover by crossover. They are losing Wonder Woman in this, as each event they make her just a little more like the Punisher.
Showing posts with label steve trevor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label steve trevor. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Sunday, May 29, 2011
What does she see in that man?
First, an enjoyable diversion that hopefully won't be pulled anytime soon. Then on to the business of expressing a pretty complex opinion.
The biggest thing I see among fans that irks me is the insistence that Wonder Woman be paired with another costumed hero like Superman (in the letter columns and the freaking 90s Elseworlds) or Batman (since the cartoon series set them up a ratehr dedicated fandom has surfaced). Worse than the fans, this is a trend among writers, who gave her a crush on Clark in the 80s (this was their way of establishing she wasn't lesbian or asexual, I suppose, since the 80s reboot got rid of all the female characters she could have been paired up with as well as getting rid of Steve), a dozen alternate universe stories where she marries Clark in the 90s, and a relationship with Batman in 2000s JLA that is so important that it saves her from the Black Lantern in their company crossover (I will never let this go. Ever.) but is never mentioned in her or his book.
Now, a lot of us object to this based purely on franchise integrity. Wonder Woman dating Batman or Superman makes her into one of their supporting characters. It's not right, and she should be treated on equal terms with them but the writers, editors and most importantly the marketers clearly favor both men over her. Until we can replace Warner Bros execs with doppelgangers who love Wonder Woman boardroom fights over Superman and Wonder Woman or Batman and Wonder Woman will end with her getting the shaft.
But my objection to these two relationships and my insistence on bringing back Steve Trevor does go further than franchise integrity. It's all about character background, masculinity and femininity, and the underlying theme of Wonder Woman. Consider if you will, the classic origin story.
Despite some variation (particularly with Kanigher, but he seems to have soft-retconned the classic origin back in when he really got to writing), most writers stick to her saving a downed pilot. This is the first man she's ever seen. He's usually half-drowned and horribly injured from the crash. She cares for him and sees him at his most vulnerable. While he's helpless, sometimes delirious, and in the cases when she hides him (Martston, Kanigher's later retcon) completely dependent on her for survival. Even when he's lucid (Kanigher's first story, Conway), he's still defenseless and has no control over what happens to him. She has to rescue and protect him.
She notices early on that he's pretty attractive. Even as a complete wreck, waterlogged and injured he is absolutely gorgeous. That's the basis for the initial attraction, but with some writers there's a little bit more. Pre-Crisis Diana knew English somehow (magic TV or there's Amazons that were shipwrecked English-speakers or Hermes willed it--she also knew Caveman language in the Silver Age). In one of the Golden Age origin retellings (I can't find it right now), Steve's delirious and babbling about the war, how his people are fighting a great evil, and how he swears he sees an angel. In the Silver Age, the first version has him telling her he doesn't see the difference between an Amazon and an angel, and then ridiculously offer to fight off sharks while she gets away. Later he shows up leading a charity outing for underprivileged kids. Both cases, he says something while helpless that demonstrates he's brave and selfless, he admires her, and he's community minded.
She decides she's attracted to him based on him being beautiful. Sometimes she gets to factor in that he says nice things about her and cares for others above his own well-being despite being absolutely helpless. Not exactly a lot to go on but I'm sure you all do a background check and require them to accomplish three quests before you'll approach an attractive stranger in a bar.
Later on we see that he's the sort of guy who tells the villain it doesn't matter what they do to him, they'll never beat Wonder Woman. Other times we see he can be gentle and thoughtful and takes care of her emotionally. He's also brave and honest. He has some very attractive qualities that are present whether he's shooting out the lock on her prison door or he's lying in her arms recovering from a recent blow to the head. He's passively desirable. It's not things he does that interest her, it's inherent qualities that show through at his weakest moments whether they're superficial like his appearance or the truest expression of his courage like laughing in the face of a villain who has him completely in their power.
The updates on Steve Trevor through the years, the new interpretations by Kanigher, Conway, Thomas, and Mishkin for their respective eras, kept that he is a doer and a heroic character but still understood that Diana's attraction was based on his characteristics rather than his accomplishments. It meant more to her that he was the sort of person who would TRY to help her than the sort of person who COULD help her.
Somehow, though, people always ask why she likes him. They want him to have done something to deserve her. Or they consider the character a complete wash, and favor her with Superman or Batman, the only two men on the planet who can be said to have accomplished more than her. They want a super-powered love interest. The long-standing trend among anti-Steve fans who are still in favor of a male love interest is to get her a so-called "Real Man" because they don't get how a woman of her calibre could fall for someone who needed her help. This is one thing to see from fans, but to have writers try and establish this too, to have her go for the one guy who outpowers her or the badass normal, to write her as the female fighter who insists on a man who matches or defeats her betrays a misunderstanding of our culture and Diana as a character.
Wonder Woman was raised in a society of women, with no positive views of men until she met one herself. This is important because it tells us that she has no investment in or even concept of the Cult of Masculinity.
The Cult of Masculinity is a way of describing how society pushes this construct of what men need to be like. It is the thing that makes us value certain traits in men above others, and insist that men are worthless unless they are superhuman overachievers who never show a moment of weakness. It is the collection of traits that men are expected to embody in order to keep their place of superiority over women. It is, among other irritating things, the expectation that men have more important jobs and earn more money than their wives. It is, among other infuriating things, our cultural requirement that even if women are allowed to be heroes men must be bigger heroes.
Wonder Woman has no clue that men are supposed to be stronger, more active, more capable, better fighters, more famous, or make more money than she is. She has no idea what we would consider a worthy mate for her. (In fact, one of the great things in the Bronze Age is that the rest of the JLA doesn't quite understand why she's with him.) She doesn't know that she's supposed to be dating UP somehow, that she's supposed to go for someone who has more power or influence than she does. She doesn't realize that when she saw him drowning, exhausted, and near death she was supposed to conclude he was defective. She never figures out that every time he needs her to save him she's supposed to think less of him.
Diana doesn't see Steve the way we do, the way Black Canary does, the way Batman does, the way our society would see him. We see a man we have no use for because he dates a woman who is better at his job than he is. (Never mind how good he actually is at his job, we're blind to that.) She sees a person who is physically attractive that turns out to also be selfless, kind, brave, light-hearted and supportive. She sees someone who often needs her help, makes sure she gets the appropriate credit for that help, and lets her know how much he appreciates it. She sees a person who is a little thick-headed, sometimes kind of irritating but that will always be at her side and always ready with a smile or a word of encouragement when she needs it.
The biggest thing I see among fans that irks me is the insistence that Wonder Woman be paired with another costumed hero like Superman (in the letter columns and the freaking 90s Elseworlds) or Batman (since the cartoon series set them up a ratehr dedicated fandom has surfaced). Worse than the fans, this is a trend among writers, who gave her a crush on Clark in the 80s (this was their way of establishing she wasn't lesbian or asexual, I suppose, since the 80s reboot got rid of all the female characters she could have been paired up with as well as getting rid of Steve), a dozen alternate universe stories where she marries Clark in the 90s, and a relationship with Batman in 2000s JLA that is so important that it saves her from the Black Lantern in their company crossover (I will never let this go. Ever.) but is never mentioned in her or his book.
Now, a lot of us object to this based purely on franchise integrity. Wonder Woman dating Batman or Superman makes her into one of their supporting characters. It's not right, and she should be treated on equal terms with them but the writers, editors and most importantly the marketers clearly favor both men over her. Until we can replace Warner Bros execs with doppelgangers who love Wonder Woman boardroom fights over Superman and Wonder Woman or Batman and Wonder Woman will end with her getting the shaft.
But my objection to these two relationships and my insistence on bringing back Steve Trevor does go further than franchise integrity. It's all about character background, masculinity and femininity, and the underlying theme of Wonder Woman. Consider if you will, the classic origin story.
Despite some variation (particularly with Kanigher, but he seems to have soft-retconned the classic origin back in when he really got to writing), most writers stick to her saving a downed pilot. This is the first man she's ever seen. He's usually half-drowned and horribly injured from the crash. She cares for him and sees him at his most vulnerable. While he's helpless, sometimes delirious, and in the cases when she hides him (Martston, Kanigher's later retcon) completely dependent on her for survival. Even when he's lucid (Kanigher's first story, Conway), he's still defenseless and has no control over what happens to him. She has to rescue and protect him.
She notices early on that he's pretty attractive. Even as a complete wreck, waterlogged and injured he is absolutely gorgeous. That's the basis for the initial attraction, but with some writers there's a little bit more. Pre-Crisis Diana knew English somehow (magic TV or there's Amazons that were shipwrecked English-speakers or Hermes willed it--she also knew Caveman language in the Silver Age). In one of the Golden Age origin retellings (I can't find it right now), Steve's delirious and babbling about the war, how his people are fighting a great evil, and how he swears he sees an angel. In the Silver Age, the first version has him telling her he doesn't see the difference between an Amazon and an angel, and then ridiculously offer to fight off sharks while she gets away. Later he shows up leading a charity outing for underprivileged kids. Both cases, he says something while helpless that demonstrates he's brave and selfless, he admires her, and he's community minded.
She decides she's attracted to him based on him being beautiful. Sometimes she gets to factor in that he says nice things about her and cares for others above his own well-being despite being absolutely helpless. Not exactly a lot to go on but I'm sure you all do a background check and require them to accomplish three quests before you'll approach an attractive stranger in a bar.
Later on we see that he's the sort of guy who tells the villain it doesn't matter what they do to him, they'll never beat Wonder Woman. Other times we see he can be gentle and thoughtful and takes care of her emotionally. He's also brave and honest. He has some very attractive qualities that are present whether he's shooting out the lock on her prison door or he's lying in her arms recovering from a recent blow to the head. He's passively desirable. It's not things he does that interest her, it's inherent qualities that show through at his weakest moments whether they're superficial like his appearance or the truest expression of his courage like laughing in the face of a villain who has him completely in their power.
The updates on Steve Trevor through the years, the new interpretations by Kanigher, Conway, Thomas, and Mishkin for their respective eras, kept that he is a doer and a heroic character but still understood that Diana's attraction was based on his characteristics rather than his accomplishments. It meant more to her that he was the sort of person who would TRY to help her than the sort of person who COULD help her.
Somehow, though, people always ask why she likes him. They want him to have done something to deserve her. Or they consider the character a complete wash, and favor her with Superman or Batman, the only two men on the planet who can be said to have accomplished more than her. They want a super-powered love interest. The long-standing trend among anti-Steve fans who are still in favor of a male love interest is to get her a so-called "Real Man" because they don't get how a woman of her calibre could fall for someone who needed her help. This is one thing to see from fans, but to have writers try and establish this too, to have her go for the one guy who outpowers her or the badass normal, to write her as the female fighter who insists on a man who matches or defeats her betrays a misunderstanding of our culture and Diana as a character.
Wonder Woman was raised in a society of women, with no positive views of men until she met one herself. This is important because it tells us that she has no investment in or even concept of the Cult of Masculinity.
The Cult of Masculinity is a way of describing how society pushes this construct of what men need to be like. It is the thing that makes us value certain traits in men above others, and insist that men are worthless unless they are superhuman overachievers who never show a moment of weakness. It is the collection of traits that men are expected to embody in order to keep their place of superiority over women. It is, among other irritating things, the expectation that men have more important jobs and earn more money than their wives. It is, among other infuriating things, our cultural requirement that even if women are allowed to be heroes men must be bigger heroes.
Wonder Woman has no clue that men are supposed to be stronger, more active, more capable, better fighters, more famous, or make more money than she is. She has no idea what we would consider a worthy mate for her. (In fact, one of the great things in the Bronze Age is that the rest of the JLA doesn't quite understand why she's with him.) She doesn't know that she's supposed to be dating UP somehow, that she's supposed to go for someone who has more power or influence than she does. She doesn't realize that when she saw him drowning, exhausted, and near death she was supposed to conclude he was defective. She never figures out that every time he needs her to save him she's supposed to think less of him.
Diana doesn't see Steve the way we do, the way Black Canary does, the way Batman does, the way our society would see him. We see a man we have no use for because he dates a woman who is better at his job than he is. (Never mind how good he actually is at his job, we're blind to that.) She sees a person who is physically attractive that turns out to also be selfless, kind, brave, light-hearted and supportive. She sees someone who often needs her help, makes sure she gets the appropriate credit for that help, and lets her know how much he appreciates it. She sees a person who is a little thick-headed, sometimes kind of irritating but that will always be at her side and always ready with a smile or a word of encouragement when she needs it.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
It hurts to say this, but Steve Trevor is not a complete idiot.
We all like to make our "Nice house, nobody home" and head injury jokes about Wonder Woman's boyfriend, but the truth of the matter is that he's not meant to be an especially stupid person. He can be a bit slow sometimes, and he's certainly mockable for it, but he's not actually unreasonably stupid about the secret identity. Yes, this man is completely in love with Wonder Woman but does not recognize Diana Prince. There's an interesting metatextual aspect to this, but Marston was a very smart man who actually included an in-story reason for Diana's secret identity being secure.
See, the thing everyone conveniently forgets is that there actually was a Diana Prince in the Golden Age. She's the Pauper in our Diana's Princess and the Pauper style origin story. Diana Prince has a job at the hospital and a man who's going to move to South America, but she doesn't have the money to join him. Princess Diana has the money, but she's really got no home, no job, and no way to keep an eye on her danger-prone love interest while he's in the hospital. So one Diana helps the other out, and manages to get a quiet place from which to observe Man's World.
A lot of people hate the secret identity, I know those are the stories where Diana looks the worst in the Silver Age (but they are also the sort of stories where CLARK looks the worst in the Silver Age), and I actually do like emphasizing Truth and Honor as what Diana represents among superheroes. But if we have to have one (and for some reason they seem insistent upon it), I prefer the story where she comes up with it herself while helping another woman out. It's certainly better than "Batman set it up for her."
"But RAAAAGNELL! It's too implausible that she'd find an EXACT lookalike."
Bullshit.
The gods have taken an active role in Diana's life. This isn't "Magneto's magnetic powers are allowing him to control stuff that can't be magnetized" implausibility, this is "What the fuck? A Steve Trevor from an Alternate Universe breached the wall between realities at the EXACT SPOT his recently deceased counterpart landed years ago, the DAY after Diana's memory of this universe's Steve has been erased" implausibility. This is a "part of the plot, and showing the mysterious works of Fate" coincidence, the sort of coincidence that is perfectly in keeping with her fairy tale/fantasy setup, having Hermes the god of chance meetings as a patron, and knowing that the Fates have woven this meeting into Diana's life.
But how does this make Steve less dense? Well, Nurse Prince worked at Walter Reed. Steve Trevor is based in Washington and has probably been in and out of that hospital a few dozen times for physicals, checkups, and minor injuries. He may not have ever talked to Diana Prince, but he's probably seen her around. And this is an established woman with a paper trail, a birth certificate, a diploma from a nursing school and (by Kanigher's retelling) a picture of herself standing next to Wonder Woman.
Along with not realizing there was once another Diana Prince peopel also tend to forget that Wonder Woman's real name isn't Diana Prince. (At least, they do when tagging on Tumblr.) It wasn't pre-Crisis, and it's not now. She is simply not that person. She has an origin that involves being raised on Paradise Island at the same time that Diana Prince was growing up in the US. While Diana Prince was establishing her paper trail, being photographed, meeting people that a private investigator can track down and talk to, Princess Diana was on Paradise Island. And while some people may doubt that the Amazons exist and their princess never set foot on US soil until the day she dropped of Steve, there's one person who has seen and spoken to them and knows that girl never saw a man before he showed up.
Steve Trevor is the only man on the planet who can be absolutely certain of where Wonder Woman came from, and he knows it's not the hospital on Diana Prince's certificate.
But why does he insist one is more attractive than the other? Well, he's pretty dazzled by Wonder Woman and it goes much deeper than her having a pretty face. He's wowed by her strength, capability and energy, traits that are hidden when she shows up as Diana Prince.
See, the thing everyone conveniently forgets is that there actually was a Diana Prince in the Golden Age. She's the Pauper in our Diana's Princess and the Pauper style origin story. Diana Prince has a job at the hospital and a man who's going to move to South America, but she doesn't have the money to join him. Princess Diana has the money, but she's really got no home, no job, and no way to keep an eye on her danger-prone love interest while he's in the hospital. So one Diana helps the other out, and manages to get a quiet place from which to observe Man's World.
A lot of people hate the secret identity, I know those are the stories where Diana looks the worst in the Silver Age (but they are also the sort of stories where CLARK looks the worst in the Silver Age), and I actually do like emphasizing Truth and Honor as what Diana represents among superheroes. But if we have to have one (and for some reason they seem insistent upon it), I prefer the story where she comes up with it herself while helping another woman out. It's certainly better than "Batman set it up for her."
"But RAAAAGNELL! It's too implausible that she'd find an EXACT lookalike."
Bullshit.
The gods have taken an active role in Diana's life. This isn't "Magneto's magnetic powers are allowing him to control stuff that can't be magnetized" implausibility, this is "What the fuck? A Steve Trevor from an Alternate Universe breached the wall between realities at the EXACT SPOT his recently deceased counterpart landed years ago, the DAY after Diana's memory of this universe's Steve has been erased" implausibility. This is a "part of the plot, and showing the mysterious works of Fate" coincidence, the sort of coincidence that is perfectly in keeping with her fairy tale/fantasy setup, having Hermes the god of chance meetings as a patron, and knowing that the Fates have woven this meeting into Diana's life.
But how does this make Steve less dense? Well, Nurse Prince worked at Walter Reed. Steve Trevor is based in Washington and has probably been in and out of that hospital a few dozen times for physicals, checkups, and minor injuries. He may not have ever talked to Diana Prince, but he's probably seen her around. And this is an established woman with a paper trail, a birth certificate, a diploma from a nursing school and (by Kanigher's retelling) a picture of herself standing next to Wonder Woman.
Along with not realizing there was once another Diana Prince peopel also tend to forget that Wonder Woman's real name isn't Diana Prince. (At least, they do when tagging on Tumblr.) It wasn't pre-Crisis, and it's not now. She is simply not that person. She has an origin that involves being raised on Paradise Island at the same time that Diana Prince was growing up in the US. While Diana Prince was establishing her paper trail, being photographed, meeting people that a private investigator can track down and talk to, Princess Diana was on Paradise Island. And while some people may doubt that the Amazons exist and their princess never set foot on US soil until the day she dropped of Steve, there's one person who has seen and spoken to them and knows that girl never saw a man before he showed up.
Steve Trevor is the only man on the planet who can be absolutely certain of where Wonder Woman came from, and he knows it's not the hospital on Diana Prince's certificate.
But why does he insist one is more attractive than the other? Well, he's pretty dazzled by Wonder Woman and it goes much deeper than her having a pretty face. He's wowed by her strength, capability and energy, traits that are hidden when she shows up as Diana Prince.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
In case you've been missing the Wonder Woman ranting
Oh, and for those of you who've been wondering when I'll get back to Wonder Woman. I've been having a rather lengthy conversation on Tumblr, here and here.
All kidding about Steve's intelligence aside, we've actually got a couple really good reasons he doesn't realize he's working with his girlfriend. I'll get around to posting about them sometime when I'm finished making pilot jokes.
Also, the usual twitter conversations with jmatonak and mizzelle. Got into a tangent today on how anti-military fans get at times. It's not just that guy on Tumblr. It's just something that comes up a lot when talking online about stuff with a civilian-military mix. You see it among SGA and Green Lantern fans too. I've seen John Sheppard, Steve Trevor, and Hal Jordan all dismissed in the same derisive way by different fans. From the POV of someone who works with military men, these are three widely varying personalities, but somehow there's fans who hate them for the exact same character traits (which they don't all possess...?).
What's really annoying is that comic writers seem to be buying into military as shorthand for one personality type, whether they like the military or not. John Stewart is being made more Marine stereotype and less John anymore. Hal's being slid into this macho military caricature. Steve was shoehorned into being Hal in the animated movie. Bucky's not always handled by other writers with the complexity Brubaker gave him. Not to mention that soldiers are pretty much cannon fodder henchmen in a lot of stories, and you only ever see reviewers point out that's a bad thing in their jokes.
Wonder if Captain America fans ever get this, or is he just a special character?
All kidding about Steve's intelligence aside, we've actually got a couple really good reasons he doesn't realize he's working with his girlfriend. I'll get around to posting about them sometime when I'm finished making pilot jokes.
Also, the usual twitter conversations with jmatonak and mizzelle. Got into a tangent today on how anti-military fans get at times. It's not just that guy on Tumblr. It's just something that comes up a lot when talking online about stuff with a civilian-military mix. You see it among SGA and Green Lantern fans too. I've seen John Sheppard, Steve Trevor, and Hal Jordan all dismissed in the same derisive way by different fans. From the POV of someone who works with military men, these are three widely varying personalities, but somehow there's fans who hate them for the exact same character traits (which they don't all possess...?).
What's really annoying is that comic writers seem to be buying into military as shorthand for one personality type, whether they like the military or not. John Stewart is being made more Marine stereotype and less John anymore. Hal's being slid into this macho military caricature. Steve was shoehorned into being Hal in the animated movie. Bucky's not always handled by other writers with the complexity Brubaker gave him. Not to mention that soldiers are pretty much cannon fodder henchmen in a lot of stories, and you only ever see reviewers point out that's a bad thing in their jokes.
Wonder if Captain America fans ever get this, or is he just a special character?
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
Happy Thoughts
It looks like they made a whole episode of the Brave and the Bold just for me. (Hat/tip)
That's right, not only is that a Green Lantern episode, but it's a Green Lantern episode with Star Sapphire and Wonder Woman. Not only that, I'm almost positive that's Steve Trevor. I mean, look at him. Who else is that comfortable being carried around like this?
I think we can safely assume the Wonder Woman scenes are the cold open. If so, that's an incredibly good choice for a Star Sapphire episode. The Zamarons are the outer space all-female society that create a female warrior and force her to fight her boyfriend to convince her to leave him. It's a good thing to have the princess of the peaceful earth-based Amazons being heroic in the lead-in just for that.
Also, I'm a sucker for the off chance they'll compare Steve and Hal. Those two characters have a lot in common on the surface. They're both military pilots. They're both adventurous men notable for their courage. They're both a bit slow on the uptake at times and prone to head injuries. And using the classic setup, they both love women that have some authority over them. In Hal's secret identity, his love interest Carol is his boss. Steve Trevor is dating Wonder Woman, who naturally outpowers him in every way he can imagine But they deal with courting a woman of authority... differently.
Here's Steve trying again for marriage in August, 1959.
Here's Hal asking for a date in October, 1959.
Granted, Steve has a standing Saturday night date with Wonder Woman and Carol has told Hal to call it quits for a while... but I think it's pretty clear right there why Steve has a standing date despite spending most of his time unconscious and Hal has to wear a mask and fight monsters to trick Carol into giving him a second chance.
That's right, not only is that a Green Lantern episode, but it's a Green Lantern episode with Star Sapphire and Wonder Woman. Not only that, I'm almost positive that's Steve Trevor. I mean, look at him. Who else is that comfortable being carried around like this?
I think we can safely assume the Wonder Woman scenes are the cold open. If so, that's an incredibly good choice for a Star Sapphire episode. The Zamarons are the outer space all-female society that create a female warrior and force her to fight her boyfriend to convince her to leave him. It's a good thing to have the princess of the peaceful earth-based Amazons being heroic in the lead-in just for that.
Also, I'm a sucker for the off chance they'll compare Steve and Hal. Those two characters have a lot in common on the surface. They're both military pilots. They're both adventurous men notable for their courage. They're both a bit slow on the uptake at times and prone to head injuries. And using the classic setup, they both love women that have some authority over them. In Hal's secret identity, his love interest Carol is his boss. Steve Trevor is dating Wonder Woman, who naturally outpowers him in every way he can imagine But they deal with courting a woman of authority... differently.
Here's Steve trying again for marriage in August, 1959.
Here's Hal asking for a date in October, 1959.
Granted, Steve has a standing Saturday night date with Wonder Woman and Carol has told Hal to call it quits for a while... but I think it's pretty clear right there why Steve has a standing date despite spending most of his time unconscious and Hal has to wear a mask and fight monsters to trick Carol into giving him a second chance.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Captain Wonder
Wonder Woman #289 opens with a five-page sequence of Wonder Woman battling the many-tentacled Kraken.
Yes, really.
It's actually a really neat fight where we get to see her helping Russian sailors, speaking Russian, and dispensing a little environmentalism. She gives us a little exposition in her thought balloons while she disentangles the monster from the ship, protects the Russian sailors, and follows it down into the ocean to discourage it from coming back to the surface.
Then she continues on her way to visit home and talk to her mother. Her goal is to get permission to bring Steve back for a purple ray treatment. She's so focused on this goal that she doesn't quite realize that Hippolyta is extra-concerned about the chance Steve might die. That's because this Steve is from an alternate universe, and Diana's memory of the previous Steve and his record two deaths in a row has been erased. Hippolyta's fears include Diana suffering another bout of grief from losing a Steve, Diana finding out her mind was wiped AGAIN, and probably having to deal with a third Steve Trevor because the Fates seem pretty big on the Diana/Steve ship.
Then she pops by the apartment to pick up her uniform and her roommates, and heads to the hospital, finds out that Steve's not there and leaves. Oh, then we find out that her second roommate is actually the Silver Swan. All in all, the exposition in this book about last issue's story takes nine pages, but it's peppered around a pretty cool fight scene and some new information. We don't get to Dr. Psycho, in the story named His Name is PSYCHO! until ten pages in, which even I'll admit is a bit odd to me. This is definitely the second issue of a three-issue arc.
Eventually we get to the moment we've been waiting for since the last panel of last issue, a naked and unconscious Steve Trevor:
Oh, and the villain.
All joking aside, we should all recognize Dr. Psycho even without the creepy facial hair. We've seen him quite recently, after all. He's been one of those villains fortunate enough to survive fairly intact to the current era. His personality and motivation have been fairly consistent. His schtick where he takes over people's minds is still around, as is his deep obsession with destroying Wonder Woman because she represents all he hates about womankind. There is a big difference, though. Right now, he's a straightforward telepathic villain. Pre-Crisis he had a slightly more interesting set of powers.
Pre-Crisis Dr. Psycho controlled minds with hypnosis, and had a spiritual twist. If he could link minds with a specific person that he referred to as a "medium", he could reach into the psychic plane and pull out ectoplasm. Then he could use that ectoplasm to make himself a physical body that he could wear like a creepy psychic suit and pretend to be a tall, dark and handsome man. The ectoplasm seems to be the traditional ectoplasm of the spirit world, and not some psionic substance. We're never clear on whether he's a mixture of two types of psychic powers, or if his mesmerizing power lets him use the medium to activate their own latent powers.
His first medium was his late wife Marva, hypnotized to marry him and stay with him. In the Golden Age Wonder Woman rescued her, in the Bronze Age he seems to have murdered her. This was unwise, because although Marva's talent was passive it was actually very rare. He spent years searching, and as of this story has only encountered one other person he can use as a medium.
I'll give you three... On second thought, there's really no point in guessing. The only other person in the world with Marva's latent power is Steve Trevor.
I'd like to stop a moment and thank Roy Thomas just for putting this idea out there. He does imply that it might just be a one-time thing because this Steve is from an alternate universe and is suffering from a "Being From An Alternate Universe"-related illness, but that doesn't change that the idea is out there. Dr. Psycho is by far Diana's creepiest villain. I can think of few better ways to annoy the living crap out of her than making it so her creepiest villain is specifically fixated on her love interest and now that option is out there.
Full disclosure here, I am the first person to cringe at the idea that Wonder Woman needs a super-powered or otherwise extranormal love interest. I don't even like giving her another vigilante like Batman or Nemesis, I prefer someone who is initiated into the World of the Weird through Wonder Woman and his association with Wonder Woman. I want him to be in love with someone from a completely different sort of reality that he has to adjust to in order to understand her just as she's in love with someone from a completely different sort of reality that she has to adjust to in order to understand him. My favorite love interest is non-powered, completely mortal Steve Trevor. Old Wonder Woman lettercols are full of people who suggest giving him super-powers, or chucking him aside for Superman, but I think those people are wrong.
That said, I am perfectly fine if he's a medium. It's receptive, passive, brimming with story potential, and suitable for a character who crosses mystical boundaries and gets knocked out/killed a lot.
Also, Captain Wonder is an astoundingly effective villain.
Sorry, I've jumped ahead of myself. See, when Dr. Psycho switches on his Evil Machine to suck ectoplasm out of the spirit world through Steve's mind, Wonder Woman bursts through the doorway. Since Dr. Psycho is already building an ectosuit for himself based on Steve's appearance, he uses the distraction to add Wonder Woman's powers to it. The result?
CAPTAIN WONDER!
This villain is often sloppily described as a combination of Steve Trevor and Wonder Woman. That leaves out two important factors. One, this villain is Dr. Psycho. Not Dr. Psycho-controlled or a Dr. Psycho illusion. Captain Wonder is like a super-suit that Dr. Psycho wears to battle. Two, this is not a Steve and Diana hybrid. This is Steve's appearance added to the powers that Steve thinks Wonder Woman has. That's a big difference, as Diana soon finds out in the battle.
Ouch.
In later scenes, we learn that he can also use the jet and the lasso because Steve has seen Wonder Woman use the jet and the lasso. Also, since Steve doesn't know any of Diana's weaknesses, Captain Wonder doesn't have any of them. Not only that, but even after Diana destroys the Ectoplasmotron Dr. Psycho still seems able to make the connection between himself, Steve and the spirit world.
He does have one hell of a weakness in that Steve has to be under Dr. Psycho's control in order to maintain that connection to the spirit world. Otherwise, the ectoplasm breaks down and Captain Wonder turns back to Dr. Psycho. Steve regaining consciousness manages to do it, which happens due to luck and things like Diana destroying the Ectoplasmotron. As Steve has the Mysterious Multiverse-Based Illness at the moment, these moments of consciousness don't last.
Still, this being Pre-Crisis Wonder Woman she always manages to win and Capt. Wonder/Dr. Psycho is down by the act break.
Captain Wonder's another good villain idea introduced by Roy Thomas that's just sat on the shelf since Crisis. They use Dr. Psycho, but because he's lost the spiritual aspect of his powers and Steve's lost prominence we're not likely to see the Captain Wonder persona anytime soon. Dr. Psycho's a really strong villain, but he can't get into a fight with Diana so he needs another villain or a strong enough hero to. Captain Wonder gave him the ability to fight her on a psychical level if he could work out the right conditions.
And honestly, I think I prefer the pre-Crisis Dr. Psycho. He's super-creepy back then too, but the spirit world aspect of his powers make him distinctive from other telepathic bad guys. This ectoplasm thing was a unique idea, and one that always brought a person for Diana to save into the equation when she squared off against Dr. Psycho. Really, if they thought of it we could have him discover this ability through a medium anytime in the future, but so few writers seem interested in reviving pre-Crisis elements that I doubt we'll see anything more than the usual telepathy.
That's a shame not only because writers seem to always be complaining that Wonder Woman has a bad Rogue's Gallery (She does not. The writers just only use the same four villains over and over again, and they don't use them to their original potential), but also because Roy Thomas uses Captain Wonder and Silver Swan together so effectively next issue.
Yes, really.
It's actually a really neat fight where we get to see her helping Russian sailors, speaking Russian, and dispensing a little environmentalism. She gives us a little exposition in her thought balloons while she disentangles the monster from the ship, protects the Russian sailors, and follows it down into the ocean to discourage it from coming back to the surface.
Then she continues on her way to visit home and talk to her mother. Her goal is to get permission to bring Steve back for a purple ray treatment. She's so focused on this goal that she doesn't quite realize that Hippolyta is extra-concerned about the chance Steve might die. That's because this Steve is from an alternate universe, and Diana's memory of the previous Steve and his record two deaths in a row has been erased. Hippolyta's fears include Diana suffering another bout of grief from losing a Steve, Diana finding out her mind was wiped AGAIN, and probably having to deal with a third Steve Trevor because the Fates seem pretty big on the Diana/Steve ship.
Then she pops by the apartment to pick up her uniform and her roommates, and heads to the hospital, finds out that Steve's not there and leaves. Oh, then we find out that her second roommate is actually the Silver Swan. All in all, the exposition in this book about last issue's story takes nine pages, but it's peppered around a pretty cool fight scene and some new information. We don't get to Dr. Psycho, in the story named His Name is PSYCHO! until ten pages in, which even I'll admit is a bit odd to me. This is definitely the second issue of a three-issue arc.
Eventually we get to the moment we've been waiting for since the last panel of last issue, a naked and unconscious Steve Trevor:
Oh, and the villain.
All joking aside, we should all recognize Dr. Psycho even without the creepy facial hair. We've seen him quite recently, after all. He's been one of those villains fortunate enough to survive fairly intact to the current era. His personality and motivation have been fairly consistent. His schtick where he takes over people's minds is still around, as is his deep obsession with destroying Wonder Woman because she represents all he hates about womankind. There is a big difference, though. Right now, he's a straightforward telepathic villain. Pre-Crisis he had a slightly more interesting set of powers.
Pre-Crisis Dr. Psycho controlled minds with hypnosis, and had a spiritual twist. If he could link minds with a specific person that he referred to as a "medium", he could reach into the psychic plane and pull out ectoplasm. Then he could use that ectoplasm to make himself a physical body that he could wear like a creepy psychic suit and pretend to be a tall, dark and handsome man. The ectoplasm seems to be the traditional ectoplasm of the spirit world, and not some psionic substance. We're never clear on whether he's a mixture of two types of psychic powers, or if his mesmerizing power lets him use the medium to activate their own latent powers.
His first medium was his late wife Marva, hypnotized to marry him and stay with him. In the Golden Age Wonder Woman rescued her, in the Bronze Age he seems to have murdered her. This was unwise, because although Marva's talent was passive it was actually very rare. He spent years searching, and as of this story has only encountered one other person he can use as a medium.
I'll give you three... On second thought, there's really no point in guessing. The only other person in the world with Marva's latent power is Steve Trevor.
I'd like to stop a moment and thank Roy Thomas just for putting this idea out there. He does imply that it might just be a one-time thing because this Steve is from an alternate universe and is suffering from a "Being From An Alternate Universe"-related illness, but that doesn't change that the idea is out there. Dr. Psycho is by far Diana's creepiest villain. I can think of few better ways to annoy the living crap out of her than making it so her creepiest villain is specifically fixated on her love interest and now that option is out there.
Full disclosure here, I am the first person to cringe at the idea that Wonder Woman needs a super-powered or otherwise extranormal love interest. I don't even like giving her another vigilante like Batman or Nemesis, I prefer someone who is initiated into the World of the Weird through Wonder Woman and his association with Wonder Woman. I want him to be in love with someone from a completely different sort of reality that he has to adjust to in order to understand her just as she's in love with someone from a completely different sort of reality that she has to adjust to in order to understand him. My favorite love interest is non-powered, completely mortal Steve Trevor. Old Wonder Woman lettercols are full of people who suggest giving him super-powers, or chucking him aside for Superman, but I think those people are wrong.
That said, I am perfectly fine if he's a medium. It's receptive, passive, brimming with story potential, and suitable for a character who crosses mystical boundaries and gets knocked out/killed a lot.
Also, Captain Wonder is an astoundingly effective villain.
Sorry, I've jumped ahead of myself. See, when Dr. Psycho switches on his Evil Machine to suck ectoplasm out of the spirit world through Steve's mind, Wonder Woman bursts through the doorway. Since Dr. Psycho is already building an ectosuit for himself based on Steve's appearance, he uses the distraction to add Wonder Woman's powers to it. The result?
This villain is often sloppily described as a combination of Steve Trevor and Wonder Woman. That leaves out two important factors. One, this villain is Dr. Psycho. Not Dr. Psycho-controlled or a Dr. Psycho illusion. Captain Wonder is like a super-suit that Dr. Psycho wears to battle. Two, this is not a Steve and Diana hybrid. This is Steve's appearance added to the powers that Steve thinks Wonder Woman has. That's a big difference, as Diana soon finds out in the battle.
Ouch.
In later scenes, we learn that he can also use the jet and the lasso because Steve has seen Wonder Woman use the jet and the lasso. Also, since Steve doesn't know any of Diana's weaknesses, Captain Wonder doesn't have any of them. Not only that, but even after Diana destroys the Ectoplasmotron Dr. Psycho still seems able to make the connection between himself, Steve and the spirit world.
He does have one hell of a weakness in that Steve has to be under Dr. Psycho's control in order to maintain that connection to the spirit world. Otherwise, the ectoplasm breaks down and Captain Wonder turns back to Dr. Psycho. Steve regaining consciousness manages to do it, which happens due to luck and things like Diana destroying the Ectoplasmotron. As Steve has the Mysterious Multiverse-Based Illness at the moment, these moments of consciousness don't last.
Still, this being Pre-Crisis Wonder Woman she always manages to win and Capt. Wonder/Dr. Psycho is down by the act break.
Captain Wonder's another good villain idea introduced by Roy Thomas that's just sat on the shelf since Crisis. They use Dr. Psycho, but because he's lost the spiritual aspect of his powers and Steve's lost prominence we're not likely to see the Captain Wonder persona anytime soon. Dr. Psycho's a really strong villain, but he can't get into a fight with Diana so he needs another villain or a strong enough hero to. Captain Wonder gave him the ability to fight her on a psychical level if he could work out the right conditions.
And honestly, I think I prefer the pre-Crisis Dr. Psycho. He's super-creepy back then too, but the spirit world aspect of his powers make him distinctive from other telepathic bad guys. This ectoplasm thing was a unique idea, and one that always brought a person for Diana to save into the equation when she squared off against Dr. Psycho. Really, if they thought of it we could have him discover this ability through a medium anytime in the future, but so few writers seem interested in reviving pre-Crisis elements that I doubt we'll see anything more than the usual telepathy.
That's a shame not only because writers seem to always be complaining that Wonder Woman has a bad Rogue's Gallery (She does not. The writers just only use the same four villains over and over again, and they don't use them to their original potential), but also because Roy Thomas uses Captain Wonder and Silver Swan together so effectively next issue.
Friday, April 08, 2011
This again?
Today's Flashpoint Friday at the the Source, and they've been releasing solicits all day. Naturally, we've been watching them in anticipation.
Remember how I said I was leery of this crossover from the Wonder Woman solicit? Well... about the time they solicited the second Aquaman issue with him holding a dead woman, I started to worry again. A quick glance at the covers up until then revealed a wide-eyed love interest, a villainess, and a banner referencing "Angry Amazons Unleashed!" along with the dead woman. And then more confirmation the Amazons were the Big Bad. I started, of course, to get irked.
Then they released the Lois Lane solicit.
So, we have a woman of action balanced out by an injured woman on her knees. There is also a shadowed man, meant to represent the leader of the resistence. This is where I really started to worry, because this guy is a surprise reveal. And yes, he could be anyone, but we've had a male character teased recently that has ties to the Wonder Woman franchise and a very specific connection to Themiscyra.
Granted, I have been complaining that DC should bring Steve Trevor back. Thing is, my brain's been going. On Twitter we discussed the horrible option this crossover would end with Wonder Woman marrying Aquaman, or at least confirming an arranged marriage to Aquaman could be happy and successful. That led to the worst possible things they could do with Wonder Woman.
In the meantime, we're seeing solicits that imply horribly evil Amazons, and the solicit for the first Wonder Woman issue says she wants to take over the world. As this is very un-Diana-like behavior, I'm thinking a shapeshifting/illusionist imposter or some form of mind control is behind it. And that leads me to DC's remarkable ability to do things that I've been wanting them to but nonetheless piss me off in the execution.
I've already outlined how making Steve Trevor a jackass would piss me off, but I hadn't realized there's another option. If he were to show up for the first time specifically to save her, I think I'd be quite pissed actually. Now, I'm not AGAINST Steve in the spotlight or pulling his weight and saving her at times. Marston had him save her butt every few issues it seems, and even Kanigher gave him some pivotal moments (though they were love interest coded), and one of my favorite things is a fight between him and Eros in 322. But it's one thing when he's been around and she saved him in the origin and regularly does the heavy fighting while he helps out and saves her once in a while. It's another thing entirely when the character in this form has been off the board for a full 25 years, and we haven't even seen the origin where she rescues him from the plane crash. It would be establishing this character in the opposite way for modern readers, from the start. And I can see them doing it because the most common complaints from fanboys who hate Steve, along with their suggested alternatives of Batman and Superman, seem to go back to the idea he's not man enough for Wonder Woman. As he has a masculine job, a masculine personality, was a war hero before he met her, and can hold his own in a fist fight it's not a stretch to gather they get this idea from how he relates to Diana. He accepts her help, he doesn't try to boss her around, and he gets his ass saved a lot by her. Introducing him sa her savior would change that dynamic for modern readers.
Of course, I hate this little idea I've conjured up, because I think it's fundamental that she save him first not only in his experience but in ours as readers. There are too few male characters who have this role in a romantic relationship, and the point of Steve Trevor was to PUT a male character in that role and still have him be masculine and attractive.
On the bright side, I could be jumping to conclusions and that could be Sgt Steel, Nemesis or Max Lord.
My fingers are crossed for Max Lord. Why? Because look what the second Wonder Woman issue's solicit is:
That's right. "How many must die to avenge Queen Hippolyta’s death and satiate Diana’s fury?"
The implication, of course, is that Hippolyta is dead for Dian a's run amok. Because we know from past experience that the death of her mother unhinges her and makes her lash out against... wait a minute. She didn't do this after her mother died in Our Worlds at War. And she isn't doing this in the Odyssey storyline where her mother's dead again. So where the fuck did this idea come from?
Not only that, what is with this Vicious Bloodthirsty Amazon obsession? Don't they know we don't like that? That it runs contrary to the Wonder Woman concept? That it completely shits on eveyrthing established as far back as Marston? That it just pisses off Wonder Woman fans? That even if this is an imposter Diana, we're still saying that the Amazons are bloodthirsty and horrible and she's the only GOOD one? That this is just reactionary panic that if women were allowed to take a leadership position they'd automatically run roughshod over men? Do they really want to tell us that all-female organizations like the Amazons and the Star Sapphires are inherently unbalanced and liable to explode violently while male-dominated organizations are perfectly fine? And is Wonder Woman really the appropriate vehicle for that message?
Abenett and Lanning are good. They are good good writers. I have no doubt there's some sort of twist coming, but I have a lot of doubt it'll be worth it. And if Odyssey was leading into this, it certainly wasn't worth it. There's a strain of fandom that loves this idea, and several of them are comics writers. They don't like our compassionate, balanced, thinking Diana who knows when to use force and when to use mercy. They want the daughters of Ares. They want a violent, unrestrained woman who kicks men in the crotch even though she has superstrength and she can easily put them in a hold without causing any damage, and uses lethal force after saying "Don't call me Baby." They want bloodthirsty Amazons carrying spears, impaling male soldiers and ranting about the Patriarchy as they do so. I don't see the appeal at all, but it's THERE and people demand it. Everyone knows someone who only liked Wonder Woman when they read Kingdom Come and really wish she'd be edgier and they'd "play up the warrior aspect."
And whatever the twist is... Circe, Dr. Psycho, Diana's really Lyta or Donna, Dark Angel, possession by Eris or Belladonna (I forget her Greek name) or one of the furies, Max Lord, White Martians, soemthing to emphasize the wrongness of this timeline (which would still imply this is in Diana's heart somewhere), whatever... this desire is being fed. We'll have a crop of fanboys going "I preferred that, I want to write Wonder Woman that way again" after all this is over. We'll have reinforced the hard-edged manhating Amazon stereotype in people's mind, especially if the twist only applies to the female-led books and the Amazons are running amok everywhere else. And really, it's just not worth it. It's not worth going back to this idea that hacks away at the foundation of what makes Diana Diana.
And that's probably why so many people don't "get" her, or have trouble writing her. If you don't faithfully read her series, and all you see is her appearing as the humorless Amazon warrior who is the one person from her culture who doesn't kill everyuone, or is the person who goes bad in every alternate timeline, you have no fucking clue who Wonder Woman is or why she endures as a hero. That's why people don't realize she has a distinctive and enduring personality, because they never showcase it and when she DOES get a big part it's because they are completely tearing down the foundations of her franchise, and the basis of her personality. They're sabotaging themselves.
And at the end, there's three ways this can go. Fans who already read her book are pissed off, and would drop it if she were changed. Fans who like her in the crossover don't see what they want in her book. And fans who would like her but see her in the crossover and get the wrong idea never pick up her book. And then they can't figure out why featuring Wonder Woman in a crossover didn't help her sales.
As I've said before with Amazons Attack. This will not ruin Wonder Woman. She has too much appeal in the mainstream community. She's an American Icon, and the franchise is strong enough to take Robert Kanigher, Denny O'Neil, John Byrne, Jodi Piccoult, Will Pfiefer, and J Michael Straczynski. She can weather the end of World War II, the death of the main love interest, the white suit era, losing the most iconic features, dating Superman and dating Batman. She can live through three different variations on the bracelets-based weakness. She can survive Millenium, War of the Gods, Our Worlds at War, Infinite Crisis, Amazons Attack, Blackest Night and certainly Flashpoint. She's survived constant supporting cast changes, 2 hard reboots and countless soft reboots. She's gotten through every fucking writer feeling the need to cast off the previous writer and rebuild her franchise from the ground up. This is far from the end.
But it is a stupid, stupid idea nonetheless.
Remember how I said I was leery of this crossover from the Wonder Woman solicit? Well... about the time they solicited the second Aquaman issue with him holding a dead woman, I started to worry again. A quick glance at the covers up until then revealed a wide-eyed love interest, a villainess, and a banner referencing "Angry Amazons Unleashed!" along with the dead woman. And then more confirmation the Amazons were the Big Bad. I started, of course, to get irked.
Then they released the Lois Lane solicit.
FLASH QUESTION: Lois Lane meets the mysterious leader of the Resistance – but will she survive?
FLASHPOINT: LOIS LANE AND THE RESISTANCE #2
Written by DAN ABNETT and ANDY LANNING
Art by EDDIE NUNEZ
Cover by EDDIE NUNEZ and SANDRA HOPE
On sale JULY 27 • 2 of 3, 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
So, we have a woman of action balanced out by an injured woman on her knees. There is also a shadowed man, meant to represent the leader of the resistence. This is where I really started to worry, because this guy is a surprise reveal. And yes, he could be anyone, but we've had a male character teased recently that has ties to the Wonder Woman franchise and a very specific connection to Themiscyra.
Granted, I have been complaining that DC should bring Steve Trevor back. Thing is, my brain's been going. On Twitter we discussed the horrible option this crossover would end with Wonder Woman marrying Aquaman, or at least confirming an arranged marriage to Aquaman could be happy and successful. That led to the worst possible things they could do with Wonder Woman.
In the meantime, we're seeing solicits that imply horribly evil Amazons, and the solicit for the first Wonder Woman issue says she wants to take over the world. As this is very un-Diana-like behavior, I'm thinking a shapeshifting/illusionist imposter or some form of mind control is behind it. And that leads me to DC's remarkable ability to do things that I've been wanting them to but nonetheless piss me off in the execution.
I've already outlined how making Steve Trevor a jackass would piss me off, but I hadn't realized there's another option. If he were to show up for the first time specifically to save her, I think I'd be quite pissed actually. Now, I'm not AGAINST Steve in the spotlight or pulling his weight and saving her at times. Marston had him save her butt every few issues it seems, and even Kanigher gave him some pivotal moments (though they were love interest coded), and one of my favorite things is a fight between him and Eros in 322. But it's one thing when he's been around and she saved him in the origin and regularly does the heavy fighting while he helps out and saves her once in a while. It's another thing entirely when the character in this form has been off the board for a full 25 years, and we haven't even seen the origin where she rescues him from the plane crash. It would be establishing this character in the opposite way for modern readers, from the start. And I can see them doing it because the most common complaints from fanboys who hate Steve, along with their suggested alternatives of Batman and Superman, seem to go back to the idea he's not man enough for Wonder Woman. As he has a masculine job, a masculine personality, was a war hero before he met her, and can hold his own in a fist fight it's not a stretch to gather they get this idea from how he relates to Diana. He accepts her help, he doesn't try to boss her around, and he gets his ass saved a lot by her. Introducing him sa her savior would change that dynamic for modern readers.
Of course, I hate this little idea I've conjured up, because I think it's fundamental that she save him first not only in his experience but in ours as readers. There are too few male characters who have this role in a romantic relationship, and the point of Steve Trevor was to PUT a male character in that role and still have him be masculine and attractive.
On the bright side, I could be jumping to conclusions and that could be Sgt Steel, Nemesis or Max Lord.
My fingers are crossed for Max Lord. Why? Because look what the second Wonder Woman issue's solicit is:
FLASH QUESTION: How many must die to avenge Queen Hippolyta’s death and satiate Diana’s fury?
FLASHPOINT: WONDER WOMAN AND THE FURIES #2
Written by DAN ABNETT and ANDY LANNING
Art by SCOTT CLARK and DAVID BEATY
Cover by ED BENES
On sale JULY 20 • 2 of 3, 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
That's right. "How many must die to avenge Queen Hippolyta’s death and satiate Diana’s fury?"
The implication, of course, is that Hippolyta is dead for Dian a's run amok. Because we know from past experience that the death of her mother unhinges her and makes her lash out against... wait a minute. She didn't do this after her mother died in Our Worlds at War. And she isn't doing this in the Odyssey storyline where her mother's dead again. So where the fuck did this idea come from?
Not only that, what is with this Vicious Bloodthirsty Amazon obsession? Don't they know we don't like that? That it runs contrary to the Wonder Woman concept? That it completely shits on eveyrthing established as far back as Marston? That it just pisses off Wonder Woman fans? That even if this is an imposter Diana, we're still saying that the Amazons are bloodthirsty and horrible and she's the only GOOD one? That this is just reactionary panic that if women were allowed to take a leadership position they'd automatically run roughshod over men? Do they really want to tell us that all-female organizations like the Amazons and the Star Sapphires are inherently unbalanced and liable to explode violently while male-dominated organizations are perfectly fine? And is Wonder Woman really the appropriate vehicle for that message?
Abenett and Lanning are good. They are good good writers. I have no doubt there's some sort of twist coming, but I have a lot of doubt it'll be worth it. And if Odyssey was leading into this, it certainly wasn't worth it. There's a strain of fandom that loves this idea, and several of them are comics writers. They don't like our compassionate, balanced, thinking Diana who knows when to use force and when to use mercy. They want the daughters of Ares. They want a violent, unrestrained woman who kicks men in the crotch even though she has superstrength and she can easily put them in a hold without causing any damage, and uses lethal force after saying "Don't call me Baby." They want bloodthirsty Amazons carrying spears, impaling male soldiers and ranting about the Patriarchy as they do so. I don't see the appeal at all, but it's THERE and people demand it. Everyone knows someone who only liked Wonder Woman when they read Kingdom Come and really wish she'd be edgier and they'd "play up the warrior aspect."
And whatever the twist is... Circe, Dr. Psycho, Diana's really Lyta or Donna, Dark Angel, possession by Eris or Belladonna (I forget her Greek name) or one of the furies, Max Lord, White Martians, soemthing to emphasize the wrongness of this timeline (which would still imply this is in Diana's heart somewhere), whatever... this desire is being fed. We'll have a crop of fanboys going "I preferred that, I want to write Wonder Woman that way again" after all this is over. We'll have reinforced the hard-edged manhating Amazon stereotype in people's mind, especially if the twist only applies to the female-led books and the Amazons are running amok everywhere else. And really, it's just not worth it. It's not worth going back to this idea that hacks away at the foundation of what makes Diana Diana.
And that's probably why so many people don't "get" her, or have trouble writing her. If you don't faithfully read her series, and all you see is her appearing as the humorless Amazon warrior who is the one person from her culture who doesn't kill everyuone, or is the person who goes bad in every alternate timeline, you have no fucking clue who Wonder Woman is or why she endures as a hero. That's why people don't realize she has a distinctive and enduring personality, because they never showcase it and when she DOES get a big part it's because they are completely tearing down the foundations of her franchise, and the basis of her personality. They're sabotaging themselves.
And at the end, there's three ways this can go. Fans who already read her book are pissed off, and would drop it if she were changed. Fans who like her in the crossover don't see what they want in her book. And fans who would like her but see her in the crossover and get the wrong idea never pick up her book. And then they can't figure out why featuring Wonder Woman in a crossover didn't help her sales.
As I've said before with Amazons Attack. This will not ruin Wonder Woman. She has too much appeal in the mainstream community. She's an American Icon, and the franchise is strong enough to take Robert Kanigher, Denny O'Neil, John Byrne, Jodi Piccoult, Will Pfiefer, and J Michael Straczynski. She can weather the end of World War II, the death of the main love interest, the white suit era, losing the most iconic features, dating Superman and dating Batman. She can live through three different variations on the bracelets-based weakness. She can survive Millenium, War of the Gods, Our Worlds at War, Infinite Crisis, Amazons Attack, Blackest Night and certainly Flashpoint. She's survived constant supporting cast changes, 2 hard reboots and countless soft reboots. She's gotten through every fucking writer feeling the need to cast off the previous writer and rebuild her franchise from the ground up. This is far from the end.
But it is a stupid, stupid idea nonetheless.
Sunday, April 03, 2011
Diana's anxieties and Steve's social shortcomings.
Wonder Woman #300 by Roy and Dann Thomas might be one of my favorite single-issue comics. It's fairly self-contained, and gives us 7 stories in one issue that all tie into the same plot. The framing story is pretty complex. Basically, she decides to marry Steve and kill off her secret identity. She's fighting a shadowmonster throughout the whole thing, and the Sandman is annoying her to dump Steve and run off to dreamland. She has four dream sequences (in addition to an Earth-2 diversion and the Sandman's origin story) that lay bare her anxieties. Dorian took five posts to recap it humorously, but I wanna look into it a bit more seriously because the Thomases address a lot about pre-Crisis Wonder Woman and her love interest in this. Still, go ahead and laugh at it and get the plot. I'll wait.
One of my favorite aspects of this is that the entire story is through Diana's eyes. This is not only refreshing as the Perez reboot set the trend of we see Diana's life through everyone else's eyes, but it's a plot point that Steve gets maybe one or two balloons in the whole special.
Early on, the argument the two have over lunch is entirely from her point of view. There's any number of reasons he might be cranky at the time but she suspects his ego is threatened. He might not have sleep the other night himself, he might be stressed over the arms conference, he might be lonely because Wonder Woman hasn't called, General Darnell might have been needling him over something before Diana and Etta got to the office, he might even be thinking about the General's constant sexual harassment and have the same doubts Diana herself has about his motives for pushing an extremely unorthodox double-promotion (The Thomases have never heard of Time-in-Grade requirements). Or she might be right, he's just weirded out by having a subordinate suddenly become an equal and it may or may not have something to do with sexism. Either way, we just know he's irritated with the General, concerned about the unorthodox double-promotion, has some general malaise about military life, and still has his absent-minded propensity for putting his foot in his mouth around Diana Prince. We never really find out what causes this, only that he's sorry about it later on.
We do, however, get some confirmation of one of my theories:
This is just slightly more tactful than "Wait, you're a woman?" and part of that tradition of odd behavior from Steve that Diana always finds insulting and a lot of fans take as just being mean to her. Personally, having worked with military men and seen how they speak to each other and women who are part of the office, I've always thought he just considered her his work-buddy and didn't realize she took any of this stuff seriously. In the Golden Age, he teases her at times but he's genuinely protective of her (he decks a guy who harasses her at lunch) and pretty friendly towards her. In the Silver Age he turns down her requests for a date as bluntly as possible (and by constantly pointing out that he is already dating someone he finds incredible), teases her about her appearance (and Diana rarely gives him an indication she's insulted by this, but instead rants at her mirror later on), but is still really protective of her and friendly enough to try and drag her to see Wonder Woman whenever she appears, and invite her out when he can't find his girlfriend. Bronze Age Steve is much better behaved than both of them, generally quieter and more thoughtful, but he still blurts out stupid things and gets surprised when she's mad at him. From what I can gather over sampling this 40 year period, he's basically coded her as a man for most social interactions. This is so ingrained in his behavior towards her that I imagine even telling her to seek safety during dangerous situations isn't a sign of chivalry, and he'd be like that with any lower ranking person that accompanies him.
That said, it's remarkably tactless, even for Steve Trevor. Poor Steve tries to be courteous but just gets his foot in that mouth without thinking. At least, that's what I gather from his surprise at her leaving and how readily he took the blame later on for his stupid big mouth. Somehow this guy always knows the right thing to say to Wonder Woman, and the wrong thing to say to Diana Prince.
Diana, for her part, has gotten better. She's less upset that he's not attracted to Diana Prince and more upset that after two years of dating Steve still doesn't suspect that these two women might be the same person. Oh yeah, this Steve is one of three Bronze Age incarnations. You have the Earth-2 version (seen in the trip to Earth-2 in this issue), the original Earth-1 version (so nice the writers killed him twice!), and this version from an unknown Earth who crashlanded on Paradise Island after she was an established superhero who was made to forget the original Earth-1 version. So she's only been dating him two years and thinks she's only known him for two years, but it feels like he's been oblivious for 39 years.
Still, she has an overall good image of the man as evidenced by the dream sequences. Each sequence presents a scenario where something different happened in her origin and her life sucked as a result. In each scenario, Steve is not the problem.
In the first story, her mother and her duty keeps them apart. Hippolyta kills herself to force Diana to take the throne. (The really horrible thing? When Diana tells her this dream Hippolyta confesses she'd thought about it.) He goes home with Mala, her runner up. We learn here that Diana will choose her people over her boyfriend, something we've seen a couple times in Silver Age stories.
In the second, the first man to find the island is evil. He's a sleazy conniving thief, but Diana's young and doesn't see this right away. Hippolyta does. Diana runs away with him to Miami and is horrified when he kills the cops who come to bring him in, so she captures him for them and forces him to confess he committed the crimes. He also gleefully tells her he never loved her. Instead of being a nightmare about Steve being bad, though, this is about a different man. His method of romance, his hair color, his eye color, that he has facial hair, he's the exact opposite of Steve down to being named Trevor Stevens. We learn that Diana's worried she'd have just run off with the first dude she ever saw, but once again Steve is not the problem.
In the third, Superman lands on the island. She marries him right away, becoming more Wonder Wife than Wonder Woman. They're too alike, and spend their days apart on the superhero job and the rest of the time arguing. They get divorced and, unlike the times she broke up with Steve or he died, she gives up on Man's World and returns home. We learn A LOT here. She sees Superman as basically a male version of herself and doesn't think they'd mesh because she needs a complementary personality. She thinks she'd have abandoned her mission if she got married too early, and that if she married Superman she'd be defined as his wife rather than as her own person. We also learn that she thinks Lois would be more pissed off than heartbroken, and I think she's right there. Still, Steve is not the problem.
The fourth and final dream is intense and horrible. She dreams herself as "a super-villainess, a murderess, so incapable of love and compassion that the world would despise me." She reject Steve's love along with any thought that men might be complex or sympathetic human beings. She comes to man's world intending to conquer people she considers sub-human, and her lack of caution and empathy cause Steve's death. This one amazes me, because along with the second story it (and her dialogue about how easy it would be for her to have been that woman) establishes that she could see herself going evil more easily than Steve ever would.
In-between she blames the Sandman for these, but I'm not sure I understand that. It is incredibly clear in each one that there's nothing wrong with Steve in her eyes. Each and every dream reinforces that Steve Trevor is her ideal mate, and that she would be miserable without him. As the Sandman's stated goal is that she dump Steve for him, this would be a really shitty tactic in addition to being incredibly creepy.
Really, it's just her increasing guilt over having lied to him so early on because even pre-Crisis, Diana is not cut out for a secret identity. And her biggest nightmare is before the big reveal of how badly she screwed with Steve.
Once again, one of my favorite things about this issue is that Diana's head is an open book while we don't really know what's going on inside Steve's head. It's an easy joke that we rarely see Steve's thought balloons, but there's a reason for that. In this romance, the man is the inscrutable, illogical, mysterious party. The woman is the one who acts for easy to understand reasons and has an obvious and serious train of thought. Even when writers like Kanigher and O'Neil make her hyper-emotional and even her creator Marston attributes stereotyped female behavior to her, we still know how her head works and the item she's concerned about is always the most important thing in the story.
(Honestly, I'm a bit relieved that Steve Trevor hasn't been the love interest for the Perez and Byrne runs, because those writers told everything through supporting cast members and it would have been too damned easy to make him the viewpoint character for them. Rucka seems to have permanently turned that around, though. All of Vol 3 is back to Diana's POV.)
In the run-up to the wedding Diana's overtired and has a lot going on between arranging a rushed but still lavish ceremony and faking her secret identity's death.
Even so, I'd say she have should given thought to just how horrible getting rid of her secret identity via tragic death could be. She's actually surprised by how upset people are at the funeral. Not only that, she completely misses when Steve hints that he's so freaked out he wants to postpone the wedding, and assumes the offer is for her feelings. Perfectly understandable, it's not like she makes a habit of completely misreading him after all. Steve, normally pretty inscrutable to Diana, is extra inscrutable because she's too preoccupied to pay attention to his behavior.
Still, there is one last point where we all should have known he was in trouble, but Diana was again too plagued by her dreams to notice. Take a look at the wedding party.
Did you catch it?
Except for Hippolyta, Etta (dressed as the Maid of Honor), and General Darnell, every guest is a superhero. These are all Diana's friends. Steve's best man is his jackass boss.
Not only that, when he does blurt out his infamous "No" (after trying to get a chance to warn the bride he's having problems), everyone looks surprised and angry. Not a sympathetic face on that dais. He not only doesn't have any friends closer than his boss, he's not close enough to his boss to tell him he's not sure he can go through with the wedding so soon after Diana Prince died.
His only friend on the platform is the bride he just turned down.
And when you think about it, that's in continuity. We rarely see a story where an old friend of Steve's shows up. He has lunch with Diana Prince usually. When his girlfriend is not around, he chooses to socialize with Diana Prince. Of course, this particular Steve is from another universe and doesn't remember any of his old friends, but he's had two years to make new ones. He mainly hangs out with Diana and Etta. Silver Age Steve hung out with Diana in either of her identities. Whenever he had tickets to something and couldn't find his girlfriend, he asked Diana Prince to go with him and specifically stated it was because he couldn't get hold of his girlfriend. Golden Age Steve had lunch with Diana Prince and socialized with her, his boss or the Holliday Girls, who were Wonder Woman's friends.
Aside from Diana and Etta (he just doesn't seem very friendly with the General to me), this man has no friends. I don't think it's so much a social fault of his, although maybe it is alienating among men to suggest that women are people not to mention being from another universe and dividing his time between work, dating and being kidnapped. Bronze Age Steve is pretty introverted and the sort of person who cultivates a few close friendships. He's not sitting at home obsessing over his girlfriend, he's just a man of few friends. Unfortunately, one of those precious few friends happens to be his girlfriend in disguise.
A lot of people seem to read his confession as a evidence that he's also in love with her secret identity but over the next 29 issues he never displays any real romantic feeling for Diana Prince. He's just happy she's not dead. They once hold hands when she's at his bedside and he tells her he's glad for her company, but he never explores any potential romance with her. Hell, over 39 years of comics he only briefly considers dating Diana Prince after she's saved him from prison in the O'Neil run. Every other time he goes out with her it's like he's going out with a poker buddy, and he wants to talk girls (well, one girl) with her. He's completely telling the truth here when he says the woman he loves is Wonder Woman. But Diana Prince is his closest platonic friend, and he does care deeply for her and he can't go through with his wedding so soon after her death.
It turns out that Diana made herself into his best friend. Now she feels like crap because she didn't realize it.
Diana's solution, of course, is to tell him she's not angry, resurrect Diana Prince and set herself to coming clean as soon as humanly possible. This being comics she takes 12 issues to work up her nerve, then he tells her he doesn't want to know.
I'd call him a jerk for that and Diana stupid for not telling him off, but I'm too amused that he worries she might be the janitor where he works.
One of my favorite aspects of this is that the entire story is through Diana's eyes. This is not only refreshing as the Perez reboot set the trend of we see Diana's life through everyone else's eyes, but it's a plot point that Steve gets maybe one or two balloons in the whole special.
Early on, the argument the two have over lunch is entirely from her point of view. There's any number of reasons he might be cranky at the time but she suspects his ego is threatened. He might not have sleep the other night himself, he might be stressed over the arms conference, he might be lonely because Wonder Woman hasn't called, General Darnell might have been needling him over something before Diana and Etta got to the office, he might even be thinking about the General's constant sexual harassment and have the same doubts Diana herself has about his motives for pushing an extremely unorthodox double-promotion (The Thomases have never heard of Time-in-Grade requirements). Or she might be right, he's just weirded out by having a subordinate suddenly become an equal and it may or may not have something to do with sexism. Either way, we just know he's irritated with the General, concerned about the unorthodox double-promotion, has some general malaise about military life, and still has his absent-minded propensity for putting his foot in his mouth around Diana Prince. We never really find out what causes this, only that he's sorry about it later on.
We do, however, get some confirmation of one of my theories:
This is just slightly more tactful than "Wait, you're a woman?" and part of that tradition of odd behavior from Steve that Diana always finds insulting and a lot of fans take as just being mean to her. Personally, having worked with military men and seen how they speak to each other and women who are part of the office, I've always thought he just considered her his work-buddy and didn't realize she took any of this stuff seriously. In the Golden Age, he teases her at times but he's genuinely protective of her (he decks a guy who harasses her at lunch) and pretty friendly towards her. In the Silver Age he turns down her requests for a date as bluntly as possible (and by constantly pointing out that he is already dating someone he finds incredible), teases her about her appearance (and Diana rarely gives him an indication she's insulted by this, but instead rants at her mirror later on), but is still really protective of her and friendly enough to try and drag her to see Wonder Woman whenever she appears, and invite her out when he can't find his girlfriend. Bronze Age Steve is much better behaved than both of them, generally quieter and more thoughtful, but he still blurts out stupid things and gets surprised when she's mad at him. From what I can gather over sampling this 40 year period, he's basically coded her as a man for most social interactions. This is so ingrained in his behavior towards her that I imagine even telling her to seek safety during dangerous situations isn't a sign of chivalry, and he'd be like that with any lower ranking person that accompanies him.
That said, it's remarkably tactless, even for Steve Trevor. Poor Steve tries to be courteous but just gets his foot in that mouth without thinking. At least, that's what I gather from his surprise at her leaving and how readily he took the blame later on for his stupid big mouth. Somehow this guy always knows the right thing to say to Wonder Woman, and the wrong thing to say to Diana Prince.
Diana, for her part, has gotten better. She's less upset that he's not attracted to Diana Prince and more upset that after two years of dating Steve still doesn't suspect that these two women might be the same person. Oh yeah, this Steve is one of three Bronze Age incarnations. You have the Earth-2 version (seen in the trip to Earth-2 in this issue), the original Earth-1 version (so nice the writers killed him twice!), and this version from an unknown Earth who crashlanded on Paradise Island after she was an established superhero who was made to forget the original Earth-1 version. So she's only been dating him two years and thinks she's only known him for two years, but it feels like he's been oblivious for 39 years.
Still, she has an overall good image of the man as evidenced by the dream sequences. Each sequence presents a scenario where something different happened in her origin and her life sucked as a result. In each scenario, Steve is not the problem.
In the first story, her mother and her duty keeps them apart. Hippolyta kills herself to force Diana to take the throne. (The really horrible thing? When Diana tells her this dream Hippolyta confesses she'd thought about it.) He goes home with Mala, her runner up. We learn here that Diana will choose her people over her boyfriend, something we've seen a couple times in Silver Age stories.
In the second, the first man to find the island is evil. He's a sleazy conniving thief, but Diana's young and doesn't see this right away. Hippolyta does. Diana runs away with him to Miami and is horrified when he kills the cops who come to bring him in, so she captures him for them and forces him to confess he committed the crimes. He also gleefully tells her he never loved her. Instead of being a nightmare about Steve being bad, though, this is about a different man. His method of romance, his hair color, his eye color, that he has facial hair, he's the exact opposite of Steve down to being named Trevor Stevens. We learn that Diana's worried she'd have just run off with the first dude she ever saw, but once again Steve is not the problem.
In the third, Superman lands on the island. She marries him right away, becoming more Wonder Wife than Wonder Woman. They're too alike, and spend their days apart on the superhero job and the rest of the time arguing. They get divorced and, unlike the times she broke up with Steve or he died, she gives up on Man's World and returns home. We learn A LOT here. She sees Superman as basically a male version of herself and doesn't think they'd mesh because she needs a complementary personality. She thinks she'd have abandoned her mission if she got married too early, and that if she married Superman she'd be defined as his wife rather than as her own person. We also learn that she thinks Lois would be more pissed off than heartbroken, and I think she's right there. Still, Steve is not the problem.
The fourth and final dream is intense and horrible. She dreams herself as "a super-villainess, a murderess, so incapable of love and compassion that the world would despise me." She reject Steve's love along with any thought that men might be complex or sympathetic human beings. She comes to man's world intending to conquer people she considers sub-human, and her lack of caution and empathy cause Steve's death. This one amazes me, because along with the second story it (and her dialogue about how easy it would be for her to have been that woman) establishes that she could see herself going evil more easily than Steve ever would.
In-between she blames the Sandman for these, but I'm not sure I understand that. It is incredibly clear in each one that there's nothing wrong with Steve in her eyes. Each and every dream reinforces that Steve Trevor is her ideal mate, and that she would be miserable without him. As the Sandman's stated goal is that she dump Steve for him, this would be a really shitty tactic in addition to being incredibly creepy.
Really, it's just her increasing guilt over having lied to him so early on because even pre-Crisis, Diana is not cut out for a secret identity. And her biggest nightmare is before the big reveal of how badly she screwed with Steve.
Once again, one of my favorite things about this issue is that Diana's head is an open book while we don't really know what's going on inside Steve's head. It's an easy joke that we rarely see Steve's thought balloons, but there's a reason for that. In this romance, the man is the inscrutable, illogical, mysterious party. The woman is the one who acts for easy to understand reasons and has an obvious and serious train of thought. Even when writers like Kanigher and O'Neil make her hyper-emotional and even her creator Marston attributes stereotyped female behavior to her, we still know how her head works and the item she's concerned about is always the most important thing in the story.
(Honestly, I'm a bit relieved that Steve Trevor hasn't been the love interest for the Perez and Byrne runs, because those writers told everything through supporting cast members and it would have been too damned easy to make him the viewpoint character for them. Rucka seems to have permanently turned that around, though. All of Vol 3 is back to Diana's POV.)
In the run-up to the wedding Diana's overtired and has a lot going on between arranging a rushed but still lavish ceremony and faking her secret identity's death.
Even so, I'd say she have should given thought to just how horrible getting rid of her secret identity via tragic death could be. She's actually surprised by how upset people are at the funeral. Not only that, she completely misses when Steve hints that he's so freaked out he wants to postpone the wedding, and assumes the offer is for her feelings. Perfectly understandable, it's not like she makes a habit of completely misreading him after all. Steve, normally pretty inscrutable to Diana, is extra inscrutable because she's too preoccupied to pay attention to his behavior.
Still, there is one last point where we all should have known he was in trouble, but Diana was again too plagued by her dreams to notice. Take a look at the wedding party.
Did you catch it?
Except for Hippolyta, Etta (dressed as the Maid of Honor), and General Darnell, every guest is a superhero. These are all Diana's friends. Steve's best man is his jackass boss.
Not only that, when he does blurt out his infamous "No" (after trying to get a chance to warn the bride he's having problems), everyone looks surprised and angry. Not a sympathetic face on that dais. He not only doesn't have any friends closer than his boss, he's not close enough to his boss to tell him he's not sure he can go through with the wedding so soon after Diana Prince died.
His only friend on the platform is the bride he just turned down.
And when you think about it, that's in continuity. We rarely see a story where an old friend of Steve's shows up. He has lunch with Diana Prince usually. When his girlfriend is not around, he chooses to socialize with Diana Prince. Of course, this particular Steve is from another universe and doesn't remember any of his old friends, but he's had two years to make new ones. He mainly hangs out with Diana and Etta. Silver Age Steve hung out with Diana in either of her identities. Whenever he had tickets to something and couldn't find his girlfriend, he asked Diana Prince to go with him and specifically stated it was because he couldn't get hold of his girlfriend. Golden Age Steve had lunch with Diana Prince and socialized with her, his boss or the Holliday Girls, who were Wonder Woman's friends.
Aside from Diana and Etta (he just doesn't seem very friendly with the General to me), this man has no friends. I don't think it's so much a social fault of his, although maybe it is alienating among men to suggest that women are people not to mention being from another universe and dividing his time between work, dating and being kidnapped. Bronze Age Steve is pretty introverted and the sort of person who cultivates a few close friendships. He's not sitting at home obsessing over his girlfriend, he's just a man of few friends. Unfortunately, one of those precious few friends happens to be his girlfriend in disguise.
A lot of people seem to read his confession as a evidence that he's also in love with her secret identity but over the next 29 issues he never displays any real romantic feeling for Diana Prince. He's just happy she's not dead. They once hold hands when she's at his bedside and he tells her he's glad for her company, but he never explores any potential romance with her. Hell, over 39 years of comics he only briefly considers dating Diana Prince after she's saved him from prison in the O'Neil run. Every other time he goes out with her it's like he's going out with a poker buddy, and he wants to talk girls (well, one girl) with her. He's completely telling the truth here when he says the woman he loves is Wonder Woman. But Diana Prince is his closest platonic friend, and he does care deeply for her and he can't go through with his wedding so soon after her death.
It turns out that Diana made herself into his best friend. Now she feels like crap because she didn't realize it.
Diana's solution, of course, is to tell him she's not angry, resurrect Diana Prince and set herself to coming clean as soon as humanly possible. This being comics she takes 12 issues to work up her nerve, then he tells her he doesn't want to know.
I'd call him a jerk for that and Diana stupid for not telling him off, but I'm too amused that he worries she might be the janitor where he works.
Saturday, April 02, 2011
*Ahem*
Okay, so yesterday's post was not entirely honest. I framed it with stuff that I actually think about retcons, but the Thomases didn't really rewrite Diana's origin to make her into a strawfeminist.
It was one of four dream sequences in Wonder Woman #300, where she makes two major life decisions: 1) She asks Steve to marry her, and 2) She fakes Diana Prince's death. Because of the Diana Prince lie and the impending wedding, plus the Sandman (Not Morpheus, Daniel, Wesley or Sandy, but that one dude in the stupid red cape that nobody likes) hanging around, she has some anxiety dreams.
There's one dream where the night before she left for Man's World her mother killed herself, and she was forced to take the crown while the runner-up went home with Steve.
In another dream, Steve Trevor doesn't crash near the island at all. Instead, Trevor Stevens does, an obnoxious black-haired man with a moustache. This guy isn't a military man, but instead someone who's stolen military tech and intends to steal from the Amazons too. It ends with him telling her he'd never loved her.
The third dream? Superman falls to the island after being hit with a kryptonite meteor. Her mother likes him so rather than mess around with secret identities, she marries Clark right away. They find that they are both too busy to spend time together, and they butt heads too often. They get a divorce and she goes home.
And the fourth and most interesting dream was the one I detailed yesterday. She rejects Steve, comes to Man's World intending to take over by force and ends up accidentally killing him. The only bit I changed was the thing about her becoming a hero at the end, she didn't. She just woke up, more horrified at this one than any of the others.
I'd like to go in-depth with this one, because I love it so much. But because it tells us so much about Diana and so much about Steve (the framing story is basically about how badly she's been screwing with him with this Diana Prince identity), it's taking me a while to dissect it. So yeah, this'll be a long one.
It was one of four dream sequences in Wonder Woman #300, where she makes two major life decisions: 1) She asks Steve to marry her, and 2) She fakes Diana Prince's death. Because of the Diana Prince lie and the impending wedding, plus the Sandman (Not Morpheus, Daniel, Wesley or Sandy, but that one dude in the stupid red cape that nobody likes) hanging around, she has some anxiety dreams.
There's one dream where the night before she left for Man's World her mother killed herself, and she was forced to take the crown while the runner-up went home with Steve.
In another dream, Steve Trevor doesn't crash near the island at all. Instead, Trevor Stevens does, an obnoxious black-haired man with a moustache. This guy isn't a military man, but instead someone who's stolen military tech and intends to steal from the Amazons too. It ends with him telling her he'd never loved her.
The third dream? Superman falls to the island after being hit with a kryptonite meteor. Her mother likes him so rather than mess around with secret identities, she marries Clark right away. They find that they are both too busy to spend time together, and they butt heads too often. They get a divorce and she goes home.
And the fourth and most interesting dream was the one I detailed yesterday. She rejects Steve, comes to Man's World intending to take over by force and ends up accidentally killing him. The only bit I changed was the thing about her becoming a hero at the end, she didn't. She just woke up, more horrified at this one than any of the others.
I'd like to go in-depth with this one, because I love it so much. But because it tells us so much about Diana and so much about Steve (the framing story is basically about how badly she's been screwing with him with this Diana Prince identity), it's taking me a while to dissect it. So yeah, this'll be a long one.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Reboots and Retcons
I suppose the fact that they couldn't find any letters praising the new JMS reboot for the Wonder Woman lettercol this week proves that this direction just isn't working. Really, though, I'm not that horrified. She'll be back to herself when it's over, and we'll have some nice Hester-written moments to show for it. My reaction to Wonder Woman reboots has changed from outrage to fatigue, because really this is a character that has been rebooted and reinvented so many times that this resiliency has become part of her franchise. Kanigher retooled the origin to get rid of the golem part and add some boyfriends in her teen years (for some reason, though, every commentator seems to focus on Hippolyta's makeover and losing the Holliday Girls--who did show up after a few dozen issues) and did some Golden Age revival attempts, but it really started with O'Neil. Ever since he took out both the Paradise Island and Man's World supporting casts, her powers, and her costume in one fell swoop we've seen writer after writer change the place.
I mean, we all know the Post-Crisis history of cast devastation and sporadic revival. JMS reboots the whole damned thing after Simone had to rebuild the supporting cast because Pfieffer tore up the Amazons in a crossover after Heinberg brought back the secret identity/secret agent and Rucka left the place in ruins on Infinite Crisis orders. This was of course after Jimenez took out her mother and brought back some Golden Age villains after a series of quite forgettable writers failed to do anything interesting with the elements Byrne brought back once he'd erased the entire Boston supporting cast, which had been put in post-Crisis to replace the classic military supporting cast that he shoved to the side along with the personalities of the gods and any Amazon technological advancements. No matter how good the writer, they are either responsible for or immediately followed by mass destruction of any recognizable elements.
But much as I get on about Perez (and damn it, I will still complain about Perez), this was nothing new. A sampling of Bronze Age comics easily reveals a similar addiction to soft reboots. After O'Neil, they drop the white suit and bring back the powers, go on for a bit, bring back Steve, play around on Earth-2 for several issues at a time, kill Steve, then bring back Steve and wipe Diana's memory. They move her from Washington to New York to Washington again. The UN to the Pentagon. I think this constant change is why I see Diana as an active explorer and a traveler. She doesn't put down for very long. (Simone's run was pretty good in that she incorporated travel into the plotlines, focusing on Diana rather than try to convince us to accept a brand new supporting cast as permanent fixtures.)
Thing is, hard reboots--retelling the origin completely from scratch--are few and far between. We've had Perez and JMS (which is only fleeting anyway). Anything else (Heinberg) has been a flashback retcon in the middle of the moving story. Diana's still the same Diana, just with a slightly altered past. Pre-Crisis we had Marston and Kanigher and.. well, a particularly odd one from Roy and Danette Thomas. See, back in 1983 they decided they might try a harder-edged Wonder Woman for a while. Even that far back it seems they wanted to drop the boyfriend and the motivated initially by romance thing to reflect modern sensibilities, and this seems to be the first try for this.
Umm.. yeah. I didn't photoshop that, that's really what she says when she wins. And it gets more annoying to me. See, as they fly home Diana makes her intentions very clear to Steve.
That's right, no dating, because he's a man and he sucks. At this point, and I believe it's intentional, we're meant to think she sounds pretty terrible and might be a bad guy. But JUST in case, old Roy wants to drive the point home by giving us her thoughts on killing in battle.
To be fair, she doesn't kill the guy. But clearly we're dealing with a brand new Diana here. Even more of an overhaul, I'd say, than O'Neil gave. (On the plus side, she did not give up her powers for a man!) However, as this is an origin story she's going to have to learn a valuable lesson. From, of course, a man...
Now, all of us and Steve know at this point that he has no chance in hell of actually hitting her with a bullet. He even tells his men that she can deflect them, but of course they shoot anyway and things go from bad to worse.
Turns out poor Diana really did feel something for the guy. She's horrified and upset, and flees the scene not out of fear but grief. A regretful scene later, she decides to turn over a new leaf but the damage has been done. She's been branded as criminal menace and must now seek redemption while on the run!
If this had become the regular origin, I imagine I'd be infuriated. But as it goes, this was a gutsy attempt. He has her come to the world all full of war and judgment, which causes tragedy and teaches her a lesson. And we have a Wonder Woman: Fugitive! set-up at the end. Could've worked, if they'd given it a chance. But really, it didn't last very long and before you knew it we were back to the regular setup and Mishkin took over. And I'm glad, because while heroes that start off bad and learn an important lesson are compelling, one of the things that makes Diana unique is that her origin is relatively untragic and her motives are optimistic and altruistic.
She lives an idyllic life which is disrupted by the appearance of a man--a creature she's only heard stories about. She rescues him, nurses him back to health, and wins the opportunity to accompany him back to his legendary world and fight the terrible evil that threatens it. She becomes a great hero to the universe and maps the modern world for her people. She's an explorer, a traveler, a wandering hero who takes the first opportunity to leave home and seek her destiny. She's not a reformed villainess, a woman haunted by her failures or traumatized by her losses and mistakes. She's a peacemaker and a warrior, and yes I do agree that she would kill if it was absolutely necessary but she has the wisdom to know when it's necessary and she doesn't carry the guilt of reckless destruction with her. She is isolated, caught between two cultures, and carries the heavy burden of the mythic hero who must always put aside her personal wants to serve the greater good, but she's a genuinely good person who came from a genuinely good place. She's not a dark character, and making her one simply doesn't ring true, even if you start from scratch with a reboot.
All scans from Wonder Woman #300, written by Roy and Dann Thomas, art by Keith Pollard. I advise anyone who gets a chance to pick it up and read the whole thing, because it has some very interesting ideas in it.
I mean, we all know the Post-Crisis history of cast devastation and sporadic revival. JMS reboots the whole damned thing after Simone had to rebuild the supporting cast because Pfieffer tore up the Amazons in a crossover after Heinberg brought back the secret identity/secret agent and Rucka left the place in ruins on Infinite Crisis orders. This was of course after Jimenez took out her mother and brought back some Golden Age villains after a series of quite forgettable writers failed to do anything interesting with the elements Byrne brought back once he'd erased the entire Boston supporting cast, which had been put in post-Crisis to replace the classic military supporting cast that he shoved to the side along with the personalities of the gods and any Amazon technological advancements. No matter how good the writer, they are either responsible for or immediately followed by mass destruction of any recognizable elements.
But much as I get on about Perez (and damn it, I will still complain about Perez), this was nothing new. A sampling of Bronze Age comics easily reveals a similar addiction to soft reboots. After O'Neil, they drop the white suit and bring back the powers, go on for a bit, bring back Steve, play around on Earth-2 for several issues at a time, kill Steve, then bring back Steve and wipe Diana's memory. They move her from Washington to New York to Washington again. The UN to the Pentagon. I think this constant change is why I see Diana as an active explorer and a traveler. She doesn't put down for very long. (Simone's run was pretty good in that she incorporated travel into the plotlines, focusing on Diana rather than try to convince us to accept a brand new supporting cast as permanent fixtures.)
Thing is, hard reboots--retelling the origin completely from scratch--are few and far between. We've had Perez and JMS (which is only fleeting anyway). Anything else (Heinberg) has been a flashback retcon in the middle of the moving story. Diana's still the same Diana, just with a slightly altered past. Pre-Crisis we had Marston and Kanigher and.. well, a particularly odd one from Roy and Danette Thomas. See, back in 1983 they decided they might try a harder-edged Wonder Woman for a while. Even that far back it seems they wanted to drop the boyfriend and the motivated initially by romance thing to reflect modern sensibilities, and this seems to be the first try for this.
Umm.. yeah. I didn't photoshop that, that's really what she says when she wins. And it gets more annoying to me. See, as they fly home Diana makes her intentions very clear to Steve.
That's right, no dating, because he's a man and he sucks. At this point, and I believe it's intentional, we're meant to think she sounds pretty terrible and might be a bad guy. But JUST in case, old Roy wants to drive the point home by giving us her thoughts on killing in battle.
To be fair, she doesn't kill the guy. But clearly we're dealing with a brand new Diana here. Even more of an overhaul, I'd say, than O'Neil gave. (On the plus side, she did not give up her powers for a man!) However, as this is an origin story she's going to have to learn a valuable lesson. From, of course, a man...
Now, all of us and Steve know at this point that he has no chance in hell of actually hitting her with a bullet. He even tells his men that she can deflect them, but of course they shoot anyway and things go from bad to worse.
Turns out poor Diana really did feel something for the guy. She's horrified and upset, and flees the scene not out of fear but grief. A regretful scene later, she decides to turn over a new leaf but the damage has been done. She's been branded as criminal menace and must now seek redemption while on the run!
If this had become the regular origin, I imagine I'd be infuriated. But as it goes, this was a gutsy attempt. He has her come to the world all full of war and judgment, which causes tragedy and teaches her a lesson. And we have a Wonder Woman: Fugitive! set-up at the end. Could've worked, if they'd given it a chance. But really, it didn't last very long and before you knew it we were back to the regular setup and Mishkin took over. And I'm glad, because while heroes that start off bad and learn an important lesson are compelling, one of the things that makes Diana unique is that her origin is relatively untragic and her motives are optimistic and altruistic.
She lives an idyllic life which is disrupted by the appearance of a man--a creature she's only heard stories about. She rescues him, nurses him back to health, and wins the opportunity to accompany him back to his legendary world and fight the terrible evil that threatens it. She becomes a great hero to the universe and maps the modern world for her people. She's an explorer, a traveler, a wandering hero who takes the first opportunity to leave home and seek her destiny. She's not a reformed villainess, a woman haunted by her failures or traumatized by her losses and mistakes. She's a peacemaker and a warrior, and yes I do agree that she would kill if it was absolutely necessary but she has the wisdom to know when it's necessary and she doesn't carry the guilt of reckless destruction with her. She is isolated, caught between two cultures, and carries the heavy burden of the mythic hero who must always put aside her personal wants to serve the greater good, but she's a genuinely good person who came from a genuinely good place. She's not a dark character, and making her one simply doesn't ring true, even if you start from scratch with a reboot.
All scans from Wonder Woman #300, written by Roy and Dann Thomas, art by Keith Pollard. I advise anyone who gets a chance to pick it up and read the whole thing, because it has some very interesting ideas in it.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Two ways to brighten my day
Two good pieces of news via the increasingly indispensable DCWKA today. First, of interest to the widest audience, set photos and spectator camera footage of the in-production Wonder Woman TV show. My favorite is this one:
Oh, they've also made some minor adjustments to the costume.
I would've been okay with the light blue but I do like this better and I do like the red boots best. Kinda wish they'd do something about that oddly textured girdle, but I'll never get a perfect Wonder Woman unless I write and direct it. It looks like it works, and maybe when the dust settles the comic Wonder Woman (that we only know for sure will still be in pants after Odyssey) will have blue pants and red boots too.
And there's longer video of her chasing that dude at the end of this post, and DCWKA's got a poll.
Second, and really only notable to me and the other two Steve Trevor fans on the internet (I love you guys!), they printed my letter in Wonder Woman this week. (I am such nerd that it makes me super-excited to be in a lettercol for the first time.) As I am still waiting on the mail every week, DCWKA was kind enough to scan the lettercol for me.
You can click to enlarge but I'll make it easier for you.
I'm bit worried by the "surprised" (I may be an optimist among Wonder Woman fans, but I'm still a Wonder Woman fan so any surprises worry me) but otherwise very happy about it.
And isn't it amusing that none of these letters seem to like the JMS storyline?
Oh, they've also made some minor adjustments to the costume.
I would've been okay with the light blue but I do like this better and I do like the red boots best. Kinda wish they'd do something about that oddly textured girdle, but I'll never get a perfect Wonder Woman unless I write and direct it. It looks like it works, and maybe when the dust settles the comic Wonder Woman (that we only know for sure will still be in pants after Odyssey) will have blue pants and red boots too.
And there's longer video of her chasing that dude at the end of this post, and DCWKA's got a poll.
Second, and really only notable to me and the other two Steve Trevor fans on the internet (I love you guys!), they printed my letter in Wonder Woman this week. (I am such nerd that it makes me super-excited to be in a lettercol for the first time.) As I am still waiting on the mail every week, DCWKA was kind enough to scan the lettercol for me.
You can click to enlarge but I'll make it easier for you.
I'm bit worried by the "surprised" (I may be an optimist among Wonder Woman fans, but I'm still a Wonder Woman fan so any surprises worry me) but otherwise very happy about it.
And isn't it amusing that none of these letters seem to like the JMS storyline?
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Resurrecting Steve
Back in Wonder Woman #180 (1968) Denny O'Neil offed Steve Trevor in a way that made both him and Diana seem pathetic and ineffective. Steve got shot and beaten by Dr. Cyber's henchmen, escaped (I got the implication he was let go on purpose but I missed any confirmation) and found Diana. She sent him to the hospital, which he was kidnapped from, and then tortured to death by Dr. Cyber's henchmen. Meaning she not only failed to save him once from this bad guy, but twice. And somehow the white suit period is the best remembered of the Silver and Bronze Age runs. Chalk one up for the first major reboot in Wonder Woman history. (But more on Mr. O'Neil's mistakes later.)
When we get to Wonder Woman #223 (1976), Mark Pashtu brings him back in what's actually a pretty sweet way. Diana's memory had been wiped of his death because Hippolyta knew she'd be really upset by that. This gets revealed to Diana when Aphrodite returns him to life as part of some heroic fitness test. (As this is Wonder Woman, the superhero who most directly recalls the Great Heroes of Folklore and how they got arbitrarily tested all the time, this works for me.) Aphrodite reveals she has passed, and is about to take him away again when Diana convinces the goddess to leave him alive.
They try to settle in on Steve knowing about the Diana Prince identity, and recovering from the trauma of death and resurrection, and having to rebuild his identity from scratch. Ready-made drama, right? Well, it doesn't work for them so come Wonder Woman #248 (1978) Jack C. Harris offs him again. Also by having him tortured to death, after intense interrogation and a machine/magic combo that sucks out the lifeforce Aphrodite had granted him to give to some... thing. I only really remember that he had converted to her religion. Isn't that sweet?
By this point Steve Trevor has died in-continuity twice. (I'm starting to really think this and all the letters in the lettercol that call him things like "helpless ragdoll" are significant indicators of how people feel about a man who pairs up with a powerful woman than any real weakness with the character.) Diana's lovelife is beginning to look like Kyle Rayner's, but with just the one guy.
Then Gerry Conway comes along and wants him back and he manages it in Wonder Woman #270 (1980), which along with Wonder Woman #271 is now one of my favorite Wonder Woman story arcs. It's a giant middle finger to fans who think the franchise is better without Steve Trevor, topped off with confused Amazons and a horrified Hippolyta.
At the end of Wonder Woman #269 Diana's still depressed that her boyfriend died (again) so she goes home to sulk. She is so miserable that Hippolyta prays to Aphrodite to rid her daughter of these horrible memories. Aphrodite points out that it might not work. Still, she decides that maybe it's better to have loved and lost and forgotten about it than to have loved and lost and be so miserable about it you can't love again. So she summons the Mists of Nepenthe to wipe Diana's memory.
Diana, rid of the memory, is finally able to smile. And on the very next page...
While Diana does the hero thing for the Amazons we get a couple one-page interludes about a blonde Air Force Colonel testing an experimental jet that'll reach Mach 10. We also learn that Paradise Island is partway in another dimension, which is pretty cool. Oh, and that experimental jet crashes into the ocean right next to the boat that Diana and the Queen are standing on.
So just how does Aphrodite explain this one? "There is more than one of everything and the Fates ship Steve and Diana. Enjoy the rest of the Bronze Age."
When we get to Wonder Woman #223 (1976), Mark Pashtu brings him back in what's actually a pretty sweet way. Diana's memory had been wiped of his death because Hippolyta knew she'd be really upset by that. This gets revealed to Diana when Aphrodite returns him to life as part of some heroic fitness test. (As this is Wonder Woman, the superhero who most directly recalls the Great Heroes of Folklore and how they got arbitrarily tested all the time, this works for me.) Aphrodite reveals she has passed, and is about to take him away again when Diana convinces the goddess to leave him alive.
They try to settle in on Steve knowing about the Diana Prince identity, and recovering from the trauma of death and resurrection, and having to rebuild his identity from scratch. Ready-made drama, right? Well, it doesn't work for them so come Wonder Woman #248 (1978) Jack C. Harris offs him again. Also by having him tortured to death, after intense interrogation and a machine/magic combo that sucks out the lifeforce Aphrodite had granted him to give to some... thing. I only really remember that he had converted to her religion. Isn't that sweet?
By this point Steve Trevor has died in-continuity twice. (I'm starting to really think this and all the letters in the lettercol that call him things like "helpless ragdoll" are significant indicators of how people feel about a man who pairs up with a powerful woman than any real weakness with the character.) Diana's lovelife is beginning to look like Kyle Rayner's, but with just the one guy.
Then Gerry Conway comes along and wants him back and he manages it in Wonder Woman #270 (1980), which along with Wonder Woman #271 is now one of my favorite Wonder Woman story arcs. It's a giant middle finger to fans who think the franchise is better without Steve Trevor, topped off with confused Amazons and a horrified Hippolyta.
At the end of Wonder Woman #269 Diana's still depressed that her boyfriend died (again) so she goes home to sulk. She is so miserable that Hippolyta prays to Aphrodite to rid her daughter of these horrible memories. Aphrodite points out that it might not work. Still, she decides that maybe it's better to have loved and lost and forgotten about it than to have loved and lost and be so miserable about it you can't love again. So she summons the Mists of Nepenthe to wipe Diana's memory.
Diana, rid of the memory, is finally able to smile. And on the very next page...
While Diana does the hero thing for the Amazons we get a couple one-page interludes about a blonde Air Force Colonel testing an experimental jet that'll reach Mach 10. We also learn that Paradise Island is partway in another dimension, which is pretty cool. Oh, and that experimental jet crashes into the ocean right next to the boat that Diana and the Queen are standing on.
So just how does Aphrodite explain this one? "There is more than one of everything and the Fates ship Steve and Diana. Enjoy the rest of the Bronze Age."
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