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Underground > Comic Books >

Wonder Woman!!!

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miss wonderstarr

07:09 / 13.12.07

there just doesn’t seem to be an iconic heft to Wonder Woman’s narrative - no Death and Return of Wonder Woman (I mean, she died and came back, but nobody really noticed) or Wonderfall

Oh also: I don't think it's those events in the careers of Batman and Superman that give them their iconic heft. I think those storylines gained the characters broader media attention, but (as with, I gather, the death of Captain America) comics readers are likely to regard them as just gimmicks, short-lived shockers that don't benefit the character and are just going to have to take years to work through before Batman and Superman get back to normal (as everyone knows they will).

I'd say the iconic heft maybe comes from the origin story, more than anything. I don't know if that's true of all the major superheroes.

ONLY NICE THINGS

08:05 / 13.12.07

Point. Iconic heft is the wrong term, or an inexact term. I meant that she doesn't have the kind of status where a storyline like that is going to break into the mainstream. I'm sure she's died once or twice, hasn't she? But there is no novel, no audio book, no animated film, sort of thing. WW's major crossover that I recall was "War of the Gods", which is barely even remembered by comic fans.

miss wonderstarr

08:09 / 13.12.07

I think the mainstream's point of reference for WW is still Lynda Carter. A big-budget film might do well if it either defined itself in shocking opposition to that TV show (this isn't your dad's Wonder Woman... basically, as DKR was promoted in the mainstream in contrast to Adam West; or I guess in the same way as BSG did with the original series) or perhaps, though I don't know if I'd like to see it, did a Starsky and Hutch affectionately-nostalgic/parodic revisiting of the TV show, with Carter in a cameo.

08:12 / 13.12.07

A big-budget film might do well if it either defined itself in shocking opposition to that TV show

Unfortunately that doesn't look like happening anytime soon. Whedon's walked from the planned WW film and it's back in Development Hell for now.

miss wonderstarr

08:23 / 13.12.07

I get the impression Whedon's Wonder Woman ~ which seemed to be aiming for devoted fidelity to the original, and attempting to pay homage to and make sense of 60 years of continuity ~ would have been loved by fans but would have baffled a general audience and probably been panned by critics.

ONLY NICE THINGS

08:23 / 13.12.07

As I've said, I'm no expert on Wonder Woman, but I believe there was a younger version of the character ~ in fact, two young versions, a teenager and a baby ~ around the same time as we were seeing the adventures of Superboy and Superbaby.

At least a couple - Diana as a young girl, and the various "young wonderwomen" - Donna Troy and later Cassie Sandsmark. WW is presented as having aged in Infinite Crisis, but notso much in Crisis on Infinite Earths - in Kingdom Come she and Superman are both middle-aged, but she has aged less and better than he - possibly tied into the overarching and instinctive need for female characters to stay sexy.

A less reverential treatment or director is usually a good idea - see Tim Kring, who doesn't read comics, and Heroes, where the nods - Stan Lee cameo, goofy names of places - make it shitter. Although then you get onto Batman and Robin - a good film is ultimately a good film, but Batman bringing a girl into the Batcave seems to me just a function of moving it to an episodic action narrative requiring a romantic female lead - just as the X-Men and Batman kill with relative impunity in films, because that is what you do with bad guys in action movies.

However, once you strip away the unusable - the BDSM - and the gratuitous, what do you have left with Wonder Woman? An invisible island full of Amazons? An invisible plane? Bullet-deflecting bracelets? Wonder Woman has a terrific, iconic look (every attempt to update which seriously has failed), and is great for Ms magazine covers or Alex Ross posters, but I'm not sure how one would keep the saleable parts (beyond 48,000 devoted readers) while maintaining any credibility. Mind you, the Fantastic Four movies may not have won any Oscars, but they did sell tickets...

miss wonderstarr

09:11 / 13.12.07

I think I'd do it a bit like The Brady Bunch Movie and the recent Starsky and Hutch, but less broadly comedic, and with some echoes of Superman Returns. Wonder Woman has been encased in ice or something since the 1970s, and is restored to life in 2007. She's played by a newcomer who, like Routh/Reeves, initially bases her performance on Lynda Carter's mannerisms, though she could evolve throughout the film. So it's a movie with the same balance of action-adventure, emotional drama and character-based comedy as Superman II (the Donner version), which is "about" changing gender politics from the late 1970s to the late 2000s. You'd have to find a decent villain (I suggest one villain, to buck the trend), maybe include an origin story pre-credits (?) or have that as some kind of fragmentary flashback (Wonder Woman isn't quite sure where she came from and has to reconnect with her cultural identity).

11:32 / 13.12.07

I think I'd get Frank Miller to direct. Problems with renewed nuclear testing, global warming or some such would force the war-like, but initially isolationist Amazons to send Diana as an emissary into the wider world, which would first baffle, and then horrify her, before forcing her into a final, bloody confrontation with the CEO of a corrupt multi-national, or related. Throughout, she would be an innocent, but nevertheless extremely dangerous character, highly intolerant of the iniquities of 'men's world' - god help anyone who laughed at her costume for example, although she might wear a trench coat over it at least some of the time, all the same. The invisible plane could stay, as long as Wonder Woman was also invisible while flying it; the lie-detecting rope would be fine as long as there was the sense that it hurt, and even the bullet-deflecting bracelets might be all right if they were used sparingly, probably no more than once. And she could even have a romance of sorts with Steve Trevor.

Wonder Woman as the Terminator, basically, with elements of '300' tossed in.

12:43 / 13.12.07

And don't forget the late, unlamented Wonder Tot. "Me am Wonder Tot!" She was, if I remember correctly, a baby Diana having some "Impossible" adventures in the 60's. And then there was Wonder Queen, Hippolyta assuming the Wonder Woman mantle.

There were three things that I found fans identifying as Wonder Woman's key traits when I interviewed them about Wonder Woman:

1) She's extremely powerful.
2) She doesn't have much angst.
3) She's compassionate, and fights for the disenfranchised.

Many of them first encountered her through the Wonder Woman TV show in the 70's, although one first became aware of her in the Morrison Justice League, where I remember her being treated as an awe-inspiring warrior princess. Another thing that a couple of people said is that they like Wonder Woman because she's well-adjusted. She doesn't have problems. It's the world around her that has problems.

Ultimately, I think you guys are mostly right that her longevity boils down to the look, the costume, her gender and her publication history, but people still do feel passionately about her for some reason and while I believe that's because she resonates with some key ideas, injected by Marston, that are evergreen culturally speaking, it could also be because of her emptiness.

Wonder Woman has so little generally known continuity, so little established, permanent fact around her character, she has an identity that has changed so many times, that maybe her surface elements (lasso, bracelets, costume, jet, gender) serve as an inviting blank slate for fans to project their own power fantasies onto, and because she's a woman she tends to attract fans who are either women or who are less likely to identify with straight, white men as their heroes.

15:03 / 13.12.07

She doesn't have problems. It's the world around her that has problems.

But does that make for greater or lesser narrative? The old complaint about Superman used to be "how interesting can he be? He's practically a god. Heat vision. Cold breath. Unbelievable strength" et al. So does the character suffer because all the conflict for her is external?

17:41 / 13.12.07

Occasional Superheroine recaps page one of this thread. I mean, not actually, but it's a decent summary.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

16:39 / 14.12.07

Further thoughts on Simone's run:

1. Simone brings an odd echo of the Golden Age by having Diana rehabilitate her enemies -- Grodd's teen ape warriors -- by dominating them. Not in any kind of overtly sexual way, but through sheer willpower and charisma. I like it, and it more clearly delineates how she's a unique character as far as heroic approach goes; though Simone chooses to highlight this as a difference between her and Batman a bit too loudly.

2. The return of Etta Candy makes me wonder if Etta's going to see through Diana's disguise.

3. Is there possibly some magic reinforcing Diana's disguise?

4. What exactly are the rules of Diana's new, powerless "human form?" Can she only change to Wonder Woman by spinning? Putting on the bracelets?

13:40 / 15.02.08

where *are* we talking about Gail Simone's Wonder Woman these days -- this thread or the 'weekly review' thread? Guess it might not really matter -- all I can say is that the final issue of Simone's 4-issue opening arc is out, and it's some damn fine WW. I think this is good a WW comic as you're going to get (and I would say the same about Greg Rucka's run). Simone's warrior mojo stirs the blood - it really, really works.

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