Petition to get the Wild Hunt on the Daily Show

I'm late to this because it broke last week, but over at Patheos they're fed up with the current media take on religion:

When the Washington Times thinks it’s appropriate to publish a column stating the Air Force Academy is “pandering” to my “fringe” religion, despite the fact that Pagans have fought and died for this country, I get angry.

Around the 1950s, fringe leftists enamored by the concept of worshiping the Earth adopted the ancient labels and pretended to follow the old ways.

When David Barton can advocate for a Christian government and actively work against my religious rights only to get away with lying about these activities on television, I get angry.

The true historic meaning of “religion” excludes paganism and witchcraft, and thus, does not compel a conclusion that McCollum has state taxpayer standing … paganism and witchcraft were never intended to receive the protections of the Religion Clauses.

When I have to deal with people who feel it’s appropriate to tell me I will burn in hell because they are the “keepers of the truth”, I get angry.

So do I. Star Foster has a more productive idea than ranting, and that's to petition to get some more pagan voices into the mainstream.

Specifically, Jason Pitzl-Waters on the Daily Show.

Instead I’m going to ask you to write The Daily Show and suggest they invite The Wild Hunt author and Washington Post columnist Jason Pitzl-Waters on the show to discuss David Barton and the real challenges religious minorities face in this country.

As a journalist he is familiar with the legal battle facing Patrick McCollum, the discrimination against Santeria, the triumphs of and challenges before the Lady Liberty League, the AFA earth-centered spirituality space, the Witch-Children of Africa and India, and many more stories important to our communities. He’s the journalist at the nexus of all of these stories, and he’s an excellent public speaker.

I'm going to take a moment to whine personally here. I do not represent pagans or the military or even pagans in the military. I certainly am not telling anyone US Air Force policy. I just want to tell you a little about my experience.

I'm scheduled to go a less intense unit soon, but in the midst of preparing for that, training my replacements for my multiple additional duties, and taking care of my personal stuff I was in the all-consuming field exercise this month. I just spent weeks working my ass off to help train and prepare folks so they can go to the middle of nowhere and do their job even when there are no amenities and a bunch of people are trying to kill them. That's not political, that's what we fucking do no matter who's in charge. (Whether it's for good or bad is all based on who you vote into office if you're in the US, so if you're an American citizen who sits out the primaries because "only the jerks ever win" I personally hate your guts.)

While I was in Afghanistan last fall, I saw no information about pagan services or a pagan rep at the chapel, but regular Christian services were scheduled. We had one Muslim dude in our unit, and he had to personally contact the Chapel to get a waiver for some Ramadan practices. They were nice about it, he didn't get any trouble over it, he just needed a special letter for some uniform thing. I never got any trouble over my solitary practices and I didn't feel a need to keep my religion under wraps on site, but I wasn't comfortable going to the Chaplain about Wiccan stuff and there was no contact information available for pagans there. I accept There were posted hours for Christian services, though.

At the field ex last week, Sunday was tear-down day. Work for everyone taking down equipment and tents. I got a good laugh when my boss (who knows that I am a witch) interrupted me to ask me if I wanted to go to Church. Our Group's Chaplain came down from base and they were busing anyone who wanted to attend Christian services to the nearby German Chapel. My boss was required to ask everyone in the office if they wanted to attend, to make sure no one who wanted to go missed it.

This is not against the rules, or oppressive. I haven't seen anything personally to file a complaint about (I've heard stories, but I've been lucky) or been treated bad by anyone in my chain of command. I've just seen some examples of the consideration Christians get that I will never see extended to pagans. It's like how Christmas is a federal holiday but I have to ASK for a special consideration if I want Beltane off. It's just an extra step I have to take (though I haven't ever actually gotten Beltane off...). These conveniences are all over the place, and I can actually see the necessity because it would suck if someone missed the bus for Sunday services while they were pulling up grounds like I was...

...

Anyway, I understand completely that I'm the rare religion here. I don't want to end Christian services or anything like that, and I'm not mad at anyone who goes to Church. I understand that if I want a group service for my religion, I have to contact the Chaplain personally (and cross my fingers that he's not a dick, because some of them are about this) and if we don't have a POC already ask around the unit to find the pagans and get a group together. I've known this at every base, it's more difficult some places and less others. And really, this unit is not bad in the regard.

I understand that there are a bazillion Christians, so everything is already nicely set up for Christians. There will always be networking at Churches. They don't have to worry about whether or not there's a volunteer POC for all of monotheism at their new base. They don't have to explain what they're reading when someone sees their bible. Good for them. That actually doesn't make me angry.

What makes me angry is when someone tries to make it seem like I want special treatment when I want the same consideration the Christians get.

What makes me angry is that we can't get a Pagan Chaplain attached to any of the four branches.

What makes me angry is that if I want the symbol of my religion on my tombstone to protect my remains and soothe my soul after death, the VA Administration is going to pale and stammer and give my relatives the runaround.

What makes me angry is that a ridiculous extremist can be elected if they're a Christian, but pagans and Atheists are scared risk political doom if they just mention their beliefs.

What makes me angry is when I log onto my computer to see someone who likely wouldn't even think of joining the National Guard in an admin position talk about how my religion isn't a real religion, it doesn't matter, and that we are being PAMPERED and PANDERED to when someone dares to set a place of worship aside for us.

This is old in social networking time, but it's still necessary. Do me a personal favor and do this, even if you're an atheist or a Christian reader. I want to see an intelligent Pagan speaking on these subjects in the mainstream for once.

The Allegory and the Amazon

I complain a lot about the the portrayal of the gods in Wonder Woman, and while the "Rise of the Olympian" storyline by Gail Simone has some openings for discussion and possibly complaint (I'm not sure how the Hawaiian culture views death for their gods, myself I'm generally against killing off gods but maybe Hawaii is like Scandanavia and gods die cyclically) she did one big thing right:

She used Zeus as her big antagonist, and she kept him in character.

I've blogged this before, but I was incredibly disappointed and pissed off by how Perez handled the Zeus-Hera relationship. He's always been a trickster when it came to sleeping around, and she's always been reactive and quick to blame the woman involved. In the Perez run, Zeus just comes down to Themiscyra AS HIMSELF and asks Diana for a roll in the hay, and when she refuses he makes her fight a whole bunch of monsters. Hera goes to her room and cries until Athena and Co talk her into standing up to him. (Oh, and if I recall correctly this mess leads to going to the center of Paradise Island where rapist Heracles is holding up the Island as penance, and Diana's gotta help him out and Hippolyta forgives him and suddenly he's a nice guy because even Perez after MAKING a rapist Heracles portrayal can't stand to have Heracles be a bad guy.)

Anyway, it fucks up the Zeus and Hera relationship in a way that strips Zeus of his trickster aspect (which is actually vital to his realm of patriarchal power, because this entire marriage is representative of how institutionalized sexism in the way women are raised and related to deceives women into supporting the patriarchal order against other women) and Hera of her personality. This is done in order to set up something that could be EASILY set up with having them act in character: Zeus just nods at the refusal, then comes back to annoy Diana in some sort of animal disguise. Hera catches him, blames Diana, orders her to fight monsters and Zeus and Hera have a giant fight on Olympus that leads to the goddesses offering their support to Hera when she stands against Zeus's violence, and convincing her to take back her rage at Diana (who by now has gotten to the climax of her quest because this sort of thing takes a while even when you have Hermes on your side), because really the whole thing is Zeus' fault.

That "Challenge of the Gods" storyline was also, I believe, where they established Pan was killed for the Millenium crossover, and it had a lot of brooding Hermes. Damn, the more I think back on it, the more I hate Perez's run.

I'm digressing again. Sorry. (I just really hate how Perez handled the gods.) So Gail Simone decides to use Zeus as a bad guy in "Rise of the Olympian" and the subsequent storyline. To this end, she has him decide that he's going to reward the Amazons and Diana by creating a race of equal men to replace them. That way they can retire, marry, and have lots of babies. Because that is seriously what Zeus thinks all women aspire to. He makes them in much the same way, animating clay using the souls of deceased warriors, with one exception. In a scene that occupies a strange gray area between a duel and a mugging, he kills a deity from another pantheon (who is the father of Pele, who is described as the goddess of violence when this particular shit hits the fan) and uses the heart to create Diana's equal: Achilles.

This is the aspect of her run I'm having trouble getting over. Surely a god can survive without a heart, but later Pele is very upset he's dead. And Simone never brought the guy back! Still, it's vital for how Achilles turned out and it does not seem, what with the stakes they had, like something Zeus would sweat over. It's got really good symbolism, because we have misguided Power embarking on needless destruction (of someone who seems to represent pure goodness and creation) and all the rationalization involved, with both the good and the bad results played out in the next couple storylines.

We also have an old white god killing a Pacific Island god and using his heart to make a blonde white dude. Which is in that area of horrible racial implications and colonization symbolism that I'm not really qualified to examine. This is brilliant or problematic, or both. The text certainly underlines that it is a horribly wrong thing, and the consequences of this action are visited on Diana rather than Zeus. I'm still against killing gods, but I'd say this is a correct portrayal of Zeus as a bad guy. He doesn't murder other gods much in classical stories, because gods don't die in those stories, but he does a lot of casting gods into Tartarus and gods trade body parts like MRE components.

What I find so incredible and compelling about this story is that throughout the whole thing Zeus is attempting to be benevolent, and missing the point completely. This is perfectly in character with the old time Zeus who considered himself the father and patron of all heroes, and it really supports his role as the personification of power and male-dominated establishment. He's convinced himself that acting in a sexist way is doing women a favor, much like chivalrous sexists do. When Diana and the Amazons react badly to this, he gets angry that his gift is unappreciated and out comes the pushiness.

Right about now Perez fans are asking how this is different from what Perez wrote. Well, back then he was dealing with Diana as a love interest and acting as the philandering husband. His relationship with Hera changes everything there. It activates the Trickster aspect, because 1) he does want to avoid a fight with her, and b) he doesn't want to ever piss her off to the point that she'll leave again. (There's a story where she does and he stages a fake wedding to attract her back. When she goes to the ceremony out of curiosity, she sees he's marrying a lifeless statue of her and is humored back into the relationship.) Perez wrote Zeus as the personification of patriarchal power in a way that minimized Hera's influence in the pantheon.

Simone wrote a story where Zeus approaches Diana as a hero, but a female one that he thinks will want to retire and have lots of babies. She weaves sexism into the assumption in a way that avoids contorting Hera's relationship with Zeus (by having Zeus perform an action that won't piss off his wife) and shows that Zeus does see Diana as a valued hero rather than just a potential fucktoy. She tells a tale about how a powerful sexist man can acknowledge an individual woman's accomplishments and claim to value femininity while still screwing over women with his assumptions.

She also tells the reconciliation story between men and women with Achilles, who is actually a pretty damned noble guy at heart from the beginning. He gets his position as the leader through Zeus's sexism, but eventually this gets reconciled and they all team up in the end. I actually really miss Achilles, he was a really good male counterpart for Diana. Fucking reboot.

Still, the real topper to all this divine symbolism is Diana standing up to Zeus, punching Patriarchal Power directly in the face. Funny thing about that essay, I really hate when the gods are made petty and bad for no good reason other than the writer wants to make Diana better than them. (And it happens all the time, see Perez and even Rucka's self-hating Athena.) Thing is, Simone did some great staging here when she picked just which gods Diana would tell off. Ares is the personification of needless violent conflict and Zeus is the personification of patriarchal power so it makes SENSE that Wonder Woman would conflict with them. They represent the exact energies that she is created to combat. She reveres Wisdom (Athena), Motherhood (Demeter), Sisterhood (Artemis), Inner Peace/Truth (Hestia), Diplomacy (Hermes), and Love (Aphrodite), but she rejects War (Ares) and she has some serious problems with Power (Zeus) from time to time. I think if Simone's run had gone on without a time fuckup, we'd have seen some very interesting things come from pledging herself to the Violence of Nature (Pele).

I have bigger worries with Thor.

I'm going to level with you all right away, Thor was a tough sell on me from the beginning. While most of the people weighing in on the matter of Idris Elba as Heimdall--including, officially at least, the extremists themselves--refer to the characters in Thor as mere characters or even cultural icons, I'm not going to dance around it. I actually subscribe to a neo-pagan religion. Thor and Heimdall aren't just a name from old dusty poems or creations of Kirby, they're genuine spiritual figure for me. And while they are many different versions of the old myths and legends, and there's a big emphasis on discovering the essence of the Divine by parsing these different legends and seeing what has the most human truth to it, the Marvel version of Thor was a bit too far afield for me. I had the worst trouble getting past the beardless blonde Thor, even after differences like that were explained away by some generational or post-Ragnarok thing I still can't confidently repeat.

I managed to get a good jumping on point with JMS and I've read his run, some miniseries and some Silver Age reprints. I was impressed with the basic characters of Thor, Balder and the Warriors Three (who weren't in the original myths but seem like the sort of people who would have been so I love them) but had trouble getting past the treatment of the goddesses. The Asyniur (and Freya) were a really appealing part of the Norse pantheon. Fewer of their stories have survived, but this was genuinely a group of amazing goddesses that get sadly ignored at times. And in the Thor franchise, they continue to be ignored. I don't think I've seen Skadi or Freya--which is ridiculous because Freya is... Freya. It's insane to dismiss her. Valkyrie seems to be the only Valkyrie flying around.

Frigga's portrayal is what really annoys me. She's been consigned to the background and we never see her handmaidens. In the meantime her signature story, her story of motherly love that ends in the tragic death of Balder, was centered instead on Odin in the Silver Age. It's possible this has been retconned to a Frigga-centered story again but since we never see the Queen of Asgard say more than two lines I haven't seen it mentioned.

Of course there are some canonical goddesses who get speaking roles like Hela. Now, Hela as I originally saw her in my childhood reading was half-black and half-white. (Not racewise, I mean like those dudes in the original series Star Trek racial harmony episode.) Most of the sources describe a duality: half black and half white, half hag and half beautiful woman, half skeleton and half person, or half dead and half alive... either way, she's split down the middle like Two-Face and it's a damned powerful image. Even if they'd just decided black and white, they could still do the Beautiful death goddess but no... THIS was the first time I saw Hela:



I can deal with Kirby's green-clad fully-human-looking goddess (especially since she has such a cool headdress), but this shirtless shit has been the norm since JMS rebooted Thor. Every use of her, especially as a wicked plotter rather than the morally neutral indifferent Death Goddess (because comics writers hate Death Deities), makes me cringe. The Goddess of Death holds secret conspiracy meetings in her nearly nonexistant nightie. Fucking seriously. And Gillen had her running around in a draping halter top! And look what they have on her profile on their official site. (She rules one of the coldest of the 9 realms! WHERE IS THE REST OF HER SHIRT?!) It's a complete surrender of any mature examination of death in favor of Sexy, Sexy Danger.

I've allowed my recent issues to pile up due to the complete massacre of source material that occurred with the Disir. Now I'd always been under the impression they were the spirits of female ancestors who protect your bloodline and fall under the realm of Freya Vanadis, but it seems Straczynski and Gillen had other ideas. Seems they're creepy soul-eaters cursed by Odin who devour divine essence. Freya could not be reached for comment, because I still haven't seen her in any of the Thor comics. (Honestly, it is in-character for a love goddess to run around in a chainmail bikini but instead you ignore Freya and tart up Hela. I do not understand Marvel.)

That said, I have hope for the Thor franchise because I've read two volumes of Walter Simonson and his handling of Sif was nothing but pure joy. Shame JMS decided to toss her into a comatose body for several years.

My point is that eventually I managed to get away from desiring dogmatic adherence to the Eddas in favor of seeking a genuinely respectful portrayal of the gods. I do think for the most part they manage that with most of the gods and some of the criminally underused goddesses. Original characters (rather than twisting a persona into a story they aren't suited for) help a lot. There's some serious missteps, usually with the goddesses, but in general they treat them as an honorable society that's worthy of reverance and manage to capture the same personalities.

As a result, I'm actually rather optimistic about Idris Elba as Heimdall. Not just because I started laughing my ass off when I first heard (though I have been giggling about this impending freakout since April) but because they might be able to pull this off.

Don't get me wrong, I still feel that so-called Chromatic Casting ignores the real problems and probably isn't the way to make up for a history of white-washing in the film industry, but in this case I'm not exactly annoyed. We don't know the full story here and it could actually be part of the plot, (Like JMS having the Asgardians wearing mortal lives after Ragnarok.) If not, well, he's being played by an accomplished actor and so long as he doesn't get the same treatment Gillen gave the Disir I should be happy.

Of course, I might just be falling prey to some white liberal guilt, or prioritizing offense about gender over race, or maybe I just like annoying white supremacists.

Actually, it's probably just the last one. I still crack up whenever I think what their faces must've looked like.

ETA: Comics Alliance issued an apology for "where we suggested their gods were concocted by drunken medievals." Kind nice of them.

I am not optimistic here.

WONDER WOMAN #605
Written by J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI
Art and cover by DON KRAMER & JAY LEISTEN
1:10 Variant cover by ALEX GARNER
As Wonder Woman continues her quest to find out exactly what happened to her current reality and who is ultimately responsible, she encounters the first of the three most deadly gods known to man. Together, they comprise...the Morrigan!
Retailers please note: This issue will ship with two covers. Please see the Previews Order Form for more information.
On sale NOVEMBER 24 * 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US

WONDER WOMAN #606
Written by J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI
Art and cover by DON KRAMER & JAY LEISTEN
1:10 Variant cover by ALEX GARNER
J. Michael Straczynski’s blockbuster re-imagining of the Amazon Princess continues with a vengeance! Deep beneath the city, Diana tracks the Morrigan to their lair. And what she finds there will astonish you!

I see DC is continuing the pagan outreach efforts they started back in War of the Gods when they killed Hecate and turned her into an evil power-eating possessing entity that wished to destroy the world. Okay, maybe this isn't going to be as horrible as that. But judging by the history it probably will be. Perez started the whole mess by establishing zero respect for the stories or the religion. Rucka did really well... until he killed off Hades (after making him evil) and gave us a self-loathing Athena talking of how much better Diana was than her gods in his last issue. Simone was doing rather well until she went and killed off a Hawaiian deity. (I actually liked her Zeus, and her Athena-not-really-dying, and Achilles being a cool guy. I'm actually pretty mad that this reboot wipes away the male equivalent of the Amazons that Zeus created... I mean, yay on using Zeus as an antagonist in a way that made sense but what the fuck is up with KILLING OFF GODS? They're GODS. Yeesh.)

Why is polytheism so hard for WW writers? It's Diana's religion, and you undermine her everytime you show the old pagan gods as nothing more than a souped up group of superhumans that are morally inferior to her. You don't have to have them as perfect, and sure you can have them as antagonists but a couple rules like... I don't know... don't make deities that aren't established as villains villains just because they're death gods? Don't kill immortals off without bringing them back in the same storyline, maybe? Some of these guys have living worshippers, y'know. I appreciate that with polytheists being after Asian people, black people, women, and gay people on the "Groups to Offend" list you still take the time to disrespect us, but it's shitting on your own hero when the character's a pagan herself AND it's sending extremely icky messages about cultural superiority when Zeus kills off Pele's dad or everyone turns out to be subordinate to the god of Abraham.

I've actually been wanting to see Wonder Woman venture into Celtic territory (I've wanted to see her interact with Scathach since I read her part of the Cuchullain cycle), but DC (and Marvel, don't think I'm not pissed off everytime I see Tarted Up and Evil Hela) has a really terrible record here. In all likelihood, this will turn into some lovefest for a higher single surpreme being (identified with the aforementioned Abrahamaic Sky Daddy) over all these gods, and then I'm going to have to find a way to be annoying. Forget constructive activism, I'm all for soothing my unrest by passing it on to other people. (Or just being annoying until they realize "Hey, there's people out there this might bug.") Maybe I can put together some Witch Tracts and hand them to the creators at conventions. Kalinara and I have come up with a few provisional titles:

"Just What Is This Halloween Thing About Anyway?"
"Have you experienced the Divine Light of Eos?"
"Tarot Cards and Ouija Boards: Not Necessarily To Summon Satan, Unless That Will Make You Go Away"
"Hekate: Not Just for the Wicked!"
"How the Morrigan Can Help YOU Accept the Harshness of Nature!"
"The Safe Great Rite"
"You Are NOT Going to Hell, Unless You Are a Pacifist Asatru and Spell It With One L"
"Cups, Swords and Rods: A Pagan's Guide to Feng Shui"
"Cups, Swords and Rods: A Pagan's Guide to Divination"
"Cups, Swords and Rods: A Pagan's Guide to Sex"
"Ragnarok: What You Need to Know About The Last Battle"
"Respect for Animal Sacrifice (Or Do You Want to be Like PETA?)"
"The Joy of Set" (This would need a guest writer.)
"The Threefold Rule and Why It Doesn't Necessarily Mean I'm a Pushover"
"Hindus: How Not To Piss Them Off" (Inside is just a single panel "Stop treating their gods like fictional characters")
"Valhalla: What Awaits You If You Fight That Mugger Rather Than Just Giving Him Your Wallet"
"Sabbat Etiquette"
"The Good and Bad of the Universe and the Divinity in Both"
"Night Gods: Not Such Bad Guys After All"
"Your Guide to Death Deities"
"That Blood Is Totally Symbolic"
"Drawing Down the Moon and Why It's Not Going to Destroy the World"
"Polytheism: The Mother of All Big Tent Parties"
"Aphrodite: She Can Get You Laid"
"No, I Did Not Curse You."
"Please Don't Pray For Me. It Kinda Fucks With My Life."
"What Not To Wear When Skyclad"

Come to think of it, if you toss out the joke proselytizing some of those might make for useful informational packets for landlords, bosses, and missionaries. I always feel bad when I have nothing to give in exchange for that Watchtower magazine.

What's in a Name When Your Characterization Sucks?

Everytime I go off about Perez's Wonder Woman run, I get somebody who asks me if at least I like that he tied Wonder Woman so closely to Greek Mythology. The problem with that is I'm not sure he did. Wonder Woman's story was ALWAYS that she was a princess of the Amazons. She was always patronized by the gods, it was just that Marston mixed up the names. Still, I remember the first Pre-Crisis Wonder Woman story I ever read. I borrowed a reprint of her Silver Age origin from my sister, who had been rolling her eyes at it. "Oh, it's terrible," she said, "the Amazons are all 'oh, the men have died in the wars, what'll we do?'" but I still read it. I really liked some parts of it. (Yeah, there's some 60s sexism, but I'll address that some other time.)

Most vividly, I remember the scene where Diana gets her powers. It's very like the start of Sleeping Beauty. The goddesses appear and bestow their gifts, and then the gods come in. There's a spirit of playful competition (with a little sexism from Hercules). Mercury/Hermes in particular stuck out at me, because I remember him being identified by Hipployta and then grinning at the baby. While he's looking at the little princess, his hat slips off. The newborn catches it.



Mercury/Hermes/Argeiophantes/Thoth/Eriounios/Whatever-you-call-him, who knew what he was giving her all along, feigns surprise and smiles with that soft expression you get when talking in front of a baby. "Why, look at that, she's faster than me! That'll be my gift to her." Even the crude still image in this panel gave me the impression of winking when I first read it. There's a life to this character, even though he's only there for a panel or two. I forgot which name the Queen called him by until I tracked this down, but I clearly remembered the smiling man and the playful way he announced his gift to the princess.



Even if she was calling him Mercury in the script, this was definitely Hermes from the Greek stories and you could tell right away. That story about Apollo's cattle? You could see it having happened with this guy. The sheer cheekiness of boring the Spirit of Watchfulness death, and then defending himself in court on the premise that a dull story isn't a murder weapon? You could see it with this guy. Finding joy in a child with such a startling appearance that the kid's own mother ran off? Yeah, this is that guy. He's playing with the baby. That quality with Hermes that made him a popular god, this overconfident (but not insultingly arrogant) and easygoing sense of humor, was in that little panel long before Perez took over the reboot duties.

The names weren't all right, but the Greek gods were sure as hell in the Silver Age stories.

(Side-note, I can't help but notice on the reread that Aphrodite and Athena give her powers vaguely equal to their own, but Mercury and Hercules give her powers specifically GREATER than theirs.)

Hermes has been a favorite since childhood, so naturally I tracked down the Perez issues where he was active. For a long time, I thought I was just annoyed they offed him for so long. But gods die and come back all the time. There's an argument that Persephone does it every year (you think you just fall into the Underworld and become the Queen of Death? No, there's some major mystical transformation going on there.) I'm not sure I'm even mad he was tricked. This happens to Trickster. No, it's all in the way the plot went down.

His storyline is as follows: Hermes is the only male present at Diana's birth. During the early issues he's shown being moody and sullen on Olympus. He directly intervenes in Diana's first encounter with Circe because he thinks it's unfair she wasn't warned about her. (This is weird, because no one had a problem with him tipping off Odysseus.) So far, so good right? The god who was closest to mortals is depressed that the Pantheon is drifting away from the mortal world. The helper of heroes is unhappy he didn't get to perform that role for the current Champion of Athena. The god of messengers is irritated he wasn't allowed to deliver a vital message. So far, he's lost his sense of humor but he's still Hermes. Possibly the solemn underworld aspect of Hermes--who spent his time back and forth between the worlds, was present at the moment of death for mortals, was tied to the Eleusinian Mysteries by bloodline and by carting his sister to hell and back every year, lost a mortal wife to suicide, had a summer house by a river in the underworld, and dated Gothic Lolita Hekate (rumor has it they had a tryst on a lakeside in Thessaly under the night sky where the moon and even the Pleiades could see)--but still arguably Hermes.

That goes away right after this. When we next meet this character, he manifests on Earth and directly announces himself as a god in order to rekindle his dead cult. He throws power around, healing and creating stuff, until he follows a cry for help and finds himself tricked by Phobos and Deimos (Yes. Phobos and Deimos. The DCU version of Phobos and Deimos), who steal the wand and a good portion of his power. Yes, that's right. He was actually tricked by the squabbling children of Ares. Hermes. The Wily One, the Watchful One, the Protector of Property, the Trickster, the Traveler... This guy who's job it was to go to new territories on diplomatic missions, and travel the mortal world incognito to check on their hospitality and pick up the dead... approaches an unfamiliar people in the stupidest way possible, puts himself in a vulnerable position, and gets punked by two members of Ares brood that even in the DC Universe are characterized by more malice and bloodthirst than sense.

I don't know who this guy Perez wrote was, but he wouldn't have lasted a day in Ancient Greece doing the Herald of the Gods job. I mean, seriously? Does anyone think the world of Greek Myth was less formidable than the DC Universe? When Hermes was born, the Gigantes were roaming around (so were a lot of Titans), Echidna's brood was active, and no small number of spirits and nature creatures were attacking even gods. Hermes was an Olympian, but the title alone and his father's reputation didn't protect him from that stuff. Not only that, ancient greeks weren't a bunch of fucking morons just because they were polytheists. They had skeptics, philosophers, and zealots who might just see magic as evidence of evil rather than evidence of the divine. And Hermes of all the Olympians was the one who spent most of his time wandering the earthly plane, dealing with skeptical humans and fending off any enemies of Zeus that might want to prey on one of the younger Olympians. Hermes got his fame for being clever enough to deal with this crap without an outright show of brute force when it came to monsters, and he spent most of his time among mortals being invisible or incognito. Yes, he tried to brazen his way in somewhere as a god among mortals once or twice such as when he was wooing Herse, but notice in those cases ended up with more trouble than he wanted to deal with ("Where'd that statue of my sister come from?"). That's why when you read Aesop he's always sneaking around pretending to be a mortal. That's why he never announced himself to Odysseus or Aeneas and just let them draw conclusions about who was helping them. He was smart enough to expect a little resistance to the "I'm a god" announcement, and had enough of a sense of humor not to have to announce it. At the very least, in an unfamiliar city, he'd do a little scouting around as a mortal first.

Hell, he's the god of communication and persuasion. Surely he'd have come up with a better plan to spread worship than announcing to a hostile world that the son of Zeus is standing Right There, and being extra careless. Surely he'd have done something a little more crafty than just telling everyone who he is and expecting them to believe him, when even in ancient times he'd have gotten more responses along the lines of "....Riiiiight."

The guy can't be this stupid and not have been a cautionary tale by now.

I know exactly the point of the story, that the gods have lost touch with the modern world and are expecting humans not to have changed. The whole point of using Hermes is that he's the only god close enough to humanity to try and reach out and keep the connection open. He's the communication god, the messenger, the herald and the peacekeeper. He'd want to keep the connection alive. And I see that the point was that the Greek Gods were filled with Hubris and didn't know as much as they thought they still. Still, this was totally the wrong god for this moral. For fuck's sake, the most consistent trait of Hermes among all the stories is that he's not a fucking moron. He's a social god, and even at best a con artist. His experience is in dealing with different peoples and carrying messages in the most effective way. He's a suave character, a smooth operator. He's not a naive, blunt buffoon. He'd do a little reconnaissance, and come up with a clever way to approach a strange culture. Then if he fails, at least he failed on the terms that suit the god's realm and was respectibly outmatched. But this guy in the Perez run was deservedly beaten for ridiculous amounts of pride and stupidity.

After this, he spends some time as barely more powerful than a mortal, and ends up dead when Circe eats all his power. Because Circe is in league with Hekate, who just has to be evil even though in her actual mythological appearances she's a good guy who helps against the Titans, helps Demeter look for Persephone, and supports the Olympian Order in the Underworld. She's the goddess of witches, she skeered mortals (except they ALL scared mortals, didn't Socrates get executed because someone was worried about pissing off Hermes?), she had a dark moon aspect so she's a bad guy who gave Circe a shit ton of power to cause a lot of trouble. And kill one of the few deities that Hekate's romantically linked to in the source material. It's as simplistic as making Hades evil, and even less supported. But why I hate War of the Gods could fill a book, and the poor writer was rushed by editorial doesn't make the first five chapters.

I know my Trickster stories, mind you. And I know from Coyote and Loki that the Trickster gets tricked when he's full of himself, and that often it looks stupid. (I can't think of a point where Hermes was tricked, but Hermes was constrained by his official role as the Agent of Zeus, a keeper of the status quo, so maybe he just never had to get cut down to size in his stories. This was a smart move on his father's part, because it kept their resident Trickster figure from running wild all over the epic landscape.) But here's the thing with that. They bounce back and continue to be clever in their other dealings. Getting tricked is a minor setback, and they learn a lesson and keep causing trouble. Perez's version of Hermes was devoid of his Trickster aspect. He never told jokes, he never outsmarted an enemy, I can't even remember a single instance where Perez's Hermes acted in an indirect manner without chafing about it. He confronted all of his problems head on, which is a respectable character trait but not one that applies to the Herald of Olympus. The charm of Hermes is his lateral thinking, his creative way of dealing with people and monsters, his Trickster side, and we never once saw that charm in Wonder Woman, Volume 2.

"Hey baby, ever make it with a fish?"

-- Kalinara's Zeus impression

Of course, when your main character is the spirit of Truth I imagine it's tough to have a patron be a Trickster. Then again, Zeus in his worst behavior has a major Trickster aspect. An aspect that Perez chucked out the window when using Zeus as an antagonist in his "Challenge of the Gods" storyline. Zeus makes no attempt to hide his intentions from the other gods or the Amazons (only Diana, in her naivete doesn't realize he's out to screw her) when in the source material he tends to move as secretly as possible. He's never this blatant. And he doesn't just go "Sleep with me or fight a bunch of monsters." He, as Kalinara pointed out in chat, will just raise his eyebrows at "No", go away, and then come back as a fish. But no, he's blatant. He announces he's going to visit Diana personally, and everyone but poor naive Diana knows that means he wants to screw her over. Everyone knows what he's up to, including Hera (who is apparently made more sympathetic by putting up with this shit), and he doesn't try to hide or cover it up. And when refused, he decrees some stupid punishment (that could easily have been brought about by Hera being pissed off, as it would have been in the source material) rather than come up with some complicated scheme enlisting that son of his that's a friend of Diana. This storyline totally and unnecessarily bypassed the built-in conflict made possible by the identities of these three gods in favor of a totally different character dynamic than seen in any of the Hellenic stories.

But yeah, I guess I can see where making Hera a bad guy would be bad. It's not like women with husbands who cheat on them and abuse them in real life blame people other than their husbands, after all. And it's not like a writer can have compassion for misplaced rage, especially when someone is wronged repeatedly throughout her life and can't do a thing about it. No, that's not something that happens to modern women. Empathizing with a woman who lashes out incorrectly at other women and helping her redirect her rage and power at something constructive isn't suitable for a Wonder Woman story, and having Hera act like Hera isn't close enough to Greek Mythology. The gods have to be called by authentic Greek names, and act completely different than they ever have order to be close to Greek Mythology.

So no, I don't credit Perez's reboot with closely tying Wonder Woman to Greek Mythology. If anything, it lost the spirit of the gods in this zeal to get all the names and places (which is fucking absurd, these deities could use a different name each mention in all 600 issues and not run out of their Ancient World names) to align correctly. Oh, and he put them all in Hellenic costumes. Because that sure helped.

Wonder Woman and Religion

Most of us blame the difficulty some writers have understanding Wonder Woman on gender. "She's a complex woman," I've heard. "They're each writing their ideal woman," I've read.

Read On

Most of these writers, of course, have no trouble with characters like Lois Lane, Barbara Gordon, or Dinah Lance. Those who do, they don't have problems to the extent they have with Diana. Lois, Babs, and Dinah seem to have much more clearly defined personalities than Diana. Diana seems almost schizophrenic, as every writer explores a different aspect, every writer makes their own personal stamp on her. For Perez, she was a total innocent, a full optimist. Loebs wrote a rebellious daughter who ran off to see the world and tried to become part of it. Byrne wrote a stiff, formal princess. Waid played up the warrior side. Morrison played up the disciplined competitor. Luke's Diana seemed lost to me. Jimenez wrote a highly emotional woman. Simonson introduced a rational, thinking woman. Rucka took to the rational, thinking side, too, but he added regality and spirituality. But the other three mentioned tend to be the same. Even lackluster writers have a basic handle on those characters, but it takes a really good writer to make Diana work.

Diana's problem isn't her gender, it's that she's from an alien and ancient culture. Not simply in attitude and philosophy, but in the religion. I think that's where it breaks down.

Most of the writers and editors (though not all, I'm sure) can be presumed to be from a monotheistic religious background. Supreme Deity, pitch perfect in all ways, representing the good and only the good in the universe, that's the measure of divinity. Most of their readers are from this background too. From this background, Diana's Pantheon seems like a kindergarten class with cosmic power. Hardly respectable or acceptable in their view of divinity (even though it's supremely unfair to judge a foreign religion in terms of your own). Divinity is good, and anything that's bad is not divine, after all. And if anyone finds the behavior of the Greek Pantheon acceptable in polite society, they need serious counseling. It's bad sometimes, therefore it can't really be divine.

Here's the thing, though. To the Modern Pagan Mind (I can't speak for the Ancients), this isn't the way to view divinity. Divinity is not good or bad, Divinity is good and bad. The Gods Just Are. Their behavior can be truly awful and truly wonderful. Their nature encompasses the extreme best and extreme worst of their spheres of influence. They aren't "people," they are "ideas." Aphrodite isn't a woman, she's the Love/Lust -- The Need to Continue/Protect the Species. Her arena includes lofty, self-sacrificial love and wild, self-(and other-) destructive lust. Ares' realm is protection and defense in addition to excessive force and violence. Athena's gentle compassionate wisdom exists alongside coldblooded scheming.

Some people who've read the Greek stories ask "How could they worship this?" (which is fascinating because I have a pagan friend who's read the Old Testament and constantly asks that about the Judeo-Christian religions). They have trouble reading in the abstract, I guess. They don't realize Athena and Aphrodite aren't women, they're concepts. Where it says "Athena does this" you should read "Wisdom does this," or "Knowledge does this." Apollo would be Reason or Light. Aphrodite is Love and Lust. Ares is War...etc..

Zeus alternately behaves as a loving father and an utter dick. I've seen it analyzed that Zeus represents Men in Power Positions (Kings, CEOs.etc..), or just Power itself. Power blesses, sets rules, rewards, creates and destroys, exploits, brutalizes, tyrannizes also. Worship of Zeus isn't necessarily embracing the worst indulgence of power, but it's representing Power as it is and accepting that it can harm and help. Aphrodite is the full scale of love and lust -- from the lowest urge to the highest regard. Her worship is respecting and accepting the nature of relationships/bonds between people, at the best and worst of it.

But people don't think this way. So, in order to write a character who worships these gods, and still use them, the writers need to find a way to make it acceptable to the majority.

They usually use one of three approaches: 1) Suck all of the life and personality out of these vibrant, energetic deities, 2) Write down the gods, making them subordinate/lesser than the supreme deity, or 3) both of the above.
Then Greek Gods are just background characters, and supporting cast in Wonder Woman. This would be fine, if they were used to support the story and move along the plot without being without being degraded in the above ways. Since the Post-Crisis Reboot, Diana's gods have been arbitrarily put in danger (Hermes, the entire Pantheon a few times), depowered (Hermes), made evil (Hecate), made ineffective (Persephone), rescued by her (Poor Hermes!) and even killed off (Hermes, Hades) in order to make Diana look stronger, and to make their existence more palatable to the majority of readers.

The trendsetter here was Perez. Sure, he told a fine story about a god being made flesh and suffering humiliation and depowerment as a human when he used Hermes. But in doing so, he drained Hermes of all of the personality that made Hermes so likeable. It could have been an acceptable result of this ordeal, but he did the same to the rest of the Pantheon. He turned Olympus into a funeral home. Even when Zeus acted like Zeus, he was so stiff and formal that it was unbelievable. Every god was the walking dead. A cipher. This is what he expected to represent the most vital pieces of life? Even Hades, the god of the dead represents a primal, energetic force in the universe that every human being knows in the deepest part of their soul. Perez's Olympus just didn't convey that. He couldn't even get their appearances right! (Artemis is Not A Blonde!) I groaned every time I saw the gods (with the exception of Hermes, whom I was excusing for his being weakened) when I read Wonder Woman for a long long time. And the death of Hermes was a continual sore spot which was only healed recently.

As I see it, Rucka seemed to have the best approach. The stories were heavy and plodding, like a Greek Tragedy, because he was playing up the cultural aspect. Ultimately, though, he has had my favorite Wonder Woman run to date. He'll always have a special place in my heart for returning Hermes to the living (conversely, he'll always be a sore spot for killing Hades). He wrote the gods as their personalities, introduced a mildly metaphysical (Cotton Candy Symbolism) explanation for their fluctuating power levels called "Indirect Worship" which reinforced the idea of the gods as Concepts with Consciousness as opposed to Normal Characters.

If you follow the maneuvers of Athena throughout Rucka's run, actually, you'll notice a parallel with what's going on inside Diana's head, which is truly an effective way to use the gods (if he did it on purpose -- and I have trouble believing the Hermes part at least wasn't on purpose). During his run I noticed:
-- Artemis -- the joy of the hunt, isolationist feminism (Themiscyra itself, which Athena and Hermes encouraged Diana to leave), seems to have been cut out of the picture (I know it was a name thing, but it still makes a great subconscious pattern especially considering that during Perez's run she was the one equated with Diana's personality the most) as Diana finally takes serious steps to spread her message to the world at large and tries to get away from chasing supervillains in favor of her professional life. Sure, it doesn't work, but notice the heavy themes of the run -- Supervillains scheme in the background while Diana focuses on the embassy, then they seek her out at work -- unlike the other runs, where the scheming took place during a lot of onscreen fighting and maybe a little side lecturing that is referred to but not shown.
-- Athena moves to take the throne as Wisdom, Strategy, and furthering her Ideological Goals moves to the forefront of Diana's thinking.
-- Diana is practically a cipher, seen through other's eyes for much of the run. She's not communicating herself to the reader, her supporting cast is. First person narrative, which is the standard of modern superhero comics, allows us a glimpse into her thoughts only once before Hermes, the God of Communication, Thought, and Learning is returned from the Dead. (Interesting how the single time we saw this method of narration is the crossover with the Flash -- a representative of Hermes if there is one in the DCU)
Rucka disappointed me, though, in Wonder Woman #225. Athena's narration is reverent of Diana, and hints at self-hatred. As though even the gods themselves cannot accept themselves as they are.
Diana's religion, once again, is undermined by the writer, even as he tries to build the character up. In a way, this cancels itself out. Diana is such a spiritual character, brought to life and empowered by the gods, given a mission by the gods, that anytime you undermine her religion you undermine the basis for her personality, and you start to lose what little ground you had.

I'm still really impressed, mind you (Despite my massive annoyance at Hades' treatment, and my irritation with Athena's attitude last issue) with Rucka's handling of the gods. I love using the events on Olympus as an allegory and a catalyst for the Earthly plot. I even more like the gods with their Homerian personalities, the sometimes benevolent, sometimes malevolent, always interesting Greek Gods that I've read about since Elementary school.

The clerk at my LCS knows this, and so he asked if I was angry by the implication in Infinite Crisis #4 and Wonder Woman #225 that they won't be an active part of Diana's life again. I don't think that's true, but on reflection, I don't think I'd mind if they are shuffled to the origin story and never used aside from retelling that. Too few writers can handle them correctly, and it gets downright insulting after a while.

(And yes, that was another Image stolen off of Poison Ivy)