Please do not make this character into Hal Jordan

And DC just found the surest way to get me interested in Flashpoint.

Yeah, if you didn't catch it DCW has it bolded.

I am aware that I may be the only genuine Steve Trevor fan on the Internet, but I'm going to go ahead and take this moment to do a little dance in my chair.



Now that I've done that I'm going to go ahead and worry, because things never really seem to work out the way I want them to. Off the top of my head they have passed on three good opportunities to restore Diana's love interest since the Perez reboot. Zero Hour just got us backstory of Hippolyta selling out the Amazons to Hercules. John Byrne's mucking around in the timestream got us Donna Troy as a magic mirror clone, Hippolyta as WWII Wonder Woman and six months of JLA compressed into 3 days. Infinite Crisis gave us Donna as an official baby sister, a secret identity and the little twirl effect. Three perfect opportunities to write Steve back in, three times they passed it by.

However, they are at least playing with the idea in their time-line miniseries, and this IS shaking up Diana. And Steve was still the love interest in the animated movie and the planned love interest for the TV series. He's the only male character that's been in the franchise since All-Star Comics #8. Eventually, they are putting him back in the love interest place and this is probably their best opportunity.

The other thing that worries me is how he'll be when he comes back. The Steve in the animated movie bugged me. He was too much like Hal Jordan. (Though honestly, if someone tried that bar scene with Hal I'd be screaming bloody murder about them portraying Green Lantern as a rapist. There are ways to make her disillusioned and angry at her boyfriend without muddying the consent waters further and perpetrating rape culture in a Wonder Woman movie by suggesting getting a woman drunk so that he can con her into bed is somehow not a villain-only behavior.) I think they just took the fighter pilot idea and built the personality based on the job, without realizing he only has that job as an excuse to get him to the island. That's why they can make him an intelligence officer or a secret agent or even a lawyer (but how the fuck a lawyer is getting washed up on Paradise Island is for David Kelley to explain) if they want. His career is a plot convenience, not part of his characterization like Hal being a pilot, Lois being a journalist or Kyle being an artist.



Beyond the idea he should be some sort of fighter jock, there's the idea that he should be some uber-macho traditionalist to properly match Wonder Woman. I've heard this from some writers and fans, and I really hope that's not what they pull either.

See, there's two things about portraying Steve Trevor, two items that make him the most viable male love interest for Wonder Woman and if you forget them you're going to screw him up:

1) He'll step in to save Wonder Woman if he can help her at any chance, but he's well aware she is super and he is not, and that does not make him feel like less of a man.

It is vitally, vitally important that Steve not be the slightest bit threatened by Wonder Woman being more powerful than him. As a concept he's attracted to the beautiful woman who regularly saves his ass when he's in over his head, and doesn't feel a need to prove that he can handle the situation without her. He thanks her for her help and tells her it's why he loves her. He's one of those chivalrous guys who thinks he should put himself in danger before he allows a woman to, but he's not even vaguely attracted to a woman he thinks needs his protection (this is why she could never get his eye as Diana Prince).


2) Wonder Woman is believably attracted to this guy.

Allow me to repeat that: Wonder Woman is believably attracted to this guy.

This is also really important, and I wasn't worried about it until the animated film. Steve Trevor was Hal Jordan in that film, and I couldn't for the life of me get why Diana liked him. (In the Carter TV show and pre-Crisis comics I get why she likes him, but in that movie I was mystified.) I know we have some stupid Silver Age panels floating about but I don't know how we get fratboy seeking sexual conquest from them.

Hitting on Wonder Woman constantly pre-Crisis wasn't the "You're gorgeous, we should hook up" sort of come on, but the "You and I should get married" sort of come on. Yes, this is born of pre-Crisis innocence when they couldn't say he wants to sleep with her, but it is still a completely different priority level from "I want to screw that hot chick" and you fundamentally change the character when you shift the focus from wanting a long-term relationship and family to wanting to sleep with Wonder Woman. Pre-Crisis his life's ambition was to marry and raise a family with a woman who could bench press an F-15. That does not properly translate to a fratboy attitude, no matter what point you want to make about people learning to respect women.



So why shouldn't they just change it? It's a new setting, right? A new era, all characters get updated... Well, again this is supporting Point 2. If he's not genuinely serious about her and he carries on like he's in High School and trying to get someone out to the van with him then he loses some of his appeal. And we all watch it and wonder why the fuck she's attracted to him.

In the pre-Crisis comics, we know why she likes him. He's selfless, brave as all hell, charitable, kind, and resilient. In his off-duty time he'll do volunteer work, like mentoring local children who can't afford summer camp. He'll offer to fight off sharks while he's injured. He'll dive into the ocean to follow when he sees her get pulled underwater by a merman. He'll get shot by spies while carrying important paperwork and manage to give her the briefcase before he loses consciousness. He'll be tied up and threatened with torture and still make smartass remarks. When she rescues him and asks if he's okay, he gets that sort of starry-eyed smile and says he's fine as long as she's around.

When you look through the pre-Crisis stories you see him constantly bugging her for marriage and calling her an Angel and beautiful, that's the most known stuff. We also see he's pretty dense and sexist at times, as you see when he tells Diana and Etta that certain things are man's work. So I can kind of see how someone would update him by emphasizing rather than minimizing these particular flaws, but that just loses the sense of the relationship.

I know the temptation to make a point about Diana teaching a man to be a decent human being is very strong, but that's something you can do with the scores and scores of guys she doesn't give a shit about. Having her teach her main male love interest to be a decent human being is a terrible idea. The relationship can't just be about what he gets from her. She needs to get something out of this.

What worries me the most is that they'll return him, and miss one of these two things and they'll lose the appeal of this relationship. I'm worried they'll want to teach some sort of lesson about masculinity and respect using Steve as the learner, and they'll destroy what makes the character unique and attractive to Diana. Then we'll have a guy who is just there and everyone will wonder why.

Or worse, we'll have a guy who acts like an asshole just because the writers genuinely believe women are attracted to handsome assholes.

Perez managed to capture a good Steve Trevor personality, a gentle thoughtful man with a real respect for other people and a desire to do good. The only problem was that he made him a father figure and the love interest for the wrong character. I trust Hester to go ahead and write this guy younger if he gets to introduce him.

I'm worried, though, that we'll get a Steve out of Flashpoint or a later crossover, written by a writer who thinks he should be a fighter jock jackass like Hal Jordan. I enjoy a good Hal Jordan story, but there should be only one Hal Jordan and under no circumstances should Wonder Woman date him. Steve Trevor should probably be the anti-Hal. Maybe even a little inexperienced with women and dating, on account of being so picky.

I would even go so far as to make it so that Steve and Hal knew each other as pilots in the Air Force, and show them contrasting each other in flashbacks.

We have a name and a face now!

They cast Wonder Woman.

Adrianne Palicki



I've never seen her in anything (I understand she was Kara in Smallville but I haven't watched that episode), but she is not on my list of nightmare casting choices so I am cautiously optimistic.

Even if they are making Steve a lawyer, and there's a guarantee of at least one depressed at night eating ice cream scene.

On the bright side, someone already tracked down Lynda Carter for an interview about it. She sounds quite optimistic.

What do you think of the casting?

"I think it is an amazing role to play. I know she is going to be really nervous about it, just because you would be. But I have a lot of confidence in [writer] David Kelley and what he's going to come up with. David Kelley's so talented, and that's really where it needs to be, is in the writing.

I spoke with David yesterday, and he's really really excited about it.

I think the story needs to be retold. It needs to have a fresh look at it. It affected a lot of people. I think it's time, I think it's important to have it out there again.

Is there any advice you'd offer her?

[Laughing] Gosh, I would never offer her any advice. Nor would she probably want any. If she wants to talk to me, that would be a whole different thing. But I would never offer, 'Now let me tell you how to do this.' She's an actress and she's a good actress and she's beautiful and I hope she kicks butt.

What makes Wonder Woman Wonder Woman?

A lot of you don't seem to get why this Superman #708 sequence is such a stupid idea, so we're going to have to go over Wonder Woman again.

Pre-Crisis, Diana is the sole daughter of the Queen of the reclusive Amazons who shunned the world of men because they had been deceived by men (Golden Age) and wished to avoid violence and conflict (Silver Age). She's trained from birth in their ways and philosophy. When a man, the very first man she ever sees, is hurt on the island she finds herself attracted to him and wants to learn more about him. Her mother realizes she's fallen in love and is susceptible to the charms of men. She tells Diana how dangerous men are, forbids her from seeing him, and says he's going home. When a contest is held to determine who will escort the man back, Diana enters in disguise because her mother won't approve and wins. She goes to man's world and pursues a romantic relationship with this man while fighting crime and inspiring women to take control of their own lives.

Post-Crisis, Diana is the sole daughter of the Queen of the reclusive Amazons who shunned the world of men because they had suffered violence at male hands. She's trained from birth in their ways and philosophy, and is the only woman on the island never to have seen or been hurt by a man. When a man, the very first man she ever sees, is hurt on the island she finds an opportunity to leave the island and seek her fortune. Diana's mother forbids this, but the goddess Athena tells her that it's her destiny to go to man's world. The contest is held. Diana enters in disguise because her mother won't approve and wins. She goes to man's world, gets a couple crushes on other heroes while fighting crime and inspiring people to take control of their own lives.

Throughout her history and her reboots, no matter what the motivation UNTIL NOW, there has been one common theme. Disobeying her mother and entering that contest incognito. Pre-Crisis, she did it because she was in love, post-crisis she did it because she wanted to explore the world. But nearly every version of her origin, there is the authority figure (her mother), the desire to leave (awakened by the injured man), and the means to do so (the contest). The important thing is her disobedience. She CHOOSES her own way in the world.

This is what makes the Greek Myth background so effective. Diana is a hero against the inevitability of ancient Greek tragedy. She is surrounded by the Gods and Fates, holding tight to her autonomy while adrift in a sea of predestination.

People might bash the pre-crisis story as a man inspiring her and say Superman #708 isn't as bad, but they're wrong. The injured man, Steve Trevor, doesn't awaken her sense of adventure, or her desire to heal and compassion for others (she feels compassion for him but this is not a new reaction to an injured person for her), or her courage. He doesn't set an example for her to follow. He doesn't SHOW her the way. He awakens her curiosity. He is what she desires, whether that be sexual desire or just an unknown person symbolizing an unknown world and a greater destiny.

The most consistent and important part of Diana's origin story is THAT CHOICE. It is SELF-DETERMINATION. She could stay on Paradise Island/Themiscyra and be a great hero in the Royal Guard there, saving her sisters from the animals and monsters known to populate the island. She doesn't need to leave to help people. Don't get me wrong, being the first woman in three thousand years to leave IS a heroic feat, but it is not the sort of heroism Superman represents. Diana as a teenager was the sort of hero Superman was.

What makes Wonder Woman special, and it is VERY specific to women who are raised to be sweet princesses who stay in the tower and make a good kingdom, is that she takes the road less traveled by her culture and by women in society. She steps out into the world and plays the part of the Prince/Knight Errant. She seeks love, honor, and glory far from home, and betters the lives of everyone she meets as she does so.

Honestly, this is what was missing from the JMS-scripted issues that Phil Hester has managed to capture. JMS had her like a leaf tossed by the wind. She made one real decision, to see the Oracle. After that she was guided from point to point by other characters, She wasn't moving herself. Once Hester took over, he did flashbacks to her self-determination in her childhood and showed her trying to balance her personal concerns (that family she was caring for) with her duty as a princess and the whims of fate. Without changing the plot, he fixed the character because he brought back the most important character trait, her self-determination.

That Superman #708 was set up as a story point by JMS just proves that he doesn't get Wonder Woman. Looking to Superman for hope and help is one thing, something everyone does in the DCU at some point. Looking to Superman to show her the way, to be the person who tells her how to be a hero? That strips Diana of her most important characteristic, which is that she is solid in her self-image and chooses her own destiny based on what she feels is best for her. She MAKES her path, she doesn't follow Superman's.

And I don't think I can put into words how important making your own path is for a woman. If you don't understand, and you don't see this as integral to Wonder Woman, I don't have the communication skill to help you understand why I do and why this decision undermines her.

Really only one book catches my eye.

DC Solicits are up for May.

I'm underwhelmed. The Flashpoint crossover starts and while I do like the whole "Alternate Timeline that is just wrong" concept, I am not particularly interestest in it. In the meantime, we draw closer to the War of the Green Lanterns which I am also not particularly interested in. I might sit out both sets of books.

And can anyone guess the quickest way to get me to drop a book? If your answer is "Put Judd Winick on it", give yourself a treat. You know why I'm dropping Batman and Robin this spring.

I'll believe Batwoman #2 is out when I see it.

And this brings me to Wonder Woman #611, which has unexpectedly become the book from DC I'm now most looking forward to. I read 605-606 this week. (I will be ignoring Superman #708, and I advise you do the same.) Hester has Diana acting like Diana. She's fighting to save people all her life, and not just her Amazon sisters. Hester's fight sequences are engaging. Hester's characters seem like people making decision, not just items that are moved from one place to another in order to set up a plot. Even knowing this timeline is temporary, I am actually worried that one of these characters will die next issue. His scripting actually got me to give a shit about some of them.

Yes, we still have JMS plot. Yes, we still have that stupid costume. Yes, I fucking hate what they are doing to the Morrigan but I think Phil Hester has achieved his goal. Wonder Woman is readable and enjoyable again. I recognize Diana again. I want to see what happens to her. I'm looking forward the May issue, because I now WANT to see the big reveal, and the big villain, and the whole point of crossing Simonson's plot with "Age of Apocalypse."

An Amazon Princess Kneels Before No Man

Okay, Steve... I know this is distracting...



Steve? Steve? Over here. Now that she's pulled away, I'm going to need to listen very carefully to what she says...



Steve, you really don't want to miss this one.



Don't miss it.... Don't miss it...



You missed it. Good god, man. You've been asking HER that question for forty years at this point! How could you miss it?!

Fortunately, Diana knows him well enough that one epic (and I mean that in the traditional Greek sense) battle later she brought up the subject again. She had greater success this time.



--Wonder Woman #329 by Gerry Conway and Don Heck.

I'm really looking forward to Avengers Academy 9

They've put out a preview for this one, so I'm optimistic it will ship on time. It's the book this week I'm looking forward to the most, because it continues my favorite Avengers Academy subplot, Quicksilver and Finesse.

Finesse really is my favorite new female character. You know that Data stereotype, with the robot who wants to have feelings and understand humans? How super-played it is? Well, Finesse is the opposite of it, being a human being who can't seem to understand feelings. She can't even get her own behavior at times. It's really interesting to watch.

In addition to that, she is pretty much perfect at everything else and so tends to be a bit overconfident. I love that we have this hypercompetent woman who is a failure at the stereotypically feminine area of intuition and empathy. It makes her very unusual.

Her entire motivation is she wants to learn new things. At every turning point, Finesse's thought is "Can I learn something from this person? Can I learn something from this action?" If she can't better herself from the action or interaction, she doesn't see the point of it. She is not altruistic or sympathetic towards anyone, but she's also not vindictive or actively malicious.

She has a fixation on Magneto that will probably bite her in the ass later on.

Plus she may be a villain's kid (and this issue is what promises to confirm or kill that possibility), and they have her tangled up with my favorite teacher on the team. Hell, this has actually redeemed the horrible Lie storyline for with the blackmail angle. Finesse, not understanding or empathizing with anyone, is constantly trying to test things so she can manipulate others into behaving the way she wants. (So far there's no indication this is for control, but because everyone else can do it and she can get people to teach her new things) She tries a little schoolgirl gushing on Hank, for example, and is disappointed it doesn't work. So for Quicksilver, once she figures out he lied about being a Skrull she decides she's going to blackmail him into teaching her everything Magneto taught him.

This is insanely amusing to me for two big reasons:

1) In the last Finesse issue, #2, she observes an argument between Pietro and Hank over appropriate training methods. Hank doesn't feel it's right to use the methods Magneto used, even watered down and with the safety on. Hank wins, but Finesse wants to learn the Magneto lessons. So... she is blackmailing him to teach her things that he already wanted to teach her.

2) She is an amateur at manipulation, and really doesn't understand how to do it. Contrast that with Magneto, who has practiced manipulation as the leader of a terrorist cult, the leader of his own country, convincing one of his sworn enemies to become romantically involved with him, and in a multi-decade struggle against a TELEPATH for the most powerful followers in the mutant community. Magneto is a master at social relations. Since he was a teenager, Quicksilver has found himself playing delicate manipulation games with Magneto where they do things like try to convince each other they are on the same side and see who double-crosses the other first. And judging by how pissed off Magneto was over the last game, documented in House of M... Quicksilver won. (And yes, I am prepared to argue over this one.)

Even discounting that last one, the fact that Pietro can play at all on Magneto's field means Finesse is in for one hell of a lesson here.

Gage has said that one of the kids will definitely go bad, and maybe others. I hope Finesse stays good because she's a real departure from the typical hero. I guess a lot depends on what happens in this issue, how the Taskmaster reacts to her and how she reacts to him. Maybe it'll open her emotions. Maybe it won't, but she sees a logical reason to follow one path or another.

The setup here is she only has Quicksilver for framing, but that might be the best chance she has. Hank, Tigra, and Justice have been mentoring the other kids and they are very touchy-feely teachers. Finesse just can't comprehend that, she needs a much colder and harsher perspective. Quicksilver is one of the most emotional members of the team, but he protects his heart well. We know he's capable of a lot of caring and kindness if she does have an emotional awakening here and needs sympathy. And if she doesn't, Quicksilver can strip away any appeal to pure heroism and present a brutal picture of reality. He can take it down to her odds of survival and success on either side of the moral divide. Every other teacher will come down to "This is the RIGHT way to act," but Pietro's much more cynical. He's bickered over right and wrong with his father, he knows that villains think they're in the right usually. He can make a good case for "this is the best way to act" and not tie it to mushy goodness.

Paperless Dolls

Rather than do anything productive, I've been goofing around on dollmaker/dress-up games. Someone on Tumblr linked this fairy tale shrug girl, and I've been on that dolldivine site all week creating people. I also like the elemental ones, but I was a bit disappointed with their superhero maker.



Other sites have superhero makers, but none so far have had the variety and interface that the Fairy Tale one on Dolldivine has. (I did make a nice girl speedster with this one, though.)



(Yeah, that second one is totally an AU design for a female Quicksilver.) Even the weaker ones are pretty addictive, though. Has anyone seen any really good superhero dollmakers out there?

Women in the Warriors

Today a coworker got us all to watch The Warriors, a 1979 film about a New York street gang. (It seems they're doing a remake, set in Los Angeles, and he wanted us to understand why he was so pissed off about the location change.) The gang itself was all male, as were most of their enemies, but I was really struck by the main plot points that involved women in the movie. Each encounter is just such a perfect example of how women are treated by macho all-male communities.

And yeah, I'm gonna spoil the shit out of this if you haven't seen it before. Also, there's a lot of sexual assault threats in the movie and I don't get too detailed with those but if you find that triggering you should consider this a warning.

There's four major portrayals of women in the movie. The first we meet is a disc jockey who passes encoded information to street gangs during her radio show. The most powerful gang in the city, the Gramercy Riffs, have set up a network of gangs that are aligned with them. The Warriors are in that network, but they've been framed for murdering the leader of the Riffs. Through this woman, the Riffs tell their entire network that the Warriors are the perpetrators, where they are, and that they want them dead. Throughout the movie she cuts in and tells the network where they were last seen and who they fought. We only ever see her mouth, but her voice is the voice of the universe aligning against our heroes. She's a powerful, removed, anonymous celebrity.

The second is Mercy, who follows and eventually joins the Warriors. She was initially involved with another gang--the Orphans (who are not part of the network and not trying to kill them), and purposefully turns a peaceful situation into a confrontation between the Orphans and the Warriors. For this, Ajax--the biggest, strongest member of the gang--seizes her from behind and threatens to rape her. The gangleader Swan tells him to let her go, then grabs her and threatens to have the entire gang rape her. Then the Orphans show and the Warriors avoid a major fight by blowing up a car. Duly impressed by the explosion as well as her own capture and their threats, she goes with them and somehow ends up following them the entire way to Coney Island despite Swan telling her he doesn't like her or approve of her way of life. Naturally, she and Swan end up together.

Okay, I actually rather liked Mercy. She actually gets to be a person, stands up for herself, takes as many stupid risks as the boys, and ends up arming herself for the final confrontation. She's the girl who joins the male clique. And while they do have good reason not to like or trust her, they still attack and threaten her. She suffers threats and insults based on her gender, but if she's persistent, sticks around and proves she has the same values and macho toughness as the men she gets to be a fixture. (But she doesn't get a vest. That's significant to me.)

The third and fourth women are both Odyssey-style traps, our Circe and our Sirens, I suppose, even though our Circe is the dispenser of justice.

At the beginning of the movie, we see scenes of the gang on the subway spliced with them exchanging exposition in pairs. Here we meet Ajax (played by James Remar) who immediately establishes himself as a homophobic asshole. He says something about hopefully meeting and bedding strange women during their trip to Gramercy, and when the other member suggests they have more important concerns he uses a gay slur. It's his go-to insult, and it along with his attitude towards women and his challenging Swan for leadership make me figure we're suppose to hate him and hope he dies first. (He does not die first, and there is a point in the movie where I actually blurted out "You killed the wrong one.")

Ajax, however, is the best fighter of the group (barring probably Cleon at the beginning) and gets a really great line and fight scene. Thing is, he knows he's a great fighter and he thinks that as the most manly man in the group he should get leadership and wimmiz. Lots of wimmiz, whenever he wants them. He's the strongest and the fiercest but gets taken down by his own entitlement and his disregard for other people's boundaries. Passing through a park they walk by a woman on a park bench. Ajax wants to go back and pick her up, the others want to move on. He separates from the group and sits next to the woman, who flirts with him.

Flirting wasn't enough for Ajax, though, and he moves on to sexual assault. She struggles and tells him at least twice to stop, then she handcuffs him to the bench, jumps away and shows him her badge. Then she whistles for a police car. Ajax, of course, starts ranting and trying to break free and actually pulls the bench towards her when the uniformed officers arrive.

And he won't calm down, so they whack him with a nightstick.

It is immensely satisfying to watch.

Ahem... Disappointing as it was not to see further police brutality against this character (All the cops in this movie seemed to be decent hardworking people removed from the plot who didn't escalate any of the encounters themselves), I was pretty happy to see that the homophobia and misogyny were leading to this guy's downfall.

The policewoman is obviously our Circe analogue, but she's also the unknown woman. And even to Swan and Co, she's not spoken about as a person. The argument is whether Ajax can stay and claim her as a conquest, or if it's more important to move along to the next station. If Swan or the others feel rape is wrong, they are prevented from admitting it by their bullshit macho code. The unknown woman is just a piece of meat on a park bench, and that attitude takes Ajax off the board.

And last we have the all-girl gang. This was easy to see coming, because they were grouped and posed just like a gang, and all wearing a matching article of clothing just like the other gangs.

Of course our heroes follow them home, hoping to get laid. That's where things get weird. The camera lingers on a female character dressed in blue overalls (rather than the tye-dyed T-shirt so I think that meant she had a leadership position) and smoking. It travels around the room and points out images of women posed in masculine poses, moving in masculine ways. As time passes, two of the women start to dance together very suggestively. When asked what the girls call themselves, one of them answers "the Lizzies."

I think at this point we can abandon the sub and safely call it text.

Either way, all of the lesbian implications and masculine posture are framed as warning signs. You get the intense feeling (and only one of the Warriors, Rembrandt, seems to get this) that something is wrong, that these guys are not going to have a relaxing night of sex, smoking and sandwich service. In fact, you get the feeling that the "dudes" they said were up in the Bronx don't really exist, and that someone's going to do something OH GOD SHE LOCKED THE DOOR AND THERE'S THE KNIFE. Yeah, that's a lesbian gang that wants to kill you RUN! RUN!

Lucky for our heroes, the girl with the gun is a shitty shot and they escape with their lives. I will give the Lizzies this, though. Out of all the casualties in the movie? The cops were the biggest danger to the Warriors. The Gramercy Riffs, who are super-intensely-tough-and-scary took out their leader Cleon, but after that no gang touches them with the exception of the Lizzies managing to cut poor Rembrandt. This makes them the most effective antagonistic gang after the Riffs.

But out of all the women in the movie, I found the Lizzies scene the most intense reveal about how a group of men might view women. Because here is a group of very like-minded women that have formed a community of their own, and it is portrayed as very suspicious and very dangerous. There are lesbian overtones all over the place, and the atmosphere is a dreamy haze of welcome that just stands to be ripped away when the women surround and destroy the men.

And that was when I looked back at the movie and saw Fandom, the military, the technical communities wrapped into one hypercompressed macho unit called the Warriors, acting out my life and the lives of my peers on the screen with gangland violence. But I like stuff like that, so it made the movie instantly much cooler to me.

Well, that and a cop smacking Ajax with a nightstick. Man, he deserved that.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

So... Does anyone remember this post where I ranted about the Perez reboot taking Wonder Woman off the JLA founder's list?

As a result, Wonder Woman was younger, less experienced, and less wordly than her former contemporaries. Again, this may not seem like a big deal to you, but it sure as hell does to me. Seniority is a huge deal where I work. These men were her colleagues before, and now, when she had been an equal when it came to age, experience and wisdom, she was now behind the curve. She went from looking to them as friends and co-workers to looking at them as examples and possible mentors. When they were veteran heroes she was a rookie. She was originally meant as an inspiration specifically to women, but now, when she came on the scene, it was littered with female heroes anyway. Her own sidekick, Donna Troy, had been recast at the beginning of the timeline and was, as Wonder Girl, more experienced than Wonder Woman when she first arrived.

And why? So that Diana, originally conceived as a teacher could be recast as an innocent setting her first feet on Man's Shores and learning the harsh lessons of life. They couldn't do it like Batman: Year One or Man of Steel and write her origin in a miniseries set at the beginning of the timeline. No, they put her at the beginning of Crisis so that we would watch her new life unfold in real-time. They rewrote her supporting cast to fit. Where she'd been a mentor and friend of a group of young girls, she was now surrounded by older women (Julia Kapetalis, the new Etta Candy, Myndi Mayner) who were there to guide and mentor her. She'd previously had a love interest, an adorable Navy pilot with a cute butt she followed all the way from Themiscyra, a man with old-fashioned ideas about womanhood who found Wonder woman strangely intriguing. She used to roll her eyes at him, try to subtly teach him lessons, and save him from danger when he got in over his head. Now, he was aged over twenty years ahead of her, and instead of a cute guy she wanted to come around to her way of thinking she had an older man to act as a father figure and guide her in this new world because she was now so fucking young and naive.

Or any of the other posts where my point is that as the most recognizable independent female superhero in the genre she should be the equal of Superman and Batman in experience, status, and ability and treated with the same respect?

If not, go read those. That way you'll know why I'm so pissed off at this.

And I'm going to remain pissed off until they X-men: Omega out this fucking reboot and restore her to the same experience level as Superman and Batman. Because they've shoe-horned her in as the doe-eyed novice of the Trinity once already.

My evening.

Today I got a couple backlogged shipments of comics, which brings me actually up to this week's order. Yay!

This will combine with the last month's backlog and another greatly anticipated reading acquisition for one glorious binge-reading session...



...on some other night. I have responsibilities.



It's all so deeply depressing.

How do I not own this?

I just found out this trade existed:



So it has the Magneto War, which is the storyline where Joseph kicks it, as well as my personal Magneto Rex which is just this crazy Magneto, Rogue and Quicksilver story and a must-have for any connoisseur of 90s superhero soap or Rogue awesomeness. It is sadly discontinued, but fortunately just about everything in it is available online if you're up for dealing with Marvel's confusing digital strategy. I'm just amazed it's out there and I never saw it. Those storylines are two of my favorite rereads in X-men comics.

This new knowledge of my own fallibility brings another question to mind: Have they ever collected Dark Seduction, the Magneto in Genosha-focused storyline that involves Polaris and Quicksilver, in trade paperback? That one isn't up in digital comics, and unlike Magneto War and Magneto Rex I wasn't able to read it when it first came out.

Happy Birthday, Kalinara!

So, today is Kalinara's birthday, and I've been racking my head for a gift.

Maybe she'd like a Guy Gardner: Warrior figurine?



Hmm... doesn't look to be for sale. Ooo, how about an ice sculpture?



Naw, that might get dusty. Maybe I should be more creative. Set up an event, like a visit from a relative who hasn't lived nearby for a while.



That could backfire. Back to traditional gifts. Umm... Everybody likes guns?



On second thought, that looks complicated.

Hmm... OH! I know! She just got a new cat. I'll get her a kitty bed, just like...



Or not.


Y'know what? Think I'll buy her some ice cream next time we get together. Yeah. That's it.

In Defense of Peter Bishop

If you're not caught up on this week's Fringe episode, "Concentrate and Ask Again", don't read any further. Spoilers for the series up until the end of that episode.



There are two things that bug me about this Altlivia fallout.

One, remember back when there was a story with the Chameleon in Spider-Man, and it looked like he pretended to be Peter and slept with his roommate? And how we had a big discussion on rape and consent as a result.

Well, this is the same situation. Peter slept with Altlivia, but his consent was based on the thought that this was HIS Olivia, a woman he trusted implicently and had grown to love over the past two years. Peter didn't really give consent.

The writers, especially in the last episode, have chosen to not explore this at all. In fact, rather than treat this as a violation they have chosen to treat it as a romance and actually set it up so that they can not treat this as a violation or else an entire universe will die.

And maybe I'm in the wrong part of fandom, but few fans seem to have remarked on this at all. I mean, I even saw a few posts discussing that what happened to Olivia was a form of rape, that then go on to talk about what a self-absorbed jerk Peter is. What the hell, fans? If this were Peternate and Olivia (or a show with Patricia and Oliver?) they'd be screaming to high heaven from every blog but instead we're going to constantly talk about how Peter should have known better? Come on, fandom.

And speaking of whether or not he should have noticed, I think people are being really unfair to Peter there too.

The thing about Peter is that he's a social person, which actually puts him in the unique position of being the one to fall for this hardest. Why? Because you don't really get to understand people as well as he does without observing them and altering your judgments based on how they act differently in certain situations. He's not someone to go "Oh, this is weird behavior, she must be an imposter." He's someone to go "Oh, that's weird. Either something's going or this is something new I learned about them. What's different for this person that's causing this?"

It looks like he's stupid for not knowing what with everything that's going on, but this guy is still getting used to the weirdness. It's just not human nature to seek out parallel universes and shape-shifters as an explanation for every time someone does something different or unepected. Human beings are not consistent creatures, and they do alter their behavior from time to time.

It's second nature for Peter to observe people, take all their normal behavior PLUS the odd behavior into account when he makes judgments, and con the crap out of them based on that. Even though he knows there's shapeshifters and alternate universes out there, this is a guy who made his living based on his skill at dealing with people for the vast majority of his. The only way he can do that is to watch people, and accept what they do as part of their personalitiesAnything new with Olivia he had to rationalize away BECAUSE he's spent his entire life paying attention to people and has seen them change this way before.

His rationalization? "This is how she acts in a romantic relationship." He's never seen her in one before, let alone been in one with her. And That's not something that a couple years and conscious knowledge of weirdness will erase. And all his life this guy has had to adjust his impressions--not challenge--when someone acts differently.

Even in the setting, we're asking way too much of Peter to expect him to have figured this out earlier than he did. It's one thing for Olivia to be upset, she's got a ton to be upset about. But as awesome as she is and much as we identify with her, we're not Olivia. We didn't just come back from that shit to land into this shit. Give Peter a break, all right. Dude still hasn't worked out his issues with Walter yet.

This amuses me.

The other day Variety listed some actresses up for "the femme lead" in Superman, and specifically stated it wasn't Lois Lane.

It sounded suspiciously like a boneheaded idea of trying a romance story with Superman and some other woman.

This caused some angst for people who went "Wait.. That can't be right. What female character would be BIGGER than Lois Lane in this? Is she even gonna be IN it?" The only idea that made sense to me was that it might be a villainess (or they made a mistake, and it was just a female lead but not The Female Lead).

I'm gonna go ahead and do my "I was right" dance now at the newest rumors. Not only is it a villainess, but revealing the identity of the villainess these 3 actresses are up for seems to contradict some of the statements Snyder has said about the film. (Yeah, this is as big a rumor too but it makes a hell of a lot more sense than letting Lana fricking Lang lead a Superman movie.)

And the one who leaked it also went out of their way to say "Lois Lane will be in the film."

Does anyone else think this got into Variety, too many people went "NOOO" and they suddenly went "Oh shit, we gotta correct this one... but with some deniability so we won't spoil it"?

Place your bets, folks

By way of Let's Be Friends Again comes this bit of Brightest Day:



Well, Roy Harper is back on drugs, Wonder Woman's mother died in flames, Aquaman is short a hand and according to Chris Haley, they're planning to do Eclipso vs the DCU again. (And don't get smug, Marvel, what with offing a member of the Fantastic Four and taking us to a dystopian timeline where the X-men never existed.) So now's the time to speculate on what's next in the Brightest Day Event. Is it...

1) Wonder Woman loses her friend in a very special issue.

2) A Big Time Demon calls the crummiest villains in the universe together to offer them new power.

3) The Justice League finds that having wiped the memory of an enemy was a bad idea.

4) Hal Jordan hosts Parallax and/or the Spectre again.

5) The Flash is put on trial for murder. (ETA: Oops, they just did this one.)

6) Dark Seid versus the Legion of Super-Heroes.

7) Guy Gardner goes into a coma, and comes out with the mentality of a 14-year-old boy.

8) Supergirl sprouts wings of flame.

9) The skies turn red and a mysterious white nothingness advances menacingly on our heroes.

10) This issue: Superman DIES.

So far this year is a bit surreal

I returned from escorting the locksmith to find someone had left a NATO medal on my desk with a certificate. (My name is on the certificate, and it appears to be in French.)


I discovered that after seven years I could still explain the difference between Pulse Amplitude Modulation, Pulse Duration Modulation and Pulse Code Modulation. (I need a whiteboard and a flashlight, though.)

I put this thought out there, and am confident it will seep into someone's fanfiction and/or fanart soon.

I became one of those nerds who answers college assignments with nerdy stuff, despite having promised myself I wouldn't. Not only that, it was discussing the meaning of the term "canon", a word that makes me cringe.

I learned that the car that shares my last name has this slogan:


I learned that I am genuinely more radical than the sexual assault response coordinator on base. Also, I'm told by a coworker who attended an Army-sponsored women's rights meeting while deployed that I am WAY more radical than they were. (Among bloggers I'm pretty moderate, but in the military looks like I'm as far left as will enter a recruiter's office.)

I saw an officer give a briefing...

That last one was the same day I explained the modulation differences to a room with three Airmen and a smartass new NCO. I was constantly worrying that my communication skills would fail me and I'd be unable to properly answer the question, I'd look like an idiot, and they would conclude that I (and, by extension, all other women) knew nothing about the actual job and that that was why I was always filing stuff. I'm not great at getting my point across with my voice, I prefer writing it out. I actually managed it, though, and helped them out.

A few hours later, we all went to a mandatory briefing where they put on a video on drunk driving. We all shrugged, because driving drunk is widely considered to be the stupidest thing you can do while in the military. It causes the whole base to get in trouble, basically, and it is easy to avoid with the support network we've set up. Then he stressed that the next speaker was entire voluntary, and had suggested this himself. And I watched an officer, a man in leadership position walk to the front of his unit, in front of all of his subordinates, and calmly, smoothly tell everyone he'd done the stupidest thing you can do while in the military.

And I'd been nervous about forgetting modulation techniques I hadn't discussed in half a decade.

Rumors

There is a bad Wonder Woman TV pilot script floating around, and pretty much everything on it sounds like a checklist of "Things that will annoy Wonder Woman fans." I feel safe in ignoring this as a prank or a journalist reading the absolute worst possible interpretation of events at the moment. Even if it's real, scripts go through a shit-ton of changes before they show up on screen.

I think it's just that we've seen so much horrible shit in her comic and horrible idiocy suggested by Hollywood about her that we'll believe anything as long as it's bad enough. I expect heavy drinking on premier night, but I'm not breaking out the whiskey yet.

As long as I'm wishing for things...

I've realized recently that if Marvel were to write a comic just for me it would be an ongoing series starring Magneto and focusing on how he relates to his family. You could set stories where he's a good guy and a bad guy, because he certainly switches, is horrifying or sympathetic, and where he fights the X-men or helps them, but the main draw for me would be a promise of seeing the family ("the family" is to be referred to with Ron Howard's voice because I've watched too much Arrested Development). ALL of his children and grandchildren (even Luna now that she's got funky mind powers) qualify as super-heroes, and he is a Big Time super-villain. If you do not find that interesting, I don't understand you.

Right now in Children's Crusade, the main thing that keeps me picking it up (other than desperate hope that Wanda will do something) is watching Tommy, Pietro, and Magneto all try to out-smartass each other. (Billy and Wanda should join in once they've finished laying out the exposition.)



Marvel could easily pick this up after this series ends, and we'll have two sets of twins plus Grandpa. You already have some serious dramatic potential there, with the two sets of twins trying to become a full family again, and Magneto trying to be an X-man still. While he's trying to do the hero thing, he's also trying to rebuild those bridges now that he's got a couple of stepping stones put down again.

Bring Lorna back from space with the boyfriend, and you have another set of characters to enfold into the family. Polaris and Magneto is already a compelling interaction, Polaris plus the twins (and new twins) after House of M is so fascinating to me that I can't understand why Marvel wants to let this lie.

And while Magneto would be the central character, this would be an excuse to showcase how the family interacts with each other. We could get my Pietro-Lorna teamup here, Wanda and Lorna doing sister stuff (and fighting evil), Wanda and her children, Lorna and her niece and nephews...etc...

Along the way, natural storylines would bring in Crystal and Luna, Hulkling, the Kaplan family, the Shepherd family, Rogue and Professor X for an issue or a few arcs. Tommy could get a little robot girlfriend. Magneto could try to manipulate Pietro into dating a human or mutant woman. (I think he'd leave Wanda alone since even down to the basic "I make bad things happen" power she's not someone wise to mess with, and she's already had two mutant children.) Ideally they'd find excuses to bring back the old Vision (not the dumb emotionless one, or the admittedly nice baby one, but the Vision who married Wanda), Astra, Joseph, and--for me the Holy Grail of potential Magneto stories--Magda.

Marvel, I promise you that unless you put an absolutely DIRE creative team on it I would buy the hell out of this.

Today's Grant Morrison's birthday, so I will blog on his writing.

Now, if you've looked at any other post on this blog you can probably tell that I am a HUGE fan of Grant Morrison and multi-level narrative themes. I have a ridiculously short attention span, so the pacing and the denseness of his stories really appeals to me, as well as the fact that I can read them any number of times and see new things each time. I adore wall to wall weird and screwing with the timing in a story. I'll often let his books pile up issue by issue on my table until I get an entire storyline and can read it all in one burst, then reread it.

Favorites of mine? I read trades of the Invisibles and Doom Patrol like I was addicted. I will never ever get tired of Flex Mentallo or Kill Your Boyfriend. Right now his Batman stuff is the only DC I'm reading regularly. I got into DC as a teenager with his JLA and have been unable to look at the X-men franchise the same since he left the book. Seven Soldiers is just a treasure trove, and contains two of the three best superhero miniseries I have ever read.

He's actually responsible for getting me to enjoy Wonder Woman, Superman, and Jean Grey. Not because I think he was someone who finally found a new use for those characters, but because they really shined under his compressed style. At his pacing, he has to really dig into a character and find a way to get across their core and their overarcing lessons at that speed. There's a lot of room for error there, there are some characters I don't really like how he handles them and others I ONLY like when he writes them but sometimes he presents them at an angle that enriches other portrayals for me. With those three characters, they clicked for me under Morrison. After reading his JLA, I suddenly found myself interested in and just enjoying appearances by Superman and Wonder Woman, two characters I'd previously written off. And his Jean Grey in New X-men actually got me to look back at previous issues that had her in them with fresh eyes. She's one of my favorites now, and I'm super-pissed they left her dead at the end of his run. (Not that he killed her, though. The story was too enjoyable and I think the existence of Future Jean made it all the more temporary.)

The three favorite superhero miniseries I've ever read were written by this guy: Seven Soldiers: The Bulleteer (compelling themes about the youth/beauty standard for women and the sexualization of superheroines, plus the refrigerator fight), Seven Soldiers: Shining Knight (coming of age story with Mabinogion King Arthur and super-science setting), and Flex Mentallo (which remains the most quotable love letter to superhero stories I've ever seen.) If you've ever taken a recommendation from me on anything, take my recommendation of those three stories.

I'm still complaining about this one.

Even today, I can't get over the number of people who want to see Wonder Woman end up with Superman or Batman. I mean, I can handle a little flirting, a story with a date now and then, but I think that pushing either one as the major romance in her life minimizes Wonder Woman as an independent character. It reduces her to a prize for one of the DCU's great Alpha Males, and hurts her standing as a franchise. She becomes an accessory to one of them.

So it really irks me, not just to see so many fans who love this, but to see how often it seeps into the comics and their media tie-ins. In particular, it pisses me off when it becomes a focus in her own book, as her crush on Superman in the Perez run or even Rucka pulling that shit with Batman in Blackest Night: Wonder Woman. She is her own character, she deserves her own love interest but writers can't seem to get them to stick.

And this is DC's fault, because they aged and married off the guy who was meant to be her Lois Lane. Rather than rehabilitate him like they did Lois, and modernize him for the new era it seems they decided just not to use him anymore. The logic was that it was sexist for her to fall for the first man she ever saw. So they made the first man she ever saw into a fatherly mentor, and decided it would be better if her first romantic interest in a man was to be attracted to Superman. Because being attracted to a man that DC will never allow her to outshine is somehow less sexist than the original dynamic of her being attracted to a normal man who is equally turned on by her saving his ass all the time.



It's the dumbest thing they did when they rebooted Wonder Woman, and potentially the dumbest thing they've done in her history. (Even when they killed him off it was better because he had still existed, and they could always bring him back.) They simply haven't been able to recover. Every love interest they've introduced (Micah, Michael, Rama, Trevor, Io, Nemesis) that survives the writer who introduced them gets ignored by the next writer. None of them seem to take. In the meantime, tons of fans argue over whether Batman or Superman suit her better because so few people have seen that she was originally created with a love interest as part of her supporting cast.

Honestly, if they can get anything out of this Flashpoint and JMS reboot shit, it should be that they can bring back Steve Trevor revamped to suit her modern trappings, as a viable love interest. He lasted 45 years, after all. No one else can seem to stick around beyond the next writer.