Hey, I'm looking forward to a Wonder Woman comic again.

Courtesy Mizzelle, this early August solicit:

DC RETROACTIVE: WONDER WOMAN – THE ‘80s #1
Artist Rich Buckler teams up with writer Roy Thomas as Wonder Woman must battle Silver Swan to protect her secret identity from being revealed.
ONE-SHOT • On sale AUGUST 3 • 56 pg, FC, $4.99 US • RATED T

The Retro-Active stuff is set in the era he wrote during, so I believe we can safely say that we'll be seeing this Silver Swan.



My favorite Silver Swan.

In case you haven't been paying attention or just found this blog today, my last two posts have been gushing over Roy Thomas-written Wonder Woman. You'll find all my recent Roy Thomas gushing here, here, and here.

Captain Wonder

Wonder Woman #289 opens with a five-page sequence of Wonder Woman battling the many-tentacled Kraken.



Yes, really.



It's actually a really neat fight where we get to see her helping Russian sailors, speaking Russian, and dispensing a little environmentalism. She gives us a little exposition in her thought balloons while she disentangles the monster from the ship, protects the Russian sailors, and follows it down into the ocean to discourage it from coming back to the surface.

Then she continues on her way to visit home and talk to her mother. Her goal is to get permission to bring Steve back for a purple ray treatment. She's so focused on this goal that she doesn't quite realize that Hippolyta is extra-concerned about the chance Steve might die. That's because this Steve is from an alternate universe, and Diana's memory of the previous Steve and his record two deaths in a row has been erased. Hippolyta's fears include Diana suffering another bout of grief from losing a Steve, Diana finding out her mind was wiped AGAIN, and probably having to deal with a third Steve Trevor because the Fates seem pretty big on the Diana/Steve ship.

Then she pops by the apartment to pick up her uniform and her roommates, and heads to the hospital, finds out that Steve's not there and leaves. Oh, then we find out that her second roommate is actually the Silver Swan. All in all, the exposition in this book about last issue's story takes nine pages, but it's peppered around a pretty cool fight scene and some new information. We don't get to Dr. Psycho, in the story named His Name is PSYCHO! until ten pages in, which even I'll admit is a bit odd to me. This is definitely the second issue of a three-issue arc.

Eventually we get to the moment we've been waiting for since the last panel of last issue, a naked and unconscious Steve Trevor:



Oh, and the villain.

All joking aside, we should all recognize Dr. Psycho even without the creepy facial hair. We've seen him quite recently, after all. He's been one of those villains fortunate enough to survive fairly intact to the current era. His personality and motivation have been fairly consistent. His schtick where he takes over people's minds is still around, as is his deep obsession with destroying Wonder Woman because she represents all he hates about womankind. There is a big difference, though. Right now, he's a straightforward telepathic villain. Pre-Crisis he had a slightly more interesting set of powers.

Pre-Crisis Dr. Psycho controlled minds with hypnosis, and had a spiritual twist. If he could link minds with a specific person that he referred to as a "medium", he could reach into the psychic plane and pull out ectoplasm. Then he could use that ectoplasm to make himself a physical body that he could wear like a creepy psychic suit and pretend to be a tall, dark and handsome man. The ectoplasm seems to be the traditional ectoplasm of the spirit world, and not some psionic substance. We're never clear on whether he's a mixture of two types of psychic powers, or if his mesmerizing power lets him use the medium to activate their own latent powers.

His first medium was his late wife Marva, hypnotized to marry him and stay with him. In the Golden Age Wonder Woman rescued her, in the Bronze Age he seems to have murdered her. This was unwise, because although Marva's talent was passive it was actually very rare. He spent years searching, and as of this story has only encountered one other person he can use as a medium.

I'll give you three... On second thought, there's really no point in guessing. The only other person in the world with Marva's latent power is Steve Trevor.



I'd like to stop a moment and thank Roy Thomas just for putting this idea out there. He does imply that it might just be a one-time thing because this Steve is from an alternate universe and is suffering from a "Being From An Alternate Universe"-related illness, but that doesn't change that the idea is out there. Dr. Psycho is by far Diana's creepiest villain. I can think of few better ways to annoy the living crap out of her than making it so her creepiest villain is specifically fixated on her love interest and now that option is out there.

Full disclosure here, I am the first person to cringe at the idea that Wonder Woman needs a super-powered or otherwise extranormal love interest. I don't even like giving her another vigilante like Batman or Nemesis, I prefer someone who is initiated into the World of the Weird through Wonder Woman and his association with Wonder Woman. I want him to be in love with someone from a completely different sort of reality that he has to adjust to in order to understand her just as she's in love with someone from a completely different sort of reality that she has to adjust to in order to understand him. My favorite love interest is non-powered, completely mortal Steve Trevor. Old Wonder Woman lettercols are full of people who suggest giving him super-powers, or chucking him aside for Superman, but I think those people are wrong.

That said, I am perfectly fine if he's a medium. It's receptive, passive, brimming with story potential, and suitable for a character who crosses mystical boundaries and gets knocked out/killed a lot.

Also, Captain Wonder is an astoundingly effective villain.

Sorry, I've jumped ahead of myself. See, when Dr. Psycho switches on his Evil Machine to suck ectoplasm out of the spirit world through Steve's mind, Wonder Woman bursts through the doorway. Since Dr. Psycho is already building an ectosuit for himself based on Steve's appearance, he uses the distraction to add Wonder Woman's powers to it. The result?



CAPTAIN WONDER!

This villain is often sloppily described as a combination of Steve Trevor and Wonder Woman. That leaves out two important factors. One, this villain is Dr. Psycho. Not Dr. Psycho-controlled or a Dr. Psycho illusion. Captain Wonder is like a super-suit that Dr. Psycho wears to battle. Two, this is not a Steve and Diana hybrid. This is Steve's appearance added to the powers that Steve thinks Wonder Woman has. That's a big difference, as Diana soon finds out in the battle.



Ouch.

In later scenes, we learn that he can also use the jet and the lasso because Steve has seen Wonder Woman use the jet and the lasso. Also, since Steve doesn't know any of Diana's weaknesses, Captain Wonder doesn't have any of them. Not only that, but even after Diana destroys the Ectoplasmotron Dr. Psycho still seems able to make the connection between himself, Steve and the spirit world.

He does have one hell of a weakness in that Steve has to be under Dr. Psycho's control in order to maintain that connection to the spirit world. Otherwise, the ectoplasm breaks down and Captain Wonder turns back to Dr. Psycho. Steve regaining consciousness manages to do it, which happens due to luck and things like Diana destroying the Ectoplasmotron. As Steve has the Mysterious Multiverse-Based Illness at the moment, these moments of consciousness don't last.

Still, this being Pre-Crisis Wonder Woman she always manages to win and Capt. Wonder/Dr. Psycho is down by the act break.



Captain Wonder's another good villain idea introduced by Roy Thomas that's just sat on the shelf since Crisis. They use Dr. Psycho, but because he's lost the spiritual aspect of his powers and Steve's lost prominence we're not likely to see the Captain Wonder persona anytime soon. Dr. Psycho's a really strong villain, but he can't get into a fight with Diana so he needs another villain or a strong enough hero to. Captain Wonder gave him the ability to fight her on a psychical level if he could work out the right conditions.

And honestly, I think I prefer the pre-Crisis Dr. Psycho. He's super-creepy back then too, but the spirit world aspect of his powers make him distinctive from other telepathic bad guys. This ectoplasm thing was a unique idea, and one that always brought a person for Diana to save into the equation when she squared off against Dr. Psycho. Really, if they thought of it we could have him discover this ability through a medium anytime in the future, but so few writers seem interested in reviving pre-Crisis elements that I doubt we'll see anything more than the usual telepathy.

That's a shame not only because writers seem to always be complaining that Wonder Woman has a bad Rogue's Gallery (She does not. The writers just only use the same four villains over and over again, and they don't use them to their original potential), but also because Roy Thomas uses Captain Wonder and Silver Swan together so effectively next issue.

The Silver Swan

I'd read some of the classic Roy Thomas works like All-Star Squadron and Invaders and liked some of what I read but been completely unimpressed with other stuff like Infinity Inc. I took him as a decent writer, but not always up to my tastes.



This may be why I'm so taken with his short Wonder Woman run back in the early eighties. I was actually surprised when I read Wonder Woman #300 that he was the writing credit, not because of disrespect for his skill but because I hadn't realized that this would be the writer who wrote such a perfect story for me. It was possible there that it was more Dann Thomas, or even a fluke, until I read the other Thomas back issues I had. As a result the RetroActive special I'm most looking forward to is his 80s Wonder Woman.

I can't figure out which of these stories they'll go with for the reprint backup, though. It was a short run dominated by multi-part stories, and the only standalone was the extra-sized issue 300. Still, they could do worse than reprinting issue #290, which ended the three-part story that introduced Silver Swan.



Silver Swan is one of those villains we see pop up from time to time Post-Crisis, who has the powers to throw down with Wonder Woman but doesn't ever seem to join villains like Cheetah, Ares, and Circe in the regular Rogue's Gallery. I think that's because when Perez introduced her, Valerie Beaudry was a sad young woman who had experienced a tragedy and was manipulated by a man. The guy she was with was the real threat, she was sympathetic. So you felt kind of bad to see Diana punch her, and wanted the whole thing resolved with her reformed.

This is a good story for a one-off bad guy, or an origin for a hero (see Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch), but not something for a regular member of the Rogue's Gallery. Valerie did reform and help Diana later, but she never caught on as a hero. The poor woman was mercifully retired.



I liked Jimenez's idea to bring in a new Silver Swan that Diana could fight, and making it Vanessa Kapetalis allowed for some intriguing angst. He could have executed this better, because the way he did it made for yet another young woman manipulated by a man story. Vanessa's trauma was even more emphasized than Valerie's, with several scenes establishing she was violently kidnapped, brainwashed and unhinged by the experience. The man who made her the Swan was the real villain, Vanessa was an innocent victim thrown at Diana. And while Vanessa's ranting, misplaced violence, and general dislikability made it easier on us when Diana had to beat her up, it still put Wonder Woman in the unsuitable bully category. Vanessa was not a villainess, she was someone Diana had to save and protect.

So I and probably most other Post-Crisis readers categorized the Silver Swan as a sympathetic victim of male manipulation, a name for Diana's Rogue's Gallery but not an identity that could really stay with a single person. Her strength, flight, and sonic scream made her a great punch-em-up bad guy, but her backstory made it hard to watch the fight. The common themes tended to be that she was "ugly duckling" who was suckered into scientific testing and remade as a terrifyingly beautiful force for evil.



This was not how Silver Swan was Pre-Crisis. Pre-Crisis, Helen Alexandros was still an "ugly duckling" given a beautiful, powerful superhero identity. She had flight, super-strength, and a sonic scream.

That's where the similarities stopped. Because Helen Alexandros was a bad guy of her own volition.

She was a young woman with acne who pursued a career as a ballerina. I feel for her in this early part of the story because dammit, she worked her ass off and if things were done on pure dancing skill alone she would have danced the lead in Swan Lake. But things are not done on pure skill alone, and she overheard that she was passed over for prima ballerina in favor of a prettier girl.

In grief and rage, she calls out to the gods in a scene straight out of Greek Mythology (and drawn by the amazing Gene Colan) that her looks are unjust, that the world is run by men, and that she HATES men!

And the gods, or rather, one god answers her.

Guess which one.



Ares tells her that she's his descendant, and also a descendant of Helen of Troy. He begins to summarize the plot of the Illiad and Helen Alexandros interrupts with how much she likes "the part about bring death and destruction to men!"

He offers her great power and beauty, provided she use those gifts to cause wars among men. She gets them for an hour at a time, until she manages to kill Wonder Woman. Killing Wonder Woman will make her permanently the Silver Swan. Helen readily agrees and pledges her fealty to the God of War.



This is not an innocent, manipulated victim. This is a woman embittered by society who has chosen to strike at society as a criminal. This is a villain with the seed of sympathy who nonetheless possesses the wickedness necessary to fully deserve being punched repeatedly in the face by Wonder Woman. This is a perfect origin for a regular member of Wonder Woman's Rogue's Gallery. Not only that, she has a mythological tie.

I cannot for the life of me understand why they didn't just use this woman when re-introducing the Silver Swan. I don't know why they didn't just make her the second one. I don't know why they don't just bring her in as the Swan right now. Because we have a villain who is a physical match, and a thematic foil for Wonder Woman just sitting on the shelf while every writer says "I want to add to her Rogue's Gallery, she doesn't have enough good villains."

But I digress.

Anyway, the Silver Swan isn't the only great villain in this storyline. In Wonder Woman 288 we establish Helen, her history, her motive, and the fact that she's figured out Wonder Woman's secret identity and managed to make herself Etta and Diana's roommate. Then we go to check in on Steve Trevor.



Poor Steve is in the hospital after a head injury because he is clumsier than the love child of Hal Jordan and Bella Swan spies/terrorists/something or other attacked them. It should have been superficial, but for Mysterious Reasons he's lapsed into a coma and is hanging onto his life by a thread. Despite this condition, the doctor signs him over to Dr. Psycho, because he seems like a nice man who has authorization from the Pentagon. (He does not have authorization from the Pentagon.)



And that's just the first issue in this storyline. Really, I wanted to get through the whole thing because one of them is cover-dated for my birth month and today is that kind of day, but I've squandered all of my time explaining why I will never be able to accept another Silver Swan. I'll get to Dr. Psycho, Steve, Captain Wonder, and the wonderful way these two plots weave together later.

I aten't dead.

This week has been pretty exhausting. I'll get back to blogging eventually, and maybe someday answer my comments but right now I'm just too pooped to do anything but argue on twitter and muck around on tumblr. I'm really just dropping this note to try and get my brain back into the updating this blog mindset.

Who's up for an old-fashioned letter campaign?

The other day I posted this on tumblr.

All right, so Ben Caldwell's Wonder Woman pitch got attention back when I was on the way to Afghanistan so I never got a chance to comment on it (even to note it has lovely art), but tonight I'm thinking about Wonder Woman, DC current direction for her, fans and such. A postcard campaign got the series renumbered to 600 rather than reset at 1 for this latest reboot. Letter campaigns got Manhunter two reprieves. A letter campaign brought Stephanie Brown back from the dead.

I think there's an off chance we can get this published, or at least get it in their heads that we want Wonder Woman to be for young girls too. And if it works, we can finally have a Wonder Woman book to give to our younger family and friends. That should be something worth shooting for even if you don't like certain aspects of it.

So, if you'd spend postage to get this a second chance, please Reblog. We'll get organized if there's enough of us.

Most of the reblogs happened within the first hour, and it seems to still be slowly trickling throughout the community five days later.

As a thoroughly unpleasant person by choice, I'm not a particularly effective leader. I'm also someone in a ridiculously busy job who can get called away from her hobbies for long periods of time in order to take little trips, or cover for people who are on little trips. So I'm not a particularly good fit for fan activism, however... No one else seems to want to do this and this is something I think can work.

Like I said, fan letter campaigns have gotten books extended, characters resurrected, and Wonder Woman renumbered rather than rebooted for a fourth issue one. DC right now is flailing about for something, anything, they can do to make Wonder Woman a seller again. There's a bit of an interest upsurge because of TV show casting and the fact that every major superhero property to hit the main-stream has been male-dominated, and the first character to come to mind when they ask what female superhero can have a movie is Wonder Woman.

And lately DC and it's related companies have passed on every chance to reimagine super-hero related properties for young women. But everytime something like Caldwell's pitch, or Lois Lane: Girl Reporter or now Barbara Gordon, Girl Detective hit the internet as a failure every reaction seems to be: "What is WRONG with them?" And to me, the biggest "What is WRONG with them?" is passing on any female-aimed Wonder Woman adaptation, because Wonder Woman was originally pitched as a way to bring girls into superheroes. It stars a princess superhero who dances between high fantasy and utopian sci-fi. The classic cast is all female except for one token boy, like so many other girl properties. Wonder Woman is a girl franchise, most successful at times when it is accessible to girls (the 40s when every kid read, the 70s in TV form when every little girl watched, and now she's at her best in merchandising, which women eat up), but they're resisting every pitch that's designed to bring her back to girls.

Meanwhile, DC's desperate attempts to revamp Wonder Woman have led us again to a point where the very opposite of her concept is emphasized in all of the solicits (and interviews with the crossover writers) even as better writers desperately try to keep true to the character and still emphasize balance. And these attempts to revamp her always seem to come back to the same ideas, which are custom-designed for the shrinking superhero audience that would already be reading Wonder Woman if they wanted to. All of this as the audience she's intended for is unaware that an icon of this genre was in fact custom-designed with them in mind.

Really, the whole thing is indicative of some very thick heads and soft spines.



However, if we were to give them impression that a number of us would buy the thing if we saw it on the shelf, they may be more inclined to open their eyes and take a risk. I think Caldwell's pitch is the best shot at this. It's using Wonder Woman, who has serious brand recognition but much less out there than Superman or Batman, and who won't be mistaken for a spin-off or tie-in to another property. It's specifically designed to appeal to the fantasy readers and the romance readers as well as the adventure readers. There's some imagery that I'm sure is meant to appeal to the coveted audience of Twilight but unlike Twilight, it features characters and relationships originally designed by a psychologist to turn traditional gender roles upside down and portray girls as heroic and active.



And it has one major thing going for it that some of the other rejected properties don't have. It's from a creator that has already been allowed to write the character being pitched. Caldwell got Wonder Woman for Wednesday Comics, someone at DC was already willing to trust him with her. He's got a foot in the door, there, so logically he's got a better chance of them letting him back in, especially based on a fan campaign. And if this idea works, and sells, it opens the door for other properties like Lois Lane and Barbara Gordon to be optioned for a wider audience.

Hell, even if there was something else blocking Caldwell's pitch in particular, we might get into their heads that we want a modern Wonder Woman aimed at young adults and get someone else's pitch through.

If it doesn't work, and they use it's failure to turn down other ideas... We're in the same boat we're in if we never tried, except without a streamlined Young Adult Wonder Woman story we can give to our younger female friends and relatives to introduce them to a female superhero.

I'm up for this, and it looks like a large number of people are. Thing is, I'm pretty busy in my regular life, so I'll need a lot of help. Drop me your email in my askbox or my formspring if you're up for it. We'll get a mailing list. We'd have to put together a website, set a date, write up our reasons and find ways to expand beyond people who read my little blogs.

Your reblogs, retweets and links are appreciated here.

(Cross-posted)

More on pre-Crisis Diana and Steve

I swear I just read a back and forth about how Diana and Steve weren't ever a loving relationship because he was "such a blithering idiot" in the Golden Age (and it's taken as a given that he's not worth reading in the Silver Age), and someone stated that the most loving they seemed in the Silver Age was in the opening two issues of Denny O'Neil's run.

I'm not going to single anyone out for last year's conversation (besides I've seen similar attitudes in letters pages and on boards and journals across the internet) but I have to say I'm boggled about that particular assertation, because... Well, it can't be the same Denny O'Neil run I'm thinking of. In the first couple issues of O'Neil's run, someone gets drunk and calls Diana a freak, she doesn't say anything (just looks uncomfortable), and Steve punches the guy. They go leave the party to park and make out. So, Diana's not herself. Then Steve gets mad at her for testifying about it at the trial when the dude gets killed. So, kinda rocky there. I suppose you might think it's sweet that he lost his temper and engaged in conduct unbecoming an officer to defend her honor rather than use the appropriate amount of force for the situation. I guess it is, I'd rather have seen Diana at least push the guy away and get an offended look.

The end sequence of the story has him holding Wonder Woman in her arms and wondering aloud if he should start dating Diana Prince since she cleared his name of a murder charge in that identity. Now, we all know Steve goes on about Wonder Woman when talking to Diana Prince, but he is actively dating Wonder Woman and only seems to be hanging out with Diana Prince because she's his friend. This has him saying to his girlfriend that his affection for her is in danger if any other woman saves his life. That's at odds with all any strife stories in the Silver Age, where Steve would either be under mind control or have had a fight and a breakup with Wonder Woman before looking elsewhere. I will grant O'Neil that he only ever gets attracted to women who look exactly like Wonder Woman. He got that, and the not interested unless she can save his life thing right. Still, not really the best moment for this relationship.

Any time they're together afterward, he's near death and she's crying over his injured form.

And honestly, that's why I hate the O'Neil run. Diana doesn't assert herself, cries even more than under Kanigher, gives up her powers so can be with Steve and then completely fails to protect him from Dr. Cyber... TWICE. And after he dies, the first man she's attracted to is evil. That opening storyline is just freaking annoying.

I mean, we bash the Silver Age but even though Kanigher made her emotional at times she was always really active and assertive. And while Kanigher's Diana was a complete stranger to logic, and his Steve was a stranger to forethought, I wouldn't call it an unpleasant relationship. They were really devoted to each other.

Kanigher wrote some extremely sweet stuff even though he also had stories where one or both of them were complete jerks. And it is generally BOTH of them being idiots. For every time Steve breaks up with Diana for a really stupid reason there's a story where Diana's angry at him for a really stupid reason and purposefully messes with his head. Not only that, everyone except Hippolyta comes off as an idiot in Mer-man stories. But for every one of those, there's cute little stories where he has to identify her by her kiss, he brings her gifts, takes her on dates to get her mind off the crime-fighting stress, builds her up when she's feeling down, doesn't dump her after tossing him across the room because of a hallucination, ignores the extremely weird goings on during a date to continue spending time with her, and doesn't give her a hard time for choosing the greater good over his life. Story wrap-ups are often Steve setting up Diana so she can give the moral, or Diana giving the moral and Steve following up with a flirtation or compliment. He's a jerk at times, but he's also the most supportive person in her life and dedicates a good percentage of his time to making sure she's comfortable and happy.

Even with Diana Prince, he's a thoughtless jerk who drones on about how awesome his girlfriend is but he's also fond of her, friendly to her, and protective of her. He's always trying to get Diana Prince to have fun and take a break from work, trying to find a way to introduce her to Wonder Woman and when she's not present for an adventure he feels bad about her being left out.

In the Golden Age, he's more outwardly macho (which I find greatly amusing) but still her absolute biggest public support. He defends her, talks her up, makes sure she gets proper credit for her heroism, attends any public appearances to offer his support, comforts her when she's upset, brings the cavalry, gets along with her friends, respects her culture and sticks around during danger on the off chance he might be able to help her in the smallest way. He can get bombastic, but that actually makes it more impressive when you see him defer to her wisdom and skill, or just when you see those panels where he's standing quietly in the background while she's in the spotlight.

Yeah, these characters weren't perfectly refined. It's Golden and Silver Age comics, Batman, Superman and their supporting casts had some odd behavior too. Still, this was not a bad boyfriend at all. A lot preferable to most of the leading men who were in the hero role, actually. Probably because he's designed to be the supportive, laid back partner to someone dominant and driven. Before I actually sat down read this stuff, I always heard the two things: He's a jerk, and he's a wuss. Reading the archives and the Showcases, I don't see a significant basis for either conclusion.

I swear, people must be reading the comics from the red universe.

This again?

Today's Flashpoint Friday at the the Source, and they've been releasing solicits all day. Naturally, we've been watching them in anticipation.

Remember how I said I was leery of this crossover from the Wonder Woman solicit? Well... about the time they solicited the second Aquaman issue with him holding a dead woman, I started to worry again. A quick glance at the covers up until then revealed a wide-eyed love interest, a villainess, and a banner referencing "Angry Amazons Unleashed!" along with the dead woman. And then more confirmation the Amazons were the Big Bad. I started, of course, to get irked.

Then they released the Lois Lane solicit.

FLASH QUESTION: Lois Lane meets the mysterious leader of the Resistance – but will she survive?

FLASHPOINT: LOIS LANE AND THE RESISTANCE #2
Written by DAN ABNETT and ANDY LANNING
Art by EDDIE NUNEZ
Cover by EDDIE NUNEZ and SANDRA HOPE
On sale JULY 27 • 2 of 3, 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T

So, we have a woman of action balanced out by an injured woman on her knees. There is also a shadowed man, meant to represent the leader of the resistence. This is where I really started to worry, because this guy is a surprise reveal. And yes, he could be anyone, but we've had a male character teased recently that has ties to the Wonder Woman franchise and a very specific connection to Themiscyra.

Granted, I have been complaining that DC should bring Steve Trevor back. Thing is, my brain's been going. On Twitter we discussed the horrible option this crossover would end with Wonder Woman marrying Aquaman, or at least confirming an arranged marriage to Aquaman could be happy and successful. That led to the worst possible things they could do with Wonder Woman.

In the meantime, we're seeing solicits that imply horribly evil Amazons, and the solicit for the first Wonder Woman issue says she wants to take over the world. As this is very un-Diana-like behavior, I'm thinking a shapeshifting/illusionist imposter or some form of mind control is behind it. And that leads me to DC's remarkable ability to do things that I've been wanting them to but nonetheless piss me off in the execution.

I've already outlined how making Steve Trevor a jackass would piss me off, but I hadn't realized there's another option. If he were to show up for the first time specifically to save her, I think I'd be quite pissed actually. Now, I'm not AGAINST Steve in the spotlight or pulling his weight and saving her at times. Marston had him save her butt every few issues it seems, and even Kanigher gave him some pivotal moments (though they were love interest coded), and one of my favorite things is a fight between him and Eros in 322. But it's one thing when he's been around and she saved him in the origin and regularly does the heavy fighting while he helps out and saves her once in a while. It's another thing entirely when the character in this form has been off the board for a full 25 years, and we haven't even seen the origin where she rescues him from the plane crash. It would be establishing this character in the opposite way for modern readers, from the start. And I can see them doing it because the most common complaints from fanboys who hate Steve, along with their suggested alternatives of Batman and Superman, seem to go back to the idea he's not man enough for Wonder Woman. As he has a masculine job, a masculine personality, was a war hero before he met her, and can hold his own in a fist fight it's not a stretch to gather they get this idea from how he relates to Diana. He accepts her help, he doesn't try to boss her around, and he gets his ass saved a lot by her. Introducing him sa her savior would change that dynamic for modern readers.

Of course, I hate this little idea I've conjured up, because I think it's fundamental that she save him first not only in his experience but in ours as readers. There are too few male characters who have this role in a romantic relationship, and the point of Steve Trevor was to PUT a male character in that role and still have him be masculine and attractive.

On the bright side, I could be jumping to conclusions and that could be Sgt Steel, Nemesis or Max Lord.

My fingers are crossed for Max Lord. Why? Because look what the second Wonder Woman issue's solicit is:

FLASH QUESTION: How many must die to avenge Queen Hippolyta’s death and satiate Diana’s fury?

FLASHPOINT: WONDER WOMAN AND THE FURIES #2
Written by DAN ABNETT and ANDY LANNING
Art by SCOTT CLARK and DAVID BEATY
Cover by ED BENES
On sale JULY 20 • 2 of 3, 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T

That's right. "How many must die to avenge Queen Hippolyta’s death and satiate Diana’s fury?"

The implication, of course, is that Hippolyta is dead for Dian a's run amok. Because we know from past experience that the death of her mother unhinges her and makes her lash out against... wait a minute. She didn't do this after her mother died in Our Worlds at War. And she isn't doing this in the Odyssey storyline where her mother's dead again. So where the fuck did this idea come from?

Not only that, what is with this Vicious Bloodthirsty Amazon obsession? Don't they know we don't like that? That it runs contrary to the Wonder Woman concept? That it completely shits on eveyrthing established as far back as Marston? That it just pisses off Wonder Woman fans? That even if this is an imposter Diana, we're still saying that the Amazons are bloodthirsty and horrible and she's the only GOOD one? That this is just reactionary panic that if women were allowed to take a leadership position they'd automatically run roughshod over men? Do they really want to tell us that all-female organizations like the Amazons and the Star Sapphires are inherently unbalanced and liable to explode violently while male-dominated organizations are perfectly fine? And is Wonder Woman really the appropriate vehicle for that message?

Abenett and Lanning are good. They are good good writers. I have no doubt there's some sort of twist coming, but I have a lot of doubt it'll be worth it. And if Odyssey was leading into this, it certainly wasn't worth it. There's a strain of fandom that loves this idea, and several of them are comics writers. They don't like our compassionate, balanced, thinking Diana who knows when to use force and when to use mercy. They want the daughters of Ares. They want a violent, unrestrained woman who kicks men in the crotch even though she has superstrength and she can easily put them in a hold without causing any damage, and uses lethal force after saying "Don't call me Baby." They want bloodthirsty Amazons carrying spears, impaling male soldiers and ranting about the Patriarchy as they do so. I don't see the appeal at all, but it's THERE and people demand it. Everyone knows someone who only liked Wonder Woman when they read Kingdom Come and really wish she'd be edgier and they'd "play up the warrior aspect."

And whatever the twist is... Circe, Dr. Psycho, Diana's really Lyta or Donna, Dark Angel, possession by Eris or Belladonna (I forget her Greek name) or one of the furies, Max Lord, White Martians, soemthing to emphasize the wrongness of this timeline (which would still imply this is in Diana's heart somewhere), whatever... this desire is being fed. We'll have a crop of fanboys going "I preferred that, I want to write Wonder Woman that way again" after all this is over. We'll have reinforced the hard-edged manhating Amazon stereotype in people's mind, especially if the twist only applies to the female-led books and the Amazons are running amok everywhere else. And really, it's just not worth it. It's not worth going back to this idea that hacks away at the foundation of what makes Diana Diana.

And that's probably why so many people don't "get" her, or have trouble writing her. If you don't faithfully read her series, and all you see is her appearing as the humorless Amazon warrior who is the one person from her culture who doesn't kill everyuone, or is the person who goes bad in every alternate timeline, you have no fucking clue who Wonder Woman is or why she endures as a hero. That's why people don't realize she has a distinctive and enduring personality, because they never showcase it and when she DOES get a big part it's because they are completely tearing down the foundations of her franchise, and the basis of her personality. They're sabotaging themselves.

And at the end, there's three ways this can go. Fans who already read her book are pissed off, and would drop it if she were changed. Fans who like her in the crossover don't see what they want in her book. And fans who would like her but see her in the crossover and get the wrong idea never pick up her book. And then they can't figure out why featuring Wonder Woman in a crossover didn't help her sales.

As I've said before with Amazons Attack. This will not ruin Wonder Woman. She has too much appeal in the mainstream community. She's an American Icon, and the franchise is strong enough to take Robert Kanigher, Denny O'Neil, John Byrne, Jodi Piccoult, Will Pfiefer, and J Michael Straczynski. She can weather the end of World War II, the death of the main love interest, the white suit era, losing the most iconic features, dating Superman and dating Batman. She can live through three different variations on the bracelets-based weakness. She can survive Millenium, War of the Gods, Our Worlds at War, Infinite Crisis, Amazons Attack, Blackest Night and certainly Flashpoint. She's survived constant supporting cast changes, 2 hard reboots and countless soft reboots. She's gotten through every fucking writer feeling the need to cast off the previous writer and rebuild her franchise from the ground up. This is far from the end.

But it is a stupid, stupid idea nonetheless.

Little stuff.

I was going to write about what a terrible leader General Darnell is, but I got distracted by Tumblr. Today's topic is Wonder Woman's costume, again. I wrote a bit on her look and her personality, and almost got into it about Pre-Crisis vs Post-Crisis characterization but that's a very complex subject and I want to get my head straight first before laying out what I think about that.

So, what do you get rather than a link to my Tumblr, a post on General Darnell and an essay on characterization? This realization:



Which is all Kyle's fault.

Yeah, those pictures are from Wonder Woman #1, Wonder Woman #17, and Wonder Woman (Series 2) #94 respectively.

And since I feel bad about not telling you why General Darnell's behavior is a threat to good order and discipline, straight out of Wonder Woman #279, here's 1/3 of the reason he sucks as a commander.



At the time of this scene, Captain Diana Prince works directly for Colonel Steve Trevor, who works directly for General Philip Darnell. Yes, that's in the direct chain of command and separated by three paygrades.

The Reason We Have Conventions

Found on tumblr, the Earth-11 Justice League.

These guys have been all over the place since Sunday. Here's a closer look at Power Man:

Diana's anxieties and Steve's social shortcomings.

Wonder Woman #300 by Roy and Dann Thomas might be one of my favorite single-issue comics. It's fairly self-contained, and gives us 7 stories in one issue that all tie into the same plot. The framing story is pretty complex. Basically, she decides to marry Steve and kill off her secret identity. She's fighting a shadowmonster throughout the whole thing, and the Sandman is annoying her to dump Steve and run off to dreamland. She has four dream sequences (in addition to an Earth-2 diversion and the Sandman's origin story) that lay bare her anxieties. Dorian took five posts to recap it humorously, but I wanna look into it a bit more seriously because the Thomases address a lot about pre-Crisis Wonder Woman and her love interest in this. Still, go ahead and laugh at it and get the plot. I'll wait.

One of my favorite aspects of this is that the entire story is through Diana's eyes. This is not only refreshing as the Perez reboot set the trend of we see Diana's life through everyone else's eyes, but it's a plot point that Steve gets maybe one or two balloons in the whole special.

Early on, the argument the two have over lunch is entirely from her point of view. There's any number of reasons he might be cranky at the time but she suspects his ego is threatened. He might not have sleep the other night himself, he might be stressed over the arms conference, he might be lonely because Wonder Woman hasn't called, General Darnell might have been needling him over something before Diana and Etta got to the office, he might even be thinking about the General's constant sexual harassment and have the same doubts Diana herself has about his motives for pushing an extremely unorthodox double-promotion (The Thomases have never heard of Time-in-Grade requirements). Or she might be right, he's just weirded out by having a subordinate suddenly become an equal and it may or may not have something to do with sexism. Either way, we just know he's irritated with the General, concerned about the unorthodox double-promotion, has some general malaise about military life, and still has his absent-minded propensity for putting his foot in his mouth around Diana Prince. We never really find out what causes this, only that he's sorry about it later on.

We do, however, get some confirmation of one of my theories:



This is just slightly more tactful than "Wait, you're a woman?" and part of that tradition of odd behavior from Steve that Diana always finds insulting and a lot of fans take as just being mean to her. Personally, having worked with military men and seen how they speak to each other and women who are part of the office, I've always thought he just considered her his work-buddy and didn't realize she took any of this stuff seriously. In the Golden Age, he teases her at times but he's genuinely protective of her (he decks a guy who harasses her at lunch) and pretty friendly towards her. In the Silver Age he turns down her requests for a date as bluntly as possible (and by constantly pointing out that he is already dating someone he finds incredible), teases her about her appearance (and Diana rarely gives him an indication she's insulted by this, but instead rants at her mirror later on), but is still really protective of her and friendly enough to try and drag her to see Wonder Woman whenever she appears, and invite her out when he can't find his girlfriend. Bronze Age Steve is much better behaved than both of them, generally quieter and more thoughtful, but he still blurts out stupid things and gets surprised when she's mad at him. From what I can gather over sampling this 40 year period, he's basically coded her as a man for most social interactions. This is so ingrained in his behavior towards her that I imagine even telling her to seek safety during dangerous situations isn't a sign of chivalry, and he'd be like that with any lower ranking person that accompanies him.

That said, it's remarkably tactless, even for Steve Trevor. Poor Steve tries to be courteous but just gets his foot in that mouth without thinking. At least, that's what I gather from his surprise at her leaving and how readily he took the blame later on for his stupid big mouth. Somehow this guy always knows the right thing to say to Wonder Woman, and the wrong thing to say to Diana Prince.

Diana, for her part, has gotten better. She's less upset that he's not attracted to Diana Prince and more upset that after two years of dating Steve still doesn't suspect that these two women might be the same person. Oh yeah, this Steve is one of three Bronze Age incarnations. You have the Earth-2 version (seen in the trip to Earth-2 in this issue), the original Earth-1 version (so nice the writers killed him twice!), and this version from an unknown Earth who crashlanded on Paradise Island after she was an established superhero who was made to forget the original Earth-1 version. So she's only been dating him two years and thinks she's only known him for two years, but it feels like he's been oblivious for 39 years.

Still, she has an overall good image of the man as evidenced by the dream sequences. Each sequence presents a scenario where something different happened in her origin and her life sucked as a result. In each scenario, Steve is not the problem.

In the first story, her mother and her duty keeps them apart. Hippolyta kills herself to force Diana to take the throne. (The really horrible thing? When Diana tells her this dream Hippolyta confesses she'd thought about it.) He goes home with Mala, her runner up. We learn here that Diana will choose her people over her boyfriend, something we've seen a couple times in Silver Age stories.

In the second, the first man to find the island is evil. He's a sleazy conniving thief, but Diana's young and doesn't see this right away. Hippolyta does. Diana runs away with him to Miami and is horrified when he kills the cops who come to bring him in, so she captures him for them and forces him to confess he committed the crimes. He also gleefully tells her he never loved her. Instead of being a nightmare about Steve being bad, though, this is about a different man. His method of romance, his hair color, his eye color, that he has facial hair, he's the exact opposite of Steve down to being named Trevor Stevens. We learn that Diana's worried she'd have just run off with the first dude she ever saw, but once again Steve is not the problem.

In the third, Superman lands on the island. She marries him right away, becoming more Wonder Wife than Wonder Woman. They're too alike, and spend their days apart on the superhero job and the rest of the time arguing. They get divorced and, unlike the times she broke up with Steve or he died, she gives up on Man's World and returns home. We learn A LOT here. She sees Superman as basically a male version of herself and doesn't think they'd mesh because she needs a complementary personality. She thinks she'd have abandoned her mission if she got married too early, and that if she married Superman she'd be defined as his wife rather than as her own person. We also learn that she thinks Lois would be more pissed off than heartbroken, and I think she's right there. Still, Steve is not the problem.

The fourth and final dream is intense and horrible. She dreams herself as "a super-villainess, a murderess, so incapable of love and compassion that the world would despise me." She reject Steve's love along with any thought that men might be complex or sympathetic human beings. She comes to man's world intending to conquer people she considers sub-human, and her lack of caution and empathy cause Steve's death. This one amazes me, because along with the second story it (and her dialogue about how easy it would be for her to have been that woman) establishes that she could see herself going evil more easily than Steve ever would.

In-between she blames the Sandman for these, but I'm not sure I understand that. It is incredibly clear in each one that there's nothing wrong with Steve in her eyes. Each and every dream reinforces that Steve Trevor is her ideal mate, and that she would be miserable without him. As the Sandman's stated goal is that she dump Steve for him, this would be a really shitty tactic in addition to being incredibly creepy.

Really, it's just her increasing guilt over having lied to him so early on because even pre-Crisis, Diana is not cut out for a secret identity. And her biggest nightmare is before the big reveal of how badly she screwed with Steve.

Once again, one of my favorite things about this issue is that Diana's head is an open book while we don't really know what's going on inside Steve's head. It's an easy joke that we rarely see Steve's thought balloons, but there's a reason for that. In this romance, the man is the inscrutable, illogical, mysterious party. The woman is the one who acts for easy to understand reasons and has an obvious and serious train of thought. Even when writers like Kanigher and O'Neil make her hyper-emotional and even her creator Marston attributes stereotyped female behavior to her, we still know how her head works and the item she's concerned about is always the most important thing in the story.

(Honestly, I'm a bit relieved that Steve Trevor hasn't been the love interest for the Perez and Byrne runs, because those writers told everything through supporting cast members and it would have been too damned easy to make him the viewpoint character for them. Rucka seems to have permanently turned that around, though. All of Vol 3 is back to Diana's POV.)

In the run-up to the wedding Diana's overtired and has a lot going on between arranging a rushed but still lavish ceremony and faking her secret identity's death.



Even so, I'd say she have should given thought to just how horrible getting rid of her secret identity via tragic death could be. She's actually surprised by how upset people are at the funeral. Not only that, she completely misses when Steve hints that he's so freaked out he wants to postpone the wedding, and assumes the offer is for her feelings. Perfectly understandable, it's not like she makes a habit of completely misreading him after all. Steve, normally pretty inscrutable to Diana, is extra inscrutable because she's too preoccupied to pay attention to his behavior.

Still, there is one last point where we all should have known he was in trouble, but Diana was again too plagued by her dreams to notice. Take a look at the wedding party.



Did you catch it?

Except for Hippolyta, Etta (dressed as the Maid of Honor), and General Darnell, every guest is a superhero. These are all Diana's friends. Steve's best man is his jackass boss.

Not only that, when he does blurt out his infamous "No" (after trying to get a chance to warn the bride he's having problems), everyone looks surprised and angry. Not a sympathetic face on that dais. He not only doesn't have any friends closer than his boss, he's not close enough to his boss to tell him he's not sure he can go through with the wedding so soon after Diana Prince died.



His only friend on the platform is the bride he just turned down.

And when you think about it, that's in continuity. We rarely see a story where an old friend of Steve's shows up. He has lunch with Diana Prince usually. When his girlfriend is not around, he chooses to socialize with Diana Prince. Of course, this particular Steve is from another universe and doesn't remember any of his old friends, but he's had two years to make new ones. He mainly hangs out with Diana and Etta. Silver Age Steve hung out with Diana in either of her identities. Whenever he had tickets to something and couldn't find his girlfriend, he asked Diana Prince to go with him and specifically stated it was because he couldn't get hold of his girlfriend. Golden Age Steve had lunch with Diana Prince and socialized with her, his boss or the Holliday Girls, who were Wonder Woman's friends.

Aside from Diana and Etta (he just doesn't seem very friendly with the General to me), this man has no friends. I don't think it's so much a social fault of his, although maybe it is alienating among men to suggest that women are people not to mention being from another universe and dividing his time between work, dating and being kidnapped. Bronze Age Steve is pretty introverted and the sort of person who cultivates a few close friendships. He's not sitting at home obsessing over his girlfriend, he's just a man of few friends. Unfortunately, one of those precious few friends happens to be his girlfriend in disguise.



A lot of people seem to read his confession as a evidence that he's also in love with her secret identity but over the next 29 issues he never displays any real romantic feeling for Diana Prince. He's just happy she's not dead. They once hold hands when she's at his bedside and he tells her he's glad for her company, but he never explores any potential romance with her. Hell, over 39 years of comics he only briefly considers dating Diana Prince after she's saved him from prison in the O'Neil run. Every other time he goes out with her it's like he's going out with a poker buddy, and he wants to talk girls (well, one girl) with her. He's completely telling the truth here when he says the woman he loves is Wonder Woman. But Diana Prince is his closest platonic friend, and he does care deeply for her and he can't go through with his wedding so soon after her death.



It turns out that Diana made herself into his best friend. Now she feels like crap because she didn't realize it.

Diana's solution, of course, is to tell him she's not angry, resurrect Diana Prince and set herself to coming clean as soon as humanly possible. This being comics she takes 12 issues to work up her nerve, then he tells her he doesn't want to know.



I'd call him a jerk for that and Diana stupid for not telling him off, but I'm too amused that he worries she might be the janitor where he works.

*Ahem*

Okay, so yesterday's post was not entirely honest. I framed it with stuff that I actually think about retcons, but the Thomases didn't really rewrite Diana's origin to make her into a strawfeminist.

It was one of four dream sequences in Wonder Woman #300, where she makes two major life decisions: 1) She asks Steve to marry her, and 2) She fakes Diana Prince's death. Because of the Diana Prince lie and the impending wedding, plus the Sandman (Not Morpheus, Daniel, Wesley or Sandy, but that one dude in the stupid red cape that nobody likes) hanging around, she has some anxiety dreams.

There's one dream where the night before she left for Man's World her mother killed herself, and she was forced to take the crown while the runner-up went home with Steve.

In another dream, Steve Trevor doesn't crash near the island at all. Instead, Trevor Stevens does, an obnoxious black-haired man with a moustache. This guy isn't a military man, but instead someone who's stolen military tech and intends to steal from the Amazons too. It ends with him telling her he'd never loved her.

The third dream? Superman falls to the island after being hit with a kryptonite meteor. Her mother likes him so rather than mess around with secret identities, she marries Clark right away. They find that they are both too busy to spend time together, and they butt heads too often. They get a divorce and she goes home.

And the fourth and most interesting dream was the one I detailed yesterday. She rejects Steve, comes to Man's World intending to take over by force and ends up accidentally killing him. The only bit I changed was the thing about her becoming a hero at the end, she didn't. She just woke up, more horrified at this one than any of the others.

I'd like to go in-depth with this one, because I love it so much. But because it tells us so much about Diana and so much about Steve (the framing story is basically about how badly she's been screwing with him with this Diana Prince identity), it's taking me a while to dissect it. So yeah, this'll be a long one.

Reboots and Retcons

I suppose the fact that they couldn't find any letters praising the new JMS reboot for the Wonder Woman lettercol this week proves that this direction just isn't working. Really, though, I'm not that horrified. She'll be back to herself when it's over, and we'll have some nice Hester-written moments to show for it. My reaction to Wonder Woman reboots has changed from outrage to fatigue, because really this is a character that has been rebooted and reinvented so many times that this resiliency has become part of her franchise. Kanigher retooled the origin to get rid of the golem part and add some boyfriends in her teen years (for some reason, though, every commentator seems to focus on Hippolyta's makeover and losing the Holliday Girls--who did show up after a few dozen issues) and did some Golden Age revival attempts, but it really started with O'Neil. Ever since he took out both the Paradise Island and Man's World supporting casts, her powers, and her costume in one fell swoop we've seen writer after writer change the place.

I mean, we all know the Post-Crisis history of cast devastation and sporadic revival. JMS reboots the whole damned thing after Simone had to rebuild the supporting cast because Pfieffer tore up the Amazons in a crossover after Heinberg brought back the secret identity/secret agent and Rucka left the place in ruins on Infinite Crisis orders. This was of course after Jimenez took out her mother and brought back some Golden Age villains after a series of quite forgettable writers failed to do anything interesting with the elements Byrne brought back once he'd erased the entire Boston supporting cast, which had been put in post-Crisis to replace the classic military supporting cast that he shoved to the side along with the personalities of the gods and any Amazon technological advancements. No matter how good the writer, they are either responsible for or immediately followed by mass destruction of any recognizable elements.

But much as I get on about Perez (and damn it, I will still complain about Perez), this was nothing new. A sampling of Bronze Age comics easily reveals a similar addiction to soft reboots. After O'Neil, they drop the white suit and bring back the powers, go on for a bit, bring back Steve, play around on Earth-2 for several issues at a time, kill Steve, then bring back Steve and wipe Diana's memory. They move her from Washington to New York to Washington again. The UN to the Pentagon. I think this constant change is why I see Diana as an active explorer and a traveler. She doesn't put down for very long. (Simone's run was pretty good in that she incorporated travel into the plotlines, focusing on Diana rather than try to convince us to accept a brand new supporting cast as permanent fixtures.)

Thing is, hard reboots--retelling the origin completely from scratch--are few and far between. We've had Perez and JMS (which is only fleeting anyway). Anything else (Heinberg) has been a flashback retcon in the middle of the moving story. Diana's still the same Diana, just with a slightly altered past. Pre-Crisis we had Marston and Kanigher and.. well, a particularly odd one from Roy and Danette Thomas. See, back in 1983 they decided they might try a harder-edged Wonder Woman for a while. Even that far back it seems they wanted to drop the boyfriend and the motivated initially by romance thing to reflect modern sensibilities, and this seems to be the first try for this.



Umm.. yeah. I didn't photoshop that, that's really what she says when she wins. And it gets more annoying to me. See, as they fly home Diana makes her intentions very clear to Steve.



That's right, no dating, because he's a man and he sucks. At this point, and I believe it's intentional, we're meant to think she sounds pretty terrible and might be a bad guy. But JUST in case, old Roy wants to drive the point home by giving us her thoughts on killing in battle.



To be fair, she doesn't kill the guy. But clearly we're dealing with a brand new Diana here. Even more of an overhaul, I'd say, than O'Neil gave. (On the plus side, she did not give up her powers for a man!) However, as this is an origin story she's going to have to learn a valuable lesson. From, of course, a man...



Now, all of us and Steve know at this point that he has no chance in hell of actually hitting her with a bullet. He even tells his men that she can deflect them, but of course they shoot anyway and things go from bad to worse.



Turns out poor Diana really did feel something for the guy. She's horrified and upset, and flees the scene not out of fear but grief. A regretful scene later, she decides to turn over a new leaf but the damage has been done. She's been branded as criminal menace and must now seek redemption while on the run!



If this had become the regular origin, I imagine I'd be infuriated. But as it goes, this was a gutsy attempt. He has her come to the world all full of war and judgment, which causes tragedy and teaches her a lesson. And we have a Wonder Woman: Fugitive! set-up at the end. Could've worked, if they'd given it a chance. But really, it didn't last very long and before you knew it we were back to the regular setup and Mishkin took over. And I'm glad, because while heroes that start off bad and learn an important lesson are compelling, one of the things that makes Diana unique is that her origin is relatively untragic and her motives are optimistic and altruistic.

She lives an idyllic life which is disrupted by the appearance of a man--a creature she's only heard stories about. She rescues him, nurses him back to health, and wins the opportunity to accompany him back to his legendary world and fight the terrible evil that threatens it. She becomes a great hero to the universe and maps the modern world for her people. She's an explorer, a traveler, a wandering hero who takes the first opportunity to leave home and seek her destiny. She's not a reformed villainess, a woman haunted by her failures or traumatized by her losses and mistakes. She's a peacemaker and a warrior, and yes I do agree that she would kill if it was absolutely necessary but she has the wisdom to know when it's necessary and she doesn't carry the guilt of reckless destruction with her. She is isolated, caught between two cultures, and carries the heavy burden of the mythic hero who must always put aside her personal wants to serve the greater good, but she's a genuinely good person who came from a genuinely good place. She's not a dark character, and making her one simply doesn't ring true, even if you start from scratch with a reboot.

All scans from Wonder Woman #300, written by Roy and Dann Thomas, art by Keith Pollard. I advise anyone who gets a chance to pick it up and read the whole thing, because it has some very interesting ideas in it.

Arisia. In a movie!

Is it just me, or does Arisia sounds very much like the main character here?

The full-length animated Green Lantern: Emerald Knights will be distributed by Warner Home Video as a Blu-Ray™ Combo Pack and DVD. The film will also be available On Demand and for Green Lantern: Emerald Knights weaves six legendary stories of the Green Lantern Corps’ rich mythology around preparations for an attack by an ancient enemy. As the battle approaches, Hal Jordan mentors new recruit Arisia in the history of the Green Lantern Corps, telling tales of Avra (the first Green Lantern) and several of Hal’s comrades – including Abin Sur, Kilowog, Laira and Mogo. In the end, Arisia must rise to the occasion to help Hal, Sinestro and the entire Green Lantern Corps save the universe from the destructive forces of Krona.

I might just love this.

Two ways to brighten my day

Two good pieces of news via the increasingly indispensable DCWKA today. First, of interest to the widest audience, set photos and spectator camera footage of the in-production Wonder Woman TV show. My favorite is this one:



Oh, they've also made some minor adjustments to the costume.



I would've been okay with the light blue but I do like this better and I do like the red boots best. Kinda wish they'd do something about that oddly textured girdle, but I'll never get a perfect Wonder Woman unless I write and direct it. It looks like it works, and maybe when the dust settles the comic Wonder Woman (that we only know for sure will still be in pants after Odyssey) will have blue pants and red boots too.

And there's longer video of her chasing that dude at the end of this post, and DCWKA's got a poll.

Second, and really only notable to me and the other two Steve Trevor fans on the internet (I love you guys!), they printed my letter in Wonder Woman this week. (I am such nerd that it makes me super-excited to be in a lettercol for the first time.) As I am still waiting on the mail every week, DCWKA was kind enough to scan the lettercol for me.



You can click to enlarge but I'll make it easier for you.



I'm bit worried by the "surprised" (I may be an optimist among Wonder Woman fans, but I'm still a Wonder Woman fan so any surprises worry me) but otherwise very happy about it.

And isn't it amusing that none of these letters seem to like the JMS storyline?