So, theres a lot of noise in comic-book land about the announced redesign and “reboot” of Wonder Woman, the longest running female superhero.
Here’s an image from the Fox News story (which I couldn’t link, but I could copy… go figure) showing the old and new Wonder Woman outfits:
The most common complaint about the new duds seems to be that it has shed Wonder Woman’s patriotic “stars and stripes” image and replaced it with a “goth lite” look which seems more appropriate for a mall visit than for punching out bad guys.
Now, I guess this is just another example of my over-analyzing of things, but I have no attachment to Wonder Woman’s star-spangled briefs, nor to her gold embroidered bustier. I don’t have any problem with them, except that drawn by certain artists, her briefs have taken on a decidely diaperesque look which I found unsettling.
Diana Prince isn’t even an American folks! She’s an Amazon princess! It makes no sense for her to be wearing American patriotic attire. Now, it makes no sense for her to be wearing that biker-chick-chic either. Not to mention that fighting in a denim (or leather, it’s not clear) jacket seems somewhat constricting to me.
I’ve never been a Wonder Woman fan anyway. I’ve never really been a DC fan in the first place, and there are plenty of other female superheroes that you can choose from if you really want to find one. I’ve always liked Sue Storm, for example, although I liked Johnny’s mutant girlfriend “Crystal” back in the old FF days too. As far as sexiness is concerned, it would be hard to top some of the Wasp’s outfits over the years. But in reality the female villains tend to appeal most to my prurient interests. Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Mystique….
Oh heck, back to work… But count me as one who cares not one bit about Wonder Woman’s conversion to a trendy biker chick. I suspect the conversion won’t stick.
Didn’t she wear a white leotard back in the early 80s?
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Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackYes, the white spandex suit was one of her many incarnations. (A decent short resource is here: http://home.freeuk.net/moondog/wonder.htm)
She originated at the beginning of WWII and fought against the Axis — thus the Star Spangled Suit…
Yeah, I KNOW she’s an American creation and was part of the explosion of comic books during and just after WWII, that’s why she’s been drawn with American patriotic emblems.
But it never made SENSE in her actual mythology that she would dress like a Fourth of July drum majorette. That’s why I don’t care if she dumps the “iconic” attire. It never made sense to me anyway. If anything she should dress like an actual Amazon (although to be truly Amazonian she’d have to have “surgically removed” her right breast to allow for use of a bow, and to throw spears).
A few thoughts come to mind. First…
You have purient interests? I am shocked and disappointed.
Second, at least the new incarnation of Wonder Woman is not wearing a burqua. We should be grateful for the small things…
Finally, I think an Amazonian Wonder Woman would be equipped with some kind of high-tech prosthetic breast that could be removed and re-inserted at her convenience…or the convenience of her significant other, Wonder Man, if you know what I mean…
frankly after being exposed to all of the wonders of Linda Carter.
Anything less just isn’t good enough.
Oh, I have no doubt that there are other females I wouldn’t mind seeing in star spangled panties and gold-embroidered bustier…
Or even skin-tight leather pants and a useless-for-warmth 1/3 jacket with sleeves that only reach the elbows….
I’m not that picky.
Whatever else, I must say that I definitely appreciate the drawing skills of whoever drew the “new” Wonder Woman in that photo…
Jim Lee. That’s some good comic art, there, man.
the fixed version
http://scifiwire.com/2010/07/image-of-the-day-wonder-w.php
Yet another reason DC is getting destroyed by Marvel.
I got into a good discussion about this the other day. When Marvel went to reboot their core characters, they had the decency to create an entirely new line – the Ultimate universe. That’s the big problem with DC, it’s not just a costume change, their going in and retconning her entire history – something DC is well known for doing.
Like you said, it won’t stick.
Chase, I think that’s “not much to wonder about woman”.
Drax, I don’t read comic books anymore. But I do play D&D in a game store which has a full selection of comic books on display, and on occasion while waiting for the rest of the group to show up I’ll peruse some of the titles.
I know my analysis is necessarily shallow since I don’t read them, so I don’t get into the nitty gritty details of story lines or see some of the more subtle differences between the characters, but here’s my impression of the state of the comic book industry nonetheless…
For the past several years DC, Marvel, and even some of the “new” publishers, have been engaged in a non-stop “reboot” of a significant number of major characters. That “reboot” might be a simple costume design, or it might be a complete revamping of the character’s origins, motivations and personality.
At the same time the whole industry seems to continue to be trapped between it’s own desires and their need to react to the public perception of their products. It is clear from some of the stories I’ve browsed through that a significant subset of the writers/artists would prefer to produce an “adult” product that I would characterize as soft-core pornography. The panels are filled with visual and dialogue double entendres and overt sexual references. But they still conform to a general “PG” level of art and dialogue at a casual glance.
There seems to be a sort of audience schizophrenia that leads to a product that isn’t really an adult product, but isn’t truly suitable for young teenagers either. In fact more and more the product seems to be targeting male baby boomers while still trying to be “tame” enough to scrape together some level of attention from young boys.
My general feeling is that this is hurting the genre. They really need to decide what the genre is going to be and stick to it. It seems that they’ve decided that going for a pure teen market is a problem both because of the cost of the product these days, and because kids today have so many more competing entertainment products compared to when I was a teenager.
I suspect the product will eventually evolve into a purely adult product with nudity and sexual acts being depicted routinely.
Just based on the way the females are drawn in the comics I see, it is clear that a major objective in the creation of the product is to appeal to men’s desire to see hyper-attractive females in scanty clothing while in suggestive poses. And they do pretty good at that, even with the constraints of their schizophrenic market approach. Once they give up entirely on attracting young teenagers to the market, it will be pretty much anything goes.
Well, as Cullen pointed out, Marvel has taken a different route to keep things “fresh.” And, that’s the most important thing — to keep things fresh — new, while, at the same time, familiar.
A good look at the results of “keeping things fresh” appears here:
http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/15633.html
You’ll see a plethora of old characters in new titles, mini-series, and re-launches. Scattered in the top 100, you’ll find Spider-man and X-Men continuing series still showing well after all these years. (Of course, those titles have changed significantly in the past couple of years as well…)
What you won’t see much of is female super-heroes such as in your other post. They’ll appear in many titles, but don’t carry them.
What surprises me in that list is how competitive DC and Marvel seem to be. I would have thought with all the Marvel blockbuster movies out there that Marvel would have been much further ahead than they are.
My postings of the female superheroes in the other post wasn’t to try to show that female superheroes were more popular, just to show the style of art that infuses comics these days. It’s a lot easier to search for “comic female superhero” than it is to search for “female supporting cast member in superhero comic book”. The artwork is similar whether it’s a superhero or a sidekick or a love interest of a superhero.
DC has done remarkably well with talent over the past several years. The new Wonder Woman, for example, has not only the fan favorite Jim Lee doing the art (he also did some of the art on one of the most popular Batman runs — and of course, in Marvel, X-Men and others) but also has as the writer Michael Straczynski who re-launched Spider-Man and other titles over the past several years. (You may be more familiar with him as the creator/writer of Babylon 5)
The stable of writers and artists for DC has been impressive and the re-launches of the many different heroes has created excitement for titles which had been seeing hard days (Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Justice League and others)
For me, DC has been more exciting overall for the past several years than Marvel. (I except the past couple of years as I haven’t read a single comic since I closed the store…and I know that a BUNCH of changes occurred at Marvel of which I’m totally oblivious…)
Every single Marvel title has rocked socks the past two years. Starting with Civil War/House of M, Marvel refreshed their entire universe without retconning any characters. There’s a vibrancy to Marvel I see that I don’t get out of DC works. Now, I’ve always been biased toward Marvel, so that colors a lot of my opinion, but I’ve really tried recently and I just can’t get into DC books.
However, DC’s mature line, Vertigo, has many of the best adult-themed books going.
And Cosmic, “I suspect the product will eventually evolve into a purely adult product with nudity and sexual acts being depicted routinely.”
I don’t think that’s very far away. Popular titles in independent companies include books like The Boys by Garth Ennis and, like all Ennis’ books, it’s full of “adult situations.” That’s not to say it’s a bad book. Far from it, it’s one of the best things on the shelves, but it’s definitely not for kids.
Didn’t Marvel get bought out, or absorbed by, or in some other euphemism, become part of Disney?
Yeah, not too long ago. So far it doesn’t seem to have impacted their comics at all. I mean, the Max series is Marvel’s equivalent of DCs Vertigo and it’s as raunchy as it can be sometimes (especially Punisher Max which was written for a while by Garth Ennis).
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