Ame-Comi Wonder Woman Spoilers
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1 week ago
I also love how everyone says “Didn’t you used to date WW?” with a “So how did you fuck that up?” unspoken followup to it.
…I’m about 85% certain at this point that it was Diana who screwed up the relationship, too.
Lois and Diana team-up
therearecertainshadesoflimelight:
Via Certain Shades of LimelightI love this issue. Superman 661 written by Kurt Busiek, starring Superman, Lois & Wonder Woman.
He melded the bronze and modern age but also brought something uniquely his own in to the mix.
I can’t even express how upset I was the day I learned he was off the book. He just grokked Superman, Clark and Lois.
One of my favorite issues ever and a really awesome example of friendship between Lois and Diana. Leave it to Busiek to remember that you can write two strong women without pitting them against each other. Also, the Clark/Diana friendship in this issue is so completely lovely.
Although, I do have to say….I know it’s innocent. But Lois and Clark bringing Diana back to their apartment could have gone a whole different way particularly considering Marston’s history. LOL
In case you’re wondering why I didn’t rant at DC there…
….even though execs at the parent company have stated in the past that they don’t think female action stars work, and they’ve been dicking around on Wonder Woman for decades?
Well, the changes in the New 52 for Wonder Woman tell me they are trying to set up a movie for her. They’ve brought back the in-franchise love interest, changed the race of the best friend character, (unwisely) streamlined her origin to an easily understood standard that gives her the same divine enemy that Hercules had, and set her up to do more Conan the Barbarian meets the Modern World style scenes.
Whether you like or hate what Johns and Azzarello are doing, it’s pretty clear WHY they are doing it. DC at least knows they have a female icon that they are desperate to get to the screen, even if she scares them shitless.
therearecertainshadesoflimelight:
33-36/100 » Lois Lane
“A Day in the Life” with Wonder Woman and Lois Lane. This issue is one of the most famous issues out there for a reason.
And if you think this issue is actually about Clark as opposed to what it’s really about…THEM…then you didn’t get the point.
I actually don’t like this issue.
I agree, it is the best of the run, but it’s still not something I love to reread over and over again. It’s the Jimenez writing style. Very little action, overly serious, telling rather than showing (Lois talking about Diana’s great and bawdy sense of humor that we NEVER see). He was usually better, I think, than Perez usually was (though I enjoy the high point of the Perez run, “Who Killed Myndi Mayer?” more than this, the high point of the Jimenez run), but for me they still have the same weakness where there’s just no… substance. Combined with the art style that seems to be adored by everyone but me, there’s this a wall between me and the characters in both runs.
This issue is not famous because it was a great story, or a great character study, or an exceptional moment. It was famous because it was Lois Lane and Wonder Woman, the two most iconic women in superhero comics, spending a day together. Normally, we get Superman and Wonder Woman teaming up with Lois in the background for a few jokes, or we get Lois as a guest star with a fun moment. This was one of very rare moments where we got the two hanging out, spending a day together, and talking of important things.
As readers, we want that, we demand that. It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t actually one of the best-written Wonder Woman or Lois Lane stories of all time, the concept ALONE, Lois follows Diana for an article and asks some honest questions to get to the heart of her as a person (This should have happened in the Perez run, actually), made it an instant classic. By idea alone, it gets to be a favorite issue because the setup annoyingly never happens.
Via Certain Shades of Limelight
2 weeks ago | 2,794 notes
therearecertainshadesoflimelight:
Via Certain Shades of LimelightMother’s Day tribute to some of DC’s mothers.
[From left to right:]
Koriand’r, Alura-El, Hippolyta & the Amazons of Themyscira, Donna Troy, Martha Kent, Lois Lane, Pantha, Dinah Lance, Barbara Gordon, Dana Drake, Kate Spencer, Stephanie Brown, Helena Sandsmark, Ellen Baker, Linda Park-West, Bonnie King-Jones, Bianca Reyes, Crystal Brown, Talia al Ghul, Lara-El, Mera, Mary Grayson, Martha Wayne.
Oh my God….this is glorious.
trypr replied to your quote: Umm…how is Steve Trevor being the first man Diana…
I think a lot of people are not sold on the whole Tarzan/Jane thing, or the whole “fall in love at first sight” thing; no more than the idea that a person has a destined/”true” love. Experience, belief and perspective are bound to affect that.It’s not that, though. It’s not that she fell in love quick because honestly, they can lengthen his stay on the island to draw that out (some treatments have done this) or kick that down the line to their interaction afterwards. It’s always that he was the FIRST guy she saw, and she ran off with him. The accusations that it’s sexist are always about not having met other men first, not about the amount of time it takes. But this is a thing, when a male character who has been isolated and never met a woman meets one and runs off with her.. it’s the cause for chuckling at worst.
Same story idea used with Wonder Woman? It’s a sign of how sexist the narrative is, and used to justify getting rid of the less powerful male love interest.
Well, my experience of this sort of discussion in WW fandom is that opposing sides usually try to paint all disagreement into a corner. For what it’s worth, I agree with you that it’s not categorically sexist but I still feel the way it was written often was; Steve Trevor as a “Prince Charming” figure who implicitly deserved her. That was his role in the narrative, and that was the problem.
Perhaps she meets him, they spend time together, there’s a strong attraction. Perhaps she’s fascinated by the world and wants to go see it, even couples that with an “official” mission to help. And Steve wants to head home and it’s convenient, given it all, that they go together, but he is not her focus. Maybe there’s tension and compromise. Likely it’s not a conventional relationship. I can imagine how it might work, but it’s not team Steve/Diana, as such, and it’s not something which would make Wonder Woman suddenly better, imo.
I’m in the segment of the fanbase that has little investment in Steve Trevor as a love interest: I’ve nothing against her having a “Steve Trevor” as a love interest, but I don’t think it really adds anything, save to give people who do have a vested interest in that an outlet (and why not).
For what it’s worth I think the arguements that he is implicitly undeserving, for whatever reason other than his behaviour in an arc, are nonsense and I’m all for Diana dating/handfasting/whathaveyou non-capes.
I am always interested by and enjoy your passionate and insightful analysis of the character, but it often feels as if there’s a false dichotomy on this issue. Tarzan/Jane and guys running off with the first girl they see: none of that appeals to me and, like a lot of “classic romance”, feels laced with binarist patriarchal messages, or just stupidity, if not explicit sexism. And I don’t think Wonder Woman ever genuinely deconstructed that. Ymmv.
All, right, I have trouble with the latter part of the post because you spell your problem out so well in the first paragraph. Let me bold it for you:
but I still feel the way it was written often was; Steve Trevor as a “Prince Charming” figure who implicitly deserved her. That was his role in the narrative, and that was the problem.“Deserved her.” See where you’re tripped up here? Let me say it once again: Wonder Woman is not a prize.
Wonder Woman is not the person who is deserved or won. Wonder Woman is an inversion of the narrative role where the princess is won through heroism. Wonder Woman is the hero of the narrative.
I’ve discussed this before. Steve is passively desirable and doesn’t earn her because he is MEANT to be passively desirable and she is the active character.
And I’m really not trying to paint you into a corner here, it’s just that it’s a tough attitude to discard. Even though you don’t think he’s implicently undeserving, you still said it bothered you that you were expected to assume he deserved her. And really, I always found it fascinating that despite the fact that he’s uniformly introduced as very good-looking, very supportive of her, extremely good-natured and decorated war veteran many of us still feel he doesn’t “deserve” Wonder Woman. Would you say that of a female love interest for a male character? That, despite being generally portrayed as beautiful and a good person, she has to do something special to deserve the hero?
I’ve seen female love interests derided as undeserving, but that’s usually presented as something they DID that was mean-spirited or cruel that specifically discredited them, not because they were simply seen as a bit bland. With Steve, it’s that somehow he has never done enough to fit the love interest role.
And you can argue that Wonder Woman never properly deconstructed classical romance, but that would be because it hasn’t had a chance to since Steve was removed at the end of the Bronze Age. The writing techniques were just maturing then. They missed the last thirty years when we were really playing with superheroes, and most of the knock-offs of WW from then have been paired with a Superman knock-off, we only just NOW have a WW analogue with a Steve analogue in Supurbia. The opportunity to turn classical romance on it’s heel is something Steve added to the narrative. Steve also, as a military officer, represents patriarchal authority and demonstrates that a force like Wonder Woman can overrule and command respect and adoration from patriarchal authority, and transform it.
Even amidst the sexism of the 40s, 50s and 60s, the mere fact that it reversed the roles and Diana was the active prince dragon-fighting character put a different dynamic on it. Every story was about Diana, about the things she does, and they show her taking the lead and being the active director in a relationship with a man.
That was revolutionary, even as written by Bob Kanigher.
In the 40s, in the middle of wartime, there would be scenes with General Darnell, Colonel Trevor and other high-ranking military officers standing around listening to Wonder Woman’s ideas. That in itself is amazing. What is even more amazing is when you stop to think that she is the girlfriend of one of these officers, and she is not being written off and he has no problem whatsoever with his girlfriend being better at his job than he is.
And that’s why we still need him in the narrative, because even today we have parts written out of movies because they feel an action heroine saving her husband emasculates him. With Steve we have a guy who is uniformly happy with being outmatched in the “manly ways” by not just a woman but a woman he’s involved with, and retains a traditionally masculine demeanor. This is pretty much the only character who plays this role to a heroine of iconic status, and it is a tragedy we never got to see him developed in the modern-story-telling line as we did Lois Lane.
I think there’s enough of him in the old pre-Crisis stories to get a personality with merits and flaws across, he’s not simply a bland Prince Charming cipher. And the way he was set up originally, as a handsome brave man with a record of having been a war hero was to make him as desirable as your standard female love interest was. It was really the Bronze Age and the post-Crisis era that developed the hell out of these characters, and Steve was consigned to a mere 60 issues of the Bronze Age. (He does come off rather well in them.)
My apologies, I should have qualified that comment better.
I meant to fault the implicit idea that he either does or does not deserve her, as well: A person is not a prize, I agree. That was also my intention when I wrote that painting him as “undeserving” was nonsense. However, when I have read pre-crisis Wonder Woman stories, the way in which their relationships is presented seems, to me, to treat her (and him) exactly that way. He may not be a completely bland Prince Charming cipher but the point of the Prince Charming figure is that he is your “reward” (or you are his), he is person you end up with. The narrative always assumes that, to my eyes: it is partly a consequence of the period, yes. And it’s implicitly patriarchal.
Lois and Clark have had the same historical problem, except we’ve had some modern writers actually write them well. And Lois was always a far better developed character than Steve, as you point out. But I would still have to be very picky about which modern writers.
You could certainly write a male love interest named Steve Trevor, even as the first man she met, who would work. But personally, I don’t find many merits in the pre-Crisis depictions of him, though I know what you are getting at.It’s pathetic that Hollywood (and enough of it’s audience) remains convinced that the accomplishment of women undermines the endeavour of men, but even if you have him in the role you describe it still seems to play into a dated, binary gender narrative to me. Even if you reverse the roles it remains so, and I’m not convinced that depicting conventionally masculine men being comfortable with women who can exceed them in conventionally masculine fields really addresses the problem. It still reinforces a hierarchy of gendered accomplishment and we just as easily end up with “Strong Female Characters” instead of/as well as “Strong Male Characters”. It even seems a mistake to present her accomplishments through the lens of that kind of relationship: if that is the intent.
That’s not to say it’d be a bad thing to have Steve as a LI with positive conventionally masculine characteristics, you can obviously go further than leaving him as a cipher. I just don’t agree it’s a radical or especially transformative move for the comic these days, and outside that; having him play into his traditional role is problematic, from my perspective.
Don’t apologize. You said something EXTREMELY pertinent before.
I have to disagree completely, though, that his role isn’t important or transformative. Now I’m coming back from a long trip so I’m gonna have a little trouble getting this across, but it’s important.:
Steve Trevor remains one of very few male characters placed in the love interest role for a woman who outpowers and outstars him. That’s why his role is still transformative, because it HASN’T been copied regularly, it hasn’t been unpacked, deconstructed, studied inside and out like Lois Lane, Wonder Woman herself, or even Jimmy Olsen has. There are startlingly few Steve Trevor knockoffs out there, especially compared to the myriad Wonder Woman and Lois Lane knockoffs. Female superheroes are regularly paired up with male heroes. Supposed “Equals”, because guess what… a non-powered love interest is unfairly not considered an equal partner.
The role of the non-powered love interest is traditionally a female role. It’s still permissable to have women in that role. We have explored women in that role. We have done thousands of variations of women in that role. We have strengthened women in that role and moved past the traditional formulas from old comics to complex storylines using non-powered female love interests as capable, interesting, multi-faceted characters.
We have no done that with non-powered male love interests. I honestly can not think of a non-powered male love interest that has lasted more than a few years. (In modern comics, this is a couple story arcs.)
Here’s the thing, as we addressed gender imbalances in the narratives, we did it in a one-sided way. We moved women to traditionally male roles. And that is awesome. And then we strengthened the women in traditionally female roles, and that is awesome too.
But we never put men in the traditionally female roles.
And if we never put men in the traditionally female position… we have never addressed the gender binary. We’ve never addressed the problem of considering traditionally feminine traits or roles worthless. We’ve done NOTHING to address that prettyh much ALL of the problem with the gender binary is that one gender is considered weak and the other is considered a positive, so we basically load all traits considered not worthwhile onto the female.
The idea that a complete reversal rather than a half-reversal “reinforces gendered hierarchy of accomplishment” is, quite simply, nonsense. All we do by going half-way is further code an entire class of characters—love interests—as weak and worthless. In order to raise women up we’ve given them male positions or male traits. but we never went the opposite direction so masculinity as a construct is unchallenged. Instead we have some women who, by following certain rules, transcend feminine roles. The roles remain feminine because men are never in those roles
. They cannot be ungendered until it is common for male characters to be in them. But we still wince at looking at men in female positions, or men with female traits. So the binary remains with male = good, female = bad because we’re not really opening all the roles up to every gender, we’re just letting some female characters take the male roles. Y’know, because they’re special and willing to act like men.That is what actually CAUSES your “Strong Female Characters” problem, where female characters are given superficial masculine traits to substitute for actual equality in the narrative. Men remain stars, women occasionally get to be stars but usually they are undercut because of their femaleness (and god help them if they are actually traditionally feminine in any way.) Men can be supporting characters, as long as they aren’t in positions that emasculate them. Those positions are for other female characters.
What’s happening is when you say “Well, that’s not really transformative because it keeps the traditional setup, just reversed” neglects to take into account that dude… we have NEVER accepted that particular reversal. We’ve only let it through halfway. And until we start playing with that, until we let masculine men be in feminine roles, and men have feminine traits but remain in starring roles, until we start messing with men and the definition of manhood and expanding it like we’ve expanded the possibilities for womanhood… we’re never getting out of this binary. You need that role reversal.
Wonder Woman wasn’t the first female hero, but she’s notable for her gender role reversal. Throwing out Steve made the whole thing just half-assed.
Now, as for Steve’s value as a character… Look, I seriously don’t get this whole thing about “I think a character named Steve Trevor would work, but not Steve as we’ve seen” because superhero comics have EVOLVED. Not only the techniques, but our culture, our values, and our definitions of positive masculinity have evolved. You could NEVER have Steve Trevor exactly as he was back then. It’s like having Batman run around with a gun, or Superman throw normal humans into the river with no due process (Oh wait, they JUST tried that and it fell flat on it’s face.)
Steve was updated quite a bit n the Silver and Bronze Ages. Like Diana herself, he retained some core character traits but reflected the values of each era. It’s actually interesting to chart, because while in recent years WW has become more harsh and forceful, in that first few years Steve was softened over time. I’m not sure what trait you have a problem with, unless it’s the military job (and I can write a few thousand more words on why THAT little thing thematically suits them.)
Cultural context has changed, of COURSE the character will change with it. Steve Trevor, unlike Lois Lane, didn’t have a chance to advance with the post-Crisis world yet. That’s why Johns did an update with him in Justice League. That’s still panning out. The character traits displayed into those issues line up with character traits displayed pre-Crisis, but updated to the modern storytelling style.
If you still don’t think Steve is a valuable potential partner or an interesting character distilled for a modern era, you are absolutely wrong but it’s one of those things that’s a matter of personal preference and not something we can really make any headway with.
As for why it should be Steve Trevor, the dude who crashed on the island… Well, that’s for Diana herself. I’ve outlined it on my blog, but here’s the cliff notes: 1) Diana has no positive ideas about masculinity until she rescues this completely helpless person. it demonstrates that what we value in men (flawless strength, basically) is not what she finds attractive in a man at all. 2) He is a constant reminder that Wonder Woman’s first act as a superhero was an act of mercy. This is something too often forgotten, and no matter how much they try to harden her if her origin is that she saved a helpless enemy, nursed him back to health and found herself falling in love with him, you CAN’T completely make her as a hateful, violent person. 3) Wonder Woman for most of her print run is trying to do two things, spread her culture’s philosophy and open her isolationist all-female culture to the outside world where men and women live together. It’s not just that the men are wrong, it’s also that the Amazons didn’t see anything worth keeping about them. A marriage to the first man ever brought to her isolationist female culture makes him a member of that culture through the sacred rites of Hera, the goddess of womanhood. That’s, pretty fucking big even if the current writer has silly notions about making Hera the big villain of the run.
I could do with a character named Steve Trevor I suppose, but the optimal usage of the character would be to take the traditional setup and update him. Marston was an odd odd man, but he wasn’t an idiot when he set things up like he did.
Now, if you want a character named Steve Trevor that is a new character who shares the name and some of the same experiences in Wonder Woman, see the post-Crisis era. The original character was created specifically to show a man who’s masculinity was not only not threatened by a powerful woman, but who found himself drawn sexually and emotionally to a woman more power than he was physically, who adhered to a better philosophy, and who was a more natural leader than he, a commissioned military officer, was. Over the pre-Crisis era that security, a practical military mindset and the unusual trait of having more female friends than male friends are his most consistent character traits. The post-Crisis version of the character felt a fatherly affection to a naive superheroine who was physically stronger than him, but was not in love with her. Instead, he went for a shy woman who was a few decades his junior, that worked directly for him and was 5 pay-grades below him.
Via the light fantastic
Via Defrosting the 'FridgeWell, this is pretty cool!
Wonder Woman referencing that she’s faster than Superman when in comes to combat and reflexes.
“…Certainly you have an advantage in raw speed, but, you have to think before you respond. I’m a trained warrior. My reactions are in my muscle memory.”-Wonder Woman.
And a Martial arts great Bruce Lee vs. Sprint King Usain Bolt comment from Bruce, which I understood, instantly. Yep. I seee your point there, Bruce. ^_^
From Justice League Of America #27. Page 22. ;)
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