This is my fourth post on Wonder Woman this week; for the earlier ones see one, two, three.
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Way back when I was bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and not filled to my ears with congealed bile, bitterness, and general cantankeousness, George Perez was pretty much my favorite comics artist. As a result, I bought the first couple years of his late eighties Wonder Woman reboot.
Time passed, and with all the filling up with bile and what-not…well, anyway, I haven’t read or much thought of either George Perez or his run on Wonder Woman in a long, long time. But since I was writing about Wonder Woman, I thought I’d disentomb the back issues from the fossilized long boxes, redistributing large piles of lint and small piles of cats.
So, now that I’ve reread these things for the first time in at least a decade, what’s the verdict?
First, and somewhat inevitably, I have to admit that Perez is no longer one of my favorite artists. Not that I think he’s bad, by any means. He’s obviously quite technically gifted, and he has an especial gift for faces. I actually remembered the sequence below, where Diana first does her bullets and bracelets thing, and I still think it’s pretty great, with a lot of the expressive charm that I appreciate in good shojo:
As is evident even in that little sequence above, Perez draws women with real sensuality and grace. His layouts are interesting and varied too. He’s a good artist; when his stuff is put in front of me, I like looking at it, which puts him head and shoulder, and, hell, waist above the vast majority of mainstream artists working today. But… compared to super-hero artists who really thrill me, like Jim Aparo or Nick Cardy or Neal Adams, or, for that matter, Mike Sekowsky in his WW run, or Harry Peter, Perez seems — well, kind of bland, I guess. His drawing is good, but not great; and his design sense always seems more utilitarian than inspired. For example, look at his wraparound cover for the first issue of WW.
This is supposed to be a tour de’force; lots of stuff happening, the whole issue shown in a single two page image. But basically it just sort of falls into a layout no-man’s land — not supremely detailed enough to be ravishing, not decisive enough in its use of space to be striking. There’s nothing wrong with any individual piece of it, or with the overall effect, even, but there’s nothing about it that makes me look at it and say “holy shit!”
Look, for example, at the (barely there) drapery on the mostly-nude Hippolyta kneeling before hercules on the left side of page. That cloth should cling and curve to her body…but it doesn’t. It just kind of sits there. Again, there’s nothing wrong with it, it’s not bad…it’s just not great.
All right, now that I’ve won that argument with my 17-year-old-self….
I’d actually remembered the first issue story as being pretty good…and it is pretty good. Not great, but pretty good. Greg Potter’s dialogue is overcarbonated in the mighty Marvel manner, but without the nudgy jocosity that made Stan Lee’s scripts tolerable (random selection: “But even into Paradise there can one day come a serpent!” groan. Still, you can see that Perez and Potter brought a lot of love and a lot of thought to the character. In particular, Perez and Potter went to town on the mythological background. There is, of course, lots of name-dropping deities and showing off erudition (Ares and Aphrodite are married! Isn’t that cool!) But there’s also several moments when all their reading actually allows them to approximate the tone and some of the power of actual myth. The sequence where Hippolyta and the Amazons are betrayed and raped by Hercules and his men has a brutal, tragic inevitability — a sense of smart, noble people entwined in betrayal and bloodshed by their own weaknesses. Similarly, Wonder Woman’s creation is both strange and poetic. The Amazons in this telling are the souls of women who were murdered by men, reincarnated by the Gods. Hippolyta (presumably the spirit of the cave-woman with whom the comic opens, though, in a very nice touch, this is never spelled out) was pregnant when she was murdered by her husband, and Diana is that unborn child’s spirit, infused into a body of clay that Hippolyta molds by the sea. It sounds complicated and kind of goofy I guess, but it’s done quietly and it’s really moving — as is the excitement of the immortal Amazons at the chance they now all have to help raise a child. ( Actually, this is somethng I probably appreciated less when I first read the book. I didn’t have a kid of my own then.)
Overall, then, I would say that this was easily the best take on Wonder Woman after Moulton. I would say that except for one thing. Wonder Woman isn’t in the comic. The story is all about Hippolyta and the Amazons. Diana shows up in the last pages, but she doesn’t become Wonder Woman till the last page. And, alas, that last page is ridiculous. That swimsuit with the pneumatic bustier and the star-spangled bottoms…all the mythological verisimilitude Potter and Perez have put so much effort into is just sacrificed on the altar of an old dead guy’s anachronistic fetish-wear.
And that’s kind of it. The rest of the series never really recovers from the fact that it has to focus on Diana. Sure, Potter and Perez do what they can to salvage the situation. They ditch the invisible plane, for example; this Wonder Woman can just fly under her own power. And they do their best to untangle the Steve Trevor/Diana Prince mess. In canon, WW pretty much becmae Diana Prince in order to attract Steve/not intimidate him; she was slumming for love. This is obviously fairly icky and not especially empowering — especially as Steve has over the years vacillated between being a rank fool and a manipulative asshole.
Steve Trevor, Fool; by Moulton and Harry Peter
Steve Trevor, Dick, by Robert Kanigher and Ross Andru
So, anyway, Potter and Perez just got rid of the Diana Prince identity altogether, and relegated Trevor to being an older uncle figure. Indeed, in the series itself, Diana has, through the whole first two years, exactly zero (0) romantic interests. (I think she had an abortive date with Superman in John Byrne’s miniseries at this time. Some ideas are so obvious they’re brilliant. And then, some ideas are so obvious they’re just fucking stupid. The Superman/Wonder Woman pairing is one of the latter (now Wonder Woman/Martian Manhunter on the other hand…or Wonder Woman/Black Canary….))
Where was I? Oh, right. Perez and Potter tried to rejigger the character to make her less ridiculous. And they had some success. The supporting cast, in particular — which is almost entirely female — is interesting and vared; there’s a scholar of ancient Greece, her daughter, a publicist, Steve Trevor, a (much-much-revised) Etta Candy; they all are fairly interesting and personable. I wouldn’t mind just reading about them and what they’re up to and how they related to Diana, how she adjust to living in a new world — stuff like that.
But, alas, we’re in a super-hero comic. And that means there have to be villains and super-battles and high-minded diatribes and everything bigger than life. And, man, it’s stupid. By the third comic or so, the whole — oh, no, I’ve been defeated, what shall I do, wait I’ll use my magic lasso! — has already become an over-used cliche. And when she’s not suddenly remembering how to use her main fucking weapon, Diana’s always thinking deep thoughts like “how strange these mortals are! I have much to learn from their courage and beauty!” Or some such. She’s the Silver Surfer, only with (slightly) more clothes.
Part of the problem is just mid-level super-hero storytelling, and a desperate dearth of interesting bad guys — Ares, the main villian of villains, just gives up when he realizes that his plan to destroy the earth will…cause the destruction of the earth. Part of the problem, though, is though they’ve fiddled with the character, they’re still saddled with Moulton’s creation. And while they avoid (at least for the most part) the bondage, they are stuck with some of his other preconceptions
The core of Perez’s story (scripted after the first few issues, and somewhat unfortunately, by Len Wein) is Diana’s mission as an emissary from Paradise Island, bringing alien knowledge, educating man’s world. But this mission is completely incoherent. What does Diana have to teach? If it’s peace, she should probably stop hitting people. If it’s how to be a strong woman…isn’t that a little condescending? Especially since she’s being written by men? Who keep drawing her in a one-piece? (Perhaps the message is that boned corsettes can do wonders.)
Basically, the problem with the series is that it wants to be an adventure series and it wants to have a message. But Moulton’s message (women are strong…because they are tied up!) won’t do — and yet they can’t quite abandon it either. So the series wanders on, mostly as a pro-forma super-hero book, but with half-digested pretensions. It can’t loosen up enough to be goofy, but it can’t spit out any words of wisdom which make sense. The series certainly has some nice moments — the sad death of Mindi Mayer, reprinted in the Greatest Wonder Woman stories, is touching. But it’s also really irritating; in a story about a woman’s sad suicide and about (presumably) female relationships, why is the narration in the head of a male detective drooling over Diana’s charms? For the most part, though, the stories aren’t either touching or irritating; they’re just tedious. I can’t believe I got this for two whole years. This time through, I couldn’t hack that many. I made it through ten, and that’s all. Back to the longbox for you, WW.
Update: All right, several folks in comments have goaded me to try Greg Rucka’s run…so I’ll give that a shot and report back…maybe next week? We’ll see how the schedule is….
Update 2: …and fixed embarrassing naming error. Duh.
Update 3: And part 5.
I applaud your close and critical look at the character, but I don’t think any long-running superhero would fare much better under such scrutiny. The whole “Superdickery” meme is a fine example of that.
I liked the Perez era and the vision of a young, inexperienced Diana. Clunky dialogue? Sure, you bet, but that’s at least partly the era.
I like that WW had a mission of peace/education, but I agree no one’s ever done a great job at articulating it — though I really liked Greg Rucka’s work in that regard. It’s a shame DC editorial jettisoned all that to reboot WW as just another dumb monster-fighter with a lame secret ID.
Gail Simone gets some nice results, but I wish she weren’t saddled with that editorially driven status quo.
Perez and Rucka, especially, took WW a long way from Moulton and produced some really good stories. I’d like to see future writers carry on further.
I don’t agree that no other character would fare well. There have been lots of great Batman stories, from Frank Miller to Bob Haney to the wonderful TV series. Same with Superman (Alan Moore’s work comes to mind.) Or Spider-Man; the current Marvel Adventures series is very nicely done. And so forth.
There is a real appeal to the innocent Diana; I think that’s part of why I like that bullets and bracelets sequence so much; her reactions are sweet in a shojoey way. Unfortunately, that innocence too often slid into Silver Surfer pontificating of the what-fools-these-mortals-be kind of nonsense.
Is there a Rucka trade that you’d especially recommend?
Rucka’s run on Wonder Woman is one long story arc, so reading only one or two of the four trade paperbacks might not be the ideal way to experience/criticize it.
Rucka did do a one-shot WW tp called The Hiketeia that I remember as being heavy-handed yet enjoyable, but if Silver-Surfer-esque melodrama isn’t your thing, you may want to skip it. That said, I do think Moulton would’ve liked the cover:
http://www.dccomics.com/media/product/1/4/1463_400x600.jpg
I’m going to try the Hekkatai (or however you spell it.) We’ll see if it inspires me to go on.
Moulton might have liked it, but…ick. I presume that’s Alex Ross again. The man’s a blight….
Suggesting that Wonder Woman is an inherently flawed, failed concept is probably provocative to some mainstream comics fans, but honestly, she started as someone’s theory of what would be a good idea (a superhero for girls!), rather than being a genuinely good idea–and soon lost even that meager rationale, reduced to being famous for being famous, a la Liz Taylor.
I’m not telling you anything you haven’t just written four posts about, but it shouldn’t be controversial that some characters simply don’t work, or they don’t work past the idiosyncratic spark of their original creators. here’s nothing wrong with limited shelf life. Yet this simple reality is warped by trademark holders who have unlimited interest in making money off of limited concepts, and by readers who refuse to let ideas go, even in the face of continued creative failure. Plastic Man, Captain Marvel, and the New Gods are obvious examples–but really, the same can be said for most superheroes. Most popular culture, really.
Every once in a while an Ed Brubaker meets a Captain America and maybe sorta justifies publishing a retirement-age character for a while, but 99% of these things haunt the racks decades after they’ve expired by any sane measure, zombie superhero comics subsisting on ever-smaller portions of atrophied brains. Being a superhero comic fan is all about embracing diminished expectations, about eking a little enjoyment out of those specific aspects or stray issues that defy the overwhelming banality. Hell, I’ve done it for more than 30 years.
Yes; Plastic Man and Captain Marvel are the two analogues I thought of too. Very individual creations. Though even they don’t have the sexual/gender weirdness WW does…
Even the matches supposedly made in heaven, like Kyle Baker on Plastic Man, Jeff Smith’s SHAZAM and Darwyn Cooke’s Spirit have struck me as nicely drawn and otherwise entirely pointless–at least from a creative standpoint. I appreciate having to pay the bills.
Is this your last entry on WW? This is shaping up to be a really great series of posts.
But one minor nitpick: when you wrote about Hera and the Amazons, I’m pretty sure you meant Hippolyta. Hera is queen of the gods, the latter is queen of the Amazons.
Agggh! Of course you’re right; it’s Hippolyta. I’ll fix that….
I’ll probably post some more on WW in the not too distant future if time permits….
Speaking of Hippolyta, I’ve often suspected that a lot of writers would rather write about her instead of her goofy daughter. She has all the mythical attributes of Wonder Woman, but she doesn’t dress in a swimsuit and she isn’t obligated to play by the standard superhero rules.
I wish I could find the link, but I remember reading an interview with Gail Simone where she went on and on about how great Hippolyta was and how she wanted to write a series about her. Just an anecdote of course, but it is one way to exploit the Wonder Woman brand without getting undermined by Moulton’s private obsessions.
Interesting articles that I’m enjoying, even if I’m not fully accepting your conclusions. I think the strongest stories of the Perez run are actually after he stopped drawing the book himself.
Also, I can’t seem to copy and paste the section, but when you talk about comic artists that thrill you, you mention Harry Potter. In this context I assume you actually meant to refer to Wonder Woman artist Harry Peter.
And double argh. That’s what I get for writing this late last night, I guess…
I don’t have the later part of the perez run, as I said…but…yeah…not especially inspired to try to find it, I’m afraid….
Isn’t it Greg Potter, not George Peter? Or am I wrong about that?
Don’t trust Greg Rucka
Yes…fixed. Sigh.
Well…we’ll see with Rucka. I think I looked thorugh that graphic novel once and wasn’t impressed…but maybe it’ll improve on a closer look….
Excellent set of essays; I've never really liked WW as a character to read and follow, but I've really liked "her" as something to study; all that stuff about Moulton is just so interesting, and WW's different versions are a great way to track the zeitgeist of the country and the comics industry. All of which to say, it's clear to me that WW is a good concept, but not usually a good comic. My 3-yr-old daughter just looooves WW; but she's too young to really understand the stories (superfriends comics, yay). She just likes that WW is the girl superhero that goes w/Batman & Superman. She identifies. So WW stays alive outside her generally midling books b/c she's THE female superhero. She's iconic. But once you actually get into HER stories (as opposed to generic superhero stories, or team stories, where she's one of the gang), there's not much there there (or TOO MUCH there there).
Rucka, like Perez, seemed to want to shed all the kink stupidity and keep the idea of an ambassador, of sorts, from a lost culture. Where Perez wrote her wide-eyed and inexperienced, Rucka presents a Diana several years down the road, more confidence, and in full swing with her “mission.” We see that, while comics have focused on super slugfests, she’s had an embassy apparatus, public engagements and charity work on the back burner all along. I thought this was a great idea, and well handled.
He also tried to show us some of the philosophy Diana espouses, and that’s tougher to do. The issues where she fights with the Flash over wildfire policy were both interesting and awkward. Here’s a thought: Batman and Superman have very clear concepts (victim of crime fights crime on its own superstitious, cowardly terms; the immigrant metaphor) while Wonder Woman’s original concept is unbearably awful, and if you try to make it intelligent by sayin, “Okay, she comes with a message of some kind, let’s keep that and update the message,” you then have to make the message resonant and intelligent, but also simple enough for a 22-page action comic. That’s a taller order, I think, than staying true to Batman’s core narrative, you know?
As a commenter notes above, Rucka never got to pay off on many of his subplots and apparent overall goals, thanks to destructive editorial fiat. Still, I think his run, taken as a bookend to Perez’ relaunch, shows the direction the character could be taken to be at least as relevant and interesting as any other spandex icon.
The first two or three Rucka collections (Down to Earth, Bitter Rivals, Eye of the Gorgon, I think) lay out these strengths, such as you may find them. Certainly the first volume, with its attempt to set up a new status quo and raise some issues for future exploration, would give you a good taste of the potential, or lack thereof.
Again, I don’t agree that Wonder Woman’s original concept was unbearably awful, any more than R. Crumb’s concepts are unbearably awful — which is to say, yes, it is unbearably awful in some sense, but that’s because it’s individual and weird and tied up (as it were) with fetish material which is uncomfortable. Superman and Batman are booooring. That’s why you can use them for anything. Wonder Woman had actual artistic content…which is why it’s both embarrassing and difficult to emulate.