This is part of a roundtable on Marston/Peter’s Wonder Woman #28. The roundtable index is here.
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Wonder Woman #28 is a great example of the Marston-Peter team at its most gloriously over-the-top. A group of prisoners on Transformation Island, the Paradise Island reformatory, escape and spend thirty-six pages trying to destroy Wonder Woman, Queen Hippolyta, the Amazons, and Wonder Woman’s sidekicks, the Holliday Girls, only to be (of course) foiled at the end by everybody’s favorite Amazon. The prisoners are a piece of work: almost half of them are drag kings. One of them is an evil snowman.
Could anyone get away with using such wacky characters today? Maybe. In the 1990s, John Byrne resurrected Egg Fu, not only wacky but racist to boot, and got away with it. Personally, I love the beautiful villains — and for the most part, Marston’s and Peter’s villainesses were beautiful — like Giganta, “formerly a gorilla.” In fancy bras and filmy skirts, they resembled a cross between Hollywood harem girls of the period, and all the beautiful but evil women on the cover of every science fiction pulp magazine. Queen Clea of Atlantis and Zara, priestess of the Crimson Flame, are dressed almost alike in outfits like that, except that one’s blonde and the other’s a comic book redhead, with crimson hair.
The plot is as wacky as the villains. Wonder Woman is forced to steal a submarine and tow it with her teeth. But she’s plucky and bounces back with a wisecrack: “You’re so kind, Clea!” Earlier, when the villains had chained the princess and her mother to a pillar with flaming chains, she had quipped, “What sweet girls you are!” Indeed, Wonder Woman rarely seems to be afraid for herself , perhaps because she knows she will win in the end. She fears for the other people in peril: her sister Amazons, the Holliday Girls, who have been shoved into a devolution machine and turned into gorillas, all except for their heads. She even fears for the villain mastermind, Eviless the Saturnian. Attempting to escape while tied to a boat full of villains, Diana pulls the boat under water. But Saturnians can’t swim! So Wonder Woman rescues her: “Aphrodite commands us to save lives always–enemies or not!”
And by the way, Steve Trevor, despite the fact that he always needs to be rescued by Wonder Woman, isn’t as wimpy as he’s been made out to be. When Cleo and Giganta tie him up and threaten to burn his eyes out and cut him to ribbons, he’s brave enough to quip, “You’re certainly playful girls! Go ahead and have your fun!”
And it is fun. You don’t take it seriously. The entire story is fun.
With a few exceptions, Wonder Woman hasn’t been fun for quite some time now, but you still don’t take it seriously. Gale Simone, in my opinion one of the two best Wonder Woman writers (The other is Bill Messner-Loeb) got into the spirit of the original when she gave the amazon princess white talking gorilla sidekicks, to take the place of Etta and the Holliday girls. They move in with her, and apologize for the “flinging incident.”
But more often, it seems that when the almost 100% male writers Wonder Woman has had get their hands on her, they just can’t wait to re-invent her. Sometimes the re-inventing is mild, if annoying, as when Wonder Woman’s suit keeps shrinking while her bust size increases. Depending on the artist, her hair bounces from curly to straight and back again. But sometimes it’s a very violent re-invention, as when in the late 1960s writer Denny O’Neill completely disempowered Princess Diana, removing her from both her powers and from Paradise Island, giving her a male guru (and a what a racist depiction that was!), taking off her iconic starry costume and garbing her in a white Emma Peel-style jumpsuit. The result was a story arc about a karate-using woman in a white jumpsuit with a male guru. What it was not was Wonder Woman.
J. Michael Straczynski gave Diana a wardrobe makeover again, in 2010, putting her into what looked like a 1980s disco outfit with long pants. Fans hated it and amazingly, DC Comics actually listened to them for a change, and restored the Amazon princess’ starry shorts.
And now it’s Brian Azzarello’s turn. He has taken everything that made Wonder Woman special, and done away with it, so that Wonder Woman isn’t special anymore. He can’t shove Princess Diana back into a white jumpsuit — been there, done that — so instead he destroys the Amazon’s very origins, which are as iconic as her star-spangled costume. As Prometheus made mankind out of clay, as the Navajo gods molded all the animals of the Earth from clay, as the supreme deity molds the first man from clay in Judeo-Christian and Islamic mythology, Queen Hippolyta molds her baby from clay. And as if this divine origin, which Wonder Woman shares with the first of all creatures, is not enough, Marston gives it a feminist twist: the goddess Aphrodite breaths life into the statue. Thus, little Diana has two mommies.
It is highly unlikely in Marston’s original version that her tribal sisters would sneer at her for her origins, as they do in Azzarello’s version, and call her “Clay.” In fact, according to the first issue of Marston’s Wonder Woman, Aphrodite originally molded the entire race of Amazons from clay, and breathed life into them.
But Azzarello has taken care of that by demoting Wonder Woman, putting her at the end of a long line of mythic heroes fathered by Zeus, and of course, in taking away her feminist origins, making her a child of the patriarchy. And as for Diana originally being the only baby born on Paradise Island, Azzarello’s nouveau Amazons seduce sailors (and then dump the sailors overboard!), keep the girl babies that result from the union, thus keeping up their tribe’s population, and they sell the boys into slavery. Marston’s Amazons would never seduce or kill anybody, and they have no need to. They drink from a fountain of eternal youth, and as Hippolyta says, “Beauty and happiness are your birthright as long as you remain on Paradise Island.”
Azzarello/ChiangWonder Woman #7
This makes Diana’s sacrifice, when she leaves her island to go to “Man’s World” all the more poignant: she is giving up immortality in order to fight evil in a blighted land.
If Azzarello has demoted the Amazons to mean and ruthless killers, the gods have fared no better. Hera (Remember how Wonder Woman used to say “Great Hera?”) is now a soap opera-style bitch, a kind of Joan Collins dressed in nothing but a peacock cape. Her daughter Eris, the goddess of strife, is a bald anorexic crusty. The other gods look like London hipsters and have become ironic. Diana has no personality at all, and definitely utters no quips. The gods lead her around and show her stuff, and she reacts rather than acts. Her expression changes from a pout to a shout and back again. Diana, who, Jesus-like, gave up her immortality for mankind, has become so vicious that she stabs Eris’ hand with a broken wine glass.
Azzarello/ChiangWonder Woman #4
To many of us, including yours truly, the Amazon princess is almost real. Yet in our saner moments we have to admit that she is a construction, a thing of paper and ink who is a slave to anyone who writes her. Thank Hera for my reprints!
I’ve yet to read an issue of Azzarello’s Wonder Woman—I’ll likely pick it up in trade paperback eventually—but even the positive reviews convince me that the magic of Wonder Woman is gone. Obviously, the goal of inspiring young girls to grow up to be Wonder Women is gone—unless this is really what DC wants girls to grow up to be. Sad.
Hey Neil. Part of the problem is that there aren’t any girls reading Azzarello/Chiang. Probably hardly any women either. Back when Marston and Peter were writing Wonder Woman, comics was aimed at a substantially younger audience, and one with substantially more female readers as well.
That’s a big part of the reason for the loss of lightheartedness that Trina points out too. Whimsy isn’t a big part of genre pulp for middle aged men. They prefer blood and sex, by and large, and that’s what Azzarello is providing. The fact that saturating a character originally conceived as a whimsical feminist inspiration for young girls with blood and pulp is a really stupid thing to do hasn’t stopped them, alas.
Trina, great to read you here! I’ve been reading you since 1967 in EVO — Suzie Slumgoddess. 45 years, geez.
Could you tell us about your own experience writing and drawing WW, back in 1985?
AB, I just wrote a legthy response, but forgot to include the stoopid captcha code and so the response disappeared, and I actually don’t have the time or the heart to write another one. Why dont you email me at mswuff@juno.com and I’ll respond over email?
Certainly!
There’s a thread on Corey Creekmur’s facebook page where Trina had an interesting comment:
I thought I’d reply over here because I don’t know how much the folks over there want to see me rambling on….
Anyway, my take is as I said above, that they can get away with it mostly because WW isn’t very popular anymore. And she’s not very popular anymore in part because comics has shifted demographically in a way that’s left her somewhat stranded (similar though less drastic fates have befallen other characters like Captain Marvel, too.)
I think in addition (and I don’t think Trina will agree here) that Marston’s mix of fetish and feminism has something to offend everyone. It’s a hard sell to feminists these days to have your feminist icon trucked out in that costume and bondage gear (which is what the bracelets and the rope are). On the other hand, it’s a hard sell to horny guys to have a heroine who is really, explicitly, aggressively feminist — from an all female community, promoting peace, etc. Marston sold it because he really believed it and was (I maintain) a genius, but it’s just not lightning that’s going to strike that many times (the short-lived television series notwithstanding.)
Honestly, I’m not someone who wants other people writing Wonder Woman anyway, is the truth. The Marston/Peter comics are some of my favorite art in any medium ever; writing a book about them is just reconfirming me in my love of them. I don’t need to see new official Wonder Woman product any more than I need to see new official Pride and Prejudice product. The perfect thing of that has already been made. Anything else is just going to be a pale imitation.
Noah, what are you talking about? Women LOVED the TV series with Lynda Carter! Women dress up in WW’s spangled shorts and eagle bustier for conventions and for Halloween! All those WW products produced by Chronicle Books — note paper, cards, address books, stationary, etc. — and they used to love the comic (just ask Gloria Steinem!). In fact, through the 60s girls still loved WW — if you read the letter pages of those years, you’ll see the letters are mostly from girls. What they don’t like is what’s been done to her for the past 50 years by male writers and artists. In fact,most women who love WW and buy WW products like her as a symbol, based on what they read as girls or saw on TV, but have not read any recent WW comics and would be horrified if they did. Yes, she is a hard sell to horny guys, which is why if DC had any smarts they would change the direction of the book and aim it back at girls, but they won’t. And wouldn;t it be nice if DC actually stopped producing WW comics — then the rights would revert back to the Marston family, where they belong!
Also, the pilot to the Lynda Carter TV series was actually pretty faithful to WW’s first appearance in Sensation Comics. They turned the dial up on the camp meter but the makers basically hit all the plot points right down to the denouement of the Amazonian contest. They must have used Marston & Peter’s comics as a template or even semi-storyboard.
Wonder Woman was very popular in the 40s with boys and girls, as far as I can tell. And the television series was popular in the 70s.
A lot has changed since then, though. Even when the TV series was on, there weren’t a whole lot of empowered heroines to compete, were there? No Katniss, no Buffy, no Xena, no Dora the Explorer — even Disney princesses are a ton more competent/feminist/empowered these days.
Our culture has come up with various ways to provide cheesecake for guys and feminist empowerment for women — and none of them really involve quite that sort of bondage gear or quite that sort of impractical outfit. Wonder Woman still has an audience, but it’s not the audience for Twilight or Hunger Games of Dora the Explorer, and I don’t think it ever will be again. The character’s too weird…which is why she’s way more interesting than any of those other folks I named.
Anyway, I absolutely agree that DC should just stop publishing it and let the rights revert. If anyone should own the character it should be Marston and Peter’s heirs. Though truthfully it’s been more than 60 years — in any sane copyright regime the character would be in the public domain by now.
Suat…I don’t think I’ve seen that. You make it sound pretty appealing. I did watch a couple of Lynda Carter WW episodes a year or so back or something and they were dreadful…though the lasso spinning change sequences (not from Marston) remained kind of exhilarating.
Noah, you keep coming back to bondage and chewing on it like a dog on a bone. Women love Wonder Woman and they don’t think she’s wierd — who do you think buys all those Chronicle Books products I listed in an earlier post? And her “impractical outfit” doesn’t bother them — that’s why they dress up in it. And if you were to bring up bpndage to a women buying a box of Wonder Woman cards, they’d go, “Huh? What are you talking about?” Those are facts.
Trina is right. The casual WW readers I’ve spoken to hardly notice the bondage thing. It’s been watered down utterly and completely. Of course, this might be your objection in the first place since you see it as central to Marston’s vision.
Noah: I’m not saying that the WW pilot is good TV. In fact, it’s pretty bad and unwatchable but I loved it as a kid. My excuse is that I was less than 10. It was the Xena of its time for sure. I can’t watch Xena either.
I’m sure that the women who like Wonder Woman often don’t notice the bondage. But lots and lots of other people do notice it. There aren’t enough of the people who don’t notice, or don’t care, to make her the massively successful property that fans sometimes seem to think she should be.
Some women like Wonder Woman; not all of them. Not nearly as many as like Dora the Explorer, or Buffy; certainly not as many as like Twilight. The point isn’t that Wonder Woman’s so weird that no one likes her. The point is that she’s so weird that, even though she’s a high profile, long lived icon, she’s not actually all that popular in comparison to things to the things that are truly popular with her demographic (like Disney Princesses, or, for tweens, the Hunger Games.)
Marston was an unusual guy. He thought dominance and submission were the two most basic human emotions. He thought sorority initiation rituals held profound insights into the souls of human beings. He wrote a softcore novel about Julius Caesar’s worship of Venus, in various senses. He thought a feminist superhero should wear bondage bracelets of submission, God (or more appropriately Goddess) love him. He put all that into his creation, and yes, you can still see it, and many people do, to one extent or another.
Everyone wants to change Wonder Woman and fix her because she actually is unusual — or queer might be the better term.
Noah, I believe the problem here is that you’re a guy and you think like a guy. Men I know in the comics industry love to talk about the bondage in WW. It’s a whole nudge nudge wink wink thing with them. The women who do not read comics don’t see any bondage and don’t care. And both women and girls (and gay men — read my article in IJOCA, “Wonder Woman Queer Appeal”) loved the TV series. Also, they don’t see the bracelets as bondage, they see them as jewelry. Just the other day I had dinner with a woman friend from NY, and I commented on her tres cool heavy bracelets, and she immediately raised her hands in that WW deflecting bullets pose. She didn’t see bondage, she saw strong woman with beautiful bracelets fighting bad guys by deflecting bullets. At the checkout stand in the supermarket, f’crissake, two checkout guys were talking together and one of them said, “Oh yeah, we’ll have to show Wonder Woman,” so of course my curiosity was peaked and I asked about WW, and they told me it was their nickname for a woman who worked there who always wore these great bracelets. If not as many women like WW as like Dora the Explorer ( actually, as you know, it’s not women but little girls who like Dora), it’s because DC doesn’t push WW as something for females. They continue to aim at for those horny male readers. But the popularity of WW costumes and all those Chronicle Books novelties tells you how big WW could be if DC only aimed her at the audience Marston intended for her.
There is no doubt standard comics writing has developed a fetish around bondage in Wonder Woman. It isn’t that it doesn’t exist, but the emphasis on it is out of scale.
Holly, you can’t possibly read Marston’s writings and think it’s out of scale. Really and truly; bondage and dominance and submission are at the center of his theories, which were at the center of his comic.
Trina, WW was originally intended to appeal to both women *and* horny male readers (and actually horny lesbian readers — Marston definitely had them in mind, as he lived with two of them (and for that matter to horny straight women readers; lots of cheesecake bonage for girls there)). That’s part of why it was so successful. Lots of pop culture phenomena continue to mine that successful territory. Not WW, though; she just doesn’t quite fit the mold.
You know WW had a huge male readership originally, right? It was definitely for girls and boys. In some ways it was Marston’s way of teaching boys to be girls, bless him.
Anyway, here’s Vom Marlowe testifying that she notices (and enjoys!) the kink in Marston. So it’s not exclusively men, at least….
Surely there are levels of interpretation and engagement at work here? It seems to me that when a cosmetics company or a Halloween costume manufacturer uses the Wonder Woman imagery they do so because of the “cool, powerful, sexy woman superhero” thing has wide appeal. What’s more, I’d expect that the skimpy outfit is less problematic now in the climate of 3rd wave feminism than it was in the 1970’s.
But when we’re talking about the comics I think the female dominance/off kilter and effusive feminism of Marston that animates the character is treated as an embarrassment to be traded in for an updated take on what it means to be an empowered woman (super spy, politician) that brackets sexuality and sex (if not necessarily gender) all together. This is Noah’s problem with subsequent stories, and it’s also why I can’t imagine trying to follow contemproary WW comics.
My question for Tina is that if the bracelets are just jewelry, then what does it matter if Wonder Woman is in a pants suit?
I think there’s also a question of theoretical approach…that is, everybody who reads the comics notices the kink. The question is whether the kink should be given theoretical weight. Is it important to the way the character functions and to the theme? Or is it a side-issue, given undue attention by horny guys and (presumably?) by Marston himself in his theoretical discussions of the comics.
If the later, I think you could well end up arguing that Marston’s version of Wonder Woman is *not* the real version, or not the one that is truest to the character. Which I think Trina actually does in her piece — you like Messner-Loeb and Simone more than Marston, if I read you correctly, right Trina?
I think that plenty of women notice the bondage–I certainly did. I think it’s part of the Marston/Peters charm. But it’s not the bondage itself that is the charm, it’s the way the kink is handled that made early WW so successful.
For a more modern version, I always loved the scene in Return of the Jedi when Leia strangles Jabba The Hut with the literal chains of the patriarchy. There she is, in the absurd bikini, and instead of just being this pretty cheesecake, she uses her bonds to save the day and get herself the biggest of the big guns. If she was just stuck there and then got rescued, well, I’d have hated it.
Same thing with WW. Old school WW is always getting tied up and then freeing herself, and tying up other people, and it’s all good clean kink. I’m sure some women (and men) don’t notice the bondage or ignore it in favor of other aspects of the character–such as her love of peace, or her invisible plane or whatever.
But WW is awesome in part because being female is awesome; I mean, to me that’s what Marston/Peters is all about. Being female saves the day–there aren’t many stories like that whatever the format. I think modern writers often write WW as being female as something that has to be overcome or is weird, like green hair–to me, that’s the trouble with all the reboots. The writers can’t figure out a way to tell a story that makes her successful because of her femininity (and I suspect that maybe they don’t even try, as in A/C’s version).
I had a long comment all written but I typed in the wrong catptcha phrase (damn! I hate that!) and it got wiped out, and once more I have neither the time not the heart to write it all over again, but I must just take the time to answer Nate: of course the bracelets are not “just jewelry!” If they had been “just jewelry,” why, when I complimented my friend on her bracelets, did she respond with the “deflecting bullets with bracelets” pose? Female empowerment, anyone?
Oh and okay, I must also answer Noah: of course I don’t prefer Loebs’ and Simon’s WW to Marston'[s! When I called them the two best WW writers, I meant after Marston died.
Damn it…Trina, in general if the captcha goes awry, you can just click the back button; your comment will usually still be there and you can try again.
Alternately, you could write it out in word and then cut and paste…it’s really frustrating to not have your comments! (Not as frustrating as it is for you to type them…but still.)
And thanks for the clarification re: Loebs’ and Simone. I was genuinely confused! (I do know people who prefer later iterations of WW, like Perez’s, specifically because they’re uncomfortable with Marston’s use of bondage.)
Trina, usually if you just click “back” on your browser, you’ll find your comment still happy and waiting for you back in the past that is the cache. It’s happened to the best (and worst) of us.
actually, i had the same thing happen on my first attempt at posting. this form doesn’t retain your comment if the captcha doesn’t work. very frustrating.
I think if you’re prone to seeing bondage, it’s right there on the surface (at least in the Marston material). I had to have it pointed out to me—now I can’t not see it.
I think it’s fairly well documented that Marston put the bondage stuff in there—the Amazons often spoke of “loving bondage,” in fact—and if the bracelets are symbols of women’s jewelry turned women’s empoweremnt (I believe this was Marston’s intention as well), they’re also part of the mythology of being in bondage to men and binding them together took the Amazons’ powers away.
I agree that the Wonder Woman of popular culture isn’t about the bondage aspects, but I also think it’s really hard to deny that it’s right there, not even in the subtext; it’s in the text.
Damn; I’m so sorry about the captcha struggles. It may depend on browsers. Before the captcha, we were getting tens of spam comments a day; it was relentless. I wish there was a better way….
Also, Neil, the bracelets are specifically signs of submission to Aphrodite in Marston’s WW. When she takes them off, her powers go out of control and she becomes impulsive and uncontrolled…like a man, Marston says.
ah, yes. forgotten the submission to Aphrodite. Knew it was submission somewhere. Wasn’t it, in a later iteration, connected to being a symbol/remembrance of being in bondage to men? Maybe Perez’s version? I don’t think the later version had the lost powers/out of control consequence to removing them, but I could be wrong there, also.
yes; i think the bracelets are supposed to remind them not to submit to men, which is why when they’re welded together by men she loses her powers…thus forcing her to submit to men (these things are complicated….)
In most later versions, they drop the losing-control-without-bracelets trope. I did have one weird version of the superfriends comic where it showed up again; scarecrow made her fear metal, so she took off her bracelets and ended up running wild. I remember reading it as a kid and thinking it was really weird even then….
Okay, what is happening here is a guy thing vs a girl thing: the guys (mostly) want to keep chewing on bondage and can’t let it go. The girls thing is female empowerment. Remember my friend with the bullets and bracelets pose? Personally, I’m over trying to explain this, so I am letting it go. My essay was not about bondage; it was about how WW used to be wacky but fun and how it has become dark and dreary. That’s it!
Speaking as a woman, I see both sides and appreciate the discussions of bondage and the many varied (positive and problematic) aspects of Wonder Woman’s history.
I think WW appreciation is highly dependent on generation, access, age, etc. My appreciation came from a few episodes from the show and the kids’ book Cheetah on the Prowl. My WW had a ridiculous outfit, but a kickass, Grecian back story. As I matured, I hated the outfit, but loved my foggy memories of that one story.
Others are drawn in by any number of the comics, or just the tv show, or just the mere fact that there was never a superheroine as predominant as she was. I would also bet that a decent portion of the appreciation now, which buys the retro WW offerings and such, do so out of amusement and appreciation of retro ideology.
Vom Marlowe is a woman. So’s Sharon Marcus, who is definitely going to talk about bondage and WW. So’s Lillian Robinson. So’s dcwomenkickingass, a blogger and writer who’s skeptical about Marston’s Wonder Woman precisely because of the bondage. I don’t think there’s any shortage of women who notice and think about these things in relation to the comic.
I agree that the wackiness and the fun and the empowerment are all important too, though.
I never dismissed the women’s empowerment aspect. That, too, is on the surface text of the Marston stories, moreso than the bondage. Still, Trina, are you saying we’re making it up? That there isn’t bondage in WW? I’m a guy, but a gay guy who is vanilla as they come. I really didn’t see it until it was pointed out to me. But it’s there and all the documentation of Marston and his interests suggest that it’s there by design, not accident. He seemed to see “loving bondage” as women’s path to empowerment (that’s my opinion, not so well documented:). And it was precisely Marston’s outlook that that made the original WW so quirky and fun.
You keep saying it’s a “boy vs. girl” thing—and I’m the first to admit that we all see things through gendered lenses—but can you address the fact that all this comes from a man who lived in a menage a trois and was apparently quite comfortable about being the “sub” to “dom” women? I mean, that Steve panel above seems to come right out of a “sub” male fantasy . . .
Wow, Monika, I just went to Amazon.com and looked up Cheetah on the Prowl! They have one copy, but without the accompanying record, so I’m trying to decide whether or not to buy it. Back in the 80s, DC was still publishing a Wonder Woman that kids could enjoy. Noah, for the last time, I am not denying that there’s bondage, I’m just explaining that there’s so much more, and that all you see or want to discuss is biondage. Vom writes what I have always said in my Powerpoint presentations about WW, which is that she gets bound so that she can escape her bonds by herself. All the other women in Golden Age superhero comics get tied up so the hero can rescue them. At this point I’m repeating myself and I’m truly tired of it, so no more from me on this particular subject.
Well, I could go on (I’m writing a 14000 word + chapter on this very topic even as we speak)…but I will resist. Sorry for being persistent and annoying; it’s hard to disengage on the internets, but I’ll give it a try.
Trina – If you want to get a taste, the whole thing (with original audio recording) is on YouTube, as I discovered today. I find it interesting to watch it and think about what stood out.
I always remembered it as an origin story, and that’s all I remember about it, save for vague familiarity with the rest. I quite literally forgot everything about her as Wonder Woman and only remember her as Diana, with little to no jewelry, or hell, as a chubby child kicking ass in every which way.
Monika, it is lovely! I only had the time to watch part 1, but intend to watch the whole thing. It’s exactly what DC needs to do now for girls.
Neil: “He seemed to see “loving bondage” as women’s path to empowerment (that’s my opinion, not so well documented:).”
That’s more or less correct…the caveat is that it’s the path to true male empowerment as well. But women are better at submission than men are. Therefore they are more empowered, and must teach submission to men.
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holly cita says:
There is no doubt standard comics writing has developed a fetish around bondage in Wonder Woman. It isn’t that it doesn’t exist, but the emphasis on it is out of scale.
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Yes. Certainly Noah’s in-depth knowledge of the subject is far beyond ours, but I wonder if being so informed about Marston’s philosophy and non-Wonder Woman writings has made what bondage there exists in the comics seem disproportionately important; eroticized in a fashion that readers who didn’t know all that backstage stuff would not see as such.
Are not women — hell, even male heroes — being trussed-up and rendered helpless, to be better imperiled by a villain, a staple of genre entertainment?
From the Perils of Pauline ( http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_k3G4RMNSVTE/TH7Q-IbqYCI/AAAAAAAAAWc/4Mti2FfnjyY/s1600/Movie-PerilsOfPauline-RRTracks-01.jpg ) to Raiders of the Lost Ark ( http://www.favouritefilm.com/acatalog/IJINDYANDMARIANTIEDTOPOST.jpg )…
Does the bondage in Marston and Peter’s Wonder Woman follow more that former template, or is like the erotic bondage, where the woman oohs and aahs, struggling ineffectually, never getting free?
Whilst WW (further emphasizing the way being tied up in the comic relates to the strength of Woman constantly being suppressed) always breaks free, and delivers righteous punishment to those who tried to put and keep her down?
I’m hoping Noah doesn’t emphasize the B&D stuff so much that everyone not acquainted with the charm, wit, inventiveness and positive messages of the original, and typically focusing on the lurid, sensationalistic stuff (as EVERY SINGLE REPORTER — and 95% of critics — WRITING ABOUT HIS BOOK WILL DO), will think of Marston and Peter’s Wonder Woman as “just a bondage comic.”
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Ng Suat Tong says:
…It was the Xena of its time for sure. I can’t watch Xena either.
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Damn, Xena was great! Especially admirable in that Lucy Lawless actually looked the part, instead of being some scrawny-armed, pouting bimbo…
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Trina Robbins says:
Noah, I believe the problem here is that you’re a guy and you think like a guy.
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Good thing nobody here said, “the problem here is that you’re a woman and you think like a woman.” How the fur would fly!
Seriously, though, I think there’s some validity to that. Not that all men and all women think alike, but the great majority of members of each gender, part due to biology, part due to socialization, have somewhat different ways of looking at things.
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My essay was not about bondage; it was about how WW used to be wacky but fun and how it has become dark and dreary.
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Indeed so! Which unfortunately most comics readers consider becoming “serious, mature.”
Like going from http://www.lethargiclad.com/gorilla/shazam9.gif to… http://readrant.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/captain-marvel.jpg?w=450 .
Or Eddie Campbell’s comments on the dreary computer re-coloring of old Kirby Thor stories:
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It looks very airless and lightless and unappealing. The very thing that attracted me to this stuff in the first place has been rejected, that is, the riotous colour of those early 1960s Marvels. It was so riotous they could never keep it between the lines … Neal Adams talked about how the old comics were limited to effectively 64 colours. Now that there are thousand to choose from, we have to wonder why our present day colourists have trouble getting past GREY (or gray as they write it in the USA).
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http://eddiecampbell.blogspot.com/2009/07/m-y-pal-mick-evans-had-copy-new.html
“Anyway, my take is as I said above, that they can get away with it mostly because WW isn’t very popular anymore.”
She may have a life of her own with the general public, but comics-wise she hasn’t been a great seller for decades. By the mid-eighties she was supposedly DC’s worst seller. Since the Perez revamp she may have had some good years saleswise, but not that many of them.
“And wouldn’t it be nice if DC actually stopped producing WW comics — then the rights would revert back to the Marston family, where they belong!”
Would this actually be the case still? Kurt Busiek supposedly said the following:
“In the intervening years, though, I’m given to understand that at some point DC bought the character outright, and thus those contract terms are no longer in force.”
“Neil Ellis Orts Wasn’t it, in a later iteration, connected to being a symbol/remembrance of being in bondage to men? Maybe Perez’s version?”
I don’t think that was in Perez’s version.
“The other gods look like London hipsters and have become ironic.”
That sounds suspiciously like a rip-off of Gaiman’s Sandman.
Richard, you got it in one. It’s definitely a Sandman rip-off — though without Gaiman’s interest in gender issues, or ability to appeal to a female audience.
But the popularity of WW costumes and all those Chronicle Books novelties tells you how big WW could be if DC only aimed her at the audience Marston intended for her.
Trina, I’m the father of a Wonder Woman-loving 5-year-old, and I’m in the age group that grew up with the Lynda Carter TV show. When mothers I know find out that I’m a comic fan, I often get asked where to find WW toys, books and comics for their kids. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot out there for young girls, unless you direct them to the older stuff, which can be hard to find for anyone not accustomed to comic shops.
I’m wondering if you’ve ever seen the Nina Jaffe-Ben Caldwell books Harper Collins put out for young readers a while back? They’re out of print and now sorta pricey, but my daughter and I really enjoyed “The Contest” (even if bullets and bracelets got converted into stones and bracelets).
Chad, I just followed that link and looked at some of the books, and they are wonderful! I love the art, and I prefer Wonder Woman’s art and costume in those books to the one in the comic book! Thanks for that link! Yeah, I have a graddaughter, now 6 years old, but when she was 3 I let her play with my Wonder Woman “action figures” and she loved them and went through a period where she was crazy about Wonder Woman. She even decided that the recorded woman’s voice on our local buses that tells you to “please hold on” when the bus starts must be the voice of Wonder Woman! Unfortunately, I obviously could not show her the comic, and there was nothing else for her — wish I’d known about those books! — so she lost interest as time passed.
Glad you enjoyed the books. Given the popularity of princesses these days among your girls, it really is unfathomable to me that DC hasn’t even tried to market its own princess — one who doesn’t need Prince Charming to save the day, thank you very much — to the same crowd that’s buying billions of dollars of princess merchandise every year.
“Unfortunately, I obviously could not show her the comic”
You mean the Marston/Peter comics? Why couldn’t you show them to her?
Chad, you would think, but I have given up on trying to figure out DC. Actually, back when my granddaughter was 3 and loved Wonder Woman, I proposed a slick-paper children’s WW book, and the editor I proposed it to did not even bother to reject it — simply never answered at all.
Noah, the WW comics I could not show to my granddaughter were the contemporary WW comics. I felt that the Golden Age ones, which featured WWll, would be too confusing to her, she’d ask about the war, and any answer would be far too complicated for a 3 year old. She still doesn’t know about wars, thank Goddess, but when the time comes that she asks, hopefully her mom will explain.
Ah, that makes sense. Right; I don’t show my 8 year old contemporary comics either.
Those Nina Jaffe-Ben Caldwell WW books are a delight…
Here’s how I figure it.
The comics industry doesn’t actually sell comic books. It sells a certain demographic readership to advertisers. That’s where the profits come from. Not from increasing or widening circulation or subscriptions (to girls or anyone else), but from selling 18-to-49-year-old male audiences to ad buyers who want to reach — and often have trouble reaching — young men’s eyeballs. The superhero genre is close-to-perfect for rounding up young guys who have disposable income and selling them to the corporations that want to talk them out of it. If advertisers want to reach young women, they have lots of other places to do so. But a superhero book, even a poor seller, has an almost automatically desirable demo. Incidentally, that’s probably one reason you don’t see comics on newsstands any more; the companies likely actually lost money on those sales. Direct marketing reaches fewer readers, but reaches the “right” readers more efficiently.
So the content of the books reflects all of that. And the companies’ decisions are almost always made in that light. The New 52, rather than trying to reach a broader audience, looks mostly like a public relations campaign to secure a slightly younger demo, that’s all. Marketing princesses to girls is very low on the list of priorities given the business model.
So downplaying our heroine’s fairy tale princess past to turn her book into a grim blood-sex-and-horror comic makes sense in this context. And it might even be working. Except for the very brief Dodson-Heinberg run some years ago, I believe “Wonder Woman” is now regularly in the Top 25 books sold monthly for the first time in a long time.
Correct me if I’m wrong; but, unlike magazines, where indeed a substantial portion (most?) of the income comes from advertising rather than sales (and which enables many slick titles, loaded with high-end advertising, to offer such cheap subscriptions — “Vanity Fair” for a buck a copy; “Rolling Stone” for 77 cents a copy)…
…isn’t advertising in comics a pretty small source of money for publishers? (Back when comics were selling in far greater quantities, I don’t imagine the “Sea Monkeys” and “X-Ray Specs” folks were laying out the big bucks to advertise their wares to kids. Maybe the Hostess Twinkies folks…)
Alas, couldn’t locate any info about how much was paid to comics publishers for ads. Here’s some other fun stuff, though:
“12 Comic Book Ads That Taught Us To Be Cynical”: http://www.cracked.com/article_16310_12-comic-book-ads-that-taught-us-to-be-cynical.html
Along that vein, “12 deceptive comic book ads”: http://www.oobject.com/12-deceptive-comic-book-ads/
Aw, gawd, journalists are so original: “Bang! Pow! Could Digital Comic Books Pack Advertising Punch?”
“The Advertising Power of Comic Book Artists”: http://imprint.printmag.com/illustration/the-advertising-power-of-comic-book-artists/ , which among its delights includes a 1968 animated Alka-Seltzer ad storyboarded and designed by Wally Wood!
I think that’s probably a little too Machiavellian, Mike. I think it’s more like they know how to sell to one demographic, and that’s what they do because that’s what they know. There are plenty of places to sell to young males too, after all. And I suspect, say, video games have a much larger young male audience and a larger female audience too.
“I think it’s more like they know how to sell to one demographic, and that’s what they do because that’s what they know.”
No, if their advertisers wanted to reach young women, then the comics publishers would bend over backward to create books that attracted that demo. They don’t because their market is the advertisers, not the demographic. They’re selling the demo to the advertisers for a profit — because “that’s what they know.” If they had to sell a different demo in order to make money, they’d know — or at least try to learn — how to do that, too.
“video games have a much larger young male audience”
They probably do, but that’s beside the point. Audience size is less important to these advertisers than the kind of audience. The young guy who has the time and money to spend on a comic book can probably also buy the stuff you see advertised in them — fast food, soft drinks, video games, movie tickets, et cetera. That’s who the advertisers want to reach. The market (i.e., the advertisers) has changed since the days of “Sea Monkeys” and “X-Ray Specs.” A broad audience (of gullible kids with an allowance) is much less important these days than a targeted one (of moneyed young adults).
And the content reflects that. That’s why you often can’t show kids the modern comics.
@Mike: The biggest-selling publisher, Marvel, has pretty much given up on running anything but house ads in their comics, so I think you might be barking up the wrong tree. I really don’t think comics offer a particularly lucrative ad market.
I’m no expert, but the proliferation of house ads might have more to do with the current state of the economy than the industry’s overall business model. The model itself dictates the content, not the dollar amounts involved.
I really don’t think that makes sense, Mike. They’re getting no money from advertising. I don’t see how you can then argue that advertising demographics are shaping the contents.
It’s not that advertisers want this particular audience and no other. That’s silly; there are tons of ways for advertisers to reach young men, most of them significantly more effective than comics in reaching large numbers of said young men. Which is why advertisers are not in fact that interested in comic books.
The issue is that mainstream comics have catered to men (not all that young anymore) for so long, and so exclusively, that they don’t have the capacity or the knowledge to appeal to anyone else. The people in charge couldn’t sell a comic to a girl if they had hundreds of thousands of female consumers jumping up and down and shouting “this! exactly this! give us this!” Which is in fact exactly what they have with manga. Doesn’t matter though; mainstream comics companies still can’t manage it.
It’s a demographic issue, but not an advertising one. Instead, it’s tied to history and corporate culture. Which makes it more difficult to change, I think. Advertisers are a lot — let me say again, a lot — more interested in selling to women than the mainstream comics companies are.
“It’s not that advertisers want this particular audience and no other. That’s silly…”
Of course it’s silly, which is why I didn’t say it.
“advertisers are not in fact that interested in comic books”
Right. But the comic book publishers are interested in advertisers. That’s my point. The advertisers are the market, not the audiences. It’s the publishers that want the advertisers and, in order to get them, they have to deliver what the advertisers want, a particular demo. Sure, the advertisers can reach that demo elsewhere and maybe more effectively, but it doesn’t matter.
What matters is that the publisher has to convince the uninterested advertisers to buy ads, and the way to do that to is to sell them “one of Madison Avenue’s most elusive audiences: guys in their 20s” — “the kind of audience that is harder and harder and harder to get to.” The quotes are from an old Wall Street Journal article about product placement in comics which includes this paragraph:
***
DC and Marvel are both burnishing “networks” of titles that appeal to male readers between the ages of 18 and 34. Marvel’s [advertising director] Mr. [Joe] Maimone says the comics titles are competing with “laddie” magazines such as PLC’s FHM or Dennis Publishing’s Maxim and Stuff.
***
That’s the competition — men’s mags, not manga — and the competition is over ads, not audiences.
And the content has to reflect that ugly reality. It’s not that the publishers “couldn’t sell a comic to a girl.” They could — and have in the past (Romance comics of the 1940s and ’50s, for example) — when the market demanded it. But they have no sane reason to — because it would cut into the profits of their already precarious medium.
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Mike says:
…It’s not that the publishers “couldn’t sell a comic to a girl.” They could — and have in the past (Romance comics of the 1940s and ’50s, for example) — when the market demanded it.
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Oh, so the “market demanded” that there would be comics for girls, and so Jack Kirby automatically, compliantly created the romance comic?
How about, a creative person saw there was a possible interest not being met, and decided to try and fill it? (With romance novels selling hand over fist, why not create romance comics? Not such a complex process.)
The success of manga and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman in selling to girls, showed that young women are not utterly comics-averse.
So if there’s this “market demand” for comics that will appeal to girls, howcum publishers didn’t go ahead and fill it? If “It’s not that the publishers ‘couldn’t sell a comic to a girl,’ ” why did even earnest, expensive attempts like Minx fail so miserably? (Despite having produced a few charming and worthy titles.)
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Noah Berlatsky says:
…The issue is that mainstream comics have catered to men (not all that young anymore) for so long, and so exclusively, that they don’t have the capacity or the knowledge to appeal to anyone else.
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Finally made it over to the ol’ comics store last night, and this is what I saw:
http://comicbook.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/wonder-woman-and-her-golden-guns.jpg
(Hurhn; DC has a new logo? And what a mediocre thing it is… {I’m sure the designers came up with fine choices, and the no-aesthetic-sense execs tweaked them to death…])
I talked about the Minx line way, way back here.
The problem definitely seems to be that the mainstream two do not know how to market to girls and women. Back in the 90s when I was one of the writers on Barbie comics for Marvel, their only advertising was in their own comics. Then, on Barbie’s 30th anniversary, my editor got an agreement with Toy R Us to have various Barbie creators do a one-day signing and appearance in their various stores and of course sell the comics. (The comics had NOT been for sale at those toy stores or at ANY toy stores, only for sale in comic book stores!) So I showed up at our local TRoys R Us and they had a nice display with the comics and a cute throne-like chair for me to sit, and people came in and saw the comics and went “Wow, I never knew there were Barbie comics! And look, they’re only 75 cents! Let’s buy some for our daughter/ neice/ granddaughter, etc.” and the comics sold out! Marvel did NOT follow up and start distributing the comics through toystores, and of course eventually they cancelled the line because it wasn’t selling enough. Makes you want to bang your head against a wall!
Noah, while some books in the Minx line were [perfectly fine, others made me wonder if the editor understood whom she was selling to. The books got edgier and adgier until there was one (I think it was called “Shark Girl”) about a surfer girl who lost her heg to a shark — a potentially great premise — but it included erotically charged scenes of girls in the world’s briefest bikinis, the kind of stuff that parents, if and when they saw the books, would have a fit.
I wish the Barbie comics story was even a little bit surprising.
‘Oh, so the “market demanded” that there would be comics for girls, and so Jack Kirby automatically, compliantly created the romance comic? How about, a creative person saw there was a possible interest not being met, and decided to try and fill it?’
No, Simon and Kirby’s innovation was to do a comic book version of the very successful “true confession” magazines of the era. The market was not girls; girls were the readership. S & K’s “Young Romance” was supposed to compete with the same sort of readership as “True Story” magazine, a young adult female audience, and sell it to the same sort of advertisers. In the postwar period, the comics industry was a mass media trying to expand its all-around audience and, with superheroes in decline, it looked to new genres. By 1949, romance comics were outselling all other genres and the ad revenues were probably enormous. Kirby said his romance books “made millions.”
“(With romance novels selling hand over fist [in 1947], why not create romance comics? Not such a complex process.)”
It was romance magazines that Kirby and others were competing with, not novels.
“young women are not utterly comics-averse”
True, but the kinds of advertisers the comic book publishers can attract today are “young women-averse.” Those advertisers can reach more young women easier elsewhere.
‘So if there’s this “market demand” for comics that will appeal to girls, howcum publishers didn’t go ahead and fill it? … [W]hy did even earnest, expensive attempts like Minx fail so miserably?’
Because, again, the market is not the girls; it’s the advertisers.
The Minx books were graphic novels, right? Not advertiser-supported periodicals. So it doesn’t really refute the argument (if you can call it an argument; it seems more like a truism).
But…Marvel comics aren’t advertiser supported either at this point.
I’m missing something, maybe, but…if Marvel isn’t actually dealing with advertisers for the most part, why are you claiming advertisers are driving the business? Surely there’s a contradiction there?
If you’re going to make the argument that an outside, financial source is shepherding the development of content in the comic industry then you should be looking at licensing and not advertising.
As Jonathan Last said “comic book publishers are no longer in the publishing business: They’re curators of, and incubators for, extremely valuable intellectual property”.
Before Marvel was purchased by Disney Marvel Entertainment had licensed products that generated US$5.7 billion in retail sales (Marvel would generally be paid a licensing fee by other companies so this figure is the retail sales from all the users of Marvel licenses). When Disney purchased Marvel, Marvel’s
Chief Executive Office Ike Perlmutter commented that Disney is the perfect home for Marvel due to the companies “proven ability to expand content creation and licensing businesses” reflecting the focus of licensing for the company. Even the Marvel website stresses the focus on it being an ideas company and not so much a comic book company. From the site “Marvel Entertainment…is one of the world’s most prominent character-based entertainment companies, built on a proven library of over 8,000 characters featured in a variety of media over seventy years. Marvel utilizes its character franchises in entertainment, licensing and publishing.”
And its not just the Big Two publishers. Quite a number of smaller publishers have had their properties licensed for films or games, sometimes even before the comic has been released on the market. The fact of the matter is there is far more money in licensing your characters and content at the moment (how long Hollywood continues to mine comics for content is unknown) than there is in actually selling comic books.
Troy, that makes sense. Though there’s no particular reason that film studios would want to get only male audiences. On the contrary, my strong impression is that the films draw many more women than the comic books do (not a difficult task, but still.)
No there isn’t. I was just responding in general to Mike’s statement:
The comics industry doesn’t actually sell comic books. It sells a certain demographic readership to advertisers. That’s where the profits come from. Not from increasing or widening circulation or subscriptions (to girls or anyone else), but from selling 18-to-49-year-old male audiences to ad buyers who want to reach — and often have trouble reaching — young men’s eyeballs.
Not to get involved in the feminism/bondage/empowerment debate but this comment and view of Wonder Woman could apply to most of the major superhero stories:
“My essay was not about bondage; it was about how WW used to be wacky but fun and how it has become dark and dreary. That’s it!”- Trina
Just look at how many ‘Death of’ moments there have been in comics in the last few years. The wacky and fun nature of most of the major super heroes has dissipated.
An unfortunate side effect of the more serious, mature super hero works of Alan Moore and Frank Miller has been the creation of a perception that people only want a much darker, violent, ‘gritty’ version of these stories. The super hero comic audience has ‘grown up’ in terms of both taste and age.
This has put the industry in a position where kids won’t or are not allowed to read comics because they are a lot darker and not designed for them and to be honest probably don’t appeal to them, yet because they aren’t buying that many comics to begin with publishers won’t seriously pursue stories aimed at kids.
So as much as Wonder Woman’s changes may be tied into changing perceptions of bondage, feminism, female empowerment or de-powerment they are also part of a wider trend in the industry where more mature, serious, violent stories are preferred to wacky, fun stories. Just take a gander at Azzarello’s work leading up to WW; 100 Bullets, Loveless, Hellblazer, Joker, Lex Luthor and Deathblow.
Agreed, Troy. Aside from the fact that the mainstream superhero comics industry is putting itself into a bind because fewer kids reading comics = less young people who will grow up to read comics = less comics readers in the future, there is also the misconception that darkly colored panels, grim’n’gritty stories, and the word F*** used in every other panel makes a comic “grown-up.”
I agree: wackiness should be included (but not over-emphasized) in any WW story. Currently I’m synopsizing the WML era and delighting in the snappy Diana he presented, one who laughs at danger and inspires the people around her. And NOT to any detriment of plot!
I continue to say that the current “WW” DC publishes is not real. Unfortunately OUR WW died in June of 2010, in issue #600 of her book. But this is comics, and death is NEVER permanent there.
Maybe if DC ever realizes that WW is the absolutely perfect symbol to put on exercise equipment and programs (the President’s Fitness Council, perhaps?), what with Amazon Training and all, and that there’s huge amounts of licensing to be procured that is not being touched currently, DC will grow interested once again in the positive potential that is Wonder Woman. Picture sweat bands modeled after tiara and bracelets. Star-spangled shorts. Eagle-emblazoned tank tops. Certificates of physical achievement signed by Princess Diana!
Once again WW’s stories should be marketed to female readers as well as young ones. The current series is clearly marketed to straight males who want to see their cardboard female leads acting like men and surrounded by them as well.
As for the Mod Era, Trina, we shall have to continue to agree to disagree about that.
Carol, your idea about exercise wear is brilliant! It would sell like crazy, and in fact, sign me up right now for the eagle tee, the starry shorts, and the tiara headband. So, ya think DC would go for it? Nah, I didn’t think so either.
Fine with me about agreeing to disagree on the mod WW. The stories were fine, as far as they went (But I Ching is sooo racist!), the art was fine, but the heroine was some chick in a white jumpsuit; she was NOT our fave amazone princess.
This probably makes me a crank, but…I just have trouble feeling like the best (or even an especially good) way to honor Wonder Woman or her creator is with more and/or better merchandising, of athletic ware or anything else.
Personally, I’d much rather see DC put an effort into making the original comics available at a reasonable price, in a format kids would read, and doing it in a reasonable timeframe (that is, not one of these years long reissue projects that never seem to actually reach the end of the run.)
A big part of the appeal of Wonder Woman to me is that the stories she was in were creative and weird and funny and beautiful. Making her a marketing icon wouldn’t ruin that, any more than it ruined Peanuts. But it doesn’t really add anything to it either. I’d rather she inspire kids to create, not to buy crap.
Then again, if she became a marketing icon, DC might actually start paying more attention to the character’s fortunes and development. Instead of serving it up to hacks that is. Or is this wishful thinking? They can’t even get those Archives editions out faster than once every 2-3 years.
She kind of is a marketing icon already though, isn’t she? There’s lots of WW products sold. But the people who buy those products don’t necessarily turn around and look for WW comics to buy. The demographics are just too different.
I just successfully tempted a friend into reading the early WW and discovered that the Archive edition of Vol 1 is now out of print and being sold for a hundred bucks (!!). Very vexing. She’s going to have to ILL it or I’ll have to send her mine.
That said, I’d definitely buy a plush sky kanga. That’s where marketing ought to go instead of that hideous spiderman lip gloss (shudder).
Noah, as you say, those teenaged girls and women who buy all those Wonder Woman products don’t read the comic, and I think they’d be horrified if they read one of the recent issues.
Vom, I must admit to buying a Wonder Woman lipstick when MAX came out with their Wonder Woman makeup. The case is great but the lipstick is awful – a really crude color and it doesn’t feel good going on, so it has mostly just sat there unworn. I think I will remove thelipstick and insert a better lipstick so I can use it, and flash the case when applying my lipstick in public.
Vom, there is this. First one’s out of print, but the second one is in and quite cheap.
Lovely that they have multiple reprint series, and none of them are kept in print. It’s almost like they don’t care.
I would buy a plush space kanga. I’ll admit it.
Trina, I wanted to buy the WW lipstick but didn’t like the color. Like you, I thought the case was great. I find the spiderman icky because I keep thinking the gloss would be the webby goo he throws out with his fingers. *shivers again*
Noah, Aha! Thank you. I’ll send her a link to that one. And really, who would not want a plush sky kanga, I ask you.
I must agree the original William Moulton Marsden Wonder Woman was a very well thought out character that DC has tried to change, to mostly its detriment, over the years. In its defense one should say that WW remained one of the iconic “big three” (with Superman and Batman) comics through the dark ages of 1950s and 1960s censorship, and so the character survived to the modern era with a huge fan base, and got her own 70s TV show that was relatively true to the original (though hokey of course). A lot of kids and grownup women have WW merchandise and I’m sure this is a huge moneymaker for Warner Brothers / DC.
There is no more reason to believe that the changes ruined or permanently broke the character’s appeal than to believe that the 1950s giant-toy phase of Batman and Robin, or the 1960s camp TV show (which was true to the 1950s comics but not to the 1940s origins of the character) ruined Batman. He came back bigtime as the brooding Dark Knight that Bob Kane created.
With Fifty Shades of Grey on the bestseller list and bondage gear mainstream marketing to adult women, same-sex marriage on the public agenda and increasingly uncontroversial, female power images everywhere, there is really no reason to believe the original William Moulton Marsden WW with the Amazons as he had conceived them (with their “loving bondage” on Transformation Island, etc., which actually reformed some of WW’s worst foes) would be a huge problem today. I have more problem with this vicious “300” style Spartan Wonder Woman, though there is lots to credit it historically (women were in fact trained seriously in athletics and wearing a lot less than WW’s skimpiest costume).
The original WW was a defender of women and children who tied up, and got tied up a lot by, her foes. She tried to save them. She was compassionate. She was gentle whenever she got an excuse to be. She was a pretty well rounded woman in all senses including those sexual ones. No one really questioned how Amazons got it on at home with no men around – it’s obvious. And yes, she got helpless when tied up by a man, but not when tied up by a woman… consistent with the Greek myth she is based on, and a reasonable vulnerability comparable to Kryptonite (Superman) or the refusal to use guns (Batman). It all seemed very dirty and subversive in the 50s and 60s, but in the 70s and 80s less so, and by now we should just have no problem with it.
WW’s contemporary the classic 40s Green Lantern, Alan Scott, has been redefined as a gay male character in his current “new 52” DC incarnation. Before it happened there was a lot of talk about WW possibly being the iconic character revealed to be gay.
Personally I think the world is ready for WW being very openly bisexual and having loving relationships that she does not filter by gender. If anything people in this position need more political visible iconic fiction characters to say are like them. And it’s consistent with WW’s choice to remain in the “world of men” but somehow never really get married exclusively, and to retain as much as possible all of her Amazon heritage.
Not that WW should be perceived as a sexual icon specifically but frankly you can’t remove the sexuality from WMM’s original stories and shouldn’t try. WMM was saying something worthwhile about diversity, tolerance, acceptance, rehabilitation and what we all have in common apart from gender. He certainly gave us a long list of iconic females (including the neglected Etta Candy, the most active and able and brave sidekick any superhero ever had including Robin, given Etta faced down situations that were dangerous even to Diana). You just can’t correctly accuse WMM of sexism or being sneaky about his sexual/bondage references or their political relevance. He was a straight-up guy who knew exactly what he was doing when he wrote her.
And we should maybe go right back to the original, as was done with Batman, and really consider whether the world is ready for her. Maybe her 75th anniversary is a good time to relaunch her as the human and appealing character WMM designed, bondage and rehabilitation of enemies and all, obese sorority sister sidekick, and tell the world it was always there in plain sight.
It just took us until now to see how truly real and cool she and her friends were. It was the God of War, the alien invader girls from Saturn, the Nazis, who were unreal and insane and to be resisted. Or their modern fellow travellers (planetary polluters and genocidal and homophobic and sexist bigots) today.
In my opinion WW is the best superhero character ever created. The issues raised just by reading her or even looking at her are worth talking about. The effect she has on little girls is very obvious – she’s a Woman, she can fight, and she actually cares… she’s not trapped on an alien planet or obsessed by a childhood trauma or hideously mutated. She puts on that very athletic outfit every day and goes out with a lasso as her only weapon, in the full confidence she can reform her worst enemies with the power of truth and transformation. What’s not to like?
A few factual points that lead me even further down this path of wanting the truly original WW back:
1. http://www.cracked.com/article_16251_5-superhero-movie-scenes-theyll-never-let-you-see.html (note number 4)
Diana is really much more open about her sex views than you think. The Amazon princess is actually quite liberated in the kink dept. and seemingly chews on her fingers at the thought of girls choosing to be slaves of good mistresses. A “master” (note: any male probably) or “bad mistress” (very significant that it’s not “bad master or mistress” but “master or bad mistress”) is the cause of the problem, not choosing a kinky BDSM lifestyle, hm?
Given she is unabashedly feminist in all other ways we have no choice but to interpret this kind of thing in a sexual fashion, as feminists obviously do not stand for the economic institution of slavery. So the original WW is actually probably 70 years ahead of her time in terms of what constitutes liberated sexual thinking, probably ahead of Camille Paglia or Nina Hartley and definitely ahead of prudes who have problems with sexual kinks. It’s probably only today that we actually get what WW means here and don’t think that she’s talking about slavery in the economic sense, in the political sense, but a “chosen” human sexual style.
So she’s right up front about it, I’d say. It isn’t a problem for me, but, even if it is for you… consider…
2. Marvel built its reputation on “heroes with problems”. Well, it might be a “problem” for a hero to have an ancient Greek sort of attitude on all sorts of sexual matters (like oh say academic pedophilia or nude Spartan women wrestling in public with boys made to watch to encourage mating) not to mention political or other issues.
So if she’s still too politically incorrect, *GOOD*. Makes for more interesting stories. It’s not as if kids can avoid knowing about these things now, with the Internet and the new pushing all sorts of images at us.
The 2009 WW animated film has Diana instructing a little girl in the park how to ferociously fight with boys with a stick, which of course scares the hell out of them. Diana doesn’t see an issue in this, coming from a warrior culture… but you know, it is an issue for parents in the park who don’t want their kids to be speared by another kid.
In the Justice League “new 52” Diana, again portrayed as freshly entering “man’s world”, inquires ironically of her colleagues that “It’s a monster, right? So no issues about the sword?” As if she would herself happily use a sword on human opponents…
Neither of these is Marsden’s character but they are evidence of an attempt to deal with Diana as a freak out of time and place – they can’t handle her sexuality or belief in transformative justice in modern America, but they can handle her as a killer…
Just as TV can take endless violence but almost no sex at all…
3. Modern pole vaulters and runners wear less than Diana does, baring midriffs for instance, cutting fabric for weight and wind resistance… and in ancient Greece the women (in Sparta) who competed athletically, wore nothing. So this is an invented issue. The original WW had shorts which were the athletic sort of the time, and this continued through the 1950s and 60s until she got a more Superman- or Batman-like pair of outdoor briefs.
4. In the UK copyright expires, period, 50 years after the death of the original author. Nineteen Eighty-Four, for instance, is out of copyright since 1998. Orwell died in 1948, Marsden in 1947.
So it may be possible to legally release UK versions of the older stories right now, somehow, though no doubt copyright treaties between the US and UK will cause publisher problems.
Until then there’s lots of ways to get electronic copies of any of the old comics, and an underground market in all sorts of new stories.
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Craig Hubley says:
…I have more problem with this vicious “300? style Spartan Wonder Woman…
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Yes, it makes the character simplistically macho, in a way intended to appeal to boys of all ages, and supposedly being “feminist.” “She’s a strong woman character…she kicks butt all the time!” As if fighting was what strength was all about…
(At least the splendid “Xena — Warrior Princess” starred a character with a dark and bloody past, with Gabrielleas counterpoint…)
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In my opinion WW is the best superhero character ever created. The issues raised just by reading her or even looking at her are worth talking about…
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Come to think of it, indeed she is! (In the original incarnation, of course.)
Not that the competition is exactly interesting; but the Marston/Peters version, and the version of the world they created, are so filled with fascinating ideas and oddities, they’re in a class by themselves.
Trina & Noah,
Interesting conversation. But it illustrates what us Marston disciples have been trying to get through to people like you. Which is to STUDY the truth surrounding the Wonder Woman mythology. What Trina has said is correct. BUT she is UNcongnizant of the bondage that Noah speaks of.
Noah’s position on the bondage is out of place. He needs to do more studying under a QUALIFIED teacher of Marstonian psychology and philosophy.
You guys can email me.
@UpStander,
“Marstonian”? When someone dead for decades is revived as an “-ism”, or an “-ian” ideology invented, I have my suspicions.
We have learned an immense amount about human sexuality, power relations and (especially) just how far sexual and romantic choice can go without causing the basics of society to collapse.
I’d say Marston was prophetic in some ways, and overt in a way that few Americans before Kinsey were. But I don’t think there ought to be a ghetto of “Marstonian” or “Kinsenian” views, hm?
Among other problems it is labelling a movement that is mostly about women’s power and choices, with the name of a male icon.
Trina is commenting on the overall mythological element and of course those stories contain lots of bondage and sexual coercion and deception and rape. This makes them a good basis to talk about the appropriate response that women ought to have to those things. Marsden provided one. I wouldn’t say its uncognizant, but she did not (as I did) make a specific point that attitudes about sex in particular might give Wonder Woman a “problem” of the sort that usually plague interesting modern comic characters.
People also may be agreeing privately on things like that which they may not feel inclined to comment on publicly. Accusations like “uncognizant” are made only after extended correspondence, in polite society.
Back to the vulnerability inherent in any submissive sexuality, or invitation of it in others: Like Batman’s obsession or Tony Stark’s heart, it creates a more real person, one driven to creative solutions and determination. One we can admire as a hero. Even Achilles had his heel. We get this entire principle of vulnerable heroes from mythology itself… one with a vulnerable sexuality that others might be more rather than less able to exploit, is both a weakness and a strength.
So I’m all for studying the scientific truth and the history but I don’t think you can criticize anyone for taking a position on the modern direction of the character or historic turns taken on her. Especially not under a pseudonym claiming qualifications…
Back to the point of this thread, which is about literature not what social problems we might solve with any given fictional arc:
It’s now a year since this thread started. We’ve seen a bit more.
The 2011 “new 52” Wonder Woman, and the prior “issue 600” pants-on-girl who was struggling with her identity, were both just fine with me. WW has often lost her memory, often struggled in alternate realities or timelines created by the gods to test or protect her, and often has trouble distinguishing dream from the physical (given her divine origins, we can expect all of that).
She also has had direct confrontations with the gods since her beginnings.
The 2011 “new 52” take, in which the Greek pantheon is portrayed in a well-disguised gritty fashion, and play empathic roles that involve very little “I can destroy you” booming from on high, is one of the best. Conflict between gods drives the action while the demi-goddess Diana is forced to mediate and prevent harm to the ordinary humans she loves. The love itself is up-front and unbashed. SPOILER: When the pistols (!) of Cupid hit her, she is only mildly affected with love of Hades, because *SHE REALLY DOES ALREADY LOVE EVERYONE*. This is exactly Marsden’s point… she is milder and more empathic in peace, but more capable than ever of mutiliating and destroying divinities who oppose love or empathy as such. Her final violent dealing with Hades is astonishing & breathtaking… This is even *better* than Marsden’s plots at making the point…
Self-love is the most necessary love. When lacking, its lack does the most harm.
Her move is instinctual, graceful, brutal, compassionate, and pre-emptive of future harm. It turns the tide of the story arc.
Marsden would have cried, and not from frustration. As did I. Out of empathy. For a murdering God who rules hell. You see?
As always with this character, love wins. I’ll keep reading her.
Hey all. I’m banning Upstander, so please don’t engage/refute/attack, since he’s no longer going to be around to defend himself.Thanks!