Actually this does deserve a discussion thread, not just for Wonder Woman, but for heroes with abilities in general. Lots of folks view these characters almost completely through the lense of who they are on the inside. Clark is a simple farm boy, Diana is all about truth & compassion, Bruce is a detective in pursuit of justice… etc. While I don’t generally disagree with such views, I feel like they’re partial representations of what I actually enjoy about the characters.
There’s plenty of stories both fictional and real that feature people with such qualities, yet I don’t find myself pursuing them on a regular basis like I do with DC. I want to see Supes fly and move mountains, Bruce use his toys and outmaneuver everyone both physically and mentally, and Diana go into battle with Greek gods and fantastical creatures. As pure entertainment, I find the powers and action exciting… when done right.
At the end of the day, I think it helps any given work to balance out both aspects, meld them together even. Diana is a badass demigod warrior, with otherworldly abilities, yet her upbringing, training, and personal experiences have made her a compassionate champion of truth. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Wonder Woman in particular just seems so wildly inconsistent to me. when i was growing up she was a counterpart to Superman, basically the Lynda Carter “boy/girl scout” role model type. then when i wasn’t looking it feels like she became a counterpart to Conan the Barbarian, and i’ve never seen the comics really reconcile these two distinct versions. like if Superman started carrying an axe around, that would be an event story! Metropolis would freak out!
but i never meant to invalidate anybody’s preferences for any version of Wonder Woman, so i hope it didn’t feel that way to anyone. the last couple of days i’ve been on meds that seem to make me a little more, let’s say, openly expressive
That is why if I make a list of my favorite superheroes Wonder Woman is not on it. If I were to remake my list of top ten female super heroes she probably misses it (she would be 10th at best). I have seen too many times where she is not a hero but a villain who joined the heroes because they gave her more killing opportunities at the time. It irks me the wrong way in spite of how good she can be.
More expressive than you usually are? We’re in trouble .
Nobody invalidating anything, and I think I understand what you’re saying about Wonder Woman. Seems to me like her portrayal differs with the setting. The more fantastical stories sometimes give the “Conan” vibes you mentioned, while the ones set in present day man’s world don’t.
I feel like some of the disconnect may be that Diana’s personality is usually at least comparatively more consistent in her own title. Outside, she has one of the same problems as Batman, namely that writers constantly feel the need to put her down to make other characters (mainly ones whose names begin with “S” and rhyme with “Superman”) look more righteous by comparison.
But at the same time (again, in common with Batman) her power levels and combat ability get inflated, so you get this picture of a character who’s really dislikable but nevertheless always wins.
The only difference is that Batman gets this stuff in his own title too.
Not so! You articulated really well why a balance between the two sides should be the goal. I feel like because comics is so visual a lot of writers feel the need to lean to what is exciting visually. And then other writers feel that’s too much and go hard in other direction. The balance is hard to get right.
I think one of the things I like most about Wonder Woman is that she is actually more complicated than it seems (or I am reading too much into this stuff, because that is what I like to do best). On the one hand, she is so devoted to love and peace that she will almost always extend her hand in peace even at the end of a battle. On the other hand, she was brought up in a very militaristic and physically combative culture so she has a real warrior vibe. And as the internet has told us:
“You can’t truly call yourself “peaceful” unless you’re capable of great violence, if you’re not capable of violence you’re not peaceful, you’re harmless”
Thank you, pithy internet quote.
So, is she here for some hippie drumming in the woods and talking about your feelings, or is she here to kick bottom and trash bozos? The answer is “yes”.
If you take an overall look at the character over the past 80 years, those are the two consistent themes that I have found. I will say that there were only a few times I felt that she was acting totally out of character, apart from the many Elseworlds kinds of stories. There are different sides to her, just like regular people. You can get a real feeling of pathos as she is so giving of herself that she never has time to just be a person, and is in fact often uncomfortable in allowing herself that role. She never really understands Man’s world. As the internet also says:
“Marvel is about humans trying to become gods. DC is about gods trying to be more human.
Again, the internet is there for us.
Anyway, I have probably taken up enough of your time for today. Wonder Woman is still my favorite character of all time, just above Marvel’s Power Princess.
I like and agree with most of these points, or at least that they’re consistent with better depictions. And then there’s Kingdom Come and Injustice, but you already excepted elseworlds.
One thing is:
I don’t trust any quote that purports to explain the difference between DC and Marvel, because those sorts of generalizations tend to be, in addition to overly simplistic, demonstrably untrue. Sometimes very literally; Thor, anyone?
Now, it’s maybe more applicable to Wonder Woman than a lot of DC characters. I don’t know about “being a god” since what that actually means is a little fuzzy outside of the most literal sense, but a really compelling and underexplored theme I’ve seen in some better Wonder Woman stories is the idea of her as an outsider who struggles with a sense of alienation because of her background.
