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[Thad]

Wonder Woman trailer.

I can't be the only one who sees the "suiting up" bit in the beginning and thinks of, well...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsGfMX-6XaM
(Skip to 3:50 or so in; NSFW.)

(EDIT: You know, you can totally see Taarna's bush when she gets out of the water, but it's nowhere to be seen when she's sporting that G-string thing.  Does the movie perhaps skip over the ritualistic shaving prior to the ritualistic donning of the mystic warrior garb?)

[Kashan]

Some heroes are made, this one was born? Isn't that like the opposite of Wonder Woman's origin story?

[Bal]

If you take her being "made" literally, yes. Although in recent years, while she was formed from clay, she was formed as an infant and raised in the conventional manner by her mother. So whatever. Wonder Woman sucks anyway.

[Cthulhu-chan]

fuck you wonder woman is awesome

Which is to say I always liked her in the Justice League cartoons and Kingdom Come.  As a comic character, she's had a rather sordid, bizarre, and often poorly written past.

[Bal]

You can't cite the Timmverse as evidence for a character's quality. Everything is better in the Timmverse.

[Cannon]

Erm. I'm pretty sure that's only because most of us have only a passing interest in DC's publishing history. I enjoy the Timmverse, too, but pithy remark or not... That's kind of an arrogant thing to say concerning eighty years of broader source material.

[Bal]

Except that, unlike you, I am familiar with Wonder Woman's history in the comics and elsewhere. So shut your stupid mouth, Cannon.

[Doom]

Whenever Iron Man gets even drunker than usual, he uses Wonder Woman's Rogue Gallery as the basis that his own is not so bad I'm fine fuck you don touch mah keys blaargarghgahr

[Cannon]

Well, I wasn't talking about Wonder Woman specifically, Bal, but I'm willing to believe that you're informed about her comics history. I am mostly not informed, honestly. I'm not going to believe that you're in the know about seventy years of DC history (if "and elsewhere" was somehow meant to imply that you are), and my remark was mostly a non-sequitur divorced from your chat with Cthulhu-chan. I jumped the gun, yes.

As an aside, I'll post what I want as long as the admins allow me. I'm capable of admitting when I've "said" something dumb, and it's ultimately not your stupid mouth. I don't think this needs a split, and I'm sorry about the small mess in your nice thread, Doom.

[Royal☭]

You can't cite the Timmverse as evidence for a character's quality. Everything is better in the Timmverse.

So what you're saying is we shouldn't use the good character to justify the character being good?

[Bal]

Yes, that is what I'm saying. Once instance is an anomaly.

[Thad]

Well, while I found the preview on Gotham Knight a little overbearing in its "rah-rah we are awesome, DC has always led the way in positive portrayals of women in comics, except when we stuffed them in refrigerators and had them raped on-panel or crippled by gunshots to the spine" back-patting, it had a point.  While there have been years and years where Wonder Woman hasn't been a particularly well-written or inspired character (and feel free to point to a mainstream superhero who that's NOT true of), there's a reason she's survived as an icon for women's rights.  To say that Marston was progressive for his time is an understatement.  We're not just talking about a strong female character, we're talking about themes like female dominance, bondage, and lesbianism, in comics in the 1940's.

Granted, that's not to say she's been a consistently well-written or well-rounded character in the decades since.  But it's certainly not because she CAN'T be.

I'm sure that I've made it clear in a number of superhero conversations now that I think the trick to writing these characters is to distill them down to what makes them iconic and go from there.  That's why Wonder Woman worked on Justice League, and what will make or break her here -- and this movie's got one hell of a cast.

[Bal]

I'm certainly not arguing against her iconic status, which is all the more impressive given the abysmal storytelling she's generally subjected to.

[Thad]

Again, she's hardly alone in that regard.  I haven't bought a Spider-Man comic since the Clone Saga, but that didn't jade me against the Spectacular toon.

[Bal]

I still think Wonder Woman is a boring character on her own. She has the iconic status, but as a character I don't find her nearly as interesting as someone like Spider-Man, or damn near anyone else for that matter, and her rogue's gallery is frankly pathetic. These are mostly subjective things, I admit. Except the rogue's gallery.

[Thad]

I think the problem is the question of who she really IS as a character.  For all that's gone badly with Superman and Spider-Man over the years, it's always been clear who they are.  (Even Batman to a certain extent, and he's arguably the most schizophrenic superhero ever.)  As for Wonder Woman -- I think you're right; you peel away her mythology and -- who is she, exactly?  I don't think there's as coherent an answer to that in her case as with the others.

But there have certainly been some great versions.  JL and Kingdom Come have both been mentioned; I loved her character in New Frontier, and I think Busiek's doing a solid job with her in Trinity (though she's still less interesting than the other two, so far).

The villain observation is probably a good one -- most people would recognize Wonder Woman, but I'm betting most couldn't name any of her enemies.  (Then again, the same's probably true of Flash, and he has a GREAT rogues gallery.)

Anyhow.  I tend to trust Timm to put out a solid product.  Even Doomsday wasn't THAT bad.

[Bal]

The thing is, while Wonder Woman is an cultural icon, The Flash is only an icon to fans. Yes, he's famous enough that pretty much everyone knows who he is, but he doesn't represent anything essential the way the big three do. The Flash, to us, is all about family, with even his rogues forming a fraternity, and these are things we as fans can appreciate.  Wonder Woman really has none of that. She presents an image of strength, beauty, and confidence to a world that has never read a book in which she is featured.

Much more so than the other icons of the industry, her image to the public at large is much better than the reality known to the comic book fan. Her personality is poorly defined, her history and origin is an ever changing mishmash of cribbed Greek mythology, and her rogues range from pathetic to forgettable.

That said, she's still a comic book character with 70 years of history, and no character with that much history can be completely without good stories.

[Arc]

Some heroes are made, this one was born? Isn't that like the opposite of Iron Man's origin story?

Yes.

Wonder Woman sucks

Yes, she sucks a mean di
...
I'll... I'll be in my cave.

[Royal☭]

I think the problem with Wonder Woman is that not even the creators had her themes fully developed, and a lot of what she was based around is even risky and taboo to talk about these days.  Sexual deviancy and dominance, submissiveness by males to a woman and a feminist heroine.  But these themes are not usually excepted today, especially not by the male dominated nerd comic book industry.  There is a market for a sexual dominant female character, but DC isn't going to make one of their flagship characters into that, so instead she becomes the female Superman.  This isn't actually a new problem, too.  Wonder Woman used to get weak in the knees for Steve Trevor in ways that would have made Lois Lane's attempts to trick Superman into marriage look subtle.

And as for her rogues gallery, her two most famous are probably Cheetah and Giganta, both which aren't horribly embarrassing.  Then again, there is one named The Bushmaster...

[Brentai]

Wonder Woman once represented something important, and she still does.  Unfortunately it's represented much better by a multitude of other characters.  Fuck, Storm's hair is more progressive than Wonder Woman is in 2008.

So the character tends to pretty much goes in two directions - quietly progressive crimefighter, or completely unreserved teenage fantasy object.  In the first case, she does her part, wondering in the back of her mind why she can't put on some pants already it's 2008 Jesus Gawd.  In the second, well, again, she's in a bit of a crowded pool.

You want people to care about Wonder Woman?  You want her to be relevant again?  Get rid of the vague lesbian undertones.  Make them overt lesbian overtones.  Give her a girlfriend, and make it no secret that she enjoys some messy clambake.  Obviously you're not helping if she runs around screaming "I WILL FIGHT CRIME AND TRIUMPH OVER EVIL ps i like titties" but at least you're doing something.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think the fight against gender inequality is over, but you're not going to help anything by putting a tight blue ass on the front lines.  The fight against other types of intolerance, well, that golden lasso can still be kinda useful.

Of course you stand the very real danger of making Stoic Wonder Woman slip into Masturbatory Wonder Woman really quickly, but at least it's something.