In this post, we will delve the channels established in my first post: The Wonder Woman who has never been and continue the work of establishing what a Wonder Woman should in fact be.
First, I will work to establish a few things about her background or character that will support our decisions for her major life events.
We will frame her as a lifelong-Olympian, I would say the consummate Olympian. I refer to both the amateur sports competition and the hierarchy of Hellenic gods. The contest that she wins in youth that guarantees her the right to leave Themyscira will have been the Amazon dedication to the original Olympic trials. This should establish her physical prowess amongst other Amazons, and give context for the way she approaches problems later on. She is seen as being especially well gifted for this competition done for the pleasure of the Gods because she is perceived to have the favor of the Gods, having been made of clay and given life by them- the only such Amazon with that origin, the rest having been born naturally at various times in history, and having been brought to or washed up on the island, which so long as you stay on it, grants immortality. This is grounds for her being more fit and flighty than the already presumably active women of Themyscira.
So, Diana the Olympian, best of all the Amazons wins the tourney which will allow her to claim the bracers, tiara, and lasso which was apportioned the Amazons by the Gods for their champion. For now, we will decontextualize this from Steve Trevor, this is something that happens when Diana comes of age because of the insistence of a seeress on the island who portends that the competition must happen. If it was not already apparent, I don’t think that Steve Trevor has any sort of longevity as a Wonder Woman character, particularly for a Wonder Woman who does not appear in the world of Men because of a World War which I seek to avoid at all costs.
So- a note on what Wonder Woman gets up to. I had previously indicated that I think adaptation and inspiration from the Homeric stories was probably the most appropriate venue for Wonder Woman stories, I had however left out an inspiration I would consider important, which is Conan and the greater sword and sorcery genre. I do not mean that Wonder Woman need become a sword swinging ale guzzling killer of men and savage of the wilds, I more so mean to say that Wonder Woman stories should involve her going to a strange and foreign place (As perceived by American audiences) and becoming a leader of locals against an otherworldly threat. Wonder Woman as Queen of the Black Coast, but her pirate crew is doing anti-whaling actions against chinese vessels because she can talk to the whales. I believe by the way that she should be able to talk to animals, it seems sometimes she can and sometimes she can’t in comics. It is important that homage, reference, and inspiration from the sword and sorcery work of great American authors like Robert E. Howard be as respectful and pure channelings of the original work as is possible. It is the strange gritty circumstance of the characters in those books and stories which has captured the imaginations of people for 100 years, and to change them in order to fit into a modern genre of fiction as unlike it as the ultra-safe house art of modern DC Comics would be a death sentence and abortion.
In our stories Wonder Woman should be demonstrating in clear terms that she is a leader, a more than willing combatant against evil, but also merciful when she engages in earthly adventures. I am not a “Wonder Woman (or most heroes) need to kill people” guy. I think you are sacrificing something integral to your ability to convey tension when you let your superpowered character murder a guy. It IS the easy win button, and the reason characters in these comics don’t press it needs to be more complicated than “They think its mean” because it comes across as willful ignorance of the consequences of their letting a supervillain live. Wonder Woman does not kill Joe Schmo or Giganta because Wonder Woman is the recipient, inheritor, and princess heir to the legacy of the Amazons who were forced into hibernation and hiding by the brutality of war and its callous disregard for those involved only as the loving family of warriors. Boarding actions against Chinese whaling, driving off a Kaiju, kidnapping and dropping off an African warlord at the Hague- this is the sort of thing she should have as her reputation which is fundamentally different from Batman and Superman. She is not camped out in Washington DC waiting for Giganta to attack the white house. It would to me be sensible and easy that she would encounter her regular cast of villains on these adventures, and it would furthermore stand to reason her villains would have gone unnoticed thus far as they are beyond the borders most superheroes are operating in, superheroes being a very American phenomena even in the comics.
In terms of the character on these adventures and the various things that might inspire some feeling in readers, I think a character like Wonder Woman actually has incredible flexibility in comparison to a character like Batman in terms of what is “appropriate” for her to get into adventures wise. Wonder Woman is just at home on Dinosaur Island as she is amongst the opera that is the New Gods and the Fourth World. I actually think Wonder Woman is uniquely suited to the Fourth World, but that is a topic for another post I think. There is an idea in DC Comics of “Gods” and “Monsters” and I think that it is an interesting but ultimately unsatisfactory method of organizing of the universe.
Ultimately, the concern here is that such a character as Wonder Woman who requires dramatic revision and rescaling can never receive that in the current format of American comics. American comics are done “run to run” where a writer/artist team takes a character on a jaunt for a month or a year and then move on to other things because DC Comics owns the character, and editorial has a constantly shifting goalpost that makes it impossible to ever pull these characters through a “life long” story with any success. Manga does not have this problem, primarily because Mangaka tend to own their characters at least in inception. The United States faces a problem of industry and the solution to industrial problems is industrial leadership- the corporate boards and editorial councils of the present must go. We must look to Jim Shooter for the answers to our woes.
For those unfamiliar Jim Shooter was the child prodigy editor of Marvel Comics in an era where his dictatorial leadership was absolutely crucial to the company producing some of the best stories written in comics. But he was absolutely dictatorial. In order to carry a character like Wonder Woman or a character as relatively miniscule as Rocket Red to any sort of satisfying narrative conclusion or consequence there simply must be one narrative, one vision guiding the way.
Any comic book fan, any actual fan, which editors and writers by and large appear not to be, would be willing to give up a finger to be in the Jim Shooter slot, the dictator of Batman. An example of this actually working in the modern day is James Gunn. He is the Executive Creative for the DCU. He gets to pick his advisors, approve or deny stories, and do periodic checks on projects in progress. You may not have liked Superman 2025, I would disagree with you, but you could do it, even do it loudly, and it won’t change his narrative for the DCU, we will be getting a continuous story about these characters with a beginning middle and end, and I guarantee you, you can take this to the bank, that that is what will be remembered about this saga of comic book media, that it had an actual story. Its the great thing about BTAS, STAS. JL, and JLU, which all came together in a narrative and ended with the last episode of JLU- we will ignore the recent animated movies that revisit these characters and timeline for nostalgia grab in their dumb adaptation of crisis. Write an original story.
A character who is supposed to be the third pillar of the DC trinity, on par with Batman and Superman who have stories and a feel all their own, needs simply to have some direction in her life. How annoyed William Moulton Marston must be in his musty tomb.
