“Wonder Woman has always been a problem for me. Because I don’t dislike the character, but…I haven’t read a lot of Wonder Woman comics that I loved. I like her a lot in some ensemble books, like Kingdom Come and some JLA. But solo. Well, lets talk about why.
1. Her rogues’ gallery sucks
The bad guys in Wonder Woman are kinda shitty. Look at Batman. That shit runs deep. Even your third-tier characters, your Mr. Freezes, have some solid moments. Solomon Grundy? Seems dumb, but Long Halloween has a great Grundy. That sounds like an exclamation: “Great Grundy!” Spider-Man? Probably the best rogues’ gallery. Enough bad guys that he has a Sinister Six! His own team of bad guys. Wonder Woman? I mean, Cheetah? So like a slower Flash lady in tacky tights? Yawn. On the flipside, we have someone like Ares or Zeus, but in the comics, it’s not like they’re fistfighting Wonder Woman. They do that godly, set things up in a bizarre plan sort of thing. And gods, as characters, aren’t usually 3-dimensional, interesting characters. Nobody I can hang my hat on.
2. Her powers are extremely flexible
Can Wonder Woman fly? Well, it depends. Golden Age? No. In this book? Yes. 10 years later? Maybe. In the movie? No. Is she harmed by bullets or would she need to deflect them with her bracelets? This happens with all heroes, for sure. Spider-Man can sometimes hold up a building, sometimes would have a hard time lifting a car over his head. BUT, Spider-Man isn’t bulletproof on some days. And homeboy can’t fly. I’m good with any level of a power, like if someone is super strong, eh, that can be malleable. With Wonder Woman, it feels a little like her powers change based on the story someone wants to tell. What keeps characters more interesting to me is when new stories come up but the characters are still within the same limitations.
3. The gods and heroes thing doesn’t work for me
This book was an exception. It bridged the gap between old mythology and modern day really well. This had some, ahem, objectionable results re: Heracles, but we’ll talk about that last, at the end, for anyone who’s interested and okay with a spoiler. But most times, I feel like Wonder Woman (along with Thor) makes the whole universe weird because of the connection to gods and such. My personal theory, this works in the movies because they can carefully decide where it begins and ends. It’s not like an 80-year continuous story the way it is in the comics.
I recommend this volume. It lines up the origin in a way that makes sense, the plot is big without seeming totally ridiculous. Like…you can see why it’s important, but it also seems like Wonder Woman can rise to the occasion and solve the problem. It makes sense in a comic book kind of way.
You can read this one without having read any Wonder Woman comics before, and this is probably the one that had the biggest influence on the movie.
The whole rape thing with spoilers:
I’m about to ride a line here of sounding like some sort of rape apologist, perhaps. Which I’m not. What I want to say is complicated, and I just want to take this opportunity to remind everyone that this is a fictional rape that happened to a fictional character that was in no way real. It’s my belief that fiction does not have to play by the rules of real life, and I feel like the discussion of a fictional rape is open to discussion in a way that a real rape is not. That’s the perspective of the person you’re about to read, so if that sort of thing is a huge issue for you, I think we should just part ways here. Just click away to something else. @benbencatcat is one of the best cats on Instagram, and it would serve anyone better to scroll through that feed than to read this.
So the book opens in a very mythological style with Heracles leading a band of men to the Amazons, then raping and pillaging. Not graphically, but there are no bones that this happened, including Heracles forcing himself on Wonder Woman’s mom (though Heracles is not Wonder Woman’s father). This is also tied up in a lot of that mythology stuff with gods indirectly influencing and blah blah blah.
Heracles ends up imprisoned in classic mythological style, which is the realm of prisons where a dude has his eyes eaten by birds every day and shit like that for like a thousand years. Wonder Woman’s mom rescues him from his imprisonment, and at the end of the story, Heracles has not only been forgiven, there is a small spark of possible love between Heracles and Wonder Mom. They kiss.
Obviously I wouldn’t argue that I don’t see the problem here. What I want to say is this:
Wonder Woman lives in the world of mythology, and we’re talking about a mythology where Zeus basically had one of those wheels that makes the animal noises, the ones for little kids? And he’d pull the ripcord, see which animal it landed on, and that’s either what he’d turn himself into or have sex with. “The swan says: #MeToo.” So I know that’s a problem for some readers, but for me, it was thematically aligned with the whole gods and monsters thing. Mythology is weird with sex stuff, so I think that it’s distasteful, and at the same time it fits. It doesn’t HAVE to be there, I’m good with a different version of mythology, but…
Let me put it like this: one of those Expendables movies is all about human trafficking or something? The aging action stars are attempting to stop a truly heinous crime, and…it’s like, not for THIS movie! Have the bad guys steal a weird bomb or something. A bizarre plot with space satellites. Not sex trafficking! An Expendables movies should be wacky and fun, and that’s just a complete wrong turn. It’s not on-theme. When Van Damme throws a knife in the air and kicks it into Thor’s brother’s chest, that’s not a movie where I think we should be getting into this shit.
In this version of Wonder Woman, this rape and pillage thing is distasteful, but it’s on-theme within the context of ancient mythology where this stuff was happening all the time, and that mythology is pretty heavy throughout. So while I don’t require it for verisimilitude, it doesn’t feel totally out of place. We’re not chugging along in a fun, sexless, victimless world and this comes out of nowhere.
Now let’s talk about the forgiveness aspect.
I think its inclusion is complicated.
We could view it as just lazy, thoughtless and a complete misread of the character, and that’s where most interpretations go. I think Perez did a pretty good job over 400 pages of comics here, writing quite a few strong female characters, so it begs the question, What if it’s not? If we can be so bold to ask the question, we have to look for a different answer.
Here’s mine.
I think characters are always more compelling when they make bad choices. It’s my opinion that Wonder Mom is making a bad choice. It’s an extreme, god-proportion version of a woman going back to the arms of her abuser. Which is a thing that happens.
It’s totally reasonable to not like the inclusion of forgiveness in this fashion, and I think it’s also reasonable to read this as a case where someone wrote a character making the wrong choice.
I think one of the primary issues with this is that it takes what would otherwise be an empowering piece for women and turns it into something that’s not so empowering.
Perfect women are women for people to look up to, especially young people. Kids don’t really make bad decisions so much as they’re manipulated by adults. I mean, sure, kids do dumb shit, but we’re not talking about a treehouse of questionable construction here.
I’m of the opinion that this is an adult-oriented book, and having characters that are problematic is appropriate for an adult book. Bad decisions belong in an adult book because adults make bad decisions. And we have to learn to reconcile with people who’ve made bad choices that we would never make. On a big scale.
So.
It’s a weird thing to think about, and I’m still not totally sure how I feel about the whole thing. For me, the question was “Why didn’t this bother me?” and I wanted to explore the answer in writing. I hope this exploration has been helpful or interesting to someone else. But if not, again, @benbencatcat. “