You have your top tier villains like Ares and Circe that seem more then powerful enough to give Diana real problems.
Cheetah and Silver Swan seem more like emotional threats then physical Threats (I never felt Cheetah would actually challenge Diana much if she wasn’t holding back). Then you have other villains like Giganta that Diana usually trounces with only moderate effort.
I’ve always felt the Angleman and Dr. Cyber should be bigger threats then they usually depicted being.
Think that's something that you can about most of the villains of flying brick types. :p
In Cheetah's case, I'd say she suffers from that she's usually depicted fine in WW's actual book but because the WW book usually doesn't have much eyes on it, Cheetah suffers because she's usually jobbed out in other more popular books and media depictions.
Agree with Gaius. If we go back to the Golden Age, the superheroes seldom had peer villains anyway. Rather than having a villain to simply trounce, they presented a problem for the hero to solve. That's really a more interesting thing to read for me.
[QUOTE=Gaius;5137327]Think that's something that you can about most of the villains of flying brick types. :p
In Cheetah's case, I'd say she suffers from that she's usually depicted fine in WW's actual book but because the WW book usually doesn't have much eyes on it, Cheetah suffers because she's usually jobbed out in other more popular books and media depictions.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=kjn;5137370]Agree with Gaius. If we go back to the Golden Age, the superheroes seldom had peer villains anyway. Rather than having a villain to simply trounce, they presented a problem for the hero to solve. That's really a more interesting thing to read for me.[/QUOTE]
Agreed with both of these points. These days, villain effectiveness is judged by how many bodies they can pile up or how they can physically hurt the hero instead of the writer actually putting the work in to come up with different scenarios. Back in the Golden Age, we have plots like Blue Snowman taking over Patsy Peters' home town, representing the evil of cold apathy to the suffering of others. It was silly but had more of a theme than a lot of villains today.
Ares and Circe are believably challenging. Cheetah is middle of the road; she mostly hurts Diana emotionally, and in this in turn allows her to hurt Diana physically because Diana will always hold back against her even at times when it is dangerous for her to do so. We see this with Priscilla in [I]Justice[/I], Diana knocked her out quickly when she finally had enough at the end but her patience nearly cost her her life. Plus Cheetah shouldn't be a purely physical threat anyway, she should also be a schemer.
Villains like Psycho and Cale are more effective as cerebral foes. Cyber can be both, she can have an army of machines at her disposal for physical stuff while being someone you can't physically hit. Giganta though really needs to be an effective physical threat though. There can and should be more to her, but she muscle is her main thing.
Dr. Cyber really should more of a threat. I imagine her as Diana's personal Ultron/Dr. Doom, someone that can physically ragdoll teams of heroes while maintaining a calm and intelligent demeanor. The "evolve or die" mentality should also be in play.
Diana's rouges need not just exposure but respect. You want to give a hero a worthy rouges gallery, you need to stop having them be A) slapped around by other characters, B) update and improve their powers to match the level of the hero they are challenging, and C) given time to show off their abilities. Why should I hold any candle for Angleman, Zara, or Blue Snowman if they show up in one panel and lose off panel.
A good superfight is great, but I don't think most people read comics specifically for that. Otherwise, why is Lex Luthor the archenemy of Superman, or Joker the archenemy of Batman? They don't challenge them physically (and actually, Cheetah would rip them both apart in a physical match), but they're both super popular villains because they challenge their rivals in other ways.
Not a lot of them can fly if that's what you're getting at...
[QUOTE=Nyssane;5137722]A good superfight is great, but I don't think most people read comics specifically for that. Otherwise, why is Lex Luthor the archenemy of Superman, or Joker the archenemy of Batman? They don't challenge them physically (and actually, Cheetah would rip them both apart in a physical match), but they're both super popular villains because they challenge their rivals in other ways.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, Diana would kill Cheetah pretty quick if she wasn't holding back.
But Superman would kill Lex even quicker. As a rule, the heroes never punch downward and go all out against their villains unless they get [I]really[/I] pushed.
[QUOTE=SiegePerilous02;5137813][b]Yeah, Diana would kill Cheetah pretty quick if she wasn't holding back.[/b]
But Superman would kill Lex even quicker. As a rule, the heroes never punch downward and go all out against their villains unless they get [I]really[/I] pushed.[/QUOTE]
Are we sure she can because cheetah almost killed flash & kal el with just a few claw swipes. Imagine her not holding back
Cheetah has had great showings against Diana especially in Perez's, Jimenez's, and Orlando's runs on the main Wonder Woman book and Johns' New 52 Justice League run. She, along with other Wonder-rogues', formidability is dependent on the writer of the story. Virtually any Wonder-rogue could be an A-level threat with the right story. Sadly, a lot of Diana's villains don't get the respect or development they deserve and are treated like jokes in a lot of other books.
I agree with others’ comments that many of her villains get jobbed and misrepresented in other hero’s titles. They need to be taken seriously by editorial in order for creatives to represent them in a powerful way. Cheetah has probably been the most underserved in this way, but at times Luthor has also been unbothered by Circe. Post Our World’s At War comes to mind to when Circe essentially approached President Luthor to become her lover and stepfather to Lyta and he turned her down. She eventually takes him on in The Witch and the Warrior, but the scenario still played out as the Hell Hath No Fury Like A Woman Scorned trope with a bit of The Taming of the Shrew trope. So, besides general disrespect, I think there’s some sexism that also comes into play.
It also depends on your definition of powerful and how the characters are portrayed.
Ares, Circe, and Cheetah *should* be powerful enemies, physically, emotionally, psychologically, etc. All of her villains should be these things to different degrees if we are going to care about or understand them as characters.
Giganta and Dr. Doris Zeul *should* be physically powerful and diabolically smart.
Doctor Psycho should be the most feared villain the entire DCU because of his telepathic, psionic, and ectoplasmic powers meshed with his brand of hatred, fear, bigotry, and sociopathy. He makes you question reality and brings any and all of your psychological fears, inadequacies, and traumas to life. He’s a character who has nearly always been underutilized and under-appreciated.
Whichever version of the Silver Swan you like comes with some emotional baggage and a personal relationship to Diana that makes them powerful, in the sense of the hold they have over Diana, let alone the destructive sonic powers and superstrength and/or bionically enhanced strength.
Superwoman of Earth Three is the original Dark Diana and is underused and under-represented as powerhouse and as nefarious as Diana is heroic. She’s always playing back up to Owlman and Ultraman, when she should be leading the Crime Syndicate.
In the DCnU the Atlanteans got an upgrade, but where’s Queen Clea been to challenge Diana? Completely forgotten, unfortunately.
I could go on and on with Doctor Cyber, Eviless, Angle Man, Zara, Anton Unreal, and other Amazon adversaries and how they *should* be treated as powerful and formidable, if only they were considered and represented in that manner. (And I’m doing it in my Wonder Woman Series Bible Thingee.)
Representation and respect matter in media and I wish we could see more of that applied to the Wonder foes.
They just need writers to use them. Who could imagine that Batman could be challenged by Joker? A long sequence of writers using Joker turned him into a serious menace. If Cheetah or Angle Man were used half as often they'd become much more interesting.