Dark Knight #3 - Wonder Woman's clay origin coming back?

[AmiMizuno]

Dc hates Wonder Woman. What could Nubia’s name be turned into? I mean it is Egyptian name meaning gold most likely. Why not have Hippoltya before she prayed the gods to being them to life she already gave them their names?

[TruthAndJustice]

Because it's a sexist patriarchal erasure of what was rightfully meant to be a non-patriarchal celebration of women.

Exactly. And it erases one thing that made Diana unique among superheroes.

[wonder39]

I'm not re-writing anything. The language used in the origin issue of Marston's run states that Hercules "makes love" to Hippolyta after he seduces her, and then a few panels later we have baby Diana pulling massive tress out of the ground and Amazons saying "this child has the strength of Hercules!" I'm not saying at all that that is what Marston for sure intended, but it's possible, especially as Morrsion is basing his WW work on the Golden Age stuff and chose to make Hercules her father.

My mixed feelings on Azzarello's run are well documented on here I think, and I'm not crazy about Zeus of all people being her dad. Since I brought up Hercules and not Zeus, I'm not sure why you brought up the Azzarello run (and the Amazon raids is by the far the more toxic element there).

Back then "making love" was equal to wooing someone...it didn't refer to sex. God knows there was no way they would have allowed sex to have been mentioned in a comic in the 40s...

[Awonder]

I'm not really seeing the relevance of the hypothetical. I'm just going off what this story is. They're telling a story about a brother and a sister, thus I'm basing my opinions going forward on that and only that. And operating off that, they sure better look to have some emotion to it if they want it to be a successful tale. And in my opinion you get off to a better start there by them actually being related as intended instead of just an empty technicality. I'm arguing only against these so-called compromises within the context of what they are actually doing. Not whether or not they should've in the first place or anything like that. That's another argument entirely.

Yeah, a "brother and sister" that just met, right? As such, they have no previous interactions of note. Any real "emotional resonance" for the story will come from their interaction going forward. Just as she could develop "emotional resonance" with someone totally unrelated or someone else molded from clay. The long, lost sibling trope is just lazy, faux drama (yes, that goes for Nubia as well).

I admit I of course can't know for sure if this belief is true without knowing what the original changes, before that meeting Didio, were going to be. Azz has never articulated what they were going to do and I doubt he ever will, All he was willing to divulge was that he thought the ideas were bad which prompted him to offer his services. If said original ideas also had an element of removing the clay origin, it certainly would be evidence that it was something on their to-do-list regardless and it wasn't the happenstance of a particular pitch.

As I said, I find Azzarello's statements rather telling, though, no, DC isn't going to tell us the whole truth. But, as I put it in another thread regarding Jason, their actions are telling:

This isn't even new. Just look at the past decade or so under DiDio's leadership:

- They got rid of the Amazons during/after Infinite Crisis.
- They brought them back for the terrible Amazons Attack, then immediately got rid of them again.
- DiDio would not let Simone undue AA even though few really liked that story.
- They added Achilles and the Man-azons.
- They got rid of Themyscira and minimized the Amazons for Odyssey.
- They added daddy Zeus (the patriarch of patriarchs) to redefine WW.
- They gave her brothers and sisters by dad.
- They emphasized the male gods helping her and female gods attacking her.
- They added the sex raids and male infanticide for "dirt."
- They brought the male Amazons in to save the women.
- They added a twin brother.

Are we seeing a pattern, yet?

DiDio has consistently pushed to undermine and distort the feminist aspects of the WW story in order to make it what he perceives as more male-market-friendly.

[Awonder]

One's an unnecessary retcon DC did . . . the other would be a lame, unnecessary, and illogical retcon if DC decided to go that route. (As I said before, where/when/why would Hippolyta be meeting a "normal man"? She doesn't normally leave Themscyria to go hang out in a place where she could pick up a dude? When did Themscyria suddenly become a destination place for men on vacations or anything?)

Giving Diana any father is "unnecessary." And, any such change - Zeus or Joe Normal - would require changes to make it happen.

So, why is a normal good guy more "lame" than Zeus?

Why is it "illogical" for Hippolyta to love a good normal guy, but not illogical for the woman leading women away from man's world because of the oppressive sexism and abuse of patriarchies to fall in love with the father of her rapist who is himself the patriarch of patriarchs and a well known abuser of women? Zeus is the epitome of all Hippolyta and the Amazons hate about man's world.

Why does Diana need a father at all? Why can't this one superhero story be maternal instead? Don't fathers already push mothers down to second rate treatment enough in the genre? Why should WW be part of the pattern of patriarchal dominance?

[Outside_85]

Because it's a sexist patriarchal erasure of what was rightfully meant to be a non-patriarchal celebration of women.

which it hasn't been since 1986 when Hermes was added to the mix, so who are you really trying to fool with that?

[Awonder]

which it hasn't been since 1986 when Hermes was added to the mix, so who are you really trying to fool with that?

When you read the Perez-Potter WW #1, do you really think the focus is on Hermes?

Hermes isn't Diana's father.
The creation of the Amazons is not his idea.
The "birth" of Diana is not his idea.
He is only one of the gods involved with blessing her - the rest are all women.

In other words, the narrative is still very female-centric even with the addition of Hermes.

[Outside_85]

When you read the Perez-Potter WW #1, do you really think the focus is on Hermes?

Hermes isn't Diana's father.
The creation of the Amazons is not his idea.
The "birth" of Diana is not his idea.
He is only one of the gods involved with blessing her - the rest are all women.

In other words, the narrative is still very female-centric even with the addition of Hermes.

As the sticking point of your argument is that Perez origins were somehow a purely feminist venture, it doesn't matter if he is the focus or not, he is there and part of it.

Technically Hermes has been Diana's dad in the post crisis era as much as the 5 goddess' and Hippolyta are her mothers and all the Amazons are her aunties.
And we don't know the details about the Amazons creation as of yet, if we ever will.
The assumption here I guess is that Zeus knew exactly what would come of sleeping with Hippolyta?
Is a white sheet clean if there is a black spot on it?

Is it now? I kinda find that hard to see when there is actually no empathise being placed on what gender the deities have, it just happens that those were the ones who thought this was a good idea and pitched in.

[Jim Kelly]

Zeus is the ultimate rapist--both in the classical and the modern sense--given he's the ultimate authority in the ancient world of the Greeks. There is no male or female that has agency in this scenario--they are all controlled by Zeus and can't legitimately give consent. He's often creeping around, doing very predatory things, either deceiving or pressuring people into exploitive situatons. Even when it seems passive, there's something morally questionable in getting a woman pregnant, without her consent, by becoming a shower of gold.

Which is why, around the time of Plato, the Greeks were starting to treat these tales of the gods as simply fanciful stories, elaborate metaphors, and not actually reflective of the gods they worshipped. Because they didn't want to believe in gods that were so perverse.

[MajorHoy]

Why is it "illogical" for Hippolyta to love a good normal guy,

You keep ignoring one key point on her "meeting" a "normal guy":
When / Where would she meet a "normal guy" when she stays on a hidden island populated by only women?!?

[AmiMizuno]

In the Golden age, the island was simply uncharted. So maybe a man wash ashore. Why make Diana a rapist father and abuser of women? We have seen in Wonder Woman how Zeus can be a creepy man. Why not keep the clay

[Triniking1234]

Attachment 56135

Thoughts? Or it was just a game of words?

I think Scott messed up. Just tweet him and ask.

[Astroman]

Back then "making love" was equal to wooing someone...it didn't refer to sex. God knows there was no way they would have allowed sex to have been mentioned in a comic in the 40s...

The first (according to the OEDs) example of the term being used to represent intercourse was in 1927 in the stage directions for the Mae West play "Sex." And then in 1934 George Orwell's novel Burmese Days uses it in a way that most people consider to reference the physical act of sex.

My point with this is not to split semantic hairs but, considering the various crypto-sexual themes in Marston's work, I wouldn't be surprised if he was playing with both uses of the term.

[Jim Kelly]

Some writers might've meant sex--maybe that was their way of getting it into their books--but I think the softer meaning was still prevalent in the 1940s when Donna Reed famously said to her mother that George was "making violent love to me" in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE. Mary Hatch was trying to upset her mother, but not to that degree.

I always found it funny reading old novels that used the expression when they really didn't mean sex and just meant "pitching woo."

[AmiMizuno]

Well even if Marston did mean sex, Diana wasn’t made from that . She was made from clay and many of her childhood friends were