Last edited by I'm a Fish; 10-21-2021 at 08:46 PM.
~I just keep swimming through these threads~
the "best" part. Considering how Batman's generally written the last 30 years, if Bruce is Clark's best friend than Clark doesn't have any other close friends.
They can be good friends, or working friends. but given the way both characters are written in modern times I don't see it anymore. Now if you bring back Blue costume Batman. Pre-Crisis Batman. Adam West Batman etc. etc. Than I could see it. But modern Batman is Superman's best friend. Feels forced given teh number of other characters in the DC Universe.
The J-man
There's 50 years before that showing that they're the best of friends, and many of the years after Frank Miller do the very same thing. They've been friends more than they've ever been at odds and putting them at odds is hyperfocusing on how they operate differently instead of the many, many similarities between them.
For a while, she was DC's temptress for Superman and bench warmer for Selina with respect to Batman. What an absolute shitshow that was.
In the most depressing way, Wonder Woman's historically been a good barometer for the general respect for female characters by the upper brass in DC editorial.
I think it started in the 70’s. There was a kriptonian posing as Wonder Woman to get Superman’s eye (which worked). Lois Lane got jealous (as 70’s Lois does) and there’s the plot.
Granted it wasn’t the actual Wonder Woman and it was resolved in one issue. But since then it’s only gone down hill.
Her nickname by DC’s editorial for decades was literally, “the annoying little sister”, because nobody wanted to write her.
I don’t know why they didn’t just hire someone who did want to write Wonder Woman…but I guess that really just speaks to how much they didn’t care.
~I just keep swimming through these threads~
We keep getting further and further away from the 70s and the 80s. I'm looking at recent comics, animations, movies. You've got a couple of generations of DC fans who see them more frequently at odds with each other. So again they can be friends.
But best friends doesn't really work for the modern incarnations. If those two are "best" friends than they don't have any other friends
The J-man
I'm happily in favor of just deleting the modern incarnations and reinvigorating the old take on their dynamic. Hopefully Waid and Mora's World's Finest will help that.
Even if it resulted in far less consistent sales and popularity compared to the other two, writing-wise I feel like Diana is the only one of the Trinity that benefited in any way from her post-COIE creator. Perez > Miller and Byrne by a country mile for me.
"Worlds Finest" and "The Trinity" are a marketing gimmick that looks good on posters, but in practice is a coin toss.
I never read any early Superman/Batman team-ups. I'm sure they were nice when comics were more lighthearted and before DC adopted Marvels proclivity of having heroes fighting each other so much.
"The Trinity" didn't become a thing until the early 2000's and turned Batman and Superman, morally speaking, into "opposites" and made Wonder Woman, "the one in the middle"...
So you got - Batman hard-ass loner, who's willing to hurt his friends because he see's them as dangerous.
And you got - Superman boy scout, read white and blue all the way, bring in the comradery.
And finally - Wonder Woman, the one in the middle (what?). Which usually translates to "will kill sometimes" but Batman and Superman aren't known for killing (even though they've both done it) and kind of just sidelines everything else she stands for.
I'm sort of glossing over here, but you know how many times when the bring up The Trinity they describe Wonder Woman as "the one in the middle" or "the glue of the Trinity".
Not to mention, to make this "morally opposite" stick they developed work for them, they made Batman "want to control everything" and gave Superman "the hands off approach, he's is only reactionary".
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So basically The Trinity sort of altered there characters for the worse in a sense, because they shoe-horn Superman and Batman into conflicting rolls, when what they want and how they do it aren't necessarily conflicting to begin with. And made Wonder Woman "the one in the middle" because...IDK, can't have her pick a side to Batman and Superman's methods I guess?
Last edited by I'm a Fish; 10-22-2021 at 08:50 AM.
~I just keep swimming through these threads~
The Trinity dynamic gets screwed because of two things: DC's borderline pathological need to have Bruce and Clark disagree with each other and so Diana either needs to be peacekeeper or thrown under the bus to be the bigger problem the two get on the same page on. And the constant mistake of pairing her with one of them romatically.
Because really, most of the writing that depicts Bruce and Clark as being opposites seems to spring from immature thought processes. They are both smart and want the same things and have a lot of similarities. They'd of course fight sometimes, because friends fight on occasion, but the "uneasy allies" thing just makes them both look like childish idiots and isn't remotely deep at all. And if they are both written in character there really isn't a need for Diana to have to play Team Mom and mediate them constantly or have issues with them herself. Modern Batman's excessive brutality is the main thing Diana would not truck with, and that's a bad trend for Batman in general that should be expunged ASAP. Her being willing to cross the line on occasions whereas they won't can lead to nuanced friction, but I'd say they both respect her enough that their in-character response should be more along the lines of what Rucka originally had planned vs. the shitshow we got.
Actually, I sometimes wonder if Diana's willingness to kill should ever have been thought up. She used to have a no-kill policy like them, perhaps an even stricter one. Perez, Rucka and Simone have all written a Diana who is willing to kill very well, but those few instances hardly seem worth it when we factor in all the crap DC has used it for.
In some ways I felt having Diana kill but Superman and Batman not was a knock on Wonder Woman. Like Bruce and Clark had this moral high ground over her allowing her to do the dirty work while they kept their hands clean.
Although we are trending more and more to a Batman and Superman who kill. Despite comic purists protests that’s the direction it feels they are being pulled to in multimedia, because let’s face it in live action most of the heroes kill.
The J-man
~I just keep swimming through these threads~