Julia would make for a good addition to Dianas cast for a tv show. Or they could've just had her be an older Etta.
Julia would make for a good addition to Dianas cast for a tv show. Or they could've just had her be an older Etta.
While OG Etta and the Holliday Girls are the best, I think Julia should teach at Holliday College. it would be a natural way for her and Etta to be brought together for plots. There are also ways to contrast her with Barbara Minerva: in Rebirth, instead of killing her off (ugh) they should have established that Julia was recruited by Steve or Etta to fill the position Barbara filled before she became the Cheetah. Barbara can be more naturally brilliant in her field and have the potential to surpass Julia, but she lacks the wisdom that Julia had with age and is way more cocky/thrill seeking; Julia would be far less likely to seek out a God for power.
I also think Phil Darnell could be re-worked as a love interest for Julia. He could be her male counterpart that serves a similar function to Steve that she serves for Diana, while Michaelis is Steve's age and close friend. And honestly, Michaelis should be fulfilling the function Etta does in Rebirth while Etta is truer to her roots as a character.
Last edited by I'm a Fish; 08-02-2021 at 05:10 PM.
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One alteration I'd make to Year One would be for it to be Julia who tries to communicate with Diana instead of Professor Perez, and fails so she recommends Barbara (with a little reluctance). That could be how she's introduced, and they bring her back after Barbara becomes Cheetah. Vanessa would be introduced around that time.
Donna arriving in Man's World as Wonder Girl would be around that time as well, and I would like to see Donna interact with Vanessa's friends like Eileen, Lucy and Meekins. It would give Donna her own mini-supporting cast for her to hang with when she isn't with Diana or the Teen Titans. Another fun thing to do would be Vanessa gradually getting closer to Lucy and neglecting Eileen like she did in the Perez run, but Eileen in turn gets closer to Donna.
Assuming they can get a Wonder Girl book off the ground, some of Diana's extended supporting cast can be given to other Wonder Family members. Julia could be a good supporting character for Nubia, Donna or Yara.
I always felt it would be easy to tie all of Diana's Mans World supporting cast if they all had a museum as common ground:
Etta Candy: My take would be to have her as a linguistic expert with military background.
Julia Kapatelias: Archaeologist.
Helena Sandsmark: Curator, researcher.
Steve Trevor: Shared military background with Etta, occasional body guard to Etta and the museum.
I love this setup, and the idea of Donna having Nessie and her friends as a supporting cast. I would read the hell out of this!
I think when it comes to Diana's supporting cast I tend to want a really rich human cast of "normal" people as much as I want Amazons with distinct personalities and motivations (that aren't all based around being heroes) to give her peers to bounce off of. Steve And Etta can be that, but they've honestly had so many different characterisations and varied so wildly from their roots I don't really know who they are enough at their core to insist they need to be part of it.
One thing I really love about both Perez's approach to her human cast and then Rucka's with the Embassy staff is that they all felt like actual people who had lives that were being affected by Diana's involvement. A lot of writers tend not to be more than superficially interested in that as a premise, but given Diana's mission being one with a message, it makes sense to me that she's surrounded by people who react to it and are changed by it. I'd argue that what we see with Julia is a woman who is pushed to new heights and challenges because she takes Diana on as a daughter, and that causes conflict in her life and how she balances creating normalcy for Vanessa. That stuff was rich and compelling, and delivered far better back with Perez than the Rebirth version. However you need both a writer to be on the title for more than a year to allow some real threads to play out, and an art team capable of actually conveying human emotion and character work rather than just big splash pages for that to land. Diana's title sadly rarely seems to get both of those together, though maybe once the current team come back to Earth we might see that.
Not sure if this is particularly controversial, but for a long time I've felt that if Diana's got a mission to teach a new way of being in the world, shouldn't she actually set up and lead an educational institution? There would be so many ways to bring in her extended cast to create a completely different place of education. Bring some of the creative energy of the concept of Xavier's school but apply it to the premise of Diana wanting to teach people a different way to live. There's also inherent drama in both the dynamics of that kind of place, how it would be seen by the rest of the world, and how it would be targeted by her enemies. Call it Holliday College if you want, but I see something as dynamic as Jimenez' floating Themyscira, smaller in scale, but brimming with possibilities.
edited post.
I think that idea would need to be handled with a lot of care. The concept of someone as progressive and left leaning as Diana basically starting an education system is going to rustle some feathers. Which, I think Rucka explored with Diana writing a book and just putting all her beliefs into it. This would just take it another step forward.
But the Idea of Diana being a figure that give speeches to students and at universities isn't new, but I'd like to see it return briefly ever now and again.
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It's part of what I'm proposing with the holliday Girls. Diana needs to create a alternative community around an abandoned college campus, which is where she creates a new society with the values of Paradise Island. It would be a university, but it would also be a women's shelter, and a cultural center, and a sciencie expo, and a self defense training facility, and the home for a athletic contest. Diana needs to put her values in practice, which means changing people individually with each adventure, but also starting a real place where her ideal world comes to fruition.
My controversial opinion of the day, Cheetah just doesn't work as Diana's archenemy regardless of how "iconic" she is. Devastation is at this point the best candidate even though she has only been used in two WW runs (and a few other titles) and if she was used more often she would be without a question.
She combines the most important aspects of Ares, Dr Psycho, Circe, and even Cheetah. Devastation just wants to spread pain and mistrust, and break down society. She was made in the perverted image of an innocent child, which visually would be the hardest thing for Diana to destroy (since it represents the only true innocence there is in the world). Devastation has implanted vicious desires onto other people, which is how she made a whole town of people kill each other. And she even made Cassie Sandsmark almost kill Wonder Woman by creating a psyhic illusion. And she is of course a physical challenge as well (but that's not really a requirement for an archenemy, case in point Joker and Lex Luthor).
My controversial opinion. It seems you want Diana to be weak and inferior to almost any character with powers. That is why you also expect Cheetah to be the same.
But i will play your game. Devastation is not a physical threrat. Fighting WW means nothing because many other characters have done it. In fact. Using your logic. WW is not super strong and she can never truly lift a submarine or anything super heavy. All the times she did was bad writing. Her real power level is the feats where she struggled with deathstroke. Killer frost, batman etc. Since you think that Cheetah being stated to be a WW opponent doesn't prove anything because she has no lifting feats of her own. Both can play that game.
You clearly have a lot of affection for your ideal version of Cheetah, that's fine. I hope you one day get what you want.
Anyway, an archeneny isn't based on their strength. If so Ares would automatically be Diana's archenemy.
Devastation's main value is everything else about her. Her design (and how Diana would be uncomfortable with destroying a little girl, even if she is evil incarnate), her ability to cause mass violence in others, and her psyhic illusions that cause Diana's allies to attack their own sister.
I mean, if Circe couldn’t make a dent in post-crisis IDK what hope Devistation would have over 100 issues into the comic.
The idea of Diana fighting a little girl made me uncomfortable, even though I’m sure that was the point.
Anyways, don’t really want Diana’s arch to be a kid. She can be younger sure, Pricilla was. But not a kid.
Last edited by I'm a Fish; 08-03-2021 at 04:10 PM.
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