Wonder Woman Controversial Opinions Part 2

[Agent Z]

If Perez had succeeded in his efforts, we wouldn't be having the issues with her characterization that we do today.

Perez is one of the handful of writers in DC's entire history who is considered to have a grasp on Diana's voice. Of all the things you can criticize him for, not characterizing her well is nowhere near the list. George Perez is not Geoff Johns or Frank Miller.

He decided to change Diana into a figure from the romanticism literary movement.

Which made her less accessible as a character,

Says who?

and represented her power way less, by being a pacifying figure rather than a challenging figure.

Diana as written by Perez is a character straight out of Pride and Prejudice.

Which means she can't engage with society in a transformative way, and that she isn't charming in any real way.

Diana isn't supposed to be a reactive character, she is supposed to be proactive

Perez's run is all about people being challenged and being made to change, from the Amazons to the Olympians to just about everyone Diana meets to Diana herself.

I think the last one is the real source of contention for Perez's detractors - for all the talk about Perez's Diana being a messiah figure, she is as much a student as she is a teacher and the book emphasizes she has as much to learn as anyone else. Perez's detractors seem to want a Diana who has all the answers and never had to learn anything.

"Charm" is completely subjective. Not everyone finds the same thing charming and frankly I find people tend to say this about characters who don't have a lot of real depth to them anyway.

[Agent Z]

Why can't we have both of these aspects? Comic books, comic book superhero stories, can integrate well rounded characters, 'silly'-sounding villain names, and a campy, fun aesthetic within a tale that has narrative gravitas and an overall compelling plot structure. What I would hate to have is a WW book that veers too much towards either side in an extreme direction that finds no balance. Wonder Woman should be a place where Golden Age Etta & Perez's Julia K can coexist, a place where Merboy and Ferdinand, as well as the two Trevors can interact, a place where Giganta & Mayfly can get to know each other, a place where Ed Indelicato can fall in love with a half harpy, half amazon former slave of Eviless', and a place where butterfly-winged mermaids can face off with kangas and two-headed Hadeshound puppies. Just my 2 cents.

This I can agree with.

This is a recurring discussion in which I agree with you 100 %.

Blocking bullets with her bracelets bracelets versus having bulletproof skin is yet another instance of two things NOT negating each other. Diana could have both, and she would definitely need them in other to deal with different kind of situations that would put her and/or people around her on the path of a bullets. And I also think that BOTH her skin being bulletproof (she is after all born from the womb of Gaea) and being skilled at bullets & bracelets are equally effective in a visual badassery kind of way. Simply put, all amazons, even her, were taught to master the ancient amazon art of B & B, because it is a traditional rite of passage for Themyscirans. Diana just happens to be the only amazon whose skin is as thick and resilient as the Earth itself. I seriously don't see why these two things cannot coexist. Just my two cents.

And just like you, by this I don't mean that I want my Diana to be infallible and unbeatable. I just think that being beat by a friggin human-made bullet is ridiculous, and something that should not be a concern to someone who is as powerful as DC claims Diana is. There are many many ways in which a good writer can give Diana a challenge, and there are many uber-powerful characters who can give Diana a headache; a common dude with a gun should not be a concern to the amazing amazon.

This as well.

[WonderLight789]

[QUOTE=SiegePerilous02;6627810]It doesn't matter if she's not bullet proof if she's never going to let a bullet hit her anyway.

Just have her always deflect them with her bracelets, and there will be no need keep bringing it up. Nobody WANTS to see her actually get hit. If it has to be done, do it how Rucka did it in Rebirth, where it downed her for only a few seconds and she recovered absurdly quickly and was barely slowed down[/QUOTE]

What Ruka did was making her job to a regular human with regular bullets. He went from WW can easily deflect bullets while being blind. To WW isn't fast enough to block bullets, they can be too fast for her. And he also made it clear that a bullet can kill her. Meaning she should die by any character that hits her once with higher than bullet level force. Not a good look at all.

[phonogram12]

Why would anyone want her to die from a bullet and not be able to put speed them to block them? Has anyone said that?

I think what many day are that the speed and skill of deflecting projectiles with her bracelets is more interesting ( especially in a visual medium) than just standing there are letting bullets bounce off of you

That you don't have to be the strongest in power to be the best at what you do or are. Again, skill and use of her traditional weapons ( tiara,bracelets, lasso) sets her aside from the punching flying brick type.

Here's the real problem. It's not her power, assumed lack thereof, etc. It's writers not being creative enough to utilize her gifts and skills and powers so that she doesn't get defeated easily, " look weak" etc.

No hero should automatically just win by nature of power. That's boring. There should be danger, and high stakes on confronting a villain. If we go into it with " well they have more than enough power to easily defeat them" then where's the drama? Or the fun?

"Stats" don't really matter unless you're playing a RPG or are in fantasy football. My love of Diana isn't because she's an 12 power set vs a 9. I love the character, what she stands for, and the storytelling. Sometimes that's good, sometimes that's bad.

But it doesn't rely on her 'numbers '

This. All of this. To the nth degree.

edit: Also, can we also not turn every thread into a stats thread? One is more than enough and they're boring af, anyway.

[bardkeep]

I would heavily disagree but that's fine.



The individualism part doesn't apply in the political sense, but it does in way Diana would be stuck inside a constant internal monologue. Which doesn't mean that she didn't express herself, just that she actively needed to walk around comtemplating nature and trying to balance her emotions and stuff. Diana was full of isolation and melancholy. Not antisocial mind you, but certainly an introverted person whose empathy drove her to seek company.

The spiritual definitely applies. Perez wrote Diana in a very Catholic way (which is quite ironic).

Here are some quotes out of wikipedia (which isn't the best literary analysis but is still useful for this):

The movement emphasized intense emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience. It granted a new importance to experiences of sympathy, awe, wonder, and terror, in part by naturalizing such emotions as responses to the "beautiful" and the "sublime".

As much as I love Perez's run, I also thought his Diana was too angelic and naïve, but I don't think her internal monologue is prominent in the run at all. One of the things I love about his run is that Diana really isn't the central ego. Julia, Vanessa, and Hippolyta all have perspectives that are explored just as much as hers, and we spend a lot of time in Etta, Steve, and Myndi Mayer's heads before they're written out of prominence (or in Myndi's case killed off).

I agree with a lot of your other observations, but I wouldn't call them negatives. I like the drama and the spiritual elements. Personally my ideal Diana is sort of "feisty monk" (like, think shades of Aang from ATLA but matured and with a sharper edge) and I think spirituality and the sublime are a huge part of that, though I wish the spiritual elements were shamanic/eclectic rather than being reverent and conservative as most writers tend to approach them.

Also I know your preferences are very Golden Age but I think she should have a melancholy to her - I don't think her core struggle should be alienation, but her entire life is a fight to save a suffering, stubborn world that she owes absolutely nothing. Melancholy shouldn't be a constant, pervasive feature and I think her first instinct should be problem solving, but I like the idea that there's a darkness and temptation to surrender that she has to actively fight.

[Koriand'r]

Controversial opinion: There's way too much talking in Wonder Woman books. The bulletproof discussion prompted me to re-read the saga of Godkiller sword. It was loooong, convoluted and filled with variations of the same speeches we hear all the time, interrupting the action. That's kind of what makes me dislike Cheetah, all the pep talks and platitudes that pour out whenever Diana tries to save Barbara Ann from herself.

[I'm a Fish]

Controversial opinion: There's way too much talking in Wonder Woman books. The bulletproof discussion prompted me to re-read the saga of Godkiller sword. It was loooong, convoluted and filled with variations of the same speeches we hear all the time, interrupting the action. That's kind of what makes me dislike Cheetah, all the pep talks and platitudes that pour out whenever Diana tries to save Barbara Ann from herself.

There's a frustrating line in comics between no wanting to just breeze through the comic in 2 minutes because it's all pictures and then waiting a month for the next installment, and having so much dialogue that it takes away from the artwork.
I'm a big fan of "show don't tell" but unless the artwork is really detailed it's easy to just breeze through the comic.

[wonder39]

All of this is irrelevant because a writer can make up anything they want anyway.

Everything happened, and there are no real rules.

And isn't that the real problem? Lol. If the lasso is indestructible, then it's indestructible. If she's fast and skillful enough to play " enter projectiles her" and bracelets, then she does it without getting hit. Writer have to have a governing set of rules and then play within them, vs " now it's this" etc....

[Koriand'r]

There's a frustrating line in comics between no wanting to just breeze through the comic in 2 minutes because it's all pictures and then waiting a month for the next installment, and having so much dialogue that it takes away from the artwork.
I'm a big fan of "show don't tell" but unless the artwork is really detailed it's easy to just breeze through the comic.

I love a dense book, but dialogue should be clever and progress the story. Say what you want about the X-Men's Krakoa era there's enough to read in the info pages that they prolong your enjoyment and make the books seem more economical.

What I'm talking about are circular discussions that cover the same ground and sermonizing.

[Koriand'r]

And isn't that the real problem? Lol. If the lasso is indestructible, then it's indestructible. If she's fast and skillful enough to play " enter projectiles her" and bracelets, then she does it without getting hit. Writer have to have a governing set of rules and then play within them, vs " now it's this" etc....

True. We really need new "Who's Who"s to tell us what's what.

[Primal Slayer]

Even though the outcome sucks...Im still a sucker for this promo. WW was badass in it.

[marhawkman]

Even though the outcome sucks...Im still a sucker for this promo. WW was badass in it.

Haha, Circe using Deathstroke as a distraction to sucker punch WW was great actually.

[HestiasHearth]

Haha, Circe using Deathstroke as a distraction to sucker punch WW was great actually.

I assume that Deathstroke getting the lasso without Diana even realizing it was all due to Circe's magic messing up Diana's senses, because how in the hell would Slade Wilson get the jump on a creature powered by Olympian goddesses?

[wonder39]

Yes stats do matter. And there are fights that heroews shpuld win easily. To me there is no point in seeing Superman struggling to beat a bunch of regular soldiers for example. That doesn't mean i want my fav character to win everything easily. There is a difference.

There is nothing powerful about dying from getting shot. It means WW0s body is as fragil as a normal mortal human. That isa pathetically weak. And there is nothing impressive about blocking bullets. .

See, since she blocks them you don't have to worry about her dying from getting shot. Easy!

It's not " blocking bullets" You yourself say any superhuman can do it. So why want that for Diana? She is able to use her skill to deflect the bullets...away from herself, away from harming others. It's pretty freaking impressive. Can you do it? Lol

This is part of why upping her to God level really detracts from her. We don't need more Superman, Super girls etc. This is part of Diana's mythos. Run with it

[wonder39]

This. All of this. To the nth degree.

edit: Also, can we also not turn every thread into a stats thread? One is more than enough and they're boring af, anyway.

This. All of this as well ❤️