Why haven't they done more stuff with Giganta?

[Agent Z]

What's wrong with having villains just be bad people who didn't need a sad story to turn evil?

Not every single last supervillain needs to be Magneto.

No ones saying they do. No one is against villains who are just bad people or the Joker still wouldn't be popular. However, this particular villain who is the subject of this thread has always had a sympathetic origin.

[AmiMizuno]

Golden age Gignata just wanted to be a savage. It can simple be that she once she got healed just started to take advantage of her new powers. Bullies picking on you. Beat them up.

[Totalwar1402]

What's wrong with having villains just be bad people who didn't need a sad story to turn evil?

Not every single last supervillain needs to be Magneto.

Nothing really. I think you get a greater sense of tragedy when you use a sympathetic storyline. You can easily make a moralising tale about that. So Magneto, because you have the Nazi regime put the kid through that, he applies that logic to humans; becoming what abused him. It conveys the idea that violence and intolerance perpetuates itself. "Theres evil when good men do nothing".

A villain who starts off evil works best as a pure primal force of destruction and madness. The Joker, Doomsday, where they are this completely alien threat which is capable of anything, is beyond reason and represents this sharp break between good and evil. Which can raise the stakes and make it more epic. "Some men just want to watch the world burn".

With Giganta herself I think a sympathetic backstory works best because:

* It implies she can be redeemed.
* Its a nice contrast to have a destructive giant who was not like that before. It goes against your expectation.
* Because WW is supposed to be somebody who is all about empathy and compassion it makes sense to give a villain sufficient plot hooks to use those skills. If she was just a mindless force of destruction then WW would not be able to do that.

[Totalwar1402]

Golden age Gignata just wanted to be a savage. It can simple be that she once she got healed just started to take advantage of her new powers. Bullies picking on you. Beat them up.

Have you read that summer supervillain comic?

[Geraldofrivia]

Nothing really. I think you get a greater sense of tragedy when you use a sympathetic storyline. You can easily make a moralising tale about that. So Magneto, because you have the Nazi regime put the kid through that, he applies that logic to humans; becoming what abused him. It conveys the idea that violence and intolerance perpetuates itself. "Theres evil when good men do nothing".

A villain who starts off evil works best as a pure primal force of destruction and madness. The Joker, Doomsday, where they are this completely alien threat which is capable of anything, is beyond reason and represents this sharp break between good and evil. Which can raise the stakes and make it more epic. "Some men just want to watch the world burn".

With Giganta herself I think a sympathetic backstory works best because:

* It implies she can be redeemed.
* Its a nice contrast to have a destructive giant who was not like that before. It goes against your expectation.
* Because WW is supposed to be somebody who is all about empathy and compassion it makes sense to give a villain sufficient plot hooks to use those skills. If she was just a mindless force of destruction then WW would not be able to do that.

Exactly, main theme of Golden Wonder Woman was that villains can be shown the right way by Diana and the Amazons and be made to repent

[marhawkman]

Another way to look at it is that you're writing a story about people who make choices. An origin story tells why they've made the choices they've made up until now. The story you're writing after that point is also about choice. Villains are defined by how they choose to do bad things. Whether their reasons seem sane to normal people is less important than that they have reasons for making choices.

Something I LOVE about Superman is how often he tries to show the villains that their choices are bad, and it at least sometimes works.

At it's core, being a hero is about doing the right thing. Part of that is showing others what the right thing is. That is where sympathy and compassion come in. If you really want someone to change for the better you need to show them how to change. If all you do is punish people for being criminals, you're doing it wrong.

But I digress.... The Joker does bad things because he LIKES it. The original version of Doomsday was a monster who didn't know any better. Livewire had an agenda of sorts that she pursued. Scorch is an interesting case because she was given powers by someone who wanted her to fight the Justice League. But, she quickly decided she wasn't interested and would rather live at home and be neither a hero or a villain. Devastation was literally created to fight Wonder Woman. WW tried to show her that she didn't actually have to, and apparently it worked since Deva eventually stopped trying to kill WW.

Giganta is someone with goals in life that she thinks require her to do bad things.

[kjn]

Perez did it in the 80s. As did Eric Luke and Eilliam Messer-Loebs.

My impression of Perez's approach to feminism and feminist thought is that it was a fairly simplistic feelgood-feminism. It was also primarily focused on history and the past, rather than Man's World and the present. I haven't found anything coming towards feminist thought in Luke's run either.

[SiegePerilous02]

No ones saying they do. No one is against villains who are just bad people or the Joker still wouldn't be popular. However, this particular villain who is the subject of this thread has always had a sympathetic origin.

Unfortunately, none of the sympathetic origins have worked in making anyone care about Giganta.

I think New 52 Cheetah's motivation of "the strong should prey upon the weak" should be transferred to Giganta. That was pretty much her Golden Age motivation. It didn't work for Barbara Minerva because she's a bigger character who needs to be more layered to justify Diana and our investment in her, but it could work for the less important Giganta who is basically a super powered thug. It's probably too late to get rid of it, but I'd ditch the mad scientist origin too and go back to the gorilla one (either transformed into a human-like being by BS "science" or preferably magic). The WW mythos and the DCU are crawling with better mad scientists.

[AmiMizuno]

Have you read that summer supervillain comic?

What super villain comic?

[kjn]

What super villain comic?

DC's Beach Blanket Bad Guys Summer Special (2018). Included one Cheetah and one Giganta story, among others. However, I'd guess all of them would be considered elseworlds unless referenced from continuity sources.

[Totalwar1402]

Unfortunately, none of the sympathetic origins have worked in making anyone care about Giganta.

I think New 52 Cheetah's motivation of "the strong should prey upon the weak" should be transferred to Giganta. That was pretty much her Golden Age motivation. It didn't work for Barbara Minerva because she's a bigger character who needs to be more layered to justify Diana and our investment in her, but it could work for the less important Giganta who is basically a super powered thug. It's probably too late to get rid of it, but I'd ditch the mad scientist origin too and go back to the gorilla one (either transformed into a human-like being by BS "science" or preferably magic). The WW mythos and the DCU are crawling with better mad scientists.

That could also be a question of exposure. I don't think too many people would read the Pandora comic or the Beach Blanket Bad Guys. That's basically two comics and not in a Wonder Woman story. Which means if she shows up in a cameo most people, I suspect, probably aren't aware of what the characters origin is and how that informs her relationship to WW. I mean I was quite taken by the story because shes quite an underdeveloped character.

They kind of do. I mean at the end of that Giganta Strong story she tells a girl that, to paraphrase, "the weak have to save themselves. Wonder Woman isn't going to get her hands dirty for you.". I mean, she is trying to explain away why she literally just did the exact opposite of that philosophy five seconds ago (saving an innocent person) so I think you are supposed to question that. But yeah, she is depicted as having a might makes right mentality.

Oh god no. No, no. Look I chuckled when on the Justice League cartoon where Gorilla Grodd has the photograph and then it pans to her eating a banana and winks at that shadow guy. Its just too silly to take seriously and you can't really go anywhere with that.

Well the way its told she isn't really a scientist and she isn't a scientist once she takes the formula. Shes a doctor whose main thing is saving people. Maybe you could have it where she just comes across this cure by accident or misfortune. But I feel like her making the choice to turn herself into Giganta is important. Taking that step despite possibly knowing the risks out of desperation. A Dr Manhatten style, "oh no I am trapped in a room, now I have superpowers. Nooo.", it can work but it removes the characters agency.

[WonderScott]

I like the idea of Doris using her brains to compensate for something about herself that she doesn't like and taking it to an extreme once she got a taste of and the thrill of physical power. She's much more interesting to me if given a backstory where she can relate to Cale, Luthor, Doctor Poison, etc. intellectually from a scientific and medical POV. She just needs an area of expertise where she's the luminary - for me that's the study of biology and genetics in a world filled with metahumans, demigods, magical creatures, extraterrestrials, etc.

She needs to be more than an image and iconography - who's the woman behind another of the monstrous Wonder "doctor" foes?

[Agent Z]

Unfortunately, none of the sympathetic origins have worked in making anyone care about Giganta.

I think New 52 Cheetah's motivation of "the strong should prey upon the weak" should be transferred to Giganta. That was pretty much her Golden Age motivation. It didn't work for Barbara Minerva because she's a bigger character who needs to be more layered to justify Diana and our investment in her, but it could work for the less important Giganta who is basically a super powered thug. It's probably too late to get rid of it, but I'd ditch the mad scientist origin too and go back to the gorilla one (either transformed into a human-like being by BS "science" or preferably magic). The WW mythos and the DCU are crawling with better mad scientists.

I wouldn't say it hasn't. Simone made it work.

[Agent Z]

My impression of Perez's approach to feminism and feminist thought is that it was a fairly simplistic feelgood-feminism. It was also primarily focused on history and the past, rather than Man's World and the present. I haven't found anything coming towards feminist thought in Luke's run either.

Gods and Mortals had Diana facing discrimination for being a woman and she was repeatedly shown to have difficulty understanding the way things worked in Man's World. Her first meeting with Barbara Minerva had her nearly losing the lasso because she couldn't believe women could also be deceptive.

Eric Luke's run had Diana liberating an alien species from patriarchal oppression.

[AmiMizuno]

This is also why I like the Banas. That they are the opposite problem but also aggression towards their own. Now paradise island amazons shouldn’t be separated because they wanted to but rather all of their men died and it just so happened that they became female only. They also have to defended the doom gate. They can’t leave the island . One or a few can but not many. I wouldn’t mind if the amazons leave the island for many different things. For example, technology. Which is how Wonder Woman title go started