Themes of Family: Diana and the Amazons

[kjn]

Perfect way of stating it. I like that so much. That's the way I want Diana to be. Not the only one with powers. Not the only really good one. Not the prophesied one. Not a god among them.

I can easily accept a Diana with greater powers than the other Amazons, or prophecies surrounding her birth. A lot of that can vary depending on what types of stories are to be told.

But I think that the relation between Diana and the Amazons is the foundation on which Wonder Woman the social icon rests. With "bad" Amazons around her, she is a token: the exceptional woman. With "good" Amazons, she is an alternative. With "bad" Amazons, Diana becomes a person who isn't here to reform our society, but to reform Themyscira.

Much stronger theme with early Diana than early Kents in the comics. They were not as significant part of Clark's story until the Superboy comics a decade later. Same for Krypton. I mean, yes they raised him, but we mostly saw him as a man in the present, without much insight in his formative years. I dislike later versions that played up the "farmboy" aspect as though it was inherently noble (rather than a common background of the time, and one that changed by the 1950s to him growing up in partly in town) or rural/smalltown people better than city folk. Anyway, my point is in the early days, childhood family/community was much more important in WW than in Superman. And in the silver age they did that thing I very much dislike where Clark thought of himself as Kryptonian first and the Kents as not his real parents sometimes and Clark not his real name and such.

Part of that probably comes down to that Marston wanted to, and had to, depict Themyscira as a vibrant and vital community, because none of us comes from there. As Wilson noted in an interview "lots of us are from Kansas, none of us are from Themyscira". Thus Clark Kent's upbringing could easily be done using shorthand forms.

Marston didn't really spend much time on Diana's upbringing either. The real differences were that Diana regularly went back to Themyscira, and that he spent some time embellishing on the Amazon backstory. The same was true of Pérez.

[kjn]

If they want to be in their safe place, good for them. It doesn't make them morally superior. I'm not an Anglo-Saxon. I'm a French republican, which means that I believe in Universalism. All men and women are equals, deserve the same rights and the same duties, and it can only be achieved by living together, not alongside each others. A lot of work has still to be made, but I reject the creation of "Community of X" or "Non-mixed places" without a clear time-limit for members before they return to the larger society.

Are the Amazons morally superior to us? I'd say they should be, but it should not be because they are isolationistic, but because of the society they have managed to build. Put another way, their society should be superior to ours despite their isolationism.

I don't believe in the need for separate communities to even exist in a country. Peoples can be black, gay and vegans, and citizens of a country, or White, Bi and omni and citizens of the same country, and can live together if they focus on what set them together instead of apart. Safe place must be temporary, not permanent, otherwise they ensure that distinctions cement themselves in stone and nothing good can come out of it.

To a degree I agree with you. But in your demand that the Amazons open up and adapt to Man's World, do you place similar demands that Man's World adapt to the Amazons?

Put more starkly, the rejection of separate communities can also be read as that everyone must adapt to the dominant (sometimes improperly called majority) culture. It places the onus of change on the already disadvantaged groups.

Do I imagine the Amazons as a perfect society? No. But I also think that the vision of an all-women utopian society has value—as a fantasy. I also think such a fantasy should be constructed in such a way that it feels real and supports certain values that I hold dear. Some writers manage that in some ways, some in others, some other writers don't even try. And that's fair, and there is certainly value in being able to discuss our own ideological premises based on that.

But I also hold that Wonder Woman loses her radical edge as an agent of change if she is here to protect Man's World from the Amazons rather than help Man's World adapt to the Amazon values.

Then again, I question Marston obvious bias that women are inherently better than men, so I guess that bias can creep up everywhere.

I think you're not alone in that. I myself think that Marston's gender essentialism is outdated and, in the long run, damaging.

But that is a reason to critique, update, and revisit the vision of the Amazons as an all-woman utopic society, not reject it.

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

It might be interesting to do a title just based on the Amazons's day to day on Themyscira. I liked that there was an amazon subculture in the states during the Pre52 era. I remember there being Amazon run women shelters as a reference so thats something you could explore.

[WonderScott]

I prefer all iterations of Diana as the wanted child and raised in love, mostly, by her mother and thousands of aunties and sisters. Hers was a happy childhood overall despite some Bildungsroman hurdles to jump that’s basic to many families (disobeying Hippolyta, etc.), but perhaps dramatized more acutely as a fictional superhero character and having such a vast amount of family who suffered and then rebuilt a culture in a way she never experienced.

That’s not to say I don’t want conflict. I agree that I found Simone’s take on the Circle and Johns’s choices for Myrina Black interesting, but overall, and despite some dissension, I think for Wonder Woman to work best she needs to come from an overwhelmingly positive and loving environment with the Amazons to work long term. That’s her story and she needs to own it as much as Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, Buffy, and Harry Potter need to own theirs.

Morrison’s, Azz’s, and other’s versions that distance themselves from this are all interesting in an Elseworlds sorta of way, but not something I think of as necessary for the character to be the character she was meant to be.

[kjn]

It might be interesting to do a title just based on the Amazons's day to day on Themyscira. I liked that there was an amazon subculture in the states during the Pre52 era. I remember there being Amazon run women shelters as a reference so thats something you could explore.

Daily life on Themyscira would make for a wonderful setting, but I wouldn't like it to turn into a invading monster of the month type of story, something which I'm sure most active DC writers would default to. I'd prefer slice-of-life drama.

In a way, I think this goes back to the limited pool of creators that superhero comics are drawn from. The writers depend on action to create tension or suspense, and often lack other mechanisms, like character drama. Stjepan Sejic commented on this recently:

writing romance leveled me up as a character writer. turns out without the help of action scenes you're left with your characters and trying to make them interesting enough to carry a story.

I prefer all iterations of Diana as the wanted child and raised in love, mostly, by her mother and thousands of aunties and sisters. Hers was a happy childhood overall despite some Bildungsroman hurdles to jump that’s basic to many families (disobeying Hippolyta, etc.), but perhaps dramatized more acutely as a fictional superhero character and having such a vast amount of family who suffered and then rebuilt a culture in a way she never experienced.

That’s not to say I don’t want conflict. I agree that I found Simone’s take on the Circle and Johns’s choices for Myrina Black interesting, but overall, and despite some dissension, I think for Wonder Woman to work best she needs to come from an overwhelmingly positive and loving environment with the Amazons to work long term. That’s her story and she needs to own it as much as Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, Buffy, and Harry Potter need to own theirs.

Morrison’s, Azz’s, and other’s versions that distance themselves from this are all interesting in an Elseworlds sorta of way, but not something I think of as necessary for the character to be the character she was meant to be.

I think DC's default narrative doesn't do the Amazons any favours here. Either they are the good guys or they are the bad guys. Marvel has a more nuanced view here (granted, it's not that nuanced), in that both good guys and bad guys can draw wildly different conclusions based on the same situation.

My go-to example here is the Bana-Mighdall under Pérez. The idea of a splinter group of Amazons after they freed themselves from enslavement is a great idea. But DC's narrative logic dictated that one be evil (and they became violent and misandristic) and one good (following the divine edicts) carries with it lots of unwanted and problematic implications. I'd have much preferred if the Themyscira–Bana split was between Amazons who retreated from humanity and those who wanted to continue to lead and teach in Man's World.

[Mel Dyer]

Why the Darkseid War had to give Wonder Woman, a brother, makes little sense. A two-part intro to her immortal cousin, Verbius Rex, an immortal woodland king, with a magic sword, might have given the Wonders, a superhuman male, who is actually part of the classical Amazon myth. He's Antiopes son, for crying out loud.

It's also a shame Grail, being a living totem of the Anti-life, couldn't have been better utilized in the story.

[Manakel]

I agree. I feel not all Amazons should hate men and have battled for centuries. That the amazons had brothers and sisters fighting with them before they got to the Island.

I think the amazons being suspiscious of men in the comic for what they lived is a good thing but the introduction of Steve and the trust Diana puts in him should make them question their way.
Like character development but for their civilization. It's not something that should be written immediately in one issue but written slowly through a whole run of a writter and leading to a new status quo.

Why the Darkseid War had to give Wonder Woman, a brother, makes little sense. A two-part intro to her immortal cousin, Verbius Rex, an immortal woodland king, with a magic sword, might have given the Wonders, a superhuman male, who is actually part of the classical Amazon myth. He's Antiopes son, for crying out loud.

It's also a shame Grail, being a living totem of the Anti-life, couldn't have been better utilized in the story.

Well, the only way to change that (Jason) is a reboot and it might happen soon. So i will not waste my time being bitter about it.
I don't think wonder woman need a male superpowered sidekick. I always thought Steve is enough for back up. In the male department i mean because i don't forget Etta is there too, but giving the last issue, she probably won't be in the first line now.
As for Grail, i find the character very interesting. She is Diana counterpart with her father being evil incarnate. It make more sense to me having Grail a Wonder Woman villain than a justice league villain like her father is.