Quote Originally Posted by Mel Dyer View Post
I think Diana's city could help define her, as a character, and even help writers to develop her best super-villains.

For me, Diana's city - Marston City or Gateway - is a port city for supernatural beings, ..like a classical Amazon freedom-fighter from a time-lost utopia, who have nowhere else to go. Like all immigrants, they've come to the city to make a better life for themselves, and Diana is the protectress of their hopes for the future. In the middle of all of that, DEO threatens their freedom, with its myriad plots to monitor and control the 'aliens' and 'freaks', putting Diana between her newfound friends ..and the awesome, hi-tech authority of the US military.

From the stage of this iconic city, Diana's stories launch her into the wildest, far-flung, most imaginative adventures that DC Comics has ever published! From her myth-inspired origins, as daughter of a once-enslaved race, Diana travels the world and beyond, challenging all, who would subdue or terrorize others, ..as her own Amazon nation was subdued. The city, as much as her origin, serves to reinforce why Diana became Wonder Woman and what she is doing in Man's World. More than just a launching pad, the City launches Diana in a coherent direction that, for writers, ..shapes and informs her on-going narrative.

It irritates me to no end that the Supergirl TV show, in one season, was able to realize that for DC Comics' girl-Superman, while Wonder Woman, DC's First Lady of Weird, continues to limp along, with no direction. What is worse, she's even given her own fictional, iconic city, something reserved for DC's top heroes, which happens to be called 'National City', which sounds so much like a caricature of Washington, DC, ..Wonder Woman's iconic roost, in the Golden Age. The Supergirl TV show has even thrown in storylines involving social injustice issues and LGBT characters, making Supergirl the champion of the DCU's disenfranchised minorities - not the world-famous, freedom-loving Amazing Amazon...but, Supergirl? It all just felt, to me, like a robbery of what could or should have been done for Wonder Woman, the first and best of female superheroes - without whom there might not be a Supergirl TV show ..or comic - a very long time ago.

Conceptually speaking, I felt National City and the role it plays in that show ..should have been Wonder Woman's.

ARGUS, at its worst, like Supergirl's DEO, ..is just one more conquest-driven monster for Diana to protect all of us from. That is why I see it, at the center of Diana's city, where I think it serves to remind us who Wonder Woman is ..and why she is doing, what she's doing. Diana's archenemy, whoever that turns out to be (looks like Warmaster), should probably be a reflection or extension of that dynamic, in her enmity, with Diana. When Diana isn't battling her female, Ming the Merciless/Vandal Savage combo platter (Clea, Atomia, Villainess X, etc), ARGUS and its X-Filesy presence should keep Diana's mission, on point, in her hometown. The iconic city should accomplish that, in the same way Metropolis and Gotham do for their respective champions.

That's what an iconic city, in a superhero comic, is for.
I love a lot of this and my take on her city includes ARGUS and some weird-meets-reality, in that I love imagining what politics and society would be like in a world with Wonder Woman. Life would be similar in some ways, but very different in others. That’s the world-building I want to see. Where it blends and where it comes into conflict. Gotham and Metropolis do that to some degree, but I don’t feel like the differences have ever been truly embraced, so that’s something I can see Diana leading with and exploring in her title in her iconic city.