You are one of those fans, I'm speaking to and trying to understand better. Thank you for the recognition.
My approach? That we need TWO monthlies - the Biden-inspired two comic solution - to showcase all that marvelous stuff we want to see in our WW comics?
I haven't had the occasion to chat up as many older WW fans, as I have fans of Superman, Batman and Namor, ..but ran into enough at the cons, to know those guys loved ETTA! Most of them, more than even Steve Trevor! That, I must say, has been one of the biggest surprises I've had, talking to fans of the Golden Age. Etta was a fixture enough that guys, who grew up reading Golden Age WW comics in the Fifties, profess to loving Etta, because she was a fun-loving, happy warrior, ..like a side-order character out of a Western or old movie serial. I wouldn't have guessed that for anything, assured that, coming out of World War II, Col. Trevor would have been their natural
favorite...
Wrong!
My position on the importance of Diana's friendship with (then, younger) Etta - the wonder-woman and the everywoman ..or
everyperson, each finding something of the other in themselves - has been made rock solid, by what I've digested on WW, in the last half decade or so. Get these two right - the TV show and movies didn't - and what Dr. Marston hoped they would mean to us mortals, center the Wonder-narrative on that diamond, ..and you've got classic
Wonder Woman, with or without kangas, Hynotas and baby-ruled planets! That, hands down, is probably the best gift Ms. Carol A. Strickland ever gave me.
I have got to write about this woman. She is amazing...
https://www.carolastrickland.com/com...ral/index.html
As for the prospects of Wonder-town, ..the work of the current creative team, which I love, is pushing me towards favoring a super-Washington, like Stan Lee Spider-Man's New York, for Diana's hometown in MW. If you take a really good look at the Washington, DC of the Marston Era, that's the stage he was telling stories on. Ghoulish agents of Mars slithering in and out of the halls of political and military power...out of people running our war effort! Big, oversized marble monuments and gorgeous Greco-Roman architecture, everywhere...waiting to be pulverized in a battle, between Diana and whatever giant robots, malevolent gods and monsters happened to be trampling through DC, at the time! Spies, some of them god-possessed or controlled by invading aliens...everywhere! That wasn't the Washington of reality, but a weird, almost Felliniesque (sometimes), surreal parody of the Nation's Capitol that Marston and H. G. Peter crafted to bring their stories to life - the super-Washington I mentioned, ..and it was fabulous.
I must confess to favoring that approach, regressive it may be to you, over returning to Gateway City--even over settling Diana in the American Southwest. If writers can dial back her urbanization a bit [Please. Please!] ..and bring back some of her Southwestern cowgirl charm and rugged optimism, who needs Texas, Arizona or Wyoming? Etta, even the current/new one, should standout against the X-filesy super-Washington, like a sore thumb on a desert highway. My approach, the whole point of posting that ARGUS citadel thing, would be to make Diana's Gothametropolis, ..right here in DC or Georgetown.
I'm all for stories about Diana and Etta romping around on the Island with the Amazons, just as they did in the Golden Age--not because I'm stuck in the Golden Age, as some would have you believe. No, no, no.
As I see it, the sisterhood of Diana and Etta, now with Dr. Minerva added [Brilliant!], ..is the narrative heart of the comic. Diana's love for Hippolyta and her Amazon sisters CAN'T be the center of it. Why? They can't be, because that would make WW's leaving the Island for Man's World...pointless? Why would she? It just doesn't work. Doesn't flow. If you get Diana and Etta and what they represent right, Dr. Minerva, the Amazons and Hippolyta will fall smoothly into place, I think. Do we need TWO monthlies to make that happen? Maybe? Maybe, not, ..but, I think we do need two
Wonder Woman monthlies, to secure the present WW monthly for mainstream comic fare - superheroics, non-stop action, some comedy.
And
boys...Steve, Siggy, Batman and romance, on the side!
My position on all of that, except for the super-Washington idea, is nothing new. I literally wrote a THREE part opinion essay, titled
"Boys On The Side"...jeez Luiz. All on the blog, to read, until your eyes bleed! LOL