Wonder Woman and Orion Appreciation 2021

[Mel Dyer]

Conceptually, this worked for me, better than Sty-ana.

The friendship between Diana and Orion started with a guardrail orientation of how to treat each other, involving a dehumanizing rump-slap and the response: a timely attack on testicles, followed by a knocking across a room. After that establishment of boundaries and surviving the wraths of Apollo and First Born, there came a mutual bearing of souls and contemplation of the burden of pursuing perfection. Throughout, the development of this friendship, there was banter and playful threats ..and fun. This was a layered, grown-up relationship, with a foundation in respect, growing mutual admiration and friendship. Furthermore, I like that Diana and Orion are so radically different in their POV, while understanding one another, as warriors and sharing the burden of their godlike parents' expectations for them.

I especially liked that they were companions - not lovers - who had a growing awareness and appreciation of each other, preferring this to the instant-marriage that writers give us, whenever Steve is Diana's love interest. I think it's a shame that Geoff Johns didn't give Orion/Diana, a chance.

If the TV show and New 52 proved anything, it's that Diana doesn't need to be anybody's girl. She needs an interesting male companion, and SEVERAL, I think - Andros, Orion, Rama, etc - who bring something interesting to the telling of a WW story. If he happens to look like Ted Shackelford, ..God bless him, ..and gods bless her.

This is an appreciation thread.

[Mel Dyer]

Orion was Willie Garvin to Diana's Modesty Blaise, who is also a Greek princess...nothing overtly sexual. We don't really know, if they're boinking. Like Diana and Orion they're companions - does it matter, if they're boinking? Let people use their bloody imaginations, if we still have those.

This is the way, it would be, with Wondy and Orion, if they'd had a chance.

[Mel Dyer]

Orion was Willie Garvin to Diana's Modesty Blaise, who is also a Greek princess...nothing overtly sexual. We don't really know, if they're boinking. Like Diana and Orion they're companions - does it matter, if they're boinking? Let people use their bloody imaginations, if we still have those.

This is the way, it would be, with Wondy and Orion, if they'd had a chance.

Between them...depth. No soap opera cheese, with a trail of clothes to a bedroom ..or sight of Diana waking up, with her head in a man's lap, ..and it's sexier, than anything in the WW comic, before or sense. This is a grown-up, heterosexual relationship, between a man and a woman - with conflict and honesty and beauty - and it's the only one Wonder Woman has ever been in.

In the real world, ignorant, poorly raised men ..and a few well-schooled ones disrespect woman, deliberately and unintentionally, and the women they care about correct them. It happens, every day, and the world doesn't end, with the men being sent to the gas chamber. In turn, women dismiss and disrespect men, also, and are forgiven. Not every transgression, between men and women, in the real world, ends in yellow, police tap, divorce or families being torn apart. Comparatively, when Brian Azzarello showed Diana confront Orion's very ugly disrespect and correct it, in such a way that made Orion a better human being ..and that didn't destroy her 'Army' family, it was brilliant and solidly good writing.

At no point in their friendship and partnership, was Diana not, unquestionably, shown to be the leader. Orion's disrespect was put in its place, ..as was Orion. She became his teacher, his healer, his commander, his priest. Diana and Orion made sense, in that fashion, and the conflict between them only served to define Diana, ..in a that affirms why she is Wonder Woman.

Some of us WW fans prefer this to cheese. Brian Azzarello is a genius.