Ah yes, can’t wait to play bingo with this comic.
~I just keep swimming through these threads~
He probably just hates Wonder Woman. That's what I assume when I see writers treat her the way they do. Unconscious sexism alone simply doesn't explain it considering stuff like Injustice (and Flashpoint) goes out of their way to make Diana not just a villain, but as unlikeable as ever.
And writers usually do this in 2 ways:
1. They either have her as a bloodthirsty warrior
2. They make her some type of succubus trying to steal away or seduce superhero men. They have her trying to replace Lois in Superman's life, trying to kiss Batman when he's engaged to Selina and obviously the whole Mera-Aquaman-Diana cheating mess in Flashpoint. Diana has basically been arm candy for 3 out of the 5 or 6 original male leaguers. Only Flash, Martian Manhunter and GL haven't had some sort of relations with her.
Apart from these 2 there's the obvious intense nerfing whenever Diana is even in the same room as a male superhero. Not just power but intelligence and even morality. Everyone should know how moral Diana is as an agent of peace and in her own stories but in stories with Batman or Superman, she is always presented as the most violent one.
For power even guys like Aquaman can now apparently whoop Diana. Intelligence is a no brainer considering Diana is rarely shown as intelligent whenever she's part of team books or collaborating with other heroes.
Eh, I rank Taylor at the bottom of people who've written Diana but I wouldn't go that far. He's brought up when criticism of his writing of her has been brought up that he likes Perez, Rucka, and Simone's runs.
I think it's mainly just another case like the DCAU or Mark Waid where he is a way bigger fan of other characters and his like of Wonder Woman doesn't really extend much beyond "she's a DC character". And just his writing talents aren't particularly well-suited for a character who isn't completely shallow like Harley Quinn or you can get by on dumb jokes like Green Arrow.
Most male writers lean towards Superman and Batman and because they tend to get the most love in adaptations and have a stronger consistency, their is a greater familiarity around those characters and incoming writers tend to build up on what the previous writers did. They see Waid's flawed take on Diana in Kingdom Come and just build up on that then the next writer comes in and builds on that. I say, builds but it's more like a devolution. KC Diana was someone who was disillusioned, shell of her former self who had grown cynical and weary because of her failure to bring peace and equality and though even Waid has admitted that his take on WW was flawed, there was something there resembling pathos and maybe a writer more familiar with WW could have built on that and gave us something more in line with WW's own mythos. Now we have evil succubus warrior woman.
It's not just limited to WW, even Batman has devolved from 'traumatized guy who is still trying to do the right thing' to 'angry rich guy who can't control his emotions and uses violence to solve his problems'. It's a result of writers removing nuance and pathos from characters, stripping them down to easily digestible archetypes with only the illusion of actual depth.
I feel like the Trinity each have their own crosses to bear when it comes to be boiled down to digestible archetypes
Wonder Woman - warrior woman who is way to casually up for killing opponents
Batman- entitled rich guy who beats up the poor and mentally ill and views his allies as tools
Superman- simple naïve farm boy at heart who will snap if any serious trauma comes his way (and/or highly susceptible to brainwashing).
The three of them are not treated equally by the publisher, but they are equal in that they each have warning signs that we can pick up on when a writer doesn't know what they're doing
BM and SM ''cross to bear'' is not even close to that of WW. She is the one that usually gets treated as a one note character and jobber in favor of the other 2. And if consistency is an issue, well that could have changed a long time ago, if writers cared about her. If they cared about WW they could put effort into being consistent. Even as a warrior woman. They aren't even consistent with that. When was the last time anybody saw WW's role as the greatest warrior play a significant part in any story or DC event? These writers that go the easy route with her and talk about how she is this warrior born, warrior goddess, the greatest warrior ever. They never deliver anything. They hype her up as the best warrior. But she never really shines in the battlefield either. So how can we get consistency, when these writers don't care about being consistent with the one thing they focus on WW. Warrior, warrior warrior. Under these writers, She is a shallow version of Xena with none of her charisma, attitude and skills. It's like they go out of their way to make WW as bland and incompetent as possible.
It isn't, but it also doesn't need to be turned into a pissing contest either.
If you're a fan of all three (like me) there is plenty to dislike at various times. They all have steaming piles of crap, WW's is just bigger and smells slightly different, but it's all crap. I think the in-fighting between the WW and Supes fanbases in particular are counter productive 99% of the time, because nobody comes out a winner.
Last edited by SiegePerilous02; 08-31-2021 at 05:59 AM.
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