Why was DCAU WW portrayed so badly?

[WonderLight789]

In the JL cartoon, her character personality was like a spoiled brat with mother issues and a men hater. Her power was weak. Her lore and cast was also poorly treated. A very unknown character like hawkgirl at the time, had more character development and weight in the DCAU than the so called most iconic female. Why didn't the writers feel like putting effort into WW?. Why did they portrayed her as a weaklink with bad attitude? What happened.

[Gaius]

Reading BTS stuff, seems they were more just interested in having WW on the JL because she's WW and she has to be there. But in terms of actually looking at WW stuff, I never got sense they didn't do much more than just read her relevant entries in a DC Encyclopedia.

Rich Fogel: She’s a little bit younger and more innocent than we’ve seen her in the past. She is literally the princess who’s fresh off the island—she’s never been off Themyscira before—and so she has a shock of culture coming out into Man’s World and her expectations of how people should behave towards her are different. It makes her a lot of fun to deal with because she’s haughty, but she’s also innocent. And, she also has issues with her mother.

Bruce Timm: She was probably the most challenging character of all of them in this show. Everyone else we kind of figured out who they were pretty easily, but we had a lot of discussions about Wonder Woman. With Batman, you could easily say “Batman: Year One, that’s the Batman we want to do," but with Wonder Woman we couldn’t really point to any previous version of Wonder Woman and say, “Well, yeah, that’s Wonder Woman.” We had to say, “Well, is she Linda Carter? Is she the George Pérez Wonder Woman? Is she Xena?” And none of those things worked exactly for what we wanted to do with the show. So the personality as just described by Rich is kind of what we came up with.

[BiteTheBullet]

For the most part, her power was decent. She was even with Superman at the beginning and what a concept, she could fly.

But they started treating her as a jobber later on when she got trashed by Kalibak as being one of the worst and then losing to Aquaman (do I sense a pattern).

Her personality was not great and the way they had her leave the island and steal her armor was bad. And the fact that they didn't activate the lasso's power till much later in the series.

She has fared much better in the DCAU animated movies than the TV series. But I never really go the sense of Cheetah's power in the Justice League Doom movie.

[WonderLight789]

Reading BTS stuff, seems they were more just interested in having WW on the JL because she's WW and she has to be there. But in terms of actually looking at WW stuff, I never got sense they didn't do much more than just read her relevant entries in a DC Encyclopedia.

That quote is just silly. What's wrong with Perez WW for example? What made them think that wasn't WW, but a weaklink and man hating spoiled brat was?

[Alpha]

Nah Perez Wonder Woman is a bad example. Perez had a lot of good things, but his Diana wasn't very interesting.

[Primal Slayer]

They didnt get WW, didnt understand WW, and just werent that invested in WW.

Makes me wonder how different the character would've been had they been able to use her on STAS for an episode like originally planned.

[Gaius]

That quote is just silly. What's wrong with Perez WW for example? What made them think that wasn't WW, but a weaklink and man hating spoiled brat was?

Perez's Wonder Woman didn't waste her time falling in love with Batman.

[SiegePerilous02]

They didnt get WW, didnt understand WW, and just werent that invested in WW.

Makes me wonder how different the character would've been had they been able to use her on STAS for an episode like originally planned.

I think a lot of her problems in JL/U was having to have her mythos represented there when there is no space to do it justice, and she desperately needed a WWTAS to put her own equal footing with Batman and Superman. Catch-all shows like JL and YJ work great for what they are, but a lot of the DC IPs just get surface level representation in them by necessity, and the Trinity in particular have such big mythoi that they either can't be done justice in a team show or threaten to overwhelm everyone else.

This definitely wasn't a problem for Batman; Superman still fared way better than Wonder Woman (low bar) but his solo show didn't have the passion that Timm and co had for Batman. Also doesn't help that he sometimes felt like a guest star in his own show while Timm did his Jack Kirby fanfiction. I think having her show up in STAS would have been better than what we got obviously, but I still would not trust this team to do right or understand Wonder Woman regardless of where she debuted or if she got her own show. If they phoned it in a lot for Superman even in his own show, they'd do worse with her.

[Vordan]

They weren’t WW “fans” and when Timm and Dini didn’t know/didn’t care about a female character their go-to was “let’s put them in a relationship with our self-insert Batman”, so that’s what they did.

[Gaius]

I think a lot of her problems in JL/U was having to have her mythos represented there when there is no space to do it justice, and she desperately needed a WWTAS to put her own equal footing with Batman and Superman. Catch-all shows like JL and YJ work great for what they are, but a lot of the DC IPs just get surface level representation in them by necessity, and the Trinity in particular have such big mythoi that they either can't be done justice in a team show or threaten to overwhelm everyone else.

This definitely wasn't a problem for Batman; Superman still fared way better than Wonder Woman (low bar) but his solo show didn't have the passion that Timm and co had for Batman. Also doesn't help that he sometimes felt like a guest star in his own show while Timm did his Jack Kirby fanfiction. I think having her show up in STAS would have been better than what we got obviously, but I still would not trust this team to do right or understand Wonder Woman regardless of where she debuted or if she got her own show. If they phoned it in a lot for Superman even in his own show, they'd do worse with her.

One thing might have been Diana would have already been established hero by the time of JL so we might have avoided the "haughty amateur" and also chopping up her origin but other stuff like being something of a misandrist and her crush on Batman would have probably been unavoidable.

[Psy-lock]

Power-wise she was fine (aside from the nerfing of the lasso), she was shown as an equal to Superman most of the time. Yeah, she had a couple of embarrassing moments, but Superman had it worse in s1.

[PCN24454]

In the JL cartoon, her character personality was like a spoiled brat with mother issues and a men hater. Her power was weak. Her lore and cast was also poorly treated. A very unknown character like hawkgirl at the time, had more character development and weight in the DCAU than the so called most iconic female. Why didn't the writers feel like putting effort into WW?. Why did they portrayed her as a weaklink with bad attitude? What happened.

I don't feel like she was a weak link. It feels like an "ensemble cast" complaint.

[Agent Z]

Nah Perez Wonder Woman is a bad example. Perez had a lot of good things, but his Diana wasn't very interesting.

Yes she was. She just wasn't the Marston version.

[Alpha]

Yes she was. She just wasn't the Marston version.

George Perez writes Diana like she is one of the happy characters in the beginning of a David Lynch movie (Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive)

That take on the character wouldn't have made her popular on the Justice League show. There are much more compelling versions of Diana.

[Agent Z]

George Perez writes Diana like she is one of the happy characters in the beginning of a David Lynch movie (Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive)

I've never seen a David Lynch movie before so this reference means nothing to me.

That take on the character wouldn't have made her popular on the Justice League show. There are much more compelling versions of Diana.

A rather bold statement to make given the first movie's take on Diana, heavily influenced by Perez, was immensely popular. Not to mention, that version never appeared in the show so we can't know if she never would have been popular.

If there are I've yet to see them.