What's the explanation behind Jeph's treatment of WW in Superman and Batman?

[John Venus]

This is the only post I'm going to make on this thread so I'll just lay it all out. I got no interest in indulging another power level complaint thread.

Loeb was a popular but overrated writer who could churn out a halfway descent story. His stories don't really hold up to close scrutiny (a friend of mine did a really great dissection of TLH and Hush and how they fall apart as both mysteries and stories) and he is usually strip mining ideas from other better writers but gets all the credit for it. For the record, he wasn't the first guy to have Batman, Gordon and Harvey Dent team up in their early years. That said, his stories tend to be self contained and thus accessible to newer fans who want to get into certain franchises and he is carried by strong artists like Tim Sale, Jim Lee and Ed McGuiness. Hush was a gateway comic for me as was TLH and DV before it were for other fans. I mean, even Superman/Batman is just the two characters going on wacky adventures centered on their friendship.

Then Loeb's son died and he had a break down which lead to complete crap like Ultimates and the above posted scans of Marvel characters getting brutally murdered followed by a whole slate of comics where he was just working his grief. I think the Sam Alexander version of Nova was based on his son. And look there are artists who can turn their pain and grief into powerful works of art and well, Loeb didn't exactly do that with his stories. :oints at Ultimates:: Instead, he dialed up the worst aspects of 00's comic storytelling by 10 fold.

Anyway, Loeb is also another fanboy turned comic book pro and like many, there are certain assumptions that he hadn't gotten over. Hence why his Amazons tends to be hot headed, shoot first-ask questions later types and his WW comes off as 'bitchy' and overly confrontational. Lady Shiva established as on par with Batman in martial arts? Not in Loeb's book. She just gets taken out like a chump 'cause nobody could top Batman*. Cass Cain is the new Batgirl? Nah, screw that. Loeb is not going to include her in his tour of the Bat Family book Hush and not even mention her at all. He is also just going to have a version of Clayface pretend to be Babs Batgirl so he can do a Supergirl/Batgirl cross over without using the current incarnation of Batgirl. This was the first hint of his anti-Asian racism before we learned that he blocked story lines and casting for Asian characters and creatives when he was overseeing Marvel's Defenders shows.

Even in that particular story that the OP is talking about, WW's characterization makes little sense. For those who don't know, in that story the scan posted above was taken from, Superman and Batman were kidnapped during their childhood and raised to be dictators of that world. Wonder Woman is part of the resistance. At first Diana is all about leading the charge and she manages to kill Batman. So far so good. But then when confronting the enraged Superman, she is suddenly trying to talk him out of it which doesn't make sense because for all this Diana knew, Superman is an evil dictator that needs to be stopped. The resulting scuffle leads to WW's neck getting snapped by her own lasso.



*except Catwoman. bad dum tsss

[Robanker]

He's just not that good of a writer, and never was. I feel bad saying that considering the family tragedy he went through, but even his earlier work showed the signs that he was all style, not substance. And it just went further down hill from there.

I just wish someone at editorial had him tone it down.

To write a story where Storm, She-Hulk, Black Widow, Spider Woman, Tigra, Hellcat, Invisible Woman, Valkyrie and Thundra all loose to Red Hulk, (and I don’t care if he had to play dead to do it), that’s on Marvel for not drawing a line.

This is the only post I'm going to make on this thread so I'll just lay it all out. I got no interest in indulging another power level complaint thread.

Loeb was a popular but overrated writer who could churn out a halfway descent story. His stories don't really hold up to close scrutiny (a friend of mine did a really great dissection of TLH and Hush and how they fall apart as both mysteries and stories) and he is usually strip mining ideas from other better writers but gets all the credit for it. For the record, he wasn't the first guy to have Batman, Gordon and Harvey Dent team up in their early years. That said, his stories tend to be self contained and thus accessible to newer fans who want to get into certain franchises and he is carried by strong artists like Tim Sale, Jim Lee and Ed McGuiness. Hush was a gateway comic for me as was TLH and DV before it were for other fans. I mean, even Superman/Batman is just the two characters going on wacky adventures centered on their friendship.

Then Loeb's son died and he had a break down which lead to complete crap like Ultimates and the above posted scans of Marvel characters getting brutally murdered followed by a whole slate of comics where he was just working his grief. I think the Sam Alexander version of Nova was based on his son. And look there are artists who can turn their pain and grief into powerful works of art and well, Loeb didn't exactly do that with his stories. :oints at Ultimates:: Instead, he dialed up the worst aspects of 00's comic storytelling by 10 fold.

Anyway, Loeb is also another fanboy turned comic book pro and like many, there are certain assumptions that he hadn't gotten over. Hence why his Amazons tends to be hot headed, shoot first-ask questions later types and his WW comes off as 'bitchy' and overly confrontational. Lady Shiva established as on par with Batman in martial arts? Not in Loeb's book. She just gets taken out like a chump 'cause nobody could top Batman*. Cass Cain is the new Batgirl? Nah, screw that. Loeb is not going to include her in his tour of the Bat Family book Hush and not even mention her at all. He is also just going to have a version of Clayface pretend to be Babs Batgirl so he can do a Supergirl/Batgirl cross over without using the current incarnation of Batgirl. This was the first hint of his anti-Asian racism before we learned that he blocked story lines and casting for Asian characters and creatives when he was overseeing Marvel's Defenders shows.

Even in that particular story that the OP is talking about, WW's characterization makes little sense. For those who don't know, in that story the scan posted above was taken from, Superman and Batman were kidnapped during their childhood and raised to be dictators of that world. Wonder Woman is part of the resistance. At first Diana is all about leading the charge and she manages to kill Batman. So far so good. But then when confronting the enraged Superman, she is suddenly trying to talk him out of it which doesn't make sense because for all this Diana knew, Superman is an evil dictator that needs to be stopped. The resulting scuffle leads to WW's neck getting snapped by her own lasso.



*except Catwoman. bad dum tsss

Yeah, Loeb's best quality as a writer was solid-not-great stories that were vehicles to get the best out of his artists. He was never excellent, but he told big stories that could be fun.

I'm retrospect, you can see some of his issues that tragedy brought to the foreground.

I wish he was reigned in too, but editorial was a boys club and enabled poor behavior from one another. Berganza, Carlin, the list goes on. It's deplorable and I only hope that the mass bloodletting at DC has excised most the awful corporate culture.

More than any power level nonsense, real bigotry was perpetrated behind the scenes and sadly this writer was among the guilty, enabled by equally shitty people holding the characters that mean the world to creatives willing to endure **** nobody should so they could spend a couple years contributing to something they cherished.

The real explanation is DC had a lot of shitty people telling stories. Some of those stories ended up being good anyway, some (like the turd pages here) very much not the case. Loeb in particular was one who flew under the radar until a genuinely tragic thing happened to his family and, as tragedy sometimes does, brought out the worst in him.

Loeb is more or less done, though the upcoming Long Halloween special is perplexing that it exists. I understand TLH is a seminal story so adaptions were inevitable, and I want Sale compensated, but a new book? I'm still debating if I get it because I want more work from Sale, but I don't want to support Loeb.

[Gaius]

This is the only post I'm going to make on this thread so I'll just lay it all out. I got no interest in indulging another power level complaint thread.

Loeb was a popular but overrated writer who could churn out a halfway descent story. His stories don't really hold up to close scrutiny (a friend of mine did a really great dissection of TLH and Hush and how they fall apart as both mysteries and stories) and he is usually strip mining ideas from other better writers but gets all the credit for it. For the record, he wasn't the first guy to have Batman, Gordon and Harvey Dent team up in their early years. That said, his stories tend to be self contained and thus accessible to newer fans who want to get into certain franchises and he is carried by strong artists like Tim Sale, Jim Lee and Ed McGuiness. Hush was a gateway comic for me as was TLH and DV before it were for other fans. I mean, even Superman/Batman is just the two characters going on wacky adventures centered on their friendship.

Then Loeb's son died and he had a break down which lead to complete crap like Ultimates and the above posted scans of Marvel characters getting brutally murdered followed by a whole slate of comics where he was just working his grief. I think the Sam Alexander version of Nova was based on his son. And look there are artists who can turn their pain and grief into powerful works of art and well, Loeb didn't exactly do that with his stories. :oints at Ultimates:: Instead, he dialed up the worst aspects of 00's comic storytelling by 10 fold.

Anyway, Loeb is also another fanboy turned comic book pro and like many, there are certain assumptions that he hadn't gotten over. Hence why his Amazons tends to be hot headed, shoot first-ask questions later types and his WW comes off as 'bitchy' and overly confrontational. Lady Shiva established as on par with Batman in martial arts? Not in Loeb's book. She just gets taken out like a chump 'cause nobody could top Batman*. Cass Cain is the new Batgirl? Nah, screw that. Loeb is not going to include her in his tour of the Bat Family book Hush and not even mention her at all. He is also just going to have a version of Clayface pretend to be Babs Batgirl so he can do a Supergirl/Batgirl cross over without using the current incarnation of Batgirl. This was the first hint of his anti-Asian racism before we learned that he blocked story lines and casting for Asian characters and creatives when he was overseeing Marvel's Defenders shows.

Even in that particular story that the OP is talking about, WW's characterization makes little sense. For those who don't know, in that story the scan posted above was taken from, Superman and Batman were kidnapped during their childhood and raised to be dictators of that world. Wonder Woman is part of the resistance. At first Diana is all about leading the charge and she manages to kill Batman. So far so good. But then when confronting the enraged Superman, she is suddenly trying to talk him out of it which doesn't make sense because for all this Diana knew, Superman is an evil dictator that needs to be stopped. The resulting scuffle leads to WW's neck getting snapped by her own lasso.



*except Catwoman. bad dum tsss

Huh, it never occurred to me Cass wasn't in in Hush since I never thought of it being around the same time of her Batgirl tenure. Yeah, that's "interesting" omission giving they included the Q/Microchip rip-off character and in-light of his comments about Asian actors in the Marvel Netflix shows.

[I'm a Fish]

Yeah, Loeb's best quality as a writer was solid-not-great stories that were vehicles to get the best out of his artists. He was never excellent, but he told big stories that could be fun.

I'm retrospect, you can see some of his issues that tragedy brought to the foreground.

I wish he was reigned in too, but editorial was a boys club and enabled poor behavior from one another. Berganza, Carlin, the list goes on. It's deplorable and I only hope that the mass bloodletting at DC has excised most the awful corporate culture.

More than any power level nonsense, real bigotry was perpetrated behind the scenes and sadly this writer was among the guilty, enabled by equally shitty people holding the characters that mean the world to creatives willing to endure **** nobody should so they could spend a couple years contributing to something they cherished.

The real explanation is DC had a lot of shitty people telling stories. Some of those stories ended up being good anyway, some (like the turd pages here) very much not the case. Loeb in particular was one who flew under the radar until a genuinely tragic thing happened to his family and, as tragedy sometimes does, brought out the worst in him.

Loeb is more or less done, though the upcoming Long Halloween special is perplexing that it exists. I understand TLH is a seminal story so adaptions were inevitable, and I want Sale compensated, but a new book? I'm still debating if I get it because I want more work from Sale, but I don't want to support Loeb.

Comics: Goes out of there way to dumb on or ignore women, racial and ethnic minorities, and LGBT groups.

Also Comics: "Why are we loosing sales numbers?!"

I mean did it really never occur to comic companies, that franchises like X-Men and Titans became more popular when they started including a wider branch of people. Same with Wonder Woman for that matter.

They are starting to correcting there mistake now, but I think it says something that comics where more progressive in the 70's and 80's than the early 2000's. Yeah, they weren't always perfect, but they were sure trying and opened the door for others writers and artists to come in and have a voice in the industry.

[Robanker]

Comics: Goes out of there way to dumb on or ignore women, racial and ethnic minorities, and LGBT groups.

Also Comics: "Why are we loosing sales numbers?!"

I mean did it really never occur to comic companies, that franchises like X-Men and Titans became more popular when they started including a wider branch of people. Same with Wonder Woman for that matter.

They are starting to correcting there mistake now, but I think it says something that comics where more progressive in the 70's and 80's than the early 2000's. Yeah, they weren't always perfect, but they were sure trying and opened the door for others writers and artists to come in and have a voice in the industry.

I don't think most of the people at DC knew that part of the reason the LoSH was so big was it had a lot of queer-coded stuff going on and it had their premier character, Superman (albeit as a boy), bumping elbows with them and being their friend. I assume it flew under the radar pretty hard. I don't normally read into coding as much as others, but it's there, and I can see why queer readers would take comfort in a book where Mister Mainstream General audience, Clark Kent, is high-fiving the character you see yourself in and treating you as an equal. It's what they had back then since characters couldn't out-and-out be... well, out.

Teams like the X-Men, Doom Patrol and Titans only further drive that home, though admittedly the X-Men did it better than anyone.

For what it's worth, the 70s/80s had a wave of fans coming in who were raised on the 50s stuff, went to college and then got a chance to write about how the world they were sold wasn't what they experienced. It was probably the first real awakening of the mainstream genre since the 40s.

And then Moore, Miller and a generation of action movie fans who were taught that they were with the Gipper in the Oval Office finally had their influence start seeping in the middle of the 80s which paid dividends in the generations that followed.

I'm generalizing, but the trends have always been reactionary. I'm just hoping the rubber banding isn't so awful, or that we break the chain and it evens out without Gators making a mark.

[John Venus]

I know I said I wouldn't make another post but I just wanted to chime in and say that diversity as profitable is still very, very recent.

The Big Two may have occasionally spread it's wings but ultimately, it always defaulted to supporting the same straight, white male fanboys that they believe make up their primary base. Time travel back to 2005 and the folks in charge then would probably claim that WW is unsellable, Superman and Batman will always be the top dog and the competition between DC and Marvel would be close with no massive siesmic imbalance tipping the scales so heavily towards one side in the near future.

[Stanlos]

I recently remembered how Diana was treated on that book. The most infamous part is obviously the one where Superman easily overpowered her and killed her with her own lasso. I have seen that image used countless times by sexists on the internet talking about how Diana is nothing next to superman in terms of power.

What can explain such a disrespectful way to portray the most iconic female in comics, and the girl power icon that was supposed to stand as an equal to Superman?

I can not comment on why he wanted to use the plot points he did use, but I can comment on the work he did to not diss the character. He took note of the message board discussions on OWAW and put in several cues to indicate that the Diana featured isn't the same and had different origins and powers

[Robanker]

I know I said I wouldn't make another post but I just wanted to chime in and say that diversity as profitable is still very, very recent.

The Big Two may have occasionally spread it's wings but ultimately, it always defaulted to supporting the same straight, white male fanboys that they believe make up their primary base. Time travel back to 2005 and the folks in charge then would probably claim that WW is unsellable, Superman and Batman will always be the top dog and the competition between DC and Marvel would be close with no massive siesmic imbalance tipping the scales so heavily towards one side in the near future.

Shoutouts to our boy Jeff Robinov shelving Wonder Woman films because "people don't pay for movies about women."

We haven't come that long a way, folks.

[WonderLight789]

I can not comment on why he wanted to use the plot points he did use, but I can comment on the work he did to not diss the character. He took note of the message board discussions on OWAW and put in several cues to indicate that the Diana featured isn't the same and had different origins and powers

I fail to see how he didn't disrespect her. And what is OWAW?

[Gaius]

I fail to see how he didn't disrespect her. And what is OWAW?

Our Worlds At War.

[John Venus]

Shoutouts to our boy Jeff Robinov shelving Wonder Woman films because "people don't pay for movies about women."

We haven't come that long a way, folks.

I still remember the hordes of dudebros arguing how Angelina Jolie's 'Salt' isn't proof that female led blockbusters can succeed (even though Jolie's entire career up to that point said otherwise). Or the number of people arguing how 'Avatar: The Last Airbender' live action needed to be whitewashed otherwise white audiences would never give it to be light of day followed by casually racist comments.

In terms of mind set, people have evolved a lot in a short span of time and only now is that starting to reflect in media representation and in the actual people writing those stories.

I fail to see how he didn't disrespect her. And what is OWAW?

Our Worlds At War.

[Primal Slayer]

This was part of the same issue I believe. Sure doesnt make it any better that he had to kill a WW but I do like the writing of at least having it hit hard for him. But either wait it does show a Superman who will go unhinged if you kill the wrong person.

[WonderLight789]

Our Worlds At War.

What about our worlds at war? WW is not very good in it. But what's that got to do with jeph's treatment of WW in batman and superman? And this is the first time i see a post suggesting our worlds at war isn't the canon continuity version of WW.

[SiegePerilous02]

Huh, it never occurred to me Cass wasn't in in Hush since I never thought of it being around the same time of her Batgirl tenure. Yeah, that's "interesting" omission giving they included the Q/Microchip rip-off character and in-light of his comments about Asian actors in the Marvel Netflix shows.

Friggin Harold made it into Hush, but Cass didn't at the height of her popularity. Jason made it in and he was dead at that point!

Her absence really does stick out like a sore thumb in hindsight.

This was part of the same issue I believe. Sure doesnt make it any better that he had to kill a WW but I do like the writing of at least having it hit hard for him. But either wait it does show a Superman who will go unhinged if you kill the wrong person.

I hate that a sweet moment like Clark telling Diana how much their friendship means to him is part of this rancid comic.

[Robanker]

I hate that a sweet moment like Clark telling Diana how much their friendship means to him is part of this rancid comic.

Superman/Batman is one of those books I enjoy a lot more when I skim it on "scan" until I get to a moment I remember being quality, then I slow down and appreciate it before I keep going.

There's a lot of books that are better revisited that way, sadly. Some comics really don't age well.