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  1. #46
    Fishy Member I'm a Fish's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by j9ac9k View Post
    Katma Tui: cut to pieces in her kitchen just to get at Hal.

    Jean Loring: became a crazy murderer to get a reaction out of Atom

    Alex DeWitt: shoved in a fridge
    Wasn’t Elongated Man’s wife also raped by Dr.Light?

    Yeah, Steve’s had a rough time as a love interest in the comics, but you could arguably say he’s the most respected superhero love interest in the Wonder Woman movie. He has actually agency outside of being just a love interest and is a well rounded character.
    ~I just keep swimming through these threads~

  2. #47
    Extraordinary Member AmiMizuno's Avatar
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    They really need to have more for him to do. I mean I kind of like for him to actually also be a official an amazon. Maybe even have a god on his side. I mean why not have him learn a secret or two about them

  3. #48
    The Comixeur Mel Dyer's Avatar
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    Col. Steve might be the most disrespected love interest, outside of porn, ..but, he's disrespected, firstly, by all the writers, who don't bother to do anything interesting, with him. Any man, who knows himself, a man, quits Diana, after World War II - he's not following her around, like a lost puppy, for the rest of his life. That instant, paperless marriage, with no rough edges, changes or dangers or anything worth struggling to hold onto ..is the biggest pile of kangapucky.

    A man would have women, who were rivals, for his affection - and he, men, who were rivals for Diana's affection. Where are they? No cast - that's where!

    A man wouldn't need a big guns and a big job, Director of F.U.R.Y., to be impressive to the ladies...even Wonder Women.

    I just think Steve has never been anybody I, as a little boy, wanted to pretend to be on a playground, with other little boys. Couldn't wait to be that other Steve, ..and it wasn't for the bionics, either! That's the ultimate test.
    Last edited by Mel Dyer; 01-17-2022 at 12:14 AM.
    COMBINING THE BIGBADITUDE OF THANOS WITH CHEETAH'S FEROCITY, IS JANUS WONDER WOMAN'S GREATEST SUPERVILLAIN?...on WONDABUNGA!!! Look alive, Kangaliers!

  4. #49
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    I entirely disagree with the idea that what we need is a love triangle. At no age did I enjoy that.

  5. #50
    The Comixeur Mel Dyer's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Alpha View Post
    I entirely disagree with the idea that what we need is a love triangle. At no age did I enjoy that.
    Giving Steve and Diana rivals doesn't necessarily promise a love triangle...just uncertainty. It's uncertainty that justifies clever storytelling, to remind us why we should want to see them get together.

    Like Batman and Catwoman? Catwoman's rival is order, as she thrives on chaos, passion and danger. Not quite a love triangle, here - sure as hell keeps it interesting, though!
    COMBINING THE BIGBADITUDE OF THANOS WITH CHEETAH'S FEROCITY, IS JANUS WONDER WOMAN'S GREATEST SUPERVILLAIN?...on WONDABUNGA!!! Look alive, Kangaliers!

  6. #51
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    Steve being developed as a supporting character and Steve being developed as a love interest are two different beasts. Perez did the former - and even included a plot point that further strengthened Steve's connection to Diana and the Amazons - but because he didn't do the latter, people act like Steve was left to the wayside by him, when that was the fault of subsequent writers. Ironically, this idea that you don't have any value as anything but a love interest is something female characters often suffer from.

    And no, Steve is not the most disrespected love interest in comics. He's not even the most disrespected Wonder Woman love interest.

    Quote Originally Posted by Mel Dyer View Post
    Giving Steve and Diana rivals doesn't necessarily promise a love triangle...just uncertainty. It's uncertainty that justifies clever storytelling, to remind us why we should want to see them get together.

    Like Batman and Catwoman? Catwoman's rival is order, as she thrives on chaos, passion and danger. Not quite a love triangle, here - sure as hell keeps it interesting, though!
    That's not what you were talking about when you suggested giving Steve a rival.

  7. #52
    Extraordinary Member kjn's Avatar
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    Several good thoughts in this thread already. Here are some of my takes.

    First, a lot of the trouble with Steve isn't unique to him, but rather it's a combination (or intersection) of issues that has caused him trouble as a character.

    A lot of the DC superheroes were built around the colourful hero with normal sidekicks around them. It's not unique to Diana. Compare Superman with Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane, or Batman with commissioner Gordon or (early) Alfred. It's common in other fiction as well, like in the Pippi Longstocking books. But the best of them had an extra purpose, to create tension and drama for the main character. In Lois' case, it was with Clark's secret identity, but that never really became a point in Marston's take on Steve. Wonder Woman pining on Steve never really worked.

    Another is the patriarchal view that no man can be in a subordinate role to a woman, and especially not in a romantic relationship (well, he can, but only if he's Andy Capp or equivalent). Now, this was something that Marston rejected, but many later writers (or their editors) have struggled with this. It is to its credit that the 2017 movie took that pattern and blasted right through it.

    Many of the more "woke" writers who could handle Steve being the junior partner ran into another problem: it simply doesn't fit that Diana falls head over heels in love with the first man she meets. The nurse in love with the fallen hero is also an old and established trope, but hardly something that fits Wonder Woman. Again, I think the movie managed this well, but I believe that the way Pérez removed Steve as a love interest entirely was partly in reaction to this.

    A lot of the DC superheroes are about a narrow idealised masculinity, and in a way, so is Wonder Woman. She is supposed to be strong, fast, decisive, good at fighting, and a leader. Steve's role in this ought to be to contrast with that in some way, but neither Marston nor anyone else since have really managed to dig into any form of positive masculinity for him.

    Which is why I think the ideal model for Steve should be someone like Harald Edelstam. He can still be a pilot and have served in the Air Force, but he isn't an officer anymore. He's flying slow, unarmed, and vulnerable aircraft straight into conflict zones bringing in food, medicine, and shelter, and bringing out refugees. I can easily see movie Steve in such a role, if he had survived the war.
    «Speaking generally, it is because of the desire of the tragic poets for the marvellous that so varied and inconsistent an account of Medea has been given out» (Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History [4.56.1])

  8. #53
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    Admittingly this could be a case of projection on my part.But I feel that whenever the question of Steve status has Dianas love interest is discussed, he's being compaired to Lois and Selina"s romance with theiir leads alone desipte Carol beimg bought up by the OP

    People see how important those romantic relationships are to there respective mythos and think that Steve/WW should be treated the same way.Problem being I dont think the majorty of the fandom view their relationship with the same level of importance.And trying to push it as such now is going to cause problems

    For this reason(and others mentioned eariler in the thead) I think Steve and Dianna having a open relationship is the best way to move forward with the pair. Its not a perfect solution ( since I dont doubt thats its going to be seen in a negative light by some i.e Steve not being 'man' enough for Diana) but its the best way to keep the majortiy of fans happy.Assuming the writers dont screw it up
    Last edited by Baseman; 01-17-2022 at 07:00 AM.

  9. #54
    The Comixeur Mel Dyer's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mel Dyer View Post
    Giving Steve and Diana rivals doesn't necessarily promise a love triangle...just uncertainty. It's uncertainty that justifies clever storytelling, to remind us why we should want to see them get together.

    Like Batman and Catwoman? Catwoman's rival is order, as she thrives on chaos, passion and danger. Not quite a love triangle, here - sure as hell keeps it interesting, though!
    I think it's more accurate to say, that Catwoman's rival is Batman's obsession, with order, ..and not order, itself. Either way, it's more interesting, than the Invisible Marriage, Steve and Diana have been stuck in, since she saw "a man", in 1941.

    I think Steve is a keeper, but, that his role in the comic should be changed, ..and that stories offering Diana and Steve, as a couple, should justify why these two are together and why we should care. While it may sound sacrilegious to some of you, it's my opinion...my POV. It may be equally challenging to share that I don't believe Diana falls in love, with the first man, she ever sees, or should. I want to see some imaginative writer really work his or her butt off, for Diana+Steve, with some good storytelling. Maybe, that's Cloonrad. We'll see.

    Sharing our POVs, no matter how controversial, is allowed, unless we're arguing, with each other, for sake of hearing ourselves argue. We can disagree, without trolling or dismissing each other.
    Last edited by Mel Dyer; 01-17-2022 at 08:17 AM. Reason: major content changes
    COMBINING THE BIGBADITUDE OF THANOS WITH CHEETAH'S FEROCITY, IS JANUS WONDER WOMAN'S GREATEST SUPERVILLAIN?...on WONDABUNGA!!! Look alive, Kangaliers!

  10. #55
    Mighty Member Fuzzy Mittens's Avatar
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    Personally ive always been a huge fan of Steve and Diana, though admittedly alot of what made Steve interesting became smothered under later writers.

    When Diana left the island with him she was concerned for him as his physician. She was the one who nursed him back to health. She was the one who brought him back from the brink of death. She was simply concerned for him.
    Steve was the one who fell in love with Diana with a whole love at first sight bit. Over the course of comics we saw him flirting with her, courting her, taking her on dates and earning her affection. Taking her dancing or to see the sights. So focused on Wonder Woman that he was hilariously blind to the fact that he was half the time blowing her off because of the whole secret identity thing.
    They made a point of establishing him as being good with children, loving to do housework, and 100% supporting Wonder Womans message and efforts.

    Back in the day he fit in rather easily with Wonder Womans stories. Like Etta, Steve would often just go along with Diana on her adventures helping to battle supervillains or traveling to the astral plane.
    Sometimes this would be more organic with the intelligence agency Steve was with getting intel and Steve going along only for Wonder Woman to swoop in and accompany.
    Other times this would be Diana basically pulling over with her invisible plane with Etta in the back, asking if Steve wants to go punch aliens. It was just that straight forward.

    Its certainly true that Steves had it rather rough for one reason or another over the decades.

    Kanigher made him an unrepentant jerk who wanted to make Diana give up everything about herself and become a domesticated housewife.

    The Mod Era killed him off followed by a brief period where he was alive only to then be killed off again as a human sacrifice. Putting him in the morgue for over a decade.

    Perez did make good use of him as a character and got rid of his role as a love interest. However in doing so he unintentionally created the situation we had after the mod era wherin every writer felt the compulsive need to create a new love interest for Diana which would last for a hot minute before being cast aside for a new one.

    And then we had the Johns take where he assumed the solution to making Steve better would be to make him the hyper competent toady of Amanda Waller who was this sauve super agent that was more adversarial to Wonder Woman and was supposed to be her handler keeping her on a leash because of how uncontrollable this take was supposed to be.

    That said, even with all of that I can't really consider him the most disrespected love interest in comics. Not when there are so many other examples out there. (Jean Loring for example who was brainwashed into becoming evil and destroyed whole planets in post crisis and became a serial killer who would be sentenced by Batman to a life in solitary confinement for the rest of her days is a more memorable one worth mentioning)

    The problems facing Steve in modern stuff mainly is a combination of how comics in more modern days have become so allergic to downtime that quiet moments can't really exist, compounded with the idea that if they just try to make him more like Nemesis or Rick Flagg then that would solve everything.
    I mean sure he would join Diana on adventures, but part of his charm is he knew Diana was the best and between playing cheer squad he was doing what he could to be support.
    And a big part of it was just how you would have this totally ordinary government spy walk into a dance hall on Wonder Womans arm and show her what jazz music is like or take her to a theme park.

  11. #56

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    Quote Originally Posted by daBronzeBomma View Post
    Lots of interesting posts in this thread regarding the problems with Steve Trevor. This is a topic I've given a little thought to as well, so here's my two cents.

    1. From the Golden Age thru the end of the Bronze Age (1938 thru 1986), there wasn't that much discernible difference bergen how Steve Trevor, Lois Lane, and Selina Kyle were as supporting characters. They were (like most non-superhero supporting characters in superhero comix at the time) largely two-dimensional at best.

    It's only from 1986 onward with the Post-COIE storytelling that Steve gets left behind by Perez while Lois and Selina finally start to get expanded as three-dimensional characters over the next quarter-century (1986 thru 2011) before Younger Steve finally comes back.

    2. Unlike Lois and Selina, Steve isn't close to being the best at his chosen profession. Lois was always a great journalist from Day One. Selina was always a great thief from Day One. Steve Trevor wasn't that remarkable in his chosen profession IIRC. Good officer, but not as good, for example, as Hal Jordan was as a pilot.

    Lois became the DCU's Greatest Journalist. Selina became the DCU's Greatest Thief.

    Steve remained Generic Military Guy who never evolved into something more. The recent attempts to turn Steve Trevor into Diet Steve Rogers has not worked, IMO. He'll never be better at warfare or any martial ability than Diana (nor should he).

    Steve needs to stand out in a way that doesn't upstage Diana. So far, they haven't found the formula for that.

    I have some ideas on how to fix Steve Trevor so that he's a much more feasible option as a permanent love interest for Wonder Woman, but that might be better served with its own thread.
    You raise a good point. Steve is not interesting on his own and utterly useless when it comes to dealing with the kind of things that Diana normally deals with. Just being the dude who is accepting of his super powerful girlfriend just doesn't cut it anymore. The best superhero couples are the ones that complement each other. Superman beats the giant robot while Lois Lane is on the phone with Perry White breaking the story. Peter is awkward and geeky and as Spider-man he becomes more extroverted and humorous meanwhile MJ puts on the facade of being an carefree airhead all as a way to cover up her own insecurities and pain.

    I always thought Steve needed a different job, maybe as an archaeologist, linguist, astronaut or gourmet chef. Maybe he had prior experience as a soldier but that's not his primary passion either before/after he meets WW.

  12. #57

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    Quote Originally Posted by Fuzzy Mittens View Post
    Personally ive always been a huge fan of Steve and Diana, though admittedly alot of what made Steve interesting became smothered under later writers.

    When Diana left the island with him she was concerned for him as his physician. She was the one who nursed him back to health. She was the one who brought him back from the brink of death. She was simply concerned for him.
    Steve was the one who fell in love with Diana with a whole love at first sight bit. Over the course of comics we saw him flirting with her, courting her, taking her on dates and earning her affection. Taking her dancing or to see the sights. So focused on Wonder Woman that he was hilariously blind to the fact that he was half the time blowing her off because of the whole secret identity thing.
    They made a point of establishing him as being good with children, loving to do housework, and 100% supporting Wonder Womans message and efforts.

    Back in the day he fit in rather easily with Wonder Womans stories. Like Etta, Steve would often just go along with Diana on her adventures helping to battle supervillains or traveling to the astral plane.
    Sometimes this would be more organic with the intelligence agency Steve was with getting intel and Steve going along only for Wonder Woman to swoop in and accompany.
    Other times this would be Diana basically pulling over with her invisible plane with Etta in the back, asking if Steve wants to go punch aliens. It was just that straight forward.

    Its certainly true that Steves had it rather rough for one reason or another over the decades.

    Kanigher made him an unrepentant jerk who wanted to make Diana give up everything about herself and become a domesticated housewife.

    The Mod Era killed him off followed by a brief period where he was alive only to then be killed off again as a human sacrifice. Putting him in the morgue for over a decade.

    Perez did make good use of him as a character and got rid of his role as a love interest. However in doing so he unintentionally created the situation we had after the mod era wherin every writer felt the compulsive need to create a new love interest for Diana which would last for a hot minute before being cast aside for a new one.

    And then we had the Johns take where he assumed the solution to making Steve better would be to make him the hyper competent toady of Amanda Waller who was this sauve super agent that was more adversarial to Wonder Woman and was supposed to be her handler keeping her on a leash because of how uncontrollable this take was supposed to be.

    That said, even with all of that I can't really consider him the most disrespected love interest in comics. Not when there are so many other examples out there. (Jean Loring for example who was brainwashed into becoming evil and destroyed whole planets in post crisis and became a serial killer who would be sentenced by Batman to a life in solitary confinement for the rest of her days is a more memorable one worth mentioning)

    The problems facing Steve in modern stuff mainly is a combination of how comics in more modern days have become so allergic to downtime that quiet moments can't really exist, compounded with the idea that if they just try to make him more like Nemesis or Rick Flagg then that would solve everything.
    I mean sure he would join Diana on adventures, but part of his charm is he knew Diana was the best and between playing cheer squad he was doing what he could to be support.
    And a big part of it was just how you would have this totally ordinary government spy walk into a dance hall on Wonder Womans arm and show her what jazz music is like or take her to a theme park.
    Do you think comics have gone backwards when it comes to male love interests? I look at older comics and you have Black Canary with Larry Lance, Zatanna with Jeffery Sloan and Diana with Steve Trevor. The female heroines are unquestionably the lead and their love interests are in need of rescuing by the hero in the same way female love interests like Lois Lane and Iris West often are. Nowadays, it's like the female heroine either takes a secondary role with their love interest (GA/BC) or the dude is someone who talks down to them or keep them on a leash or exist to cause drama (see modern takes on Steve Trevor, especially 2009 movie Steve Trevor, Zatanna/Constantine and a lot of depictions of Green Arrow/Black Canary).

    Mind you, the dude doesn't have to be a helpless dude in distress. More examples of Chris Pine Steve would be refreshing in the pop cultural landscape.

  13. #58
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    I always felt the reason why people didn't like Steve was because, as a whole, WW's supporting cast doesn't get a lot of focus.

    The same goes for Batman actually where a lot of his non-Super cast gets overlooked for one reason or another.

    Superman avoids this because he has a more concrete setting than WW does. If he and WW ever became an OTP, she would move to Metropolis, but he would never move to Washington, DC because then we would lose his iconic supporting cast.

  14. #59
    Mighty Member Fuzzy Mittens's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by John Venus View Post
    Do you think comics have gone backwards when it comes to male love interests? I look at older comics and you have Black Canary with Larry Lance, Zatanna with Jeffery Sloan and Diana with Steve Trevor. The female heroines are unquestionably the lead and their love interests are in need of rescuing by the hero in the same way female love interests like Lois Lane and Iris West often are. Nowadays, it's like the female heroine either takes a secondary role with their love interest (GA/BC) or the dude is someone who talks down to them or keep them on a leash or exist to cause drama (see modern takes on Steve Trevor, especially 2009 movie Steve Trevor, Zatanna/Constantine and a lot of depictions of Green Arrow/Black Canary).

    Mind you, the dude doesn't have to be a helpless dude in distress. More examples of Chris Pine Steve would be refreshing in the pop cultural landscape.
    Personally I feel like its not so much that comics have gone backwards when it comes to male love interests (though Marstons take on Steve is rarely matched by anyone)
    Its more that unless your a hero whose had a continuous book for years and has not jettisoned its supporting cast, then the more 'action oriented' nature of modern comics is going to simply erase any elements deemed 'unnecesary.' Not helped in our previous EIC over DC comics (Dan Didio) having the perspective that heroes are defined by sacrificing having relationships and lives to be heroes across the board because he thought that added more depth.

    An example of this id point to would be how Hal Jordon did used to have a love interest in Carol Ferris. But decades of him being evil, dead, then under a writer who didn't have much interest in focusing on that sort of relationship, led to them rarely being associated with one another nowadays.
    A counterpoint would be the Wally West Flash where a writer spent several years cementing him as being in a commited relationship with children which became such a defining element of the character that even efforts to retcon away the family life wouldn't stay undone for more than a few years before being restored.

    The reason why this affects male love interests of female superheroes especially is mainly because very rarely do they actually get a dedicated book and those that do such as Wonder Woman or even Supergirl tend to have an editorial who doesn't care about them very much, and writers who with little oversight feel free to overhaul the supporting cast, change location, change careers, and not be expected to have any elements which define the characters in question. A problem which I am hoping we will see change in coming years for Wonder Woman with the shift in elements from editorial to writers.

    Due to the whole 'when was the last time X heroine has had a book'? issue, it also creates a whole thing where the only time they appear in anything is when their in someone elses book as a cameo or reoccuring character, or in a team book where the book is already chalk full of several characters who are other heroes.
    Which usually results in them being paired off with male love interests who are also superheroes. Hence why you see Canary and Green Arrow or Zatanna and Constantine.

    The problem for the male love interest is simply that superhero comics as a storytelling genre has drifted away from superheroes having secret identities or personal lives or any down time. Instead just being 'the hero' identity 24-7 and no time for anything that is not strictly in that bubble. Which is a shame because I feel like it really fleshes out a character and adds dimensions to them.

  15. #60
    The Comixeur Mel Dyer's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Fuzzy Mittens View Post
    Personally ive always been a huge fan of Steve and Diana, though admittedly alot of what made Steve interesting became smothered under later writers.

    When Diana left the island with him she was concerned for him as his physician. She was the one who nursed him back to health. She was the one who brought him back from the brink of death...

    Kanigher made him an unrepentant jerk who wanted to make Diana give up everything...

    The problems facing Steve in modern stuff mainly is a combination of how comics in more modern days have become so allergic to downtime that quiet moments can't really exist, compounded with the idea that if they just try to make him more like Nemesis or Rick Flagg then that would solve everything.
    I mean sure he would join Diana on adventures, but part of his charm is he knew Diana was the best and between playing cheer squad he was doing what he could to be support.
    And a big part of it was just how you would have this totally ordinary government spy walk into a dance hall on Wonder Womans arm and show her what jazz music is like or take her to a theme park.
    Fuzzy Mittens...outstanding! That was a truly exceptional mix of scholarship and critical insight, on Steve, from the Golden Age, to the present!

    I would have liked to see the WW comic go into the Silver Age, ..(1) with a revised origin for Wonder Woman, ..(2) making ex-Army Steve Trevor an employee of Diana's, ..(3) ending the paperless instant-marriage, between Steve and Diana, ..(4) the introduction of NEW super-villains, ..(5) moving the setting to the American Southwest (perfect for the Hollywood Western-loving 1950s), ..(6) a regular supporting CAST, ..(7) continued focus on ADVENTURE in bizarre and exotic places ..and (8) leaving Washington and the U.S. Military, permanently, in the rearview. The changes would have given Steve Trevor a hint of depth, fully realized Diana Prince's feminist promise as her own boss, added much needed sexual intrigue, between Diana and her leading man, ..and set the comic, on a solid path to popularity, with young men AND young women.

    I think the resulting effect, where Col. Steve is concerned, would be making him into a leading man, more resembling Gregory Peck or Glenn Ford, than ..Ken doll. Steve needs a little complexity, and these changes might have given him, that.

    Your retrospective review was a GREAT help, in putting the above outline, together. Thank you, Fuzzy.
    Last edited by Mel Dyer; 01-17-2022 at 08:26 PM. Reason: content, clarity
    COMBINING THE BIGBADITUDE OF THANOS WITH CHEETAH'S FEROCITY, IS JANUS WONDER WOMAN'S GREATEST SUPERVILLAIN?...on WONDABUNGA!!! Look alive, Kangaliers!

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