Should Wonder Woman be invulnerable to man-made bullets and other piercing weapons?

[Stone Cold]

Yeah but she needs a kryptonite because right now she has no weaknesses and without weaknesses, Wonder Woman is ridiculously powerful so they have to dumb her down a lot whereas with a Kryptonite we'd probably see Wonder Woman engage her brain more in order to pull through. It comes down to whether we want a dumbed down Wonder Woman who's incredibly powerful, or a Wonder Woman that uses her brain and skill to cancel out her weaknesses. I prefer the latter

Why does she need weakness when her foes are more powerful than her? She was given these weaknesses in a time when her main foes were a lady in cheetah costume, cross-dresser, college bullies and tiny guy.

She looked absolutely ridiculous fighting goofy looking villains way below her power-level. It looked even more ridiculous when she got captured by them. She wasn't really taken seriously back then.

First born, Apollo, Artemis, Minotaur, queen of fables, Circe, genocide, devastation and her countless foes didn't require her to have weakness to beat her to pulp.

[Punisher007]

If she can go up against freaking Doomsday and make it out with simply a broken arm (which heals pretty quickly to boot), then don't tell me that simple bullets or stabby weapons can do serious damage to her. That's just ludicrous. Specially designed anti-magic/god/metahuman/etc weapons, ok fine. But normal ones, no just no.

And here's a couple of weakness for her. If the opponent is strong enough, they can just flat-out overpower her. And if she's going up against a physically weaker but smart villain, then they can come up with some clever strategy to compensate (like Lex often does with Superman).

[brettc1]

Her main opponents back then were also gods.

I grasp suspension of belief. It's all the folks voting for invulnerability that have the difficulty, IMO.

20 votes on Facebook for Bullets and Bracelets.

[brettc1]

You don't seem to quite grasp how the suspension of disbelief works. The reader can only accept implausiblility within the narrative if the writer does infuse a semblance of truth in his tale. When you add BS after BS, people do have a problem with it, as the very fact people have a tendency not to agree with you on this discussion proves. The reader can accept that some specified rules are changed if these changes are important to the narrative. But he otherwise needs to have a world where the basics rules of reality still apply.
For instance, people can accept that in LOTR,stuff like elves and dwarves exist, that's part of the specifics rules needed for the narrative to exist.But if someone in LOTR drops a coin on the floor, and the coin starts flying and making loops, without some kind of explanation, people are going to call BS on it.
Kryptonite works because it's a fictional McGuffin with a fictional explanation (it emits radiation harmful to Kryptonians that interfere with Superman's absorbed sunlight). Bullets.....are real objects without any explanation- not even a lame one- as to why they would hurt WW, or as to why WW's powers would be specifically countered by them.
Worse, unlike Kryptonite, it serves no narrative purpose. Kryptonite is there to be an obstacle for Superman, to have the invulnerable man weak and helpless. WW's "weakness" to bullets would only be there so that she could look cool deflecting them with her bracelets. People tend to accept narrative BS better when there's actually a point to it.

your own argument defeats you.

Coins are real, so must act like coins, but Elves are fictional, and so not bound by rules applying to real Elves.

The same should therefore hold true to Amazon Princesses.

[Agent Z]

And what happens when the Justice League fights a non-magical foe with no magical weapons? She's incredibly powerful on paper but she's still gotta play second fiddle to Superman in that situation so that leaves no other option than to dumb her down. They systematically do that and I don't like it. And this weakness to magic weapons is not a weakness per se, they hurt everyone.

I can also add advanced tech weapons and other super powered beings. This is more of a problem with the writers favoring other characters than Diana being powerful.

[Silvanus]

Why wouldn't a sniper's bullet from afar hit her, if a sniper chose to take a shot at her and she had no way of knowing about it?

Why wouldn't Superman punch his hand through a wall when he rolls over in bed? Why would the Flash be able to execute a right angle turn while running at hypersonic speed.

I don't necessarily know why, butI know that they can control their powers in that way. Since the writers have established that these abilities exist, it's easy for me to suspend disbelief about them. It's less evident that Wonder Woman can block shots fired by far-away, concealed, silent snipers when she's not expecting an attack. If the writers want to say she has a Wonder Sense that allows her, for example, to detect bullets when she has to reason to suspect that she's being shot at, and to wake up and block shots that are fired at her while she's sleeping, then they can do that I can try to suspect disbelief about it. But even when Rucka had her deflect bullets while blind, they weren't being fired by snipers out of the blue when she had no reason to anticipate danger, so I don't really think anyone has established that she has an ability that would infallibly protect her from bullets under all circumstances. And if she's kept safe by basically the plot-induced stupidity of villains who send stealthy snipers, that's not what I would call invulnerability.

More importantly, I don't know why having to block bullets, rather than simply being bulletproof, is better for her character. Certainly, I could suspend disbelief and accept that she's vulnerable to bullets (should they hit her when she's not looking) even though she's not vulnerable to, say, an airplane crashing on her head. I really could. If I had to, I could also suspend disbelief about a powerful hero being deathly afraid of an ordinary mouse, as Wonder Woman was in a Kanigher issue. But I have no great desire to have to suspend disbelief in either regard. The bullet vulnerability isn't stereotypical and objectionable like the mouse phobia, but I still don't see how this particular fantasy of vulnerability enhances the character. There should, I think, be lots of ways to showcase her skills that don't make her look more ordinary, in terms of her vulnerabilities, than the many bulletproof characters. As others have pointed out, those ways could include having her ise her bracelets to block Omega Beams and similarly exotic, powerful attacks.

You can make up some pseudo-scientific sounding reason if you like but the only real answer is the story works better if you don't think TOO much.

But, does the story work better if bullets that hit her could hurt her? If so, why does it work better?

My point is, if she can and does block every bullet shot at her she is not really vulnerable to them.

Vulnerable means "able to be harmed." It doesn't necessarily mean "has been harmed." If a sniper can, in principle, pierce her skin with bullets when she's not looking, then she is, in principle, vulnerable to bullets. I've managed to avoid being hurt by bad drivers whose paths I've crossed; maybe that means that I'm a decent defensive drive (as Wonder Woman is an excellent bullet blocker) or maybe it just means I've been lucky so far, but it doesn't mean I'm invulnerable to bad drivers.

You could as easily say Iron Man is vulnerable to bullets because he is not living in the armor 24/7.

He is. More precisely, Tony Stark (at least, in classic Iron Man comics that I used to read when I was a kid), when not wearing his armor, is vulnerable to bullets (and to everything else that normal human beings are vulnerable to, except maybe being befuddled by technology). That makes sense in terms of the themes of the stories that are told about him; he's just a human being, but though his great technological mind, resourcefulness, and determination (and a big wallet), he has created armor that's capable of turning him into a super-powerful champion. Wonder Woman, on the other hand, though she has also worked very hard to train and discipline herself as a warrior for peace and protector of humanity, is naturally a superhuman with powers that are supposed to be roughly on par with those of the most physically powerful beings. So having her be vulnerable to something mundane as bullets, even if it were only in her sleep, doesn't, on the face of it, seem like as good a thematic fit, as I see it.

[Auguste Dupin]

your own argument defeats you.

Coins are real, so must act like coins, but Elves are fictional, and so not bound by rules applying to real Elves.

The same should therefore hold true to Amazon Princesses.

So, what's your fictonal explanation as to why Diana can be punched in the face by Darkseid, but not tank a bullet? What's so special about bullets that are so dangerous to Amazonian physiology? How is being weak to bullets thematically or narratively relevant to Wonder Woman as a character?
Hell, a more simple one: what purpose would such a weakness serve? By your own admission, even you don't think bullets should be a threat to her. "How is she vulnerable to bullets if they never hit her?". Your words.
You're so caught up in wether or not you could have weak to bullets that you didn't even consider wether or not you should.

[DochaDocha]

Part of my issue is that comics and cartoons tend to follow silly tropes in which guns and knives are obviously bad, but somehow getting ejected from a moving vehicle, being slammed against a hard surface, getting hit so hard your body goes flying like a punted football, or various other forms of non-piercing injuries somehow can be shaken off with minimal lingering effects.

I'd almost rather that if a bullet to the head could harm her, it was because there was a silly, LotR-style curse on WW that bullets and knives can hurt her but dropping a car on her head can be withstood.

[Aula_Magna]

They could just have it that her skin is like a net with tiny holes in it because she's only half-God, and that, if the caliber's small enough, a bullet can pierce her flesh though the soft areas of her skin. But her muscles are so supernaturally dense, the bullet doesn't go through them and it just hurts really bad.

[Sacred Knight]

Seems like an awfully convoluted way to go about making an explanation for something as simple as bullets and an excuse to use the bracelets to block them. It doesn't need an excuse. She can be invulnerable and block them anyway. Invulnerable superheroes can take lots of force but just don't take it for the hell of it if they can help it. They do tend to dodge or whatnot if they can. So why does Diana need a special reason to block bullets even though they don't hurt her if they connect?

[Aula_Magna]

It's a wee bit more elaborate than "just because her boobs wiggle" but I think it's retainable, and I want those bullets to hurt Wonder Woman because I don't want Wonder Woman to be this female Superman that does everything he does, but not as well as him

[DochaDocha]

because I don't Wonder Woman to be this female Superman that does everything he does, but not as good as him

The current model seems to avoid this.

Her skin is not as durable as his is, but her bracelets are more durable than any protection he has to offer, the most recent JL run notwithstanding. She can't tank attacks exactly the way Superman does, but her bracelets protect her entirely from things that can hurt Superman.

Couple that with Azzarello's take, and her bracelets aren't a redundant accessory to her latent durability. Her skin has heightened durability, and the bracelets generally provide out of this world durability.

[Sacred Knight]

It's a wee bit more elaborate than "just because her boobs wiggle" but I think it's retainable, and I want those bullets to hurt Wonder Woman because I don't Wonder Woman to be this female Superman that does everything he does, but not as good as him

This sounds more like a problem of being way too insecure over Superman comparisons than any problems in regards to how it affects Wonder Woman from a characterization and story pov. If everything you do or don't do with her is based on another character, then you're already messing up.

Further, the idea that her powers shouldn't be like Superman's doesn't seem to be uniform. I mean, I rarely see anyone having a problem with the idea she can fly, and that's more "Superman" in the public consciousness than being invulnerable to bullets. Yet I saw more people upset when we thought she might not be able to fly in this continuity. Why is bullets of all things the line? Just further shows how flawed it is to look at her through the prism of "Does this make her too much like Superman?" He was the first superhero. And to paraphrase Cartman "He has lots and lots of powers". Comparisons are going to be drawn, same for most every other superhero to come after him. If avoiding that at all costs is the sole reason behind decisions...then the decision maker needs to find some better reasons.

[brettc1]

I don't necessarily know why, butI know that they can control their powers in that way. Since the writers have established that these abilities exist, it's easy for me to suspend disbelief about them. It's less evident that Wonder Woman can block shots fired by far-away, concealed, silent snipers when she's not expecting an attack. If the writers want to say she has a Wonder Sense that allows her, for example, to detect bullets when she has to reason to suspect that she's being shot at, and to wake up and block shots that are fired at her while she's sleeping, then they can do that I can try to suspect disbelief about it. But even when Rucka had her deflect bullets while blind, they weren't being fired by snipers out of the blue when she had no reason to anticipate danger, so I don't really think anyone has established that she has an ability that would infallibly protect her from bullets under all circumstances. And if she's kept safe by basically the plot-induced stupidity of villains who send stealthy snipers, that's not what I would call invulnerability.

More importantly, I don't know why having to block bullets, rather than simply being bulletproof, is better for her character. Certainly, I could suspend disbelief and accept that she's vulnerable to bullets (should they hit her when she's not looking) even though she's not vulnerable to, say, an airplane crashing on her head. I really could. If I had to, I could also suspend disbelief about a powerful hero being deathly afraid of an ordinary mouse, as Wonder Woman was in a Kanigher issue. But I have no great desire to have to suspend disbelief in either regard. The bullet vulnerability isn't stereotypical and objectionable like the mouse phobia, but I still don't see how this particular fantasy of vulnerability enhances the character. There should, I think, be lots of ways to showcase her skills that don't make her look more ordinary, in terms of her vulnerabilities, than the many bulletproof characters. As others have pointed out, those ways could include having her ise her bracelets to block Omega Beams and similarly exotic, powerful attacks.



But, does the story work better if bullets that hit her could hurt her? If so, why does it work better?



Vulnerable means "able to be harmed." It doesn't necessarily mean "has been harmed." If a sniper can, in principle, pierce her skin with bullets when she's not looking, then she is, in principle, vulnerable to bullets. I've managed to avoid being hurt by bad drivers whose paths I've crossed; maybe that means that I'm a decent defensive drive (as Wonder Woman is an excellent bullet blocker) or maybe it just means I've been lucky so far, but it doesn't mean I'm invulnerable to bad drivers.



He is. More precisely, Tony Stark (at least, in classic Iron Man comics that I used to read when I was a kid), when not wearing his armor, is vulnerable to bullets (and to everything else that normal human beings are vulnerable to, except maybe being befuddled by technology). That makes sense in terms of the themes of the stories that are told about him; he's just a human being, but though his great technological mind, resourcefulness, and determination (and a big wallet), he has created armor that's capable of turning him into a super-powerful champion. Wonder Woman, on the other hand, though she has also worked very hard to train and discipline herself as a warrior for peace and protector of humanity, is naturally a superhuman with powers that are supposed to be roughly on par with those of the most physically powerful beings. So having her be vulnerable to something mundane as bullets, even if it were only in her sleep, doesn't, on the face of it, seem like as good a thematic fit, as I see it.

Only with regard to how she could sense the shot coming, in the scenario where she fights the League blind Batman says she is adjusting by sensing pressure differentials in the air around her.

Now some will say "you cant do that with a bullet fired a long range" Well, logically then Superman should fly right through planets, since you cant SEE things in real space when you are moving faster than the light that tells you where they are. Logically he cant even see where to go when he starts off because the light he is taking a reckoning by has been travelling through space for years [sometimes centuries] and the actual stars have moved well beyond that position because of stellar drift.

See what happens when you think too much

[brettc1]

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