Wonder Woman Earth One: Discussion Thread

[kjn]

Morrison's narration doesn't have to spell anything out, because Paquette's art shows us several examples of women in Man's World with more varied body types. At the hospital and among the Holliday Girls. That and Mala's, Althea's, and even Diana's initial attitudes upon seeing Etta's body, and Etta in turn retaining confidence in herself, is a strike against body shaming. And it is somewhat innocent on the part of the Amazons, as a body that shape is completely new to them. It's a woman who is not athletic, and from the POV of immortal athletic warrior women who never experienced it, it's a natural (if wrong) reaction.

And how does that critique the way women were drawn in Marston's original Wonder Woman? You can just as easily say it critiques the way women are drawn in comics today: even more slender, even more impossibly-bosomed, and even more attractive and sexualised.

When Etta calls out the Amazons on the way they treat her, she doesn't critique Marston, she critiques the Amazons as they are portrayed by Morrison. And Morrison set up his Amazons to behave badly.

Wonder Woman the movie arguably does a better job of critiquing Marston, and comics in general, here, by the simple act of making the Amazons come in several different forms and sizes.

The orgy scene in Earth One is a homage to "Diana's Day" in Wonder Woman #3, and it isn't even that much more explicit than what was shown there. Aside from some dancing topless Amazons (whose breasts are obscured), there isn't anything too scandalous going on here. No explicit sexual acts are being performed. Maybe we're also jumping the gun in even calling it an orgy?

Thanks for giving a reference on the orgy. However, the orgy in Morrison's description sticks out like a sore thumb for two reasons. First is that it is not needed for the narrative, it is only included to check a box for "weird stuff that Marston did". This worsens the issue with that it feels like an odd fit to the culturally and technologically advanced Amazons.

Marston, on the other hand, made sure there was a narrative reason why Wonder Woman was at the orgy, and he had done a lot more work in establishing both Diana and the Amazons.

As for dumping it all at once...why does it have to be explained over time instead of showing us in media res? One way is not inherently better than the other, and this is only one night in in the immortal lives of the Amazons, not their whole culture. As for relationships, this book does more with Hippolyta and Nubia than Marston did with many of his individual Amazons. In the Golden Age, I don't believe anybody was named except for Hippolyta, Mala and Althea.

In medias res is starting with the action first; it's not "show" as in "show, don't tell". Again, it is not necessarily bad to front-load details, if it is needed for the narrative, or for som dramatic effect. At the same time, the info-dump is usually treated as one of the common sins of writing. Morrison puts checking off weird Marston stuff before telling his story, and in effect gets too much exposition and background before the actual plot even starts. While it's not technically info-dumps, the result is largely the same. Now, he is not alone in doing so, and arguably it's a common flaw in every Wonder Woman origin story I've read since Perez. But it feels worse here, since Morrison does not so much tell a long backstory as checks of old Wonder Woman trivia.

I believe in one of the interviews leading up to the release, Morrison wanted to add more dramatic conflict between mother and daughter, as the original story seems to have Hippolyta give up way too easily. And her over protectiveness is well documented throughout Wonder Woman history. Hippolyta keeping secrets from Diana and trying to almost smother her with protection is not without precedent, unfortunately. it's part of her character at this point to be a well meaning but at times flawed mother figure.

That might be what Morrison intended, but I don't think he hits the mark. Where movie Hippolyta comes across as protective, Earth One Hippolyta comes across as smothering. Where movie Hippolyt comes across as sorrowful over Diana's choices, Earth One Hippolyta comes across as wrathful. Instead of accepting, she is crushed in the end.

Also, Hippolyta doesn't enforce violence against Diana. She unleashes Medusa, who even then only takes out combatants, because she has a jaded view on how violent Man's World is and wants to save Diana from it all costs. Even then, she backs off from Steve as soon as it is determined he won't betray their location from the outside world, and permits the Purple Ray be used to turn back the other stoned soldiers.

And Medusa isn't extreme violence?

Ok, you say he hides it well but you just said that he paints them as being as narrow minded in their own way as Man's World, which seems like a pretty obvious critique, doesn't it? Marston genuinely believed the world would be a better place if men were subservient to women, that women were inherently better than men, which is not true feminism.

You're coming really close to the No True Scotsman fallacy there.

There have been plenty of critiques of Marston's Amazons, but they do so by looking at the background and trying to work out how the Amazon society would function and evolve, or by looking at the splits and tensions that would run through it. See "The Circle", or The Legend of Wonder Woman for great examples.

By placing the critique of Amazon behaviour largely in the mouth of Etta, the result is also to say that the women of Man's World (like Etta) are morally superior to the narrow-minded Amazons.

I'd also add that doing meaningful and deep in-media critique of other media is extremely hard, and probably even more so when doing it within the same franchise; often you will do good with simple re-examinations or exploring new angles or fissures. Ostrander and Yale did manage to pull it off in "Oracle: Year One". Even Moore arguably failed to do so in Watchmen, because the result by other comic book writers was to take it as a style guide rather that critique.

[SiegePerilous02]

And how does that critique the way women were drawn in Marston's original Wonder Woman? You can just as easily say it critiques the way women are drawn in comics today: even more slender, even more impossibly-bosomed, and even more attractive and sexualised.

Yes, you could. It's art. There isn't always one interpretation.

When Etta calls out the Amazons on the way they treat her, she doesn't critique Marston, she critiques the Amazons as they are portrayed by Morrison. And Morrison set up his Amazons to behave badly.

Well, Etta's not going to name drop Marston himself, is she? Morrison made only two Amazons act espcially hostile (Hippolyta and Mala) and showed why they think that way. And from a modern perspective, Marston's Amazons in general have moments of behaving badly. Brainwashing people with Venus Girdles to be passive and "cured", placing importance on being strong while still maintaining conventional standards of beauty and believing men are inferior because they are not naturally benevolent and need to submit to woman's loving authority are not ideas that have stood the test of time, and Marston was behind them 100%. Morrison altered Hippolyta and Mala's characters to suit his narrative (and as it's a completely new take separate from the main canon, so what?), but the general attitudes of the Amazons are from Marston. And Etta (who, as great as she was in the Golden Age, was also the butt of fat jokes, while the Amazons were beautiful and great and everyone loved them) gets to call them out on it.

Wonder Woman the movie arguably does a better job of critiquing Marston, and comics in general, here, by the simple act of making the Amazons come in several different forms and sizes.

And it's great that it did that, but it (and other takes like Perez and Rucka's Year One) did it by sanitizing the aspects of Marston's Amazons people find troubling or offensive. It swept it under the rug or changed it instead of calling out some of the BS for what it is. Other takes, like this one, choose to leave it in and either criticize it or invite readers to come to their own conclusions on who is right and who is wrong: the Amazons, Etta, men like Steve or somebody like Diana who is in between and experiencing the outside world for the first time and might have a whole new perspective.

First is that it is not needed for the narrative, it is only included to check a box for "weird stuff that Marston did".

It showcases a ritual in which Diana has to play Hercules, and shows that she is separate from the other Amazons (at least at times. We don't have enough evidence to suggest Diana is ostracized outside of anything to due with contests of feats, as Mala is in love with her and Althea views her as a favorite student). Which in turn foreshadows the reveal of her parentage. it served a purpose.

This worsens the issue with that it feels like an odd fit to the culturally and technologically advanced Amazons.

Why do technological advancements preclude them from having weird rituals like this? What does one have to do with the other? They are a fictional society comprised of immortal women from ancient times who never aged and developed these technologies without abandoning their belief system. We do not have to real world basis to compare them to to determine that anything is an odd fit. And they had technological advancements in the Golden age while they were doing weirder things than this.

Marston, on the other hand, made sure there was a narrative reason why Wonder Woman was at the orgy, and he had done a lot more work in establishing both Diana and the Amazons.

There is a narrative reason here, it's just a different one. Diana coming home to deliver Christmas presents in a pagan ritual vs. playing Hercules in her mother's celebration of female power as they capture Hercules and force him to submit to loving authority and be reformed (and Diana being Diana, she bucks tradition and never lets the ritual finish as intended). It's done to show how different the Amazons are and how they cope with the traumatic past with Hercules, and how Diana lives through the same rituals year after year on her mother's "fantasy island," and wants to experience something. Cue Steve.

Reading the old Marston issue, I'm sure some readers came away from it thinking Marston wanted to get his weird kinky ideas onto the page first and foremost and built a silly plot to go around it.

That might be what Morrison intended, but I don't think he hits the mark. Where movie Hippolyta comes across as protective, Earth One Hippolyta comes across as smothering. Where movie Hippolyt comes across as sorrowful over Diana's choices, Earth One Hippolyta comes across as wrathful. Instead of accepting, she is crushed in the end.

There are examples of Hippolyta being able to cope and let Diana go (in Year One there is no need for deception on Diana's part even), and there is more than enough precedent for her to be smothering or lie in sketchy ways in a misguided attempt to protect Diana (lying about the Zeus parentage, lying about Hercules here, lying about Nubia, lying about whatever the hell was going on with Steve and Eros pre-Crisis that I believe also resulted in Diana being mind wiped (...?), manipulating things so that Artemis becomes Wonder Woman and gets killed in Diana's place, etc.). Even in the Golden Age she called Diana constantly on the Mental Radio and nagged her to visit, and she busted out a slideshow of baby pictures of Diana to show everybody. She's a well meaning but at times smothering/embarassing mom.

And Medusa isn't extreme violence?

Not against Diana she isn't. She is employed against what are believed to be hostile enemy forces (and Hippolyta sees enough of our world's violence in the Magic Sphere that, from her perspective, sending her Amazons out into our world with magical protection doesn't seem like a bad idea). And even then, again, she only freezes the soldiers. The civilians are shown as frightened, but unharmed, with the Amazons not showing any action that they will harm them. And the effect was all undone anyway; once it's confirmed for sure that Steve won't sell them out, Hippolyta lets him go on his merry way, and the other victims are cured.

It is hostility, but that is done to show that the Amazons are not entirely different than everyone else. They can be prone to misunderstandings and hostility, which could be interpreted as another critique/modernization of Marston: in his world, the women wouldn't do that because they are better than the uncivilized men. But they ultimately don't do any permanent harm.

You're coming really close to the No True Scotsman fallacy there.

I don't see how I am. You said Morrison hides it, but I pointed out that I disagreed and provided an example. You are now saying that there are other critiques of Marston's work in other WW stories that you feel work better. Which is fine, but do these critiques only work if they play out a certain way? There is no one way to do this. Morrison is one. LoWW is another. Azzarello is still another, and even if I feel he swung the pendulum too far in the other direction, Amazons kidnapping unwilling men as part of the "Husband Hunting Ritual" in Wonder Woman #9 is a thing. So even his take has some validity even if a lot of us don't like it.

By placing the critique of Amazon behaviour largely in the mouth of Etta, the result is also to say that the women of Man's World (like Etta) are morally superior to the narrow-minded Amazons.

That's a valid interpretation, but is it so wrong if Morrison actually intended it to be that way? By modern standards, Etta is morally superior than the Amazons when it comes to this subject. And how Diana and the Amazons respond to that has the potential to be very interesting going forward.

[Agent Z]

The criticisms of "sanitization" in WW confuse me because I don't see how this is any different than writers not depicting Superman as an anti-Japanese racist or not depicting Batman as being a condescending jerk who threatens to spank Catwoman. Exactly what is wrong with removing elements that people found offensive? Hell, Morrison himself does this in Earth One. He alters the clay origin because he finds it "gross" and in an interview stated his reasons for changing Steve Trevor was because he found him to feminine and mocked Diana for being a virgin (to say nothing of the racial and gender tone deafness of those two statements).

[kjn]

The criticisms of "sanitization" in WW confuse me because I don't see how this is any different than writers not depicting Superman as an anti-Japanese racist or not depicting Batman as being a condescending jerk who threatens to spank Catwoman. Exactly what is wrong with removing elements that people found offensive? Hell, Morrison himself does this in Earth One. He alters the clay origin because he finds it "gross" and in an interview stated his reasons for changing Steve Trevor was because he found him to feminine and mocked Diana for being a virgin (to say nothing of the racial and gender tone deafness of those two statements).

I'd say SiegePerilous02 gets sanitisation, as a term of literary/cultural critique, precisely backwards, in just about every way I can think of. If you remove the word "negro" from Huckleburry Finn or Martin Luther King's speeches, then you are doing sanitisation: removing elements that are troubling now simply because they are troubling, with no thought on the implications of doing so, or the context of why they are there in the first place.

One can say that removing the frequent bondage references in later Wonder Woman depictions is an example of sanitisation, but it can just as easily be claimed to be a valid re-interpretation of the characters and their story: in such, some elements are always emphasised and some de-emphasised or removed. If Marston's original comics were changed in a re-issue, one would have a much stronger claim for sanitisation.