Wonder Woman is nothing without a man

[Carabas]

I have to disagree. She shares the same origin as hundreds of other characters. There is nothing in my opinion unique or interesting about being yet another generic offspring of Zeus. There are countless ways of making her a demigod without owing her powers to a man. If they didn't want to continue the Adam origin of clay brought to life, there were countless routes they could have went. They could have given her a human father to explain her fascination with man's world. They could have revealed that she was the daughter of Athena or even Hera. She could have been so many things but nope. She's Paris Hilton. Famous because of her fathers wealth and power.

Ugh. I'm sorry. I'm just frustrated today. I bought Earth One and it has me in a fowl mood.

Okay. Say she did get her powers from Athena or Aphrodite or whatever. That is still power that ultimately is derived from Zeus. And Zeus and Hera get their power from Chronos.
Go further up the family three and you get Uranus and Gaia, half male, half female.

And children of Zeus are a lot rare than you seem to think they are.
Nevermind that her parentage is just small part of her origin.

Also, it's a foul mood.

[hellacre]

It doesn't matter who her father is. Azzarello's point was that she got her nurturing and morals from her mom. Zeus was a dead beat dad. And I am a female and I had male and female influences in my life. How remiss of me to look down at any teacher because he happened to be a male. WW character wouldn't even do that I think....judge a teacher because who happens to be a man. That was the beauty of Diana being a child unspoiled by hate that tainted her amazon sisters. She never judged. If you flip it...and you had a male hero and say he shouldn't have females in his life? That is not helping gender equity. Sure would have been nice to see Athena train her too but Ares training her is no different to her having Hermes for a patron. Having abilities doesn't define her. End of the day it boils down to Diana and her nurturing and how she uses her abilites.

Plus DC has some of what what they seem to promote as pro female comics...like Legend of WW and Bombshells and one wonders where are the readers to support it?

[Tayswift]

Okay. Say she did get her powers from Athena or Aphrodite or whatever. That is still power that ultimately is derived from Zeus. And Zeus and Hera get their power from Chronos.
Go further up the family three and you get Uranus and Gaia, half male, half female.

And children of Zeus are a lot rare than you seem to think they are.
Nevermind that her parentage is just small part of her origin.

Also, it's a foul mood.

yeah, you can trace the power back t othe male god. but it was ultimtely a decision made by women to give life to another woman.

well there is hercules, and then there is this bunch of kids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeus#C...s_and_children

It doesn't matter who her father is. Azzarello's point was that she got her nurturing and morals from her mom. Zeus was a dead beat dad. And I am a female and I had male and female influences in my life. How remiss of me to look down at any teacher because he happened to be a male. WW character wouldn't even do that I think....judge a teacher because who happens to be a man. That was the beauty of Diana being a child unspoiled by hate that tainted her amazon sisters. She never judged. If you flip it...and you had a male hero and say he shouldn't have females in his life? That is not helping gender equity. Sure would have been nice to see Athena train her too but Ares training her is no different to her having Hermes for a patron. Having abilities doesn't define her. End of the day it boils down to Diana and her nurturing and how she uses her abilites.

Plus DC has some of what what they seem to promote as pro female comics...like Legend of WW and Bombshells and one wonders where are the readers to support it?

you are just missing the point of what marston was doing with WW.

the readers are buying legend of wonder woman and bombshells

[RAY DILLON]

Why does DC feel that Diana must have her power come from a man? For decades, Diana was the paragon of girl power and now that is twisted into a lie. Oh you only thought she was powerful because of her training or up bringing but surprise it was a man all along! Her mother is actually a crafty liar! Thank the all powerful man that Diana REALLY receives her powers from.

I don't understand why she can't be a powerful woman due to either herself a woman or the goddesses which were women. Are the writers that insecure that to comprehend her they have to pull back the curtain and declare whew close one boys but the most powerful woman is in fact powerful because of a man.

I feel like the next origin of Wonder Woman will feature her true true origin where they reveal she was actually a man all along.

Sorry for the rant. I am just so sick of the male power source for what was once a beacon of feminism.

I recommend you check out LEGEND OF WONDER WOMAN. I think you'll be very happy with how Renae handled this very topic in later issues. Trying not to give spoilers...

[Nyssane]

If Diana has to be a demigod, why Zeus? Zeus has had so many children, it makes Diana just one of hundreds, and makes her second fiddle to the arguably more well-known Hercules.

I kind of liked how in Earth One, spoilers:

she was the daughter of Hercules. It adds layers but Hercules is also a character that won't outshine Hippolyta as much as Zeus, all-powerful King of the Gods, does.

end of spoilers

Ares is also a more preferable choice, simply because of the history he's had with Diana and the fact that it would add complexity to their relationship (and his role as an antagonist). Maybe Athena could turn into a man and impregnate Hippolyta? Teehee.

[SonOfDiana]

I LOVE Legend. I am so thankful for it.

[Lex Luthor]

I think they are trying (badly) to make her more appealing to wider audiences. I really don't think it's deliberate (maybe I'm just hopeful of that though). But to be honest I've never thought that ANY of her origins post-Marston did her justice ... blessings, born of Zeus etc ... she and the Amazons were better, IMO, when their powers came from Amazonian training and skills.

my thoughts exactly

[Pamp_Lusa]

I think Wonder Woman's got bigger issues than whether or not she was conceived with the help of a man, like the fact that Perez stripped Wonder Woman and the Amazons of all their agency and that she's a de facto Superman supporting character, now that really does take away from Wonder Woman. Having a male progenitor doesn't demean her in any way, shape or form, but he mustn't upstage her mom. Morrison's origin story works for me

[Stanlos]

Why does DC feel that Diana must have her power come from a man? For decades, Diana was the paragon of girl power and now that is twisted into a lie. Oh you only thought she was powerful because of her training or up bringing but surprise it was a man all along! Her mother is actually a crafty liar! Thank the all powerful man that Diana REALLY receives her powers from.

I don't understand why she can't be a powerful woman due to either herself a woman or the goddesses which were women. Are the writers that insecure that to comprehend her they have to pull back the curtain and declare whew close one boys but the most powerful woman is in fact powerful because of a man.

I feel like the next origin of Wonder Woman will feature her true true origin where they reveal she was actually a man all along.

Sorry for the rant. I am just so sick of the male power source for what was once a beacon of feminism.

That means you read Earth (Whatever)! I just finished my first pass.

[Stanlos]

She's a lot cooler when she's a demi-god. Sorry but I find her new origin a lot more interesting than the whole clay thing. Plus it adds so much needed depth to her supporting cast.

You know if they wanted to do her as a demi-God they could also have her be oh I dunno the daughter of Aphrodite, Athena, or Gaea herself even. Perhaps from a coupling with an Argonaut or what have you. It would largely retain the source of her powers being femme. And that would be something that we don't normally see.

Ooooooooooooooo or a spiritual union between Hippolyte and Athena! (if they MUST do something we have seen before)

I find that at nearly every turn TPTB take the most pedestrian route possible it seems.

[Doctor Bifrost]

Azzarello's point was that she got her nurturing and morals from her mom.

The mom who was queen of a race of murderers, did nothing to stop it, and concealed it from her daughter? The Amazons presented in Azzarello's run are about as villainous as the League of Assassins - arguably worse, since no reason is ever presented for why they kill their victims (who seem largely innocent), and they were willing to drown their own infant sons if a kindly (male) god hadn't come along and offered to take them off their hands.

If Diana got her morals from Hippolyta and the Amazons, its only because they concealed from her how monstrous they actually were. That's a pretty severe change to the mythos.

[Doctor Bifrost]

I don't know if this is appropriate to discussion-board protocol, but I wrote an article on this subject for my blog, and The Mary Sue reprinted it, and rather than repeat everything I've said I'll just put a link here: http://www.themarysue.com/wonder-wom...nal-narrative/.

As it happens, I agree with the original poster, for reasons that I lay out in some detail

[Agent 86]

I agree with the OP. My preference is for Wonder Woman to have an entirely unique "origin" story (i.e. a clay sculpture imbued with life and special powers by the Greek goddesses) as opposed to an origin which may not frequently recur within DC Comics, but which has certainly been used by numerous mythological characters in the past, notably Hercules.

If DC Comics insisted upon having Diana result from a physical union between Hippolyta and someone else, then I don't see why it couldn't have been Artemis, patron goddess of the Amazons, who through godly magic impregnated her lover and most devoted servant.

I'm similarly disappointed by the changes to Harley Quinn's "origin" story in New52.

[Powertool]

I agree with the OP. My preference is for Wonder Woman to have an entirely unique "origin" story (i.e. a clay sculpture imbued with life and special powers by the Greek goddesses)

Oh yeah, that's definitely unique.

http://https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora

Addressing the OP's concerns about Diana, I really, really, REALLY don't care where Wonder Woman derives her power from. In my opinion, origin stories are overrated and characters who are too deeply defined by them are doomed to stagnation or outright failure. Just look at Nineties' Superboy tragic fate: his life ended (i.e. he stopped being a character which could inspire interesting stories in multiple writers) once Johns decided that absolutely everything about that previously free-spirited character had from then on to gravitate around the new origin story he had mailed to DC when he was a kid. Before? SupermanclonefromCadmuslabsdealwithit--let'shavefuninHawaiiwithmyYJfriends.

I'm a lot more interested in the way superheroes use their powers. So much in fact that the idea of Rucka spending his first arc addressing the "lies" that were told to Wonder Woman makes me a lot less optimistic about his second run being on par with his first. Not that I don't want anything of WW's past addressed, of course. I'd settle with the Finches' run being revealed as a bad salvia trip -- or a Chicago Deep Dish-induced nightmare.

[Agent 86]

Oh yeah, that's definitely unique.

http://https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora

Fair point. I was unfamiliar with the myth about Pandora's origins. I was only familiar with the Pandora's box myth.

There is one crucial difference, Pandora was created as a curse. Diana was created as a blessing. But, otherwise I agree that their origins are very similar - created from earth and imbued with gifts from the Greek gods.