Summertime summertime sum-sum-summertime. Long days. Sultry nights.
Summer is hot. Literally. We are very aware of our bodies, and the bodies of those around us. We wear lighter clothes. We wear sunglasses and/or glamorous hats.
Love is in the air, or at least lust.
Naturally, I asked myself, “What do superheroes do about this?”
I mean, skin-tight costumes are hot. Literally. And while certain superpowers like invulnerability might make it easier to wear synthetic fabrics or leather, that still doesn’t explain how a Batman can get through a humid Gotham summer.
I guess he’s had his mind on other things. Last month, he proposed to Catwoman Selina Kyle, on a rooftop, both dressed in their superhero outfits.
Neither one of them appeared to be sweating. Although it’s raining, so maybe that made a difference.
I like the Batman/Catwoman romance. I liked it in the old comics I read as a kid, and I liked it in The Dark Knight Rises. I loved it. I loved the Alan Brennert story, The Autobiography of Bruce Wayne, where they got married the first time.
I’m not sure I love this Batman and this Catwoman together.
There are a lot of iconic relationships in comics. Because some characters have been in existence for more than 75 years, these relationships have gone through a lot of ups and downs. If you’re a continuity geek (and sometimes I am, but not about this), you can make yourself crazy with the seeming contradictions over the years. Is Lois Lane a jealous snoop, or an independent professional dedicated to her craft? Is Carol Ferris a stuck-up heiress or a lonely little rich girl? Is Iris West a busybody nagging busybody or simply a person who doesn’t like to be lied to? Is Steve Trevor a macho man or a wimp?
Instead, I choose to see these relationships as reflections of both their times and the people (usually men) who write them. This is especially obvious in stories from the 1970s and 1980s when the modern day feminist movement achieved its first successes. You can tell that the writers (and, probably, editors) know something is happening, but they aren’t sure what they are supposed to do about it. So you get a lot of female characters proclaiming themselves “women’s libbers” while wearing hot pants.
(Note: I’m not saying no feminist ever wore hot pants, or that wearing hot pants is anti-feminist. I’m just saying it wasn’t as common in real life as it was in say, Metropolis.)
Today, with movies and television as well as comics, we have a lot of different versions of the same relationships from which to choose. I enjoy Lois and Clark in the Superman comics, who are comfortable being married and being parents. I enjoy Barry Allen and Iris West on the television Flash, mostly because Candice Patton is so refreshingly straightforward. I thought the Wonder Woman/Steve Trevor dynamic in the new Wonder Woman was totally believable, way more than it has been in the comics for decades.
I’m not so sure about the current versions of Batman and Catwoman. Bruce Wayne has been through even more trauma than usual lately, what with losing Tim Drake and everything. If I were his shrink, I would advise him to wait at least a year before making any life-changing decisions. I know he’s hurting, but divorce would hurt even more.
The Wonder Woman of my youth was a fairly ridiculous character, whose adventures included less fighting and more romantic entanglements, not only with Steve Trevor but also a merman and a bird boy. She was no more a feminist icon to me than Supergirl, Betty or Veronica, but then, I was a child and there was no feminist movement at my elementary school in Ohio for me to know.
I still loved her. I wanted to be able to fly by catching a wind current. I wanted to be able to make people tell me the truth, especially if I could tie them up, too. To be honest, I probably also wanted a merman for a boyfriend.
This is a long, roundabout way of saying that while Wonder Woman influenced my feminism (breathing influenced my feminism), she didn’t create it. I did not expect a movie about her, especially one from a major studio, to make much difference to me.
I was wrong.
All over the world, women went to see Wonder Woman and cried. These were tears of relief, of gratitude, that someone had finally put their hopes and fears and experiences onscreen, without the filter of a male gaze. We saw a woman who defined herself by her goals and her purpose, not her dress size or men’s approval.
Was the movie perfect? Of course not. I can pick nits with the best of them. Still, it was the most high-profile, big budget movie to show women doing heroic things that we have not seen women do in other high-profile, big budget movies. The director, Patty Jenkins, knows how women see the world, and what women think is heroic, and filmed accordingly.
I didn’t go to a women-only screening. They sounded like a lot of fun, but they sold out quickly and were not at a convenient time or location for me. Instead, I went to one of the hundreds of other available showings, with a group of friends of differing genders.
Wow, did I have a good time! I loved watching Diana grow up, mischievous and scrappy and eager to be alive. I loved seeing her fish-out-of-water reaction to man’s world, during which we saw both curiosity and determination on her face (and also, well, wonder). Gal Gadot captured more emotion in her face than any other actor in a superhero film, except, possibly, Mark Ruffalo.
Perhaps because I’ve been reading superhero comics with an appreciation for their socio-political subtexts, I did not cry when I saw Diana go into battle. I cheered. The only time I came close to tears was at the end, when a wall of photos of fallen soldiers reminded me of so many similar walls in New York after September 11.
However, as a straight cis white woman, I see more examples of people like myself in popular culture than anyone else besides straight cis white men. I appreciate how people who don’t fit the default assumptions could find themselves overcome by the recognition this film provides.
One way to tell how effective the movie was at reaching its target audience is by the reaction of those who felt threatened by the content. The Alamo Drafthouse, a small theater chain headquartered in Austin, Texas, decided to hold a few women-only screenings, one in each of their six theaters. They had done similar promotions in the past, such as veterans-only screenings and senior-only screenings.
For some reason, no one had any problems with those. But for Wonder Woman, the crybabies came out en masse. The whining from their butthurt was deafening. In my favorite example, one wrote to the mayor of Austin to protest this heinous discrimination. His reply is not only spot-on, but hilarious.
I hope Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot return for the sequel. I hope they find a way to bring back Etta Candy and Antiope. I hope they all go shopping together again. I would watch that movie.
Warning Spoilers! It’s more than a review this week because we just have so much to say about Wonder Woman. Not only is it Tweeks Approved, but we had to reorder our Chrises.
Our planet is being strangled to death by morons, at least one-quarter of all Americans think Vlad Putin’s interference with our elections and our economy is absolutely swell, comedians are being persecuted for making errors in judgment, people can’t afford even basic health care, an increasing percentage of our citizens depend upon neighborhood gas stations and “convenience” stores for their food supplies… and what is Fox News screaming about?
Last Friday, the official opening date of a movie called Wonder Woman, Fox News puppet Neil Cavuto got into a serious hissy-fit about the eponymous character’s wardrobe. Evidently, he thinks moving past the vague red, white and blue of her original comic book costume, designed back when this nation was just about to append the word “World” onto World War II, has been abandoned for colors he considered to be somehow unpatriotic.
Right. In other words, Fox News is pissed because a Greek goddess, the princess of Themyscira, an Amazon warrior trained to defend her homeland and not Cavuto’s, declined to envelope herself in colors that he could run up a flagpole in his own American front yard.
Please, do not tell Neil that our American warriors do not wear red, white and blue costumes in combat either. If they did, that would be a mistake. The last thing a soldier without superpowers would do is wrap himself up in an outfit of bright colors. That really doesn’t go along with the whole trench warfare thing.
NEIL CAVUTO: Wonder Woman is out in theaters right now. Some are calling it less American, Dion, because her outfit isn’t red, white, and blue, and, in order to appeal for foreign audiences, very little reference to America at all.
DION BAIA (guest): I think, nowadays, sadly, money trumps patriotism. Especially, recently, I personally feel like we’re not really very patriotic, the country, in a certain sense.
MIKE GUNZELMAN (guest): I think the Hollywood aspect, we see this time and time again, it’s cool to hit America these days.
It’s a shame neither Baia nor Gunzelman were aware that, by definition, the United States was not the only nation fighting the bad guys in World War I. You know, the war to end all wars that didn’t end all wars. Or any. Perhaps they didn’t notice that (very minor spoiler alert) the villain of the piece was a lot more British than Princess Diana was American.
Cavuto and company ascribe the motivation for the costume change to the desire for greater international sales. In a free market economy, one might think your basic rabid capitalist would consider that to be admirable. But, according to that same “logic”, the bad guys would not have been German. There are a lot of movie theaters in Germany. I suspect Wonder Woman will do as well there as just about anyplace else.
Come to think of it, Princess Diana hadn’t been to America before or during World War I. Prior to leaving Themyscira to risk her life in order to aid American Steve Trevor in his battle to save us all, it wasn’t established that she had even heard of the United States of America. Or Great Britain, for that matter. Hell, she had just heard about Germany. I guess they don’t get Fox News in Themyscira.
Or, more likely, Amazons are too heavily vested in that “truth” thing.
It seems like incredibly faint praise but I should get it out at the beginning: Wonder Woman is the best film of the DC Extended Universe era. That only means that it’s a coherent film with proper pacing and character work that doesn’t feel completely at odds with 80 years of published material. It’s honestly hard to believe that the same studio was working on this gem at the same time they were shoveling Suicide Squad and Batman v Superman out the door. Wonder Woman is a triumph for DC and the kind of shining beacon for the future that I’m sure they will ignore for a grey and smokey Justice League later in the year.
The action beats in Wonder Woman are stellar. The sequence where she ditches her outerwear and uses her sword and shield to come over the top of a bunker and traverse the no man’s land is maybe the best action beat I’ve seen all year. I’ll even give them bonus points for not underlining the potential word play. The training montages on Themyscira are crowded without being cluttered. They gesture to a frenetic martial lifestyle that I would love to see more of in a sequel. The mass action sequences are done so well that it’s a little disappointing to have the final battle be a kind of inscrutable one-on-one fight but that’s how these movies end. I would be in to the superhero movie where things are solved in an institutional manner or with one hero fighting an entire army, but it’s seemingly never been done and this was probably not the time to start.
Gal Gadot is perfect in the role of Diana Prince. She’s so good that it’s easy to forget all the times another actress seemed perfect for the part and DC squandered the opportunity by not making a movie out of this property in the last 25 years. Her facial expressions are on point and she deftly handles the switch from a steely warriors gaze to befuddlement at the world outside her island. I think “oh, I don’t understand this modern thing” might be a little overused here but it’s one of their only avenues for comedy and you wouldn’t want it to be just a movie about how terrible World War One is, we’ve had those movies and I personally don’t find them very interesting. The rest of the cast is fine, I suppose. Chris Pine is punching a little above his weight here, or he’s criminally underused in the Star Trek movies. Robin Wright and Connie Nielsen are great as Antiope and Hippolyta respectively, but with such vanishingly small amounts of screen time.
I struggled a bit with World War I as a setting. In the comics Wonder Woman has all the Hitler-punching bonafides as Captain America does, and moving to a war with a less certain, less reviled, adversary takes some of that oomph out of things. It’s easy for Diana to hate Nazis and slightly harder for her to hate too many convoluted political alliances. It serves the story (the suspicion of Ares’ involvement might seem too overt in WWII) but I spent a lot of time wondering when things might get turned up a little. I’m here to see Diana smash tanks and fight against unstoppable odds (present in this film for sure) and less here for her infiltrating a ball or shopping in a very standard version of London (also unfortunately present).
I enjoyed Wonder Woman a great deal, but that’s not really what’s most important here. I have watched my Facebook feed fill up all weekend with raves from women I know thrilled to see a superhero movie that speaks to them. I have to believe them that this movie is something special above and beyond my appreciation of it on a surface level. That people feel heard and represented by a movie is more important than any quibbles I might have over the depth of the supporting cast or how uninteresting I find World War I as a setting. I thought Wonder Woman was good, all these people thought it was real, and given the circumstances I’m going to go with them on this one.
“Be careful of mankind, Diana. They do not deserve you.” —Queen Hippolyta
Will the Amazonian be the woman who finally breaks the Hollywood glass ceiling?
Wonder Woman, starring Israeli actress Gal Gadot as Princess Diana of Themiscrya, premieres on June 2, just 12 days away, and the fate of all the superwomen and their eponymous movies who would follow her lies in the ability of her sword-wielding, shield-bearing, gold lassoing hands and her armor-plated breast to vanquish the biggest and baddest super-villain of them all: Box Office.
I’ve watched every trailer and clip that Warner Bros. has released, and though they were all great, the very best of all of them, im-not-so-ho, was Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Every time Ms. Gadot showed up, whether it was in her guise as Diana Prince or as Wonder Woman, the movie morphed from an overbearing, weighted down slog through mud into a wonderama gliding with the agility and talent of an Olympian figure skater. Her Diana Prince was a woman of intriguing mystery and integrity, and her Amazon alter-ego was a wonder of heroic strength and bravery. She is possessed with incredible beauty and stature, the natural grace of a gazelle, and quiet yet undeniable assurance. The camera loved her; so did I, and I walked out of the theater knowing that Ms. Gadot is a worthy inheritor to the role that made Lynda Carter a star and icon for girls and young women coming of age during the 1970’s.
I know that I have previously said that I thought placing the movie during WW I might be a mistake. But after watching (again) all the Wonder Woman clips and previews and that bit from BvS—in which Bruce Wayne discovers the picture of a “meta-human” captioned “Belgium, November, 1918” and starts putting “1 + 1”—I have what I think is a pretty good idea as to why the movie is set when it’s set. (Of course, I will have to wait to see if I’m right…and I’ll let you know if I was, okay?)
Meantime, the Twitter universe has lit up with early reviews, released on Thursday, May 18; here are some examples:
Indiewire’s Kate Eerbland:
WONDER WOMAN: Easily my favorite DCEU film. Has the humor and heart the franchise so desperately needs. Gadot and Pine are charming as hell.
Every tweet I read reflected what I felt and saw on the screen in BvS. Gal Gadot is to Wonder Woman what Christopher Reeve was to Superman. And it may just be that the answer to the question posed up above will be a resounding yes.
Only the gods and goddesses know.
We all have mothers. I had a mother of a cold last week, and since Sunday was Mom’s day, I thought I would take a moment to honor all those women who have taken on the absolutely hardest job in the multi-verse, even though it’s 24 hours late.
I think the best known mother in the four-color universe is the farmer’s wife from Smallville who, with her husband, found and raised the “strange visitor from another planet” who would grow up to become the one and only Superman. Although I’ve always known that farmer’s wife as Martha Clark Kent, her name varied for quite a while; she was known as Mary Kent in Superman #1 (1939), but in George F. Lowther’s 1942 novel, The Adventures of Superman, and on the radio program for which Mr. Lowther was a writer, Mrs. Kent’s first name was Sarah, which also followed her to the George Reeves television series of the same name. (The Adventures of Superman, Episode 1, “Superman on Earth,” written by Richard Fielding) Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster finally settled on “Martha” sometime in the 1950’s, and since then, every variation of Superman’s mom on the page and on television and in the movies has been known by that name.
Several actresses have played Ma Kent on the big and small screens. Virginia Carroll was the first to play her in the 1948 movie serial that starred Kirk Alyn as the Man of Steel, in which her name was Martha. Francis Morris played Sarah Kent in the aforementioned The Adventures of Superman. Phyllis Thaxter was the perfect Martha to Chris Reeve’s Superman in the one and only Richard Donner film—and if you haven’t seen Donner’s version of Superman II, get on it, guys!!!!! The venerable actress Eva Marie Saint played her in Superman Returns, and Diane Lane is the most recent Martha, doing an admirable job in Man of Steel, Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, and is about to return as Martha Kent in Justice League.
Television Marthas have been portrayed as younger and hipper. K Callan’s version, in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures, was a sixties-something woman whom you could easily imagine having burned her bra and marched with Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug, and other women during the social upheaval of the ‘60’s. And I have a special fondness for Annette O’Toole, who played Martha on Smallville for the show’s entire run. (This was Ms. O’Toole’s second time around in the DC universe; she played Lana Lang in Superman III,) I think her Martha was innately every bit a feminist as K Callan’s, but, im-not-so-ho, I don’t think she ever needed her consciousness “raised”—she just instinctively understood that she was as equal and capable as her husband and any other man, and her choice to be a “stay-at-home” mom was just that—her choice. In later seasons, Senator Martha Kent went to Washington, representing the state of Kansas, although her political party was never stated; my own political leanings make her a Democrat, although in reality I think she would most likely be what in today’s political climate is called a RINO, which is pronounced like the animal and stands for Republican In Name Only—a pejorative for someone who is not considered conservative enough in their beliefs.
I also want to take some space here to give a shout-out to two very important moms in my life: Loretta Yontef Newell, my mom, and her granddaughter (and my daughter), Alixandra.
I haven’t all that often talked about my mom here—I’m really not sure why. She and my late dad were married for 69 years—they almost made it to 70 years, as their anniversary is coming up this June—and I know she was the linchpin for their relationship, for my dad adored her. I remember when we celebrated their 60th year of marriage; I said, “y’know, I gotta tell ya, there were times I was sure you two were headed towards divorce.” My father scoffed and said, “You’re nuts!,”; my mother wouldn’t even deign to answer.
She was a woman who was “feminist” in the same way that Annette O’Toole’s Martha was—raised to be able to stand on her own two feet in a time when most women were raised to become wives only, she first worked as a telephone operator before entering the U.S. Army Nurse Cadet Corps during WW II, and was stationed in Washington, D.C. as the war drew to a close. After the war she worked as a Labor and Delivery nurse at the Brooklyn Jewish Hospital—she commuted every day from Bayonne, taking bus, ferry, and subways!—where, she told me, she and her friends, after a long night delivering babies, went to the Paramount Theatre in Brooklyn to see a certain young singer from Hoboken whose first name was Frank and whose last name was Sinatra. (I could never get her to admit to being one of the “bobby-soxers” who screamed his name earlier in the decade.) She was also a school nurse, a medical-surgical nurse, one of the very first nurses to work with dialysis patients back in the day when the dialysis machines looked like giant rotors with a netting strung across their innards, and worked for the U.S. Public Health Service at a hospital on Staten Island, where one of her jobs was to ride a jetty out to the ships moored in Lower New York Harbor and give physicals to the merchant marine crewmen, clearing them for entrance into the States. She was a school nurse, a sleep-away camp nurse, and an ER nurse. And she did all this while being an involved wife and mother. My dad was always proud of his wife being a professional woman; and she was, for the longest time, the only one of their circle of friends who worked “outside the home.”
She made time for the kids (me and my brother), too. She encouraged us to read—leading her own two plus their reprobate friends to the public library—and took us into New York City to Broadway shows and museums. I think our elementary school teachers were afraid of her, because if she thought one of us had been treated unfairly, she didn’t sit on her hands.
When I was in second grade I went to my school’s library and wanted to take out “The Black Stallion,” by Walter Farley. The librarian would not allow it, saying that it was a book for the older grades. When my mother heard about this, she went up to the school and demanded that I be allowed to read whatever I wanted to read. Of course, I wasn’t present for this showdown, but I can only imagine what my mom said, because from then on I never had a problem.
Another time, I think I was in third grade, the class was assigned to read a biography and then write a book report about the subject. My mom took me to the public library, and I chose the story of Y.A. Tittle, the N.Y. Giants quarterback. When I handed in my report, the teacher gave it back to me, saying, “Little girls do not read biographies about football players.” Up went my mother, back to P.S. 29. Again, I don’t know what she said to the teacher, but I got an A+ on that book report—I’ve always wondered whether it was because it was an early example of my writing ability or because, simply put, the teacher was scared shit of my mother.
My mother never told me what she said, and now it is too late—right before my dad died, maybe two weeks prior, my mom had a stroke, and though she is not physically disabled, her cognitive abilities are, to put it sadly and simply, pretty much shot to hell. She now lives in the same nursing home, and on the same floor, where my father spent the last years of his life. Sometimes she is more “cognitive” than at other times—sometimes when I speak to her on the phone, she is almost my mother; and other times, most times, she simply cries and says she wants to go “home.”
The other mom I want to talk about is my daughter, Alixandra. She and her wonderful husband Jeffrey, my son-in-law the Doctor—he is a PhD. and a professor at Montclair State University in New Jersey—have a son, named after both grandfathers: Meyer Manuel. He is loving and beautiful and the light of my life. He is also autistic.
When Meyer was definitively diagnosed at 18 months—the earliest age at which autism can be, well, definitively diagnosed—Alix was working full-time and applying for a second Master’s program in Public Health and Policy at New York University. She didn’t quit her job; she didn’t quit her educational plans, only delayed her entry into the program for a semester; she started researching autism and the education of autistic children, and found Meyer the best school in her area, Caldwell University, enrolling her son in the Applied Behavior Analysis program there. It was incredibly expensive, and when the insurance company lagged in its responsibilities, she fought them. She has never, ever ceased fighting for her child, has never ceased to put him first; they sold their beloved first home and moved to a town with better, and more progressive, educational policies towards special needs kids, choosing to rent and investing the monies from the sale of their home in Meyer’s future. And meanwhile, she did go back to school for that second Masters and continues to work full-time, commuting to New York City and always bringing work home with her.
Last week Greg Rucka, current writer on Wonder Woman Rebirth, confirmed in an interview that Wonder Woman is queer. Whether you agree with Greg Rucka’s approach on the character, it’s a good interview and worth your time. Basically, the ideas delved into are that since Wonder Woman’s home Themyscira is an all woman’s paradise that whereas they may not exactly consider it being queer since same sex relationships are all they could have, we would consider it queer by our standards. And certainly any women that come to our world from there would almost certainly be queer by our standards.
This is certainly important for queer representation in comics. However, there are some factors here that limit this milestone that are worth discussing.
First, Wonder Woman has not always been queer. Some sites like this one make the claim that she always was, and that was always creator William Moulton Marston’s intentions. We have absolutely no evidence that was his end goal. Yes, he was in a polyamorous relationship with two women and enjoyed BDSM. While he clearly drew on some of his bondage experience for the comic, that does not mean he wished the character to be openly queer and to ultimately acknowledge that in the comics. Seeing as William Moulton Marston passed away in 1947, there are little to know formal interviews his creating Wonder Woman. Believe it or not, people didn’t care a lot about comic creators back then.
When it comes to Wonder Woman in comics as well let’s keep in mind that Comics Code Authority. The code as it stood in 1954 banned any reference to sexual deviations as they saw it, so any form of queerness, straight through 1989. While both Marvel and DC had printed a few comics that could not get the Comics Code Authority seal, it was almost always for something related to drug use. Rarely if ever was the seal denied to Marvel or DC for queerness.
The companies followed those guidelines so closely that Chris Claremont was forced to drop the idea of a queer relationship between Mystique and Destiny from his X-Men run. As a result, multiple generations of Wonder Woman writers had no intention of writing her as queer as it would not be published. Furthermore, straight cis white men (with the arguable exception of William Moulton Marston being polyamorous) exclusively wrote Wonder Woman for over four decades until ComicMix’s own Mindy Newell got to write three issues in 1985 before George Pérez took the reigns after Crisis On Infinite Earths.
Since 1942, various incarnations of Wonder Woman appeared in comics, on TV, and now Gal Gadot is Wonder Woman in the DC Cinematic Universe. From cartoons spanning Super Friends, Justice League, and Justice League Unlimited to the live-action Wonder Woman starring Lynda Carter, Wonder Woman has presented straight or at most warm and welcoming to other women. Her love interests didn’t stray far from Steve Trevor or Superman. With Steve Trevor cast in the Wonder Woman film debuting next summer in addition to the movie having mostly been filmed already, it is highly likely if not entirely impossible she will be presenting as queer in the film. Though I do fear there’s a chance she may appear queer briefly in the film in a cringe-worthy-for-the-male-gaze fashion. I’m hoping that won’t be the case.
It’s also worth noting that DC has retconned quite a few characters as being bisexual/queer. These characters include Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, John Constantine and now Wonder Woman. All of them are cis and white with only one of them being male. Many of the characters named have appeared in other media recently; when the Constantine show premiered on NBC, the showrunners stated they would not portray him as bisexual. Harley Quinn was just in the film Suicide Squad with no reference to her bisexuality. It’s hard to say you’re pushing for diversity when you’re pushing for it in the medium with the least amount of people engaging in it, while not demanding it with those characters’ counterparts on TV and in the movies.
The characters being cis and white are part of the limitations DC has when they retcon characters. The overwhelming majority of the characters created decades ago were straight cis and white. When you aren’t creating new characters and are retconning queerness into them, the result is a lot of white queer characters and few to no queer POC. This sort of backdoor diversity approach to queerness isn’t the best approach. As I’ve been advocating on this column for a while, we need more new queer characters and to use some of the queer characters who were made with the intention to be queer like Coagula, who granted is white, but would still bring DC’s trans superhero count from 0 to 1. DC needs new characters, not more backdoor diversity.
We have decades of a straight-coded Wonder Woman in our culture. Yes, she has often been a symbol of feminism, but we cannot conflate feminism with queerness. Whether people want to admit it or not, Wonder Woman being queer is a retcon and we need to treat it as such.
We can embrace this news as positive and push for more overt queerness in Wonder Woman, which is what I plan on doing. We can praise Greg Rucka for taking positive steps in this direction and for his handling of Wonder Woman. What we can’t do is go around acting like DC Comics has been progressive on this front for decades and we just didn’t realize it. And we can’t praise Wonder Woman being queer in the comics and not acknowledge how she’s presenting as straight in other media. That’s not how this works.
At the San Diego Comic Con, the United States Post Office announced that, in honor of her 75th anniversary, it was issuing a series of Wonder Woman stamps. This makes me very happy, since I just ran out of Batman stamps.
Also at SDCC, Warner Bros. released the first trailer for the Wonder Woman movie, due out in February. There were other trailers from Warners and other studios, but Wonder Woman is what everybody was talking about, at least on my feed.
While Supergirl was the first super heroine I loved, I also always adored Wonder Woman. When I first read her stories, they were as silly as many other comics with guest stars who included mermen and bird men. I didn’t know about her kinky origin, but I did notice that every story involved someone getting tied up. That didn’t bother child-me because I was too enthralled with her daring escapes and triumphs.
There is a lot that is wonderful about this trailer. Gal Godot looks fantastic, in costume and in civilian clothes. Her training in the Israeli army is obvious in the way she moves, and I completely believe she has the skills to be a super-powered warrior princess. I like the armor. It looks like it moves in battle, which is what armor is supposed to do.
Robin Wright is appropriately regal as Hippolyte. Chris Pine manages to convey Steve Trevor without undue camp.
On the minus side, there is also a lot of slow-motion fighting, which makes it look, to me, like Zack Snyder might have had too much influence. I remember thinking the Batman vs. Superman trailer didn’t look horrible, and then it broke my heart. Please don’t let that happen this time.
Still, I have hope. There is a scene where Steve Trevor is trying to stop Wonder Woman from going to a fight, and she says, “What I do is not up to you.”
That’s my Wonder Woman…
…Which brings me to the Democratic National Convention.
There were women who spoke at last week’s Republican convention, and I’m not questioning their sincerity nor their passion for public service. To me, however, their words defending their party were belied by the platform it approved. And the women who got the featured time slots in network broadcast were, for the most part, relatives of the candidate.
As I write this, the Democrats are just starting. Michelle Obama, wife of the president, had a prime time slot. But so did Sarah Silverman and Elizabeth Warren and non-famous women who spoke about their own, unique realities. The schedule for the rest of the week includes Bill and Chelsea, who are Clinton family members, but also many other women with professions and missions that show their personal commitment to this country, and to their candidate.
And then, later in the week as I write this but last Tuesday as this gets posted, Hillary will be nominated. She doesn’t have her husband’s charm as a speaker but she is intelligent and determined and she does her homework. I expect to be quite moved as she is/was the first woman to be nominated for president by one of our major political parties.
Summertime summertime sum-sum-summertime. Long days. Sultry nights.
I mean, skin-tight costumes are hot. Literally. And while certain superpowers like invulnerability might make it easier to wear synthetic fabrics or leather, that still doesn’t explain how a Batman can get through a humid Gotham summer.
There are a lot of iconic relationships in comics. Because some characters have been in existence for more than 75 years, these relationships have gone through a lot of ups and downs. If you’re a continuity geek (and sometimes I am, but not about this), you can make yourself crazy with the seeming contradictions over the years. Is Lois Lane a jealous snoop, or an independent professional dedicated to her craft? Is Carol Ferris a stuck-up heiress or a lonely little rich girl? Is Iris West a busybody nagging busybody or simply a person who doesn’t like to be lied to? Is Steve Trevor a macho man or a wimp?
Today, with movies and television as well as comics, we have a lot of different versions of the same relationships from which to choose. I enjoy Lois and Clark in the Superman comics, who are comfortable being married and being parents. I enjoy Barry Allen and Iris West on the television Flash, mostly because Candice Patton is so refreshingly straightforward. I thought the Wonder Woman/Steve Trevor dynamic in the new Wonder Woman was totally believable, way more than it has been in the comics for decades.
