Previous posts on WW in this series: One Two Three Four Five, Six, Seven.
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So yesterday I started talking about the first issue of Wonder Woman, then got distracted by Darwyn Cooke and Ms. and so forth. But we’ll try again.
So one surprising thing about WW #1 is that, in Moulton’s telling, WW’s mission actually makes sense.
As I’ve mentioned before in this series one of the perennial problems with Wonder Woman is that her mission to man’s world is always really stupid. Has she come here to lead us to peace? To be an international UN do-gooder? To hit lots of bad guys and flirt with Superman? Any way you look at it, none of it quite rings true.
But in Moulton’s telling, her mission is pretty straightforward, as Aphrodite explains.
Wonder Woman is going to man’s world to help America win World War 2. That neatly resolves the peace/battle contradiction; the forces for war are the Axis; they must be defeated to restore peace, so an Amazon will journey to the homefront to restore love and amity by slugging evildoers. Niebuhr would be pleased.
This, of course, also resolves the difficulty of WW’s costume. If she comes from the back-end of the mythologicalverse, why is she wearing the stars and stripes? Well, logically enough, because she represents America not as the embodiment of national ideals, but as the embodiment of international and even universal ones. World War II was probably the one time in history where this could actually make sense; there was really a case to be made that America (whatever its own sins) was, at that time, the last best hope for civilization and peace.
Since that moment, of course, it’s been a lot harder to argue that the interests of America and the world align — but WW has been stuck with that costume. Not sure how Moulton handled it after the war ended (I’ll have to look into that) but other creators have had difficulties. George Perez did some sort of utterly ridiculous retcon, if I remember precisely, where Steve Trevor’s mother had come to paradise….you know what, forget it. The point is you end up on the one hand, with moments like this from Phil Jimenez, which egregiously beg the question:
Please Keep Your Eyes Off the Eagles
Or with efforts like this, from the Playboy shoot
Please Keep Your Eyes On the Stars
Playboy actually used these Wonder Woman photos to illustrate an essay on “American Sensuality” or some such. Not sure how sensual that image above is supposed to be exactly; it really looks more jokey or parodic than sexy; Fallon’s intense “I’m fighting for truth, justice, and the American Way” is pretty thoroughly contradicted by the (literally) painted-on costume, which is even more silly-looking in real-life than on the page. In fact, it seems likely that that’s the point; Playboy isn’t using Wonder Woman to make fun of feminism; rather they’re using trite misogyny to poke fun at America in a bland, we-lived-through-the-60s kind of way. For Moulton, a woman was the perfect representative of the U.S., since he saw the U.S. as engaged in a fight for peace. For Playboy, a sexy woman wearing the flag is just the level of edgy irony they’re looking for; they can claim a sort of jokey yes we do, no we don’t pride in America. It’s all more or less predicated on the idea that a woman being strong or representing America is in itself funny-quaint-snicker-worthy.
[Update: Matthew argues out in comments that this isn’t part of the Playboy body paint shoot; it’s just Tiffany Fallon wearing a Wonder Woman costume. I think that’s right; it was used to illustrate this article about Fallon and Playboy. I’m not sure if it was in the original mag or not, though obviously it’s somewhat related. More evidence for the ongoing “Noah doesn’t know what he’s talking about” thesis, though.]
Playboy isn’t alone though. Jimenez also tries to distance WW and America, as do most recent takes on the character. One of the (many) problems with Greg Rucka’s Hiketeia is that its all about WW’s Greek heritage and mythological connections, and she’s talking to the furies and agonizing about ancient ritual — and she’s wearing star-spangled underoos. It’s hard to maintain the profundity…unless, like Moulton, you are willing to link the U.S. to the mythological, and happen to live at a historical moment when doing so was at least somewhat defensible.
It’s interesting that Captain America has kept his close ties with Americanism, while WW has spent much of her career trying to avoid the implications of her costume. Probably it’s partly because Cap has a much less complicated narrative (he fights Nazis because he loves America, as opposed to because he loves peace.) I wonder if it’s also because, or related to, some difficulty in imagining, or figuring out what to do with, female patriotism. It’s also interesting that the (relatively) politically engaged Denny O’Neill is the one who took WW out of the stars and stripes. I mean, there are a lot of reasons to ditch that costume, but…did he dislike the patriotic connotations?
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Anyway, more next week, hopefully; magic lassos and why Moulton’s characterization of Diana is still the best….
Update: Last Wonder Woman post here.
As for your comments on Captain America, I think part of what makes Cap work is that Marvel doesn’t fight his anachronistic nature. Instead, that was built into his character when he was re-introduced in the Silver Age. Cap is the right man trapped in the wrong era, which writers have thoroughly dredged for as much pathos as possible.
DC either ignores the anachronism inherent in WW, or in the case of Perez (and more recently Simone), uses retcons to explain away the patriotic symbolism. Either approach comes across as both dumb and insulting to people for whom patriotic imagery truly matters.
That’s a great point, Richard.
It’s especially odd since there’s a ready fix; WW’s supposed to be immortal. You could have her be out of time fairly easily. In fact, this is what they did in the WW TV series; they initially had it set in WW2, then moved it up to contemporary times, with the immortal WW looking as young as ever. There were a couple of cute bits where she complained about how much housing costs had risen….
I’m not a Playboy connoisseur or anything (that’s what everybody says right? Insert your own “reading it for the articles” joke here), but I don’t think that picture is from the Tiffany Fallon bodypaint shoot. I’m pretty sure that’s something else, which might not even be Playboy-related at all. Not that it matters, of course.
Also, and this probably doesn’t matter either, hasn’t a recent retcon been made saying that the Wonder Woman in WWII was actually Hippolyta, and now Diana has taken up her mantle? I have no idea how that fits into the theorizing, but it’s at least noteworthy, right?
It’s related I think; it’s a picture from an article about Fallon and the playboy shoot; I just assumed it was form the issue, but quite possibly not. Thanks for making me look like an idiot, though. Again.
I can’t really follow the ins and outs of the retconning. Anyone know what the deal is with Hippolyta these days?
Sadly, I know this from memory. Why can’t I remember cool song lyrics instead?
In the 90’s, John Byrne transformed Diana from Wonder Woman to the Greek goddess of truth. Hippolyta stepped in to fill the role of Wonder Woman. Bryne sent Hippolyta back in time to WWII, where she became a member of the JSA. This was meant to restore the Golden Age Wonder Woman to continuity and explain the patriotic costume in a paradoxical time travel sort of way.
Eventually Hippolyta returned to the present and Diana became Wonder Woman again. Both acted as Wonder Woman until Hippolyta was killed defending the Earth from alien invasion in the Superman “Our Worlds at War” crossover. I don’t know if Hippolyta has been revived since that time.
Bryne’s also earnestly reintroduced other elements of Wonder Woman’s past, including the Invisible Jet, Egg Fu, and Donna Troy. The run was a great example of how nostalgia for a character’s past can lead to some truly bad stories.
Oh yeah…I vaguely remembered that Byrne had mucked about with the character for a while.
“Goddess of Truth” huh? Barf.
Have you seen the Wonder Woman “comics” on this page?
http://www.geocities.com/pippl/index.html
In these apocryphal adventures, she’s immortal (fights Nazis, works for JFK, talks about modern land mines) and her “Americanism” is some kind of semi-satirized radical dissidence (she wants to come to America to fight the evil there).
And the explanation for the costume is pretty hilarious, I thought.
Hey Anonymous. Thanks for the link. Not sure I’m as big a fan as you, though. It looks to mostly be making fun of the TV series in fairly obvious ways. I mean, it’s fine, but it didn’t make me laugh out loud the way the Marston comics do.
Perhaps the only honest way to handle Wonder Woman in the present day — when the US Government is unambiguously the bad guy a hell of a lot of the time, like with torture and drone murders — is to have her have an entirely different costume and be working with a different organization.
It’s not at all clear what organization would fit in these benighted times, however. The UN actually seemed like a pretty plausible choice in the 1980s, still, even with its flaws. Not so much any more; too ineffective.
You could also take it the really radically political direction and have her working undercover in “Man’s World” for something like the underground abortion access networks, infiltrating and destroying organizations like Operation Rescue. But even the most feminist of WW authors haven’t been able to go close to there, and I’m quite certain DC won’t let them actually write that plot, at least not in the mainstream continuity. I’ve heard good things about Absolute DC: The New Frontier in this regard, but I haven’t read it, and it’s been firmly planted in the Elseworlds category by DC. There’s also a number of short-story one-shots which head in that direction, but again, not permitted for the ongoing continuity.
Frankly, at this point she might just go back to Paradise Island and stay there.