Daily Archives: June 30, 2010

Once again DC shows it doesn’t know what to do with one of its iconic characters. In this case, Wonder Woman. Newsflash: The problem with Wonder Woman isn’t her costume. But this and some origin retconning is how they think she’ll be fixed.

DC describes the new outfit as “a Wonder Woman look designed for the 21st century” that will allow Diana “to be taken seriously as a warrior, in partial answer to the many female fans over the years who’ve asked, ‘how does she fight in that thing without all her parts falling out?’ …The bracelets are still there, but made more colorful, tied on the inside and over the hand, with a script W on each of them that form WW when she holds them side by side… and if you get hit by one of them, it leaves a W mark. This is a Wonder Woman who signs her work.”

The problem with Wonder Woman isn’t her look. It’s her personality. She has never been a warm, appealing character. She starts off with this man hater history which is a turn off, especially in a field where the majority of comics readers are men.

Secondly, while she does change her attitude somewhat when she comes ashore, the whole men are evil mentality continues. It’s misandry, plain and simple and that’s unappealing.

Third, she lacks personality. A character needs to be appealing in some way for people to care about them. Every writer of that character failed to give us a reason to give a damn about her. Being good looking isn’t enough, especially in a world were 99% of the women are babes.

Her backstory isn’t very well thought out. The guy who created her, William Moulton Marston, was a bit of a perv who was into bondage, which is why she got tied up a lot back in the ’40s.

Until she gets handled by someone who understands the problems with this character and knows how to really fix them, this reboot is going to be yet another in a long line of failures. I don’t see anything in the press about what they want to do to change that opinion.

UPDATE: Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood says “DC Ruined Wonder Woman”. I agree with GeorgeC that it’ll last two years at most before they revert to the old look. I give it a year, actually.