Friday, September 26, 2008

In your leather skirt, laying down some hurt

More on that awesome Wonder Woman costume



Holy Crap! When Comic by Comic talked about that awesome, fan-made Wonder Woman poster from earlier in the month, one of their commenters pointed out a couple of other shots of the same costume. I hope the film-makers are paying attention, because this is now the standard they're going to have to beat.

Wonder Woman movie update

Speaking of Wonder Woman film-makers, MTV ran an interview not too long ago with producer Willaim Goldberg. While the headline (and just about everyone who linked to the story) focused on Goldberg's casual mention of the Wachowski Bros. as former candidates for the writing and directing roles, the actually interesting part of the piece is where Goldberg talks about how he'd like to see the movie made.

Dismissing the idea of trying to hire another writer/director (like Joss Whedon), Goldberg says, "When we have a script to present to directors, we’ll sit down with them and see who has a take that blows us away." He then goes on to talk about what kind of script he'd like to see:
I would like it to be more current. I hope that we don’t finally wind up doing the same story again: Steve Trevor flying, and his plane crashes onto the island. He’s supposed to be executed, and she saves his life. Perhaps we’ll do that in a very abbreviated fashion up front, and then come up with a story that no one has seen yet.
I don't know. Sure, Wonder Woman's origin is familiar, but it's not like it's been filmed as often as, say, Superman's. Or even Batman's. And it would be good to clearly define what she's trying to achieve in the world. Of course, you can define her without the origin and it would be pretty cool to see them pull that off.

Goldberg also talks about how much he expects to play up Wonder Woman's sexiness.
...a friend of mine sent me the initial copy of Ms. Magazine. On the cover was Wonder Woman, which got me to thinking about what an iconic figure she was for women. So I don’t see any reason to (sex her up). That separates her from Catwoman.
Anything that separates her from Catwoman is a great idea.

Goldberg also says that he'd like to cast an unknown in the role. "People are not, in my opinion, going to come for the actress, " he said. "They’re going to come for Wonder Woman."

Unknown Wonder Woman



Photo taken at DragonCon by this guy.

No DCU Elementary?

Now that my son and I are twelve kinds of excited about the possibility of a comic called DCU Elementary, Rich Johnston (who originally leaked the art) says that it's not on the schedule and that "there's no sign of it being so." Crap.

As long as I'm cranky...

I've got a lot of RSS feeds to read every day whenever I find the time. One of the hassles of keeping up with news about sea-related adventure stories is all the posts you have to filter out about Stargate Atlantis and The Little Mermaid. I'm sick of hearing about Pirate Bay's troubles and the fire at Dubai's Atlantis casino. And for a while there after the Republican Convention, I was sick of skimming past post after post proclaiming Sarah Palin as Wonder Woman.

Now, this isn't a political blog and I should also mention that I was even more frustrated by all the Hillary-as-Wonder-Woman posts from earlier in the year. At least Palin bears a passing resemblence to Lynda Carter as Diana Prince (if by "passing resemblence" you mean that they both have dark hair and wear glasses).

I wasn't going to mention this except that Lynda Carter herself finally came out and said something about the Palin comparisons. I'm glad she did that for a couple of reasons. The more petty of the two is that my Google Reader has pretty much shut up about the topic now that Wonder Woman herself has ended the conversation. But the better reason is that it gave Lisa Fortuner a reason to make an observation that was really helpful to me.
I admit I’m annoyed to hear her compared to Diana, and I understand that’s the limitation of having just one such notable female hero in the culture. Every notable woman gets referred to as a “Wonder Woman” when being praised. It’s not like everyone who gets told they’re Batman or a Superman matches the personality of Clark or Bruce, so I know this is just a figure of speech. My annoyance is just a side effect of being a rabid comic book fan.
I've mentioned before that I find it frustrating whenever any successful woman is immediately compared to Wonder Woman. It's sort of liberating to know that's mostly my geek getting poked. I'm not at all irritated when a guy is referred to as "Superman," but that's because I don't like Superman all that much. I don't think I've ever actually heard someone called a "Batman."

Anyway, it helps me to remember that people who call Sarah Palin "Wonder Woman" don't actually mean that she's anything remotely like the superhero character.

Unknown Mary Marvel



Okay, I feel less cranky now. Thanks, Flickr.

(No, I don't know what Mary's doing here in the Wonder Woman post either. They're both butt-kicking heroines with powers given to them by the gods though. Does that help?)

Another Wonder Woman outfit



But this one you can actually wear on the street. Very cool.

I want Candy



Paul Arrand Rodgers features Wonder Woman sidekick Etta Candy in his "Awful DC Comics Characters" feature. In spite of the feature's name, he rightly seems to appreciate the sassy, fat girl. I've only read a few of Etta's adventures, but she's awesome and I'll be talking more about her later.

What's Wrong with Wonder Woman

So a while back I was defending Wonder Woman and talking about how I wish that her critics would be more reasonable in their discussion about her. Along comes Mike Gold who cites Wonder Woman's numerous "revisions, reboots, reinterpretations, and make-overs" as evidence that she's been broken. I think that's totally fair.

When I first started talking about Wonder Woman here, I had to start with a three-part post outlining what I thought her essential qualities were. I never would've had to do that with Batman and Superman. Gold says the problem is that "
she became an icon and too many of her creators treat her as such. Gingerly."

He goes on to say that somewhere along the way, Wonder Woman became more goddess than superhero and that interfered with readers' (and writers') ability to relate to her. "Whereas Greek mythology is central to her origin," Gold writes, "it is no more significant than, say, Krypton is to the Man of Steel or the Vietnam War is to Iron Man. It’s the backstory, not the real story."

He's dead on and that's one of the reasons that Gail Simone is getting the character right. It's obvious that Simone has a ton of respect for Wonder Woman, but she's also well in touch with the character's pulp adventure roots.

4 comments:

Lisa said...

I wish I had more time, because your posts on Wonder Woman make me want to read every single one of her stories.

I grew up watching the TV show, and I'm so amazed at how much more material there is on the character.

I'm still sad that Whedon left the movie project. If Simone is so in touch with the character, maybe she should write the script.

That fan poster is frakking amazing.

Michael May said...

"If Simone is so in touch with the character, maybe she should write the script."

That would certainly take away a huge part of my doubt that an awesome Wonder Woman movie is possile.

greyloch said...

I should have commented ages ago on this post just to clarify who the costumers were. The unknown Wonder Woman in costume is Margie and does a lot of costumes at cons across the country - her other notable costume is Soranik Natu from "Green Lantern" comics.

The unknown Mary Marvel is "Riki Hime" another costumer who does some great costumes as well. (Hellgrrl, Dr. Mrs. The Monarch, Wasp, Ice, etc.)

Michael May said...

Very cool, greyloch. Thanks for that information!

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