Links: Elric movie, Tiempos Finales 2, and Lois Lane: Girl Reporter

This still won't catch me up on the backlog, but I'll keep picking away at it.

Pirates

• In the comments for my At World's End review, someone mentioned that SPOILER! "because Elizabeth faithfully waited for Will, the curse was eventually broken after 10 years." To which I replied that I'd heard the same thing somewhere. Here's where. I really hope there's an extended version DVD in the works.

Horror

• Sam Hiti has announced that as soon as he finishes his current graphic novel Death Day (which from what I've seen is going to be unbelievably awesome by the way), next on his plate will be Tiempos Finales Volume 2. His plan for the future is to work on two projects a year, one of which will be a Tiempos Finales volume.

Fantasy

• There's an Elric movie in the works from the guys who are doing The Golden Compass. I loved Elric stories as a kid (except for the ones where he was teaming up with those other Eternal Champion guys -- that was one crossover I could've done without).
• Looks like that Harry Potter theme park is finally coming to fruition.

Science Fiction

• LucasFilm's released a trailer for the CGI Clone Wars series.
• Here's a great list of Disney films with a steampunk feel. Time to update my Netflix queue.

Superheroes

• There's a Teen Titans movie in the works. No news on what characters will be in it (though Nightwing is rumored), but Mark Verheiden (Smallville, Battlestar Galactica) is writing and the tone is supposed to be similar to Batman Begins and Superman Returns.
• I haven't been reading Supergirl, but I've mentioned the general fan dissatisfaction around it a couple of times. Looks like DC is serious about remedying that and revamping the character into a believable teenaged heroine. Looks like I will be reading Supergirl before too long.
• Speaking of superheroines, and in light of my recent examination of Wonder Woman, Lillian S. Robinson's Wonder Women is definitely going on my Wish List.
• I totally agree with Kalinara: there ought to be a Lois Lane comic focusing on her investigative reporting. It could be a great adventure/mystery comic.

Stuff Nobody Cares About But Everybody Cares About Including Me

• Movie theater owners are figuring out how you can rat out obnoxious movie watchers to managers without leaving the movie. It's about time. (Thanks to Brad Meltzer for the link.)

Movie sequels: mindless repetition or serialized storytelling?

I don't even know where today went. Way too busy to do a real post, so here are a couple of interesting links and a thought or two about them.

Every summer the movie critics dust off their keyboards, crack their knuckles, and get to typing about how sad it is that the summer schedule is full of sequels. It's their equivalent to Minnesotans' complaining about snow in March, even though there's always been snow in March in Minnesota since time began. This year, the first complainer I've heard about is Patrick Goldstein from the Los Angeles Times.

"Is there anyone besides me" he asks, "who is depressed by the news that Steven Spielberg, a great filmmaker with the clout to get any project he wants off the ground, is going off to make … Indiana Jones 4?" Actually, Patrick? Probably not. At least not anyone I want to hang out with.

He goes on to do the usual whining about how sequels are all about money and being "cozy and reassuring" versus good storytelling. He's way too general about the whole thing. Yeah, there are crappy sequels, but there are good, thoughtful ones too. And not just The Godfather Part II.

I'm more in line with David Bordwell and his friends who see movie sequels as just another manifestation of serialized storytelling. As one of the panelists, Jason Mittell, says, "Continuity of a narrative world is a core part of nearly every storytelling form, but the language of 'sequel' is applied predominantly to film. 'Series' seems a more respectable term, as it suggests an organic continuity rather than a reactive stance of 'Hey, let’s do that again!'" And I think that's the key. Does the sequel continue the story (even when, like in the Shrek movies, the first installment didn't exactly cry out for continuation) or just tell the same story over again (like in the Home Alone movies, for example)?

Tarzan Triumphs

I got nervous about Tarzan Triumphs when I didn't see Maureen O'Sullivan's name in the opening credits. Apparently she'd quit the series to pursue more serious roles. After the Tarzan folks had casually thrown out Tumbo in the previous movie, I figured that continuity wasn't really their bag and that we'd probably just see Tarzan and Boy hanging out in the jungle as if it had always been just them. Not so though.

We quickly learn that Jane is off in London visiting her sick mother (whom she's never mentioned before, but oh well) and Tarzan and Boy spend some nice time missing her. We get to see Johnny Weissmuller do some more actual acting as he reads a letter from Jane and grieves her absence. Seriously, Weissmuller was a damn fine actor and he gets to show it a few times in this movie.

The plot is the old Weissmuller-Tarzan formula, but turned up to about thirteen on the Awesome Scale. Yeah, it's about "civilized" bad guys coming to the jungle to take something back with them, but in this case it's Nazis coming to carry off the wealth of a hidden jungle city. And there's a drop-dead gorgeous jungle princess to boot who escapes the Nazis and finds Tarzan in order to ask for his help.

There's some definite allegory going on as Tarzan at first refuses to get involved. As long as the Nazis don't bother him, he's not going to bother them. At one point, the Nazis even refer to him as an Isolationist. It's not until the Nazis directly provoke Tarzan by kidnapping Boy (for a good reason that I won't go into) that he's stirred to action. He draws his knife and snarls a line that had to have had 1943 audiences cheering in their theaters: "Now Tarzan make war!" It's a hell of a moment and Weissmuller nails it.

The war is as cool as any Rambo film. Tarzan uses his jungle skill to sneak around guerilla-style and ambush individual Nazis before helping the citizens of the lost city mount a coordinated offense. Even Cheetah picks up a machine gun and gets into the action (though they've toned her antics way down from the last couple of movies; no more hyper-extended sequences of her just cutting up for no reason).

I only have a couple of complaints. One is a cheap shot at Hitler that's so ludicrous it's unbelievable. Not that Hitler doesn't deserve ridicule, but really it's a terrible joke. Okay, I'll tell it to you, if you really want to hear it. If you think you might track down the movie and don't want to know, skip to the next paragraph. SPOILER WARNING: At the end of the movie, Cheetah's playing around with the Nazis' radio and dials in Berlin. When the Nazis on the other end hear Cheetah's screeching, they realize that they're not talking to their men, but think instead that they're talking directly to Hitler himself. It sounds funny when I read it, but after a whole movie that's been played relatively straight, it's just dumb.

My other complaint is about how the jungle princess, Zandra, tries to convince Tarzan to help her. Boy (who wants to help) tells her that Jane's always been able to get Tarzan to change his mind, so he instructs Zandra to dress in Jane's clothing, go on romantic swims with Tarzan, and cook delicious meals for him. I might be reading into the "romantic" part, but I don't think so. Tarzan lies down next to Zandra at one point and holds her hand. It's a little creepy that he and Boy have not so much forgotten about Jane as they have stopped caring about her in order to focus on the new girl. I kept telling myself that jungle people just have a different way of expressing platonic relationships than uptight Western folk do.

All that aside though, a great adventure film. I understand that there are more Nazis in the next one and I can't wait. I'm especially curious to see how the writers explain that Jane's not coming back at all and how Tarzan and Boy react to it.

Links: Black Canary/Zatanna hardcover, Justice League of Amazons, and Coked-Out Carrie

Man, it's been a long time since I've done one of these. Not gonna get caught up today, but I'll make a dent in it.

Mystery

• About halfway down this report on the Saló International del Cómic de Barcelona, The Beat posts the coolest convention costume I've ever seen: Blacksad. Or if you don't feel like going to look for it, click here.

Science Fiction

• I totally skipped over blogging about the Star Wars 30th Anniversary. I'm not even sure why. But my favorite celebration of it was Kevin Church's "Ten Reasons I Still Really Like Star Wars Despite The Fact I Keep Saying I've Walked Away And That It's Over, Really, So Don't Call Anymore, George." My favorite reason is also his: Coked-Out Carrie.
• I got a nice email from Richard Starkings concerning my review of his comic Elephantmen. It was short, but it was the highest praise I ever hope for from a review: "You got it."

Superheroes

• Illustration on Paul Dini's Black Canary/Zatanna hardcover graphic novel should begin later this year, hopefully out by next summer. Dini's not saying who's illustrating but promises, "It will be worth the wait."
• Ragnell reminded me of what could've been the coolest superteam of all time. And still could again, I suppose, if someone wanted to make another comic about them.

Writing is Hard

• Pub Rants offers some advice on marketing.
• Speaking of marketing, I usually skip over writer interviews because most of them end up sounding like ads for the writer's latest book. Not so with this one with Nancy Kress. Of course, it might have something to do with her latest book, Beginnings, Middles, & Ends, being a book about writing, but still, her interview is full of useful thoughts on craft.

Stuff Nobody Cares About But Me

• Doctor Doom loves the Gilmore Girls: "Doom does not understand much of your attraction with the medium of television, although Doom does confess a certain admiration of Gilmore Girls. Doom has no time or need for romance, but were he so inclined, Lorelai Gilmore, with her sharp tongue and quick wit, is indeed a paramour worthy of Doom."

Captain America: representing what exactly?

Here's an interesting (if kinda silly) article about Captain America and his role as the representative of an entire country. Like Wonder Woman, I've never been able to get my mind around Captain America and -- again, like her -- it's related to this idea of "mission." Now that I've got Wonder Woman figured out for myself, it seems like maybe I should try to get Captain America under control too, but that feels like a daunting task and I don't know that I'm that interested.

I do know this though: I completely disagree with the Brian Michael Bendis quote from the article that says, "If the country is angry, he gets angry. If the country is sad, he gets sad… He doesn’t represent a flag, but a collective emotion." That's a shaky grasp on the character, isn't it? What do you do with him when the mood of the country is generally apathetic or self-involved? Or completely schizophrenic as it was during the last Presidential election? There's no way Captain America can represent the mood of the freakin' country. He's absolutely got to represent the flag. He's got to emulate what's best about the country: it's ideals. Otherwise, maybe he should be sitting around surfing MySpace and YouTube.

I don't know if it's possible to get a good handle on Captain America though. As shaky as his representing the country's collective emotion is already, it's made even less steady by the fact that he's really representing one particular writer's interpretation of the country's collective emotion. If the writer's especially perceptive, that might be possible, but it's still going to get filtered through the writer's eyes. And the same is true if Cap represents American ideals, which vary from citizen to citizen. And writer to writer.

Does Cap represent the American Dream (which, let's face it, is pretty selfish)? Does he represent the spirit of Independence? Does he represent the power of the People to truly make a difference in the adminstration of their government? It's the same problem Wonder Woman has when writers focus too much on her Mission. The writers' personal interpretations change from run to run and makes it very difficult for readers to get their arms around the character.

I think that's one reason why people (myself included) are enjoying Ed Brubaker's work on Captain America right now. Brubaker focuses on the spy drama and the man-out-of-time angle and leaves the "representing America" stuff alone. Kevin has it right: Cap is so much more cool when he's fighting America's enemies than he is when he's trying to figure out her ideals.

Tarzan's Revenge

I've been trying to watch these Tarzan movies in more or less chronological order, but somehow I missed Tarzan's Revenge from 1938. Now I wish that I'd kept right on missing it.

It's a typical Tarzan plot: a bunch of civilized folks come to the jungle to trap animals and get in trouble, so Tarzan has to save them. In this case, the civilized folks are the Reed family: bumbling Dad, complaining Mom, and pretty Eleanor. They've also brought along Eleanor's cowardly husband Nevin who likes to shoot crocodiles from the deck of a riverboat, but gets creeped out if a chipmunk runs across his foot. Actually, Nevin's the best part of the movie. His weaseliness is at least funny.

The conflict comes in when a wealthy sheik decides to add Eleanor to his harem and plots to have her party captured and brought to his jungle palace. Fortunately (I guess), Tarzan encounters the party and falls for Eleanor, ensuring his protection against the evil sheik.

Putting aside for a second the problem with Tarzan's falling in love with anyone besides Jane (who's not in the movie), there are lots of other problems to look at. Glenn Morris isn't a handsome Tarzan, but he also must not have been much of an actor either. He has maybe three lines in the entire movie and they all consist of his pointing to himself and saying, "Tarzan." He was obviously hired due to his being an Olympic athlete and he never played Tarzan (or any other character, for that matter) again.

The movie's only a little over an hour long and most of it is filled with fluff like Tarzan's goofing around in the jungle with his unnamed chimpanzee pal. Tarzan comes across as a Peter Pan type figure who spends his days loafing, swimming, and getting into mischief. When he first encounters Eleanor, she's stuck in a mud pond and he briefly rescues her before playfully tossing her back in.

Of course the plot requires that Eleanor still fall in love with Tarzan even though he's a big jerk, so she does. There's absolutely no chemistry between the two of them though and it's completely unbelievable when she decides to stay with him at the end of the movie. Oops, I've spoiled it for you. You're welcome.

Fingers crossed

We're sending out the pitch for Kill All Monsters! to our first potential publisher today. Wish us luck.

Books and tolerance

Here's an interesting article (from a poker blog, of all places) about how banning books leads to intolerance.

If this lady doesn't want her kid to read (a book with homosexual themes), fine. That is her right as a parent. But to take that option away from all the other parents in the area is just stupid ... Books are ideas, and the more ideas that our young people are kept hidden away from, the more likely they are to be blindsided by these ideas when they get out in the Big Bad World.

It's not necessarily a groundbreaking observation, but it is one that can use repeating.

What makes it doubly interesting to me is the blogger's personal story about how reading Alpha Flight helped him deal with a friend's coming out as gay. As poorly as Marvel's handled Northstar at times (though there have been others when he was handled very well), including a gay character at all in their comics was a benefit. I'm not saying that they should pat themselves on the back or rest easy and think that their work is done, but I do like that even a pulpy adventure comic can have that profound an impact on someone's life.

You're a wonder, Wonder Woman: part three

Read Part One here.

Read Part Two here.

So, I was talking about Greg Rucka. I haven't enjoyed every Greg Rucka story I've ever read, but I love how he approaches them. He thinks hard about them, and if he doesn't think he has anything interesting to say about a character, he won't write the story. And usually, I'm interested in his take on the characters he writes about.

So, I got pretty excited when I heard that he was writing Wonder Woman and I think he did a fine job of capturing the confidence that I've gone on and on about. Where I started getting tired was with his interpretation of Wonder Woman's Mission.

Although I agree with West in yesterday's comments that giving her a Mission was probably a mistake in the first place, Rucka took it seriously and I think that's okay. It's part of the story now and dealing with it is probably better than ignoring it. But even though Rucka made the Mission the central part of his story (by making the Amazonian embassy Diana's base of operations and having her write a best-selling book that promoted Amazonian ideals), I think he was just as unclear about the Mission's details as anyone else.

Mad Thinker Scott takes a stab at defining the Mission and the thought he put into it is worth linking to even though I don't agree with him. He sees "the championing of women’s rights and equality" as the core theme of her character and I think that's the perception that a lot of people have. But Scott also summarizes the inherent problems with having that as the Mission. He says, "If fighting for women’s rights is going to be the central theme of Wonder Woman’s conflicts, she’s going to have to get into stickier situations than she has in the past. For instance, there are women’s issues that Wonder Woman could fight for in the US. She could lobby to increase the amount of child care available to working women, so women aren’t held back in their careers as much as some are now. However, that isn’t the kind of conflict that comic buyers are looking for when they pick up a magazine about a woman who can deflect bullets and throw cars."

He goes on to suggest other women's rights situations that might make for more exciting adventures, but when he takes this Mission to its logical conclusion, he sees the reason that it would never work for a serialized, ongoing story: "I’d love to see Themyscira take a more aggressive stance on international women’s rights and actually get into armed conflicts with other nations; however, I’m not sure how long that Paradise Island v. the World theme can last, and Wonder Woman’s role in the wider DC universe would be radically altered." He finishes his article by admitting that he doesn't know where the line should be drawn in regard to how aggressively Wonder Woman defends the rights of women.

My own observation is that Wonder Woman probably ought to leave alone real-world issues like the Thai sex trade and the way women are treated by Islamic extremists. That would be as pointless as having Superman capture Osama bin Laden. It might be a cathartic story to tell, but it would ultimately make the DC Universe unrelatable. In an attempt to make comics more relevant, the ironic result would be that they'd become less so.

But there's another Mission that Wonder Woman has that's not only relevant, but has the advantage (for an ongoing series) of being never ending. And it all has to do with this confidence thing. In her post that originally got me thinking about all of this, Ragnell says that "Wonder Woman is supposed to already be the woman other women in fiction learn to be." And that's the Mission, folks. She's the woman that all women want to be. She's the role model.

I'm gonna skip ahead in my chronological examination of Wonder Woman comics and mention Will Pfiefer's fill-in issue between Allan Heinberg and Jodi Picoult's runs. It's a simple, stand-alone tale that was unfortunately overlooked by many in anticipation of seeing what Picoult would do. But it's a beautiful story about the dramatic influence that Wonder Woman has on the lives of women she's never even met. They want to be stronger women thanks simply to the example Wonder Woman sets. She doesn't have to take down the Thai sex trade to fulfill her Mission in Man's World; she does it just by being who she is. If the Amazon's have a philosophy that needs sharing with humanity, it's not all that contradictory nonsense about peaceful warriors; it's that women can and should be strong, confident people. And Wonder Woman's here to show them how. And you don't have to make the comic about that all the time in order for it to be true. It's just background to whatever she's currently doing.

Back to how the comics went though.

In the end, it wasn't lack of clarity about the Mission that made me grow tired of Rucka's run. It was his slow, thoughtful plotting. There just weren't enough big moments in his early issues, which was sort of the opposite problem that I had with Jimenez's run. Somewhere in between is a balance. But more on that in a minute.

I got interested again in Wonder Woman in the build up to Infinite Crisis. DC started playing up the idealogical differences between Wonder Woman, Batman, and Superman, and Rucka was a huge part of making that happen. In a great issue of Adventures of Superman (written by Rucka), Wonder Woman made it clear that, unlike her male counterparts, she would be willing to kill if the need ever arose. I found that fascinating given the usual hardline, "no killing" policy most traditional superheroes take (antiheroes like the Punisher notwithstanding). I also found it profoundly believable considering that she's an Amazon warrior. Her opinions about execution and killing come from an entirely different place than ours and I loved that Rucka and DC were willing to explore that. And explore it they did just a little bit later when they had Wonder Woman kill Maxwell Lord in Wonder Woman #219.

Suddenly I was entranced again and I've been hooked on Wonder Woman's story ever since. Allan Heinberg got off to a great start during his run by not only exploring the consequences of Maxwell Lord's murder, but by balancing Jimenez's big action with Rucka's personal drama. Unfortunately -- though I'm thrilled to have him involved with Gray's Anatomy -- other duties took precedence and he wasn't able to finish what he started.

Jodi Picoult's run, with the return to the fish-out-of-water version of Wonder Woman, was a disappointment. I quit buying it after the first issue of it, but writing these articles made we want to check it out again, if only to keep up with where the character is going, so I've gone back and caught up. It's less annoying than that first issue, but I'm still anxiously awaiting Gail Simone.

I'm trying not to put too much pressure on Gail to be awesome, but as I've said before, I have high hopes for her. I haven't read her take on the character, but she's too good a writer not to have one and I have faith that at heart, her Wonder Woman will be a continuation of the character who grew to maturity in Messner-Loeb's run and we saw in Jimenez's and Rucka's. I also know that Gail has the ability to tell a great adventure story while grounding it in human drama, so I'm not worried on that end either. After all: "She’s punching a monkey off a waterfall on page three."

Gail seems much more concerned with telling exciting stories about "the best goddamned warrior planet Earth has ever known" than she is about the Mission or the dichotomy between Peace and War or any of the headier stuff and that sounds exactly right to me. Jimenez and Rucka needed to explore that part of her to get her to where she is today, but that work's been done. It's backstory now and as long as it remains backstory, there's no need to go over it again. Wonder Woman's ready to punch monkeys (or air pirates, kangas, man-fish, seal men, or Christopher Columbus).

I'm sorry I never got to talking about the Justice League cartoons. That's going to require more research, but I'm at a point now where I'd love to do it. In writing this article, I learned that Greg Rucka doesn't care so much for that version of Wonder Woman, so I'm curious to balance his opinion with Siskoids (who rightly thinks that Wonder Woman was generally done correctly in the JLA comic) and see what I think.

As for Black Canary and Rogue: that'll be a separate post altogether. I'm done analyzing Wonder Woman for a while. I just want to be able to enjoy her adventures now.

You're a wonder, Wonder Woman: part two

In the first part of this look at Wonder Woman, I decided that what I want to see in a Wonder Woman comic is a heroine who is absolutely confident. I talked about the way that she's been portrayed visually over the last 20 years and promised to look at how she's been written during that same time period. So let's do that.

I've already covered George Perez's take on her because his visual depiction of her perfectly matched the way he wrote her: a wide-eyed, innocent, fish-out-of-water who wasn't at all ready to stand next to heroes like Batman and Superman. What I haven't yet talked much about was Perez's reason for having Wonder Woman leave Paradise Island Themyscira.

In the '40s, when Wonder Woman was first introduced, she left the Amazon's to help fight Nazis. It was a admirable reason and nobody questioned it. I don't think anyone today would question it either. But in the mid-'80s when Perez rebooted the concept, there wasn't an easy enemy like that who needed a Wonder Woman butt-whoopin'. So, Perez gave her the Mission.

If Wonder Woman's mission to Man's/Patriarch's World has ever been clearly defined, I haven't read it. I welcome correction if I'm wrong about this, but as far as I've ever been able to tell, it's description is limited to a vague "ambassador of Amazonian ideals." But what those ideals are has never been explained to me. It's been a while since I read the early Perez issues (out of dissatisfaction with whomever was writing Wonder Woman's current adventures at the time), but I remember there being something about living peacefully and somehow trying to line that up with the Amazons' status as a warrior race. I just never got it. And I don't think that any of the writers ever got it either.

Wonder Woman's next writer was William Messner-Loebs and it was about ten issues into his run that I read my first Wonder Woman comic. And it was this cover that made me pick it up. Unfortunately, the majesty depicted on that cover was very different from the struggling-to-find-herself character I read about inside. That character was much more in keeping with the following issue's cover that shows Wonder Woman having to get a job at a fast food joint in order to make ends meet. It was a cute story, but as a new reader to the book, I couldn't make it fit in with what I wanted to see Wonder Woman doing. You'd never see Lynda Carter flipping burgers unless Diana Prince was undercover somewhere. I didn't stick with it for very long.

I'm assuming that Ragnell read more of Messner-Loebs' run than I did. Her description of it is that it's about "a rebellious daughter who ran off to see the world and tried to become part of it." That fits with the whole Having to Get a Job thing, but it also describes why it wasn't the Wonder Woman I wanted to read about. My Wonder Woman would never have to run away from home or try to become a part of something. She'd do whatever she damn well liked and expect the world to conform to her. After all, isn't that the entire idea behind her having a Mission? To try to teach Amazonian ideals to humanity? And what is that if not trying to get the world to conform to her standards? Maybe she'd given up on that by that point, I don't know. What I do know is that she was a floundering character who elicited pity rather than awe. I want to be in awe of Wonder Woman.

I came back to Messner-Loebs' run later on, tempted by the event of having Diana replaced as Wonder Woman by Artemis. Replacing traditional heroes with newer versions was an old gimmick of DC's by that point, but they were making a really big deal about it and remember, I was looking for reasons to read Wonder Woman. And interestingly, I liked it a lot.

Even though her "official" status as Wonder Woman was taken from her, Diana was woman enough to give Themyscira and her mom a big ole "f*** you" and keep on doing her thing in a different costume. That's the Wonder Woman I wanted to see. It looks like maybe Messner-Loebs had a plan all along and was chronicling Wonder Woman's transformation from Perez's innocent to the confident heroine I wanted to see. Too bad DC fired Messner-Loebs right about then in order to make room for John Byrne's return to the company.

I won't go into a John Byrne rant here, but I need to say that even though he's single-handedly responsible for making me a hardcore comics addict, I really wasn't fond of his art in the '90s and couldn't make myself buy any of his Wonder Woman run. As Ragnell describes it though, "Byrne wrote a stiff, formal princess." I don't feel like I missed much.

After a couple of fill-in issues by Christopher Priest that I don't know anything about (though I really like Priest's work, so maybe they were good?), Eric Luke was the next writer. I'm pretty sure that I read the end of his run, but I didn't remember that until I started researching this article. Ragnell describes his version of Wonder Woman as "lost." Wikipedia says that she "was often questioning her mission in Man's World, and most primarily her reason for existing." Maybe that's why I don't remember his issues.

The reason that I read the end of Luke's run (and the fill-in issues by Brian K. Vaughan and Ben Raab at the end of it) was that I was getting ready for Phil Jimenez. I'd met Jimenez at a local convention and been totally wowed by him as a person and by his Wonder Woman pitch (which he was enthusiastically sharing with anyone who was interested). I wish I remembered now what the pitch was because I'm sure it would shed some light on this subject, but all I retained was the feeling of being impressed with how much thought he'd given the character. And for a while, I was impressed with his run too.

Jimenez was on the right track. His Wonder Woman was a strong, confident woman and in hindsight I think a lot of my opinions about what Wonder Woman should be were formed by the way he portrayed her. He gave her a love interest in Trevor Barnes and had her do all the pursuing at first. Trevor initially turned her down, but came to his senses later and asked her out.

There was a lot of controversy about Trevor at the time. Liberals thought that Wonder Woman should be portrayed as a lesbian; conservatives thought that Trevor's being black was overly PC. Jimenez couldn't win that one. My personal feeling about it at the time was nervousness that Trevor was going to be portrayed as not being entirely masculine. If Wonder Woman took the agressive, "male" role, then there was a possibility that Trevor might end up taking a passive, "female" role. I shouldn't have worried though. Jimenez was too smart and too talented to let either character be "weak" or passive. He started crafting a relationship of equals between the two of them. Unfortunately, I never did learn what ultimately became of it.

My dropping Wonder Woman during Jimenez's run had nothing to do with how the character was being portrayed and it had nothing to do with Trevor Barnes. But though I think he had those elements exactly right, Jimenez -- either through his own fault or DC editorial's -- kept presenting plots that I just wasn't interested in. There was the return of some George Perez characters whom I didn't care about. There was a civil war on Paradise Island that resulted in Wonder Woman's losing her crown as princess of the Amazons. Then there was that whole Our World at War crossover in which her mom died. It seemed like we were always going from one big event to the next and I started getting tired. There were some quieter issues, like the one in which Lois Lane spends a day with Wonder Woman for an interview, but the run as a whole didn't feel grounded. I finally gave up on it, but I'd like to go back and finish his run now to see where he ended up taking it.

After Jimenez, Walt Simonson wrote a six-issue homage to the powerless, white costume, spy years. I totally missed that one, but I got interested again when Greg Rucka, who's approach to writing I love, took over.

This is getting long again, so I'm going to cut it short here. Next time I'll talk about Greg Rucka, Allan Heinberg, and Jodi Picoult. I'll also try to mention her portrayal in the Justice League cartoon, but I haven't seen many of those, so we'll see if I can find anything interesting to say about them. But I will put in my two cents about what Wonder Woman's mission ought to be.

I'll eventually get around to explaining what Black Canary and Rogue have to do with this, but that'll probably be a fourth article.

Read Part Three here.

June theatrical releases

Last month I tried to categorize these by genre and the universal response was that it would be more helpful to organize them by release date.

Like last month though, these aren't all the movies that are coming out this month; just the ones I find interesting. If I don't mention one that you think I should've or you think one of mine is unworthy of mention; that's what the comments section is for.

Today

Knocked Up: Katherine Heigl's beautiful and I love her on Grey's Anatomy, but really this just looks very, very funny.

Day Watch: (limited release) Night Watch was an amazing fantasy film and I've been patiently waiting for the sequel. Wait's over.

Rise: Blood Hunter: This looks positively horrible, but it's Lucy Liu. I endured Ecks vs. Sever for her; I can make it through this.

June 8th

Surf's Up: I didn't see the marching or the dancing penguins, so I may have a higher tolerance for penguins than most folks right now. This looks funny to me.

Ocean's Thirteen: I have man crushes on George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Matt Damon. Didn't care so much about Ocean's Twelve, but I didn't hate it either and I loved the first one.

La Vie en Rose: (limited release) I love Edith Piaf, but I'm not sure if I want to know about her life. The trailer looks interesting enough. Almost definitely a rental.

June 15th

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer: I really didn't care for the first one very much. I'm too much of a Doctor Doom fan to accept the high-pitched voice of the Nip/Tuck guy as a substitute for the James Earl Jones voice I've always heard in my head when reading the comics. But holy crap that trailer looks good. And I can't wait to see Galactus.

Fido: HA! You've gotta see the trailer on this one. A Boy and his Zombie. I thought they should probably leave the zombie-comedy niche well enough alone after Shaun of the Dead, but I was wrong. There's obviously far more that can be done with it.

DOA: Dead or Alive: And you thought only Rodriguez and Tarantino could do grindhouse. And it stars Jaime Pressly and deadly little Miho from Sin City? And the trailer actually looks frickin' awesome.

June 22nd

1408: John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson in a Stephen King adaptation that looks scary as hell.

Evan Almighty: I liked Bruce Almighty, but the real reason to see this is Steve Carrell. I'll see anything he's in. Funniest man on earth right now.

Black Sheep: (limited release) Weresheep? Are you kidding me? Man, I love horror movies right now!

June 29th

Ratatouille: The plot sounds like an extended Warner Brothers cartoon, but it's Brad Bird writing and directing and I trust that man completely.

Live Free or Die Hard: I'm John McClane's bitch. I feel dirty about how hot his daughter is though. I hear her name and immediately picture the little girl from the first movie answering the phone, "McClane residence; Lucy McClane speaking."

Death at a Funeral: The premise for this sounded hit-or-miss ("two brothers try to stop a blackmailer from exposing their deceased father's secret at his funeral"), but it's directed by Frank Oz, so I gave the trailer a look. It's hysterical! And it stars Alan Tudyk (Wash from Firefly, Steve the Pirate from Dodgeball).