Reinventing Females in the DCU

First, a disclaimer. This is a somewhat rambling, unedited essay I threw together over a week or so, with thoughts I've been having about Wonder Woman and her place in the DCU, in light of the new weekly series, Trinity, scheduled to start in June that will focus on her, Batman, and Superman. And when I think of Wonder Woman, I can't help but think of that other iconic female DC character, Supergirl.

Not quite retconning, revamping tired characters is nothing new. Akin to putting a fresh coat of paint on an old house, it's the sort of thing every new creative team engages in when they take over a book, whether the ideas are theirs or dictated by the editor(s). Sometimes, it involves characters that headline many books. The decree will be that Batman stories in Detective will focus on his detecting skills while his stories in Batman will focus on his going head to head or fist to face with larger than life villains.

Other times, things are more drastic. The reworking of the Golden Age characters of DC to the Silver Age, for example, along with creating new versions of old characters (Flash, Green Lantern), dusted off and polished up others (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman). And then there's the outright retconning, changing origins, revamping the universe after such events as Crisis on Infinite Earths, and so on.

There's been a lot of blogging recently about the old which is better, Marvel or DC? And much discussion of how DC treats females and minorities in its comics. And in general, I think DC has done a decent job, once the inequities have been pointed out to them, oft-times with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, but still, they do seem to try. While infrequently creating new minority or female characters that stand alone, when it comes to legacy characters, more and more, a female or a minority group has a fair chance of being included. So, after a white male replaced a white male Atom, we now have an Asian in that role. Along with the white Green Lanterns, we also have a black male. And of course, there are GLs of all alien colors and cultures. Other planets have been better represented for years in comics than the diversity here on Earth.

There is, however, still room for improvement. While DC has many strong, female characters, they seem to have a spotty record when it comes to creating a solid identity for them. And it's two of the iconic female characters who seem to have been revamped more than any other, female or male. They're Wonder Woman and Supergirl.

I understand that there was a time that female characters were treated less seriously than the males. Growing up, I wasn't all that bothered by Wonder Woman or Supergirl facing less than all-powerful enemies or worrying about their hairdos and outfits or whether the guy of their dreams will notice them. Those were things I was worrying or wondering about, too, so it seemed perfectly normal. And meanwhile, they were kicking butt. Even Lois Lane got to shine, especially in her own book, and she didn't have powers. But looking back, I can see that no one could ever decide what the essence of these characters are. It isn't so much as focusing on one aspect of a character, the way Batman's detective skills might be emphasized or Superman's inner goodness. At least with them, the rest of their traits were included, if not in a given story, than in others. And they headlined more than one book, so they could have a different focus in each. Batman had Batman and Detective. Superman had Superman and Action. And for a long while, they shared World's Finest. Supergirl got stories in other books, before finally getting her own. And Wonder Woman had just the one title.

Let's look at some of the revamping by character.

CAREER of Secret Identity

Superman: Newspaper reporter. For a while, tv reporting was part of the mix. With all the changes in his life over the years, the Clark Kent identity has been very stable, other than his adopted parents being brought back from the dead during one of the reboots (the time period I wasn't reading comics, so I'm fuzzy on the details).

Batman: Rich person, philanthropist, runs Wayne Enterprises. For a time, the business end was featured, with Lucius Fox (a character I really liked, and a minority, at that) introduced. He ran the everyday operations. While Batman has had his darker, brooding side emphasized some years and his lighter, detective side emphasized in others, Bruce has remained essentially a rich ladies man.

Wonder Woman: She's been in the military, lost her powers and became an adventurer (with I Ching and Patrick McGuire as her helpers; I think of this as her Modesty Blaise phase), and somewhere along the line got her powers back and the focus at times has been on Diana the Amazon Princess and ambassador from Paradise Island to "Man's World." I missed some versions of her during my boycott of comics in the '80s. And now, Diana Prince works for the Department of Metahuman Affairs. Her love life has been a mess, not that Batman's has been much better, but at least, his affairs have the feel of reality while hers barely rise over schoolgirl crushes in tone and treatment.

Supergirl: High school student, college student (a nice, natural progression I liked), reporter (upon graduation, also nice because she was actually growing up), then back to college as an advisor because it was decided she worked better in an academic setting. Then she got killed off. And we've had varied versions of a Supergirl til Kara was brought back a few years ago and she has no secret identity to speak of and every writer on the book has been emphasizing a different aspect of her to the point she's undergone personality transplants. She's younger than she's been since the original graduated high school. And while I don't expect her to be the sweet, innocent character she was way back when, I would like some consistency. Today, Kara has been a different character depending on who's writing her.

Note that there has been far more changed about the 2 best known female characters than the 2 best known males.

And then I got to thinking about some major plot developments for the two main males during my comics boycott/hiatus. Batman had his back broken and was replaced for a while. And Superman died, but he came back and after some nonsense, he was still Superman. The major change in his life was marrying Lois and it was about time. That was such a natural progression for his character that I would have been disappointed if they hadn't gotten married.

But the thing that stands out for me, the impression I get, is that when things are written to shake up Superman and Batman, it's out of a writing perspective, the thrill and challenge of doing something interesting with them, the chance to have circumstances screw up their lives and with them in character, act upon whatever, cope, even die as the hero they are if need be.

I don't get that sense from the changes in Wonder Woman's various iterations and especially not with Supergirl. With them, I sense a bit of desperation beneath the chance to do something new. And the something new doesn't seem a natural outgrowth of the characters. Even when Diana renounced her powers and became human, I still got the sense back then that it was a plot device and Diana was coping as best she could. The only male character I read regularly who'd had circumstances thrust on him for editorial reasons that changed his very nature was Oliver Queen. But since the new Green Arrow was so much more interesting and sexier than the old version, I quickly forgave the powers that be and would never want to go back to the old, boring Ollie.

I even forgive the silliness of the '60s. The male characters weren't immune to it, but it was the females and their silly pursuits of the male of the species (or sometimes, humanoid aliens), in stories full of stereotypes, that suffered more indignity and faced a greater risk of becoming irrelevant.

Killing Supergirl and keeping Power Girl after Crisis on Infinite Earths made some sort of sense, I guess, because PG had her own look and a strong personality, a good female role model for the '80s and '90s. Bringing in a new version of the old Supergirl would've cheapened the original's sacrifice and would have complicated things unnecessarily. And when the need to keep the Supergirl name active, I suppose, a new character was created. I read a few of those issues and couldn't get into them. I couldn't see why she had to be Supergirl. She could have had her own name and identity. And when Kara finally came back, in the previous Supergirl book, she retained enough of the original's sweetness to bring cheer to my heart. And then, she's taken away, a new version shows up, and things just get ugly.

It could have been great. The potential was there. I was ready to love her. But the writing wasn't up to the challenge and Kara came across like a spoiled brat. As her youth on Krypton came to light, things just got uglier. And every writer since then has tried to "fix" her and has done little more than confuse and complicate what should be one of the most basic characters to write. A super-powered teen who shares a bloodline with the greatest hero in the galaxy: Superman.

After some similarly muddy attempts to revive Wonder Woman's iconic status, Gail Simone has taken over and in her first story arc has done what I was starting to think was impossible, though I had faith she could do it. After all, she elevated Birds of Prey to a must-read. Gail writes Wonder Woman and Diana as capable women, each with a role to play. She's deepened the character's background without negating anything, has made everything she's written come naturally and out of Diana's personality and place in the DCU. Nothing seems forced or imposed on the character for plot purposes. Finally, Wonder Woman is being treated as a true member of the Trinity and not as a character who needs to be fixed.

I'm still waiting for someone to do that with Supergirl. Someone who won't keep trying to reinvent her and will simply enrich her background and character (without resorting to silly implanted crystals and himbo would-be boyfriends). Oddly enough, the most endearing scenes in the book have been between Kara and Boomer. One thing the book needs is a set of supporting characters who would have a natural place in Kara's life who are not Superman or Batman or characters who live in other books. Diana has her Department of Meta Human Affairs colleagues and the Amazons. Who does Kara have? In the old version, it was her adopted family and school friends (well, mainly Dick Malverne), plus Streaky and Comet. They chose to not go the adoption route, but she's not working, either. She has no other identity. And that has hurt the character and the book because it forces everything to be about the powers and not the person. And that identity doesn't have to be a traditional secret ID. It can simply be a life out of the spotlight that isn't about sitting home and moping about what happens every time she goes out. Yes, we've seen how Kara is dealing with those powers and the responsibility that comes with them, but still, everything seems to start with the powers.

Let me repeat that.

Kara has no other identity. And that has hurt the character and the book because it forces everything to be about the powers and not the person.

When was the last time -- and has there ever really been a time? -- when we said that about Superman?

Three Reviews

Birds of Prey 109
The first post-Gail Simone issue. It shows. Not that it wasn't enjoyable, but it lacked a certain something. Even the scenes with Babs and Dinah talking lacked their usual oomph. Sin and Barda were cute. And I liked Knockout and Scandal and appreciated the explanation of what's going on with the Secret Six. But there was a disjointed feel with the 2 separate storylines going. Gail handled that better, I think. But the big problem was the flat out error Babs makes when she say Ollie "fathered Connor with that ninja woman." Uh, no. Shado is not Connor's father and Dinah doesn't correct her, which lays the blame on the writer, Bedard, and the editor, Carlin. Yes, Ollie fathered a son with Shado, but Connor was born well before Ollie met Dinah, or Shado for that matter.

Green Arrow Year 1 4
This one also had me scratching my head a bit, going Huh? Now, I've been enjoying this reworking of Ollie's origin. The art's been nice, the story's been filled in with more detail and more character growth for Ollie, plus there's the nifty case he stumbles into with the opium trade and that brings me to the huh? moment. Because with all the retconning that's gone on, during the years I boycotted comics and since, one thing has remained constant. Roy got hooked on heroin while Ollie was off seeing the country with Hal, Ollie discovered this when he gets back (for a bit) and throws him out, after which Hal finds him and brings him to Dinah where he goes cold turkey. So, if Ollie now has the agony of his own withdrawal from opium in his background, is throwing Roy out his way of forcing Roy to go it alone the way he had to? Makes him an even colder bastard than previously because if Hal hadn't been troubled enough by the way Roy was talking to go look for him, who knows what would have happened to Roy. Unless, of course, they plan to do away with that, which would be a big mistake, in my not so humble opinion.

When you alter something in the past, even just to fill in details, that usually will affect more than that one character, but any or all other characters in that character's life. I wish writers and editors would take such ramifications into consideration when they run stories like this. I wish they'd ask the questions, starting with, "who/what else would this affect?" This one little bit in an otherwise excellent installment has ruined the series a bit for me. feh.

Countdown 36
So, Mary's gone off the deep end and someone's pushing. Mr. Action meets the JLA and Roy's body language was priceless. But Trickster and Piper are just too funny. They make a great duo. It's worth getting the book just for their banter.

Retconned Art

So, I'm going through what I lovingly call my Roy Harper comics and came across this bit of incongruity. Coloring revisions in "Punish Not My Evil Son." The first excerpt is from the original book, The Brave and the Bold 83. Note that Donna is wearing a white dress and Lance is wearing a shirt and vest, both in obnoxious shades of green to not match his orangey pants.



The second excerpt, of the same panel, is from The Best of the Brave and the Bold 6, on the better quality Baxter paper, I guess. Donna is now wearing a 2-color dress, red with a garish yellow middle that perhaps is supposed to now be a belt, instead of the tight knit it appears to be in the original. And Lance is now wearing a greenish suit with a purple shirt, both a more formal, non-teen-like outfit, and an even uglier color combination than the original.

I've seen this sort of thing done often, in this case and in others. I can understand if it's an improvement, but here it clearly isn't, though it does make Donna stand out even more. And yet, in the original, Dick, Wally, and Roy on the left, are in muted colors, making Donna and Lance stand out. In the revision, Dick and uh, Wally, I think it is, are fully colored, with Roy in blue shadows, and the panel doesn't feel properly blanced. I dunno. Maybe it's just me.

Gonna go find nice Roy shots to scan.

Post-IC Commentary with Reviews

There's been a lot of blogging going on re: Infinite Crisis 7 and the bit of retconning that went on. I must admit that to me it's not a big deal since for me, that's the way things have mostly been, no matter what's been written in the last 25 years in the DCU. That's partly what happens when you stop reading something like the DCU for a decade or so.

There was only about 4-5 years where I didn't read comics at all, when I gave up the last title I'd been reading, Teen Titans/Titans, around 1991. But in 1985, after the first Crisis (when Supergirl was killed), I stopped reading just about everything else. And when I picked up DC Comics again in the mid-'90s with the Nightwing mini and the Arsenal one-shot and slowly added titles, I didn't look back. There were big gaps in my DC knowledge that slowly got filled in by talking to people, reading the DC message boards, and from the tidbits dropped into the comics I was again reading.

I never read the Year One books, except for the Robin/Dick Grayson mini (I tried the Nightwing one, but thought it pretty dull). At least, I think those were Year One books, albeit a bit late in the game.

Gradually, I learned that Ollie Queen had died and his son, a new character, was the then-current GA. I learned about Hal turning bad and Kyle being GL. I couldn't ignore those changes, but others, the ones dealing with backgrounds or who founded the JLA (which I wasn't reading and hadn't read since pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths) were either unknown to me or were of no consequence since they didn't make a difference in the stories I was reading. So hearing that Wonder Woman again is a founder of the JLA isn't a big deal. She always has been to me.

I pretended the post-Crisis DCU was simply another alternate reality. I don't really buy the bit about realities converging. Sure, maybe for that moment, but I'm a big fan of the science fiction construct that realities are created at every decision point. As soon as the first decisions were made in the then new DCU, reality splintered once more. So the planets of the DCU were similar to the one I'd lost, just enough so that I could read and enjoy the stories without dwelling on Kara's death, or Ollie's, because I knew they were alive somewhere and anything I liked that happened to my favorite characters probably happened in those other unseen versions of the DCU, too. So seeing the Earth-2 Clark and Lois wasn't out of left field for me. More like a bit left of center.

It's hard for me at times to keep track of all the versions of a character. I grew up with the Silver Age and soon thereafter, the multiverse. Retconning of retcons makes me dizzy. In many things, what we learn when we're young tends to stick with us, sometimes more than what we learn later. It's hard to forget some early lessons, even misconceptions. So when I can't remember the current details of Batman's origin, I fall back on the version I've read the most: the old one.

And now, once again, realities have converged and I know, it's only for the moment. What the DCU is now, the stories we're reading, are just one version of reality, because one nanosecond after, someone made a decision and reality splintered once again, only the characters populating the DCU are unaware of it. Perhaps, they'll never find out, if that's what the writers and editors decide.

Once you accept that alternate realities can't help but exist (okay, I take this on faith and have no idea if they exist for real, but within fiction, I aim for consistency with this concept), you then can look to the future as being flexible in that millions of possible futures exist for each reality. So the future where the LSH exists is but one future. The future Booster Gold knows is but another future and if 52's first issue can be a guide, he's about to learn just that.

So, my reviews here are based on this view of the DCU.

Nightwing 120
Somewhere, the real Nightwing lives. This isn't it. If ever a character has been screwed over so quickly and completely, it's Dick Grayson. As bad as Devin's last arc was (and I'm a fan of her writing in general), as angst-driven as he was, at least I could recognize him. This version of Dick bears no more than a physical resemblence to him. And the story is just bad. I can't see why Clancy was brought back. I like her, but she's serving no purpose other than as someone Dick knows from before. She could've been anyone from before. The fashion show stuff was just crap. Cheyenne is a meta? Ho-hum. She's already been established as boring, immature, and idiotic, so why should I care about her? Where is Babs and why aren't she and Dick still together? That's what I care about. First, Tarantula, now Cheyenne? What is this need to surround Dick with out-of-control women? And I'm not going to get started on Jason, because I'm one of those people who was happy when he died and wished he'd stayed that way. The art is serviceable. The only reason I'm reading this book, still, is the hope that the next arc will be better. Well, I can dream.

JSA 85
The pace is a bit slow, but I'm enjoying the history of the Gentleman Ghost. Unlike the JSA Classfied arc featuring Vandal Savage and not much of the JSA, Levitz is weaving the Ghost's story in nicely with the JSAers. And I liked Jade's ghost visiting her father and trying to get him to fight to live. It was probably one of her better appearances. And nice art from Rags and company.

Checkmate 1
I never read about this group til the Crisis Countdown series. The concept intrigues me and the political aspect of the new series has a lot of potential. The art is nice, but I can't always tell some of the characters apart.

52 Week 1
Wow. I'm impressed. By ticking off the days, they really gave this a real-time feel. The cover is stunning, as good as the preview promised. The writing, especially the dialogue, is crisp and the art is wonderful, very evocative in places. The characters are full of life. Ralph's pain was palpable, even moreso than in Identity Crisis when so much else was going on and was distracting from the personal aspect of his loss. As with any good story, a lot happened, but not too much, giving a hint of things to come.

I suspect things to come includes the death of many beloved characters. One of the managers at the comic shop where I keep my pull list said a "ton of characters" will die in 52. I still suspect Roy "Arsenal" Harper will be one of them. If no, I don't know what DC hopes to gain by not giving us a hint of what's to come for him. And if he does die, the surprise in that is gone for many of us who are convinced he will die. If he doesn't, there will be no surprise, just enormous relief. With Dick playing boy toy and idiot du jour, if I lose Roy, I'll be hard pressed to find a new fav. Although, WildCats is supposed to return with a new book. There's no one quite like Cole "Grifter" Cash. It will be odd to have a fav comic character outside the DCU. Very odd. But unless Roy returns, or Dick shakes off the funk he's in, or someone else steps up and makes me take notice, Cole it will have to be.