The Four Color Media Monitor

An old argument this may be by now, but still a great one, and gives some very good perspective and argument on the Princess of Power, and how Rucka's current storyline, which is all too obviously part of a crossover (Infinite Crisis, what else), is a far cry from what George Perez worked upon so well in the late 80s, and tossed off with much more relish than Rucka's ever offered:

...in returning Diana to her warrior roots, Perez also avoided having her learn the standard superhero code of morality. Thus, in Wonder Woman v. 2 #5, a desperate Diana used her razor-sharp tiara to behead Deimos, the war-god son of Ares. While it may have been shocking at the time, it was also part of Perez's goal to make Diana more than just a female counterpart to Superman or Thor. His efforts paid off, and although future writers like Bill Messner-Loebs and John Byrne put Diana in more superheroic situations, she was firmly established as having a perspective slightly outside the mainstream. Mark Waid took advantage of this in the alternate future of Kingdom Come, when Diana took hard-line stances on the social issues which made Superman squeamish; and she, not Superman, ended up fighting Batman.

Therefore, Diana may be believable as the bad cop, but does that make it right? Moreover, as the most recognizable female superhero, should Diana be held to a higher standard than her grimmer, grittier descendants -- or, because she's a woman, does this just make her "strong," "edgy," or "deep"? Wouldn't Xena, Dana Scully, or Sydney Bristow have done the same thing to Max Lord? Would there have been gasps of shock if Aquaman, Hawkman, or Green Arrow had killed Max? Isn't this part of the same sexist mentality which holds that a murderous Jean Loring is more shocking than a murderous Ray Palmer?

I think I can see what the writer is getting at here, and it's that Diana was used as something akin to the notion that "stereotypes are easy": she's more easily expendable than Supes and Bats are, and that's why she was the one depicted as performing the death knell, not Supes or Bats.

Thus, he's got a very good point - that this is apparently part of the same misogynistic mentality that Identity Crisis was slapped so shamelessly together with. And it's all pointed out even further in the following:

Hard to say -- but over the past two decades, DC has allowed Diana to develop into a distinct character with her own viewpoint and her own mission. This was apparent from the beginning of Perez's run when, an issue after she killed Deimos, she defeated Ares not by force or violence, but with the Lasso of Truth. It showed him the futility of his plan to incite nuclear holocaust, and compelled him to abandon it. (Nowadays, either the lasso has lost its kick or Max Lord's mental powers are stronger than a Greek god's, because it couldn't even force Max to break his hold on Superman, let alone see the truth of where his actions would lead. Since Greg Rucka has just given Diana "vision of the gods," I suppose one could rationalize that at least she saw the truth of what she did.)

Clearly a double standard has evolved from DC's having more well-defined boundaries for Superman and Batman than it has had for Wonder Woman. On the bright side, this treatment has encouraged writers to take more chances with Diana and arguably has made her a far more complex character. The downside is that while Superman and Batman may have been treated like hothouse flowers, and not allowed to grow or change in the same ways Diana has, now she looks vengeful, even amoral, in comparison to someone who only knows her from Lynda Carter. Given the choice, if fans could "sacrifice" the morality of one of the Big Three, they might well vote for Wonder Woman.

Considering that WW's already been in situations where she's had to kill, that's exactly why her doing so to Max Lord, whose return appearance in Countdown was apparently just so he could die soon afterwards in the OMAC stuff, and was intended as simply a plot device in a crossover to boot, was little more than an exercise in futility on Rucka's part. In fact, a similar argument could be made from how Jean Loring was turned into a caricature, rather than a real human being, in Day of Vengeance, written by a would-be writer whose works I now have no interest in.

Labels: dc comics, misogyny and racism, Wonder Woman