The Four Color Media Monitor: NYT sugarcoats G. Willow Wilson's new Wonder Woman run

Practically every MSM outlet's been nothing but favorable towards the overrated Islamic apologist G. Willow Wilson and the propaganda she's forced into mainstream comics over the past several years. The New York Times is no exception, in a recent interview where they pay more lip service and fawn over what she's spewing out in Wonder Woman:

In the opening pages of “Wonder Woman” No. 58, Ares, the god of war, sits imprisoned in a dark cell. He has had an epiphany. It isn’t glorious conquest or love that accords immortality to the honorable. It is justice. It’s a perversely compelling moment — war personified, becoming a crusader for righteousness.

But for the writer G. Willow Wilson, the ancient Greek god’s conversion gives her the chance to question 21st-century values. How do we define justice today? Can war, and the violence it begets, ever be just? DC Comics tapped Wilson, an author (her second novel, “The Bird King,” is due out next year) already highly regarded among comics fans for co-creating Kamala Khan for Marvel Comics’s “Ms. Marvel,” to write Wonder Woman this year. The first issue of her “Just War” arc is out this week.

If her books sell as low as they do, she's not highly regarded except by industry insiders for her far-left angles. Something they predictably won't admit.

And it sounds an awful lot like this story is a metaphor for the "one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter" propaganda. That kind of monstrous thinking is disturbing.

In a charged cultural moment in which women run for and win office, demonstrate against inequity and speak out against the everyday violence they face, writing the most prominent female superhero in the canon carries weight.

The article they back-link to is about women who ran as part of the Democrats, and if it's the anti-Israeli, pro-Islam and pro-BDS activists they're talking about, then this contradicts what they're talking about. Why, what if they're against Gal Gadot as part of the same ideologies they adhere to? In that case, there isn't much weight to find here.

Why did you take Wonder Woman on to begin with?

It was a great opportunity to figure out what kind of new stories could be told about this iconic character who’s already been around for the better part of a century. I think the real challenge with characters like Wonder Woman and Superman and Batman is to keep them fresh, keep them relevant and, at the same time, honor that history that has meant so much to so many people.

Well if she has no issues with Democrat reps like Ilhan Omar, then she's not keeping them relevant, nor is she honoring history at all. But my my, here we have another example of Wilson borrowing what look like valid arguments and exploiting them to bolster her standings. Sometimes, it seems like only people of Wilson's positions are allowed to cite the kind of arguments real fans could make, because of her religion and politics.

Does writing comics in this political moment feel significant to you?

Obviously, we are in an extremely contentious political climate right now, and everything in pop culture feels quite fraught in a way that it didn’t when I was first breaking into comics. We were coming out of a decade of what I would almost describe as political quietism, where talking about politics was considered a little bit gauche and art was separate from everything else and was supposed to be above politics.

We’re in a very different place now, and I think even books and TV shows and movies that might not have been made with any particular kind of specific political message in mind have become profoundly symbolic and gained a kind of importance that I think they would not have in a different historical moment. I’m thinking, of course, of shows like “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which just happened to come on the scene in this political moment where all of these women’s rights that we thought were a done deal are suddenly back up for debate.

I think any responsible artist in this particular climate has to take those things into consideration, and know, in a clearheaded way, what they believe, what the character stands for and how best that character can serve the audience in this time. And not use the art form as some kind of political bludgeon, but also not be naïve and pretend that these aren’t issues that are affecting people’s lives in very real ways, and that they aren’t looking to their heroes to make a stand.

Oh, if this were the Reagan era, I'm sure she'd say the politics she believes in took on a special importance, if only so she could engage in Republican-bashing. Once again, she steals the talking points of people like those supporting Comicsgate, all so she can virtue-signal.

Your story arc is called “The Just War.” What does that tell us about where you’re taking Wonder Woman?

What I wanted to do in this arc is take some classic, beloved or notorious Wonder Woman characters, and kind of hold them upside down, shake them and see what falls out of their pockets. In this case, that meant bringing back Ares in a form and in a way that we really haven’t seen him before. So, he’s coming back thinking that being the god of war doesn’t necessarily mean being unjust. That maybe he can bend his powers to bring about positive change. He kind of becomes a caricature of what Wonder Woman herself stands for. She has to reckon with her own modus operandi and what she thinks her role is in the face of this extremely powerful old enemy who’s now suddenly wanting to be her best friend. It’s, in many ways, a meditation on violence and whether wars are fought in the same way as they’ve been in the past, whether there is such a thing as a just war anymore.

Again, this is where it sounds like she intends to blur the difference between good and evil, while simultaneously making Ares into a loony-bin who thinks his new approach is entirely valid. Obviously, this is otherwise an anti-war metaphor of a left-wing variety.

In your work on “Ms. Marvel,” you’ve tried to balance the fantastical with everyday American concerns. Will you keep doing that in this series?

That’s exactly what I was looking for. I think what’s fun about Wonder Woman, especially in some of her more recent incarnations, is the way that she juxtaposes these mythological features with the very banal, everyday facts of living in our society in the 21st century. For me, it’s really about re-examining those Greek myths that have timeless themes in the context of a society that has smartphones and Wi-Fi and international espionage and gentrification and income inequality and all the things that you encounter on a daily basis. To see whether they’re still relevant and to keep them relevant is an interesting artistic challenge.

Well she's not keeping them relevant with that kind of political standing. Already, in the pages of the Muslim Ms. Marvel, she made the lead look totalitarian-minded, used it as a means to attack ordinary white people, and even exploited it for childish election propaganda. Whether real life or metaphorical elements are used in WW, why should we expect any different now?

You’ve never shied away from politics in your work, whether it’s about profiling or the acidification of the world’s oceans. This year has been called the Year of the Woman. Where does that put you artistically?

It’s been difficult to watch events unfold over the course of the past 18 months. In many ways, it’s made me feel frustrated, because I think in the best of times, we really lionize writers and artists and say, “Oh, you can change the world.” What you write and what you draw, you never know what it’s going to kick-start and who it’s going to inspire. But then when push comes to shove, and things get really bad, as they have recently, you start to realize how limited your power is.

Before this administration, I kind of bought into the “artists change the world” values in a very uncritical way. It’s not that I think that’s untrue. I think demonstrably art changes the world. But I don’t know that it’s really the art itself. I think it’s the way that art inspires people who then go out and put their physical bodies between people who are in trouble and the people who want to hurt them. Those are the real heroes.

I’ve come to understand that I think in a visceral way. That the symbols are important. I’ve come to see my role as much more service oriented. That I’m supporting the leaders, and trying to be a bastion for them, and to give them things that are useful, and ideas and concepts that are useful to them in their day-to-day lives. Because I think the critical thing now is not to give up hope. So, if you can provide hope fuel, that is what you can do. It’s both a very small thing and a very great thing.

The politics of Obama, which she embraced, are just why "artists" of her standing failed to change the world. The blatant politics in her work are exactly why these books sell so poorly.

There's also a review of WW 59 on Geek Dad, which further confirms this is going someplace bad. This is what it decribes of how Ares is depicted:

...As Wonder Woman #59 opens, the oddball group of supernatural beings is being led by a mysterious boy to what seems like a new Temple of Zeus in the middle of war-torn Durovnia. There, they find a Griffin leading the group of mythical creatures – who have captured Steve Trevor. Whether Ares is involved in this is yet to be determined, but Diana already has her hands full with the self-proclaimed reformed God when he escalates the conflict on the ground. Although he works to protect the Rebels from attacks from the government, he has no problem turning those same attacks on the civilian population of the US-backed government.

The truce between Diana and Ares is short-lived, but he refuses to answer Diana’s anger in kind – protesting that all he’s done is even the playing field in favor of the powerless. He interferes with government planes flying into the territory, and when he sees Diana defending what he sees as “the oppressor”, he turns on her. Wilson is doing something really interesting here, turning Diana’s most iconic villain into a representative of a belief system we almost never see reflected in comics.

Yep, this does sound eerily like a subtle attack on the US government alright. It could be a metaphorical attack on the war in Iraq with allusions to no-fly zones, or worse, an attack on Israel. But since when don't we see the mindset they refer to being reflected in comics? It's become common in the past few years, to depict villains representing it. There's more:

Justice, as Diana knows, is more complicated than picking the right side. Killing children in the service of justice is never right, something Ares doesn’t understand.

Considering last week’s headlines of tear gas being used against children at the U.S./Mexican border, and the events over the past year, as U.S. government policy tore children from the custody of their would-be immigrant parents, it’s impossible not to read a message in Ares’ actions.

Exploiting children for invading and propaganda is never right either. Though I must say, pretty amazing they admit it's entirely possible quite a few of the children were not related to the "custodians" who brought them along. Is that right to be hauling children who may not belong to the "parents" on a cross-continental trip for grueling miles for ambiguous goals? No way. Nor is it right when illegal immigrants are committing violent crimes. All that aside, Marco Rubio's defended use of tear gas to help gain control of a chaotic situation that could've been avoided, especially if south American governments in countries like Bolivia and Venezuela would actually take positive steps to make life worth living there.

Is there a message in Ares' actions? Well it's a very bad one indeed, and that's why this story by Wilson is best avoided, and the consumer's money better spent on books from smaller publishers with less political agendas shoved in.

Labels: dc comics, islam and jihad, marvel comics, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, violence, Wonder Woman

"Already, in the pages of the Muslim Ms. Marvel, she made the lead look totalitarian-minded, ..."

huh? There was one story where she was caught up in that cross-over over predictive justice, mostly because of wanting to please Carol Danvers, who she hero worships; but she recognized the dangers of that model by the end. Generally she's open minded, not totalitarian.

"used it as a means to attack ordinary white people..."

Which ordinary white people? There are a lot of positive depictions of all kinds of white people; she is friends with several white girls at school, has the beginnings of a romance with an Italian boy, good friends with a Jewish guy; and by contrast there are some villainous Muslim characters. She lives in Jersey City; you grow up with all kinds of people there.

"and even exploited it for childish election propaganda."

She did have a get out and vote message in one issue. But what was childish about it?

Commercially, the fan girl Ms Marvel has been more successful than the blonde one was; trades topped the bestseller lists for graphic novels, it has won a Hugo award, it has been one of the top downloads on Comixology.

Posted by Anonymous | 5:41 PM

"The article they back-link to is about women who ran as part of the Democrats, and if it's the anti-Israeli, pro-Islam and pro-BDS activists they're talking about, then this contradicts what they're talking about."

The back linked article discusses the large number of women who ran for both parties; a lot more of them were democrats than republicans, but it is about the fact that there were so many running on both sides of the aisle. The article did not focus on Israel or Islam.

Posted by Anonymous | 5:51 PM

'Why, what if they're against Gal Gadot as part of the same ideologies they adhere to? In that case, there isn't much weight to find here.'

"They" - the New York Times - love Gal Gadot.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/04/movies/wonder-woman-dc-comics-gal-gadot.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/movies/wonder-woman-gal-gadot-patty-jenkins.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/movies/wonder-woman-gal-gadot-patty-jenkins.html

Posted by Anonymous | 8:51 AM

Those trades are not being bought by individual people, they being bought by academia.

Academia is overwhelmingly liberal at this point.
They are actively trying to use popular media as well as academia to disseminate their views. They can get things banned, herd the school age children to the movies to watch the latest movie that fights white supremacy (black panther)
https://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2018/03/teachers_are_bringing_black_pa.html

Any content provider catering to them are guaranteed sales even if the sales are paltry compared to marketing to laymen because it takes less effort.

That is why the Hugo awards are important to those catering to academia--currently Hugo awards are determined largely by the prevailing political views of the judges. There has been a recent push to include groups of people who generally aren't interested in science fiction---women and sexual minorities, and colored people-- as nominees and winners. Writers from groups that are underrepresented in science fiction are being included with the prerequisite being that identity is the central theme in the writers' work as apposed to science fiction.

Books that have the Hugo award seal of approval are ordered by libraries and these orders result in it being on bestseller lists ( which might be reflections of what libraries are ordering than what individual people are buying, reading and enjoying).

There is NO popular support behind the vast majority of the"diverse" content that sjws are cheering for. It is more top-down social engineering from the elite and its useful idiots.

Posted by Saber Tooth Tiger Mike | 2:41 PM

Academics are people too! About a third of the US population has a college degree, so 'academia' is a large potential audience.

I don't know how anyone can say that woman, sexual minorities and 'colored people' (does this mean black people only, or Asian and Hispanic 'people of color' also, or ?)are not interested in science fiction. The audience for the old sci-fi pulp magazines of the 1940s and 1950s was probably mostly male, judging by the letter columns and the kind of audience that the cover illustrations were aimed at. But women were a large part of Star Trek fandom beginning in the late 1960s, and more women began writing under their own names as opposed to male pseudonyms in the 1960s and 1970s. The female audience started expanding - ironically, at the same time the mass market comic book audience was becoming more and more male.

We don't really know the ethnicity or sex of most of the older sci-fi writers, other than the best-known and the ones who attended conventions. Many of the publishers would not have known either, as they may have only dealt with the writers by correspondence. Women wrote under male or androgynous names - CL Moore, James Tiptree Jr, Andre Norton - or even under house names. And we don't have marketing surveys about the race of the readers back then. let alone their sexual orientation.

Gay, black and women writers became more noticeable from the 1960s on - Samuel Delany, Joanna Russ, Ursula Leguin, Kate Wilhelm, Tiptree, Norton, a host of others. Traditional right wing sci fi writers like Robert Heinlein wrote gay-positive and transgender stories years and years ago, and writers experimented with futures where gay was normal, or with feminist utopias.

Women and black people were winning awards long before the 'recent push' - Leigh Brackett won the Hugo in 1956, followed by Marion Bradley, Andre Norton, Ursula LeGuin, Vonda McIntyre... Wilhelm won a Nebula the first year of the award. Chip Delany won Hugos and Nebulas, two years in a row for both awards, in the 1960s. Tiptree won her awards before anyone knew she was a woman. (The 'push' at the awards has been in the opposite direction, as when a white supremacist who writes under the name Vox Day tried to organize a putsch to have far-right work win the sci-fi awards, earning him his reputation as the most hated man in science fiction.)

Libraries order according to demand as well as merit. If a book is in high demand, they order more copies. If books don't circulate, they get discarded to make room on the shelf for newer books.

Posted by Anonymous | 12:04 PM

The fact that your response to my assertion that the recent decision by the Hugo awards to nominate minorities based on social justice politics was a claim that women and minorities were always a huge part of sci-fi--again with little to no proof--instead of focusing on the merit of their work-- -proves my point about you--academia--and the Hugo award nominations being driven by spreading social justice views than recognizing outstanding but overlooked talent. NO WHERE do you mention merit.

There are two sides to the story and you're so committed to yours that you cannot be counted on to cover the other half.

The point that Vox made with Sad Puppies that it was easy to rig the nomination process.
An episode of My Little Pony was nominated. That's not sci-fi.

"Traditional right wing sci fi writers like Robert Heinlein wrote gay-positive and transgender stories years and years ago, and writers experimented with futures where gay was normal, or with feminist utopias."

Yes, but he explored those themes out of his own violation, he was not coerced into it by interest groups infiltrating science fiction literature demanding representation. The idea that writers should be praised with awards and puff pieces for doing a story about feminist utopias or gay relationships and scorned if they don't--is at the heart of the objection of the "far right"'s objection to diversity. That is the political reality today--progressives are mandating that all sci fi literature feature feminist -positive stories and gay lovers or else they will engage in yellow journalism--crying oppression if a writer doesn't want to do what they say. The Hugo awards have been taken over by these hard line Progressives and they will not hesitate to tar and feather anyone who even questions their line of reasoning. Science fiction now exists to spread partisan political ideology and no other views are welcome.

Posted by Saber Tooth Tiger Mike | 2:26 PM

After VD was unsuccessful in gaming the system so as to get books published by him to win Hugos, he tried to save face over his failure by saying that he was just trying to show how easy it was to rig the nomination process. It is a bit difficult to take him seriously on this, and not just because of the delusions of grandeur and proclamation of infection on which he has built his pseudonym.

Hugos are fan awards, based on popularity; not necessarily about literary merit, although a lot of the winners over the years have had that, and exactly the opposite of recognizing overlooked talent. If you are looking for literary merit, try Nalo Hopkinson’s novels grounded in Carribean culture and folklore, or Kiese Laymon’s flawed but moving time travel novel. For Hispanic novels of the fantastic, try Miguel Angel Asturias, although of course there is a lot of other magic realism out there. Feminist writers are legion; Ursula LeGuin has enough literary merit for a dozen writers. Academic books sell in the hundreds, while Atwood’s The Handmaids Tale has sold about 8 million copies in English editions alone; there does seem to be a market for feminist sci fi outside of academia.

“interest groups infiltrating science fiction literature demanding representation” makes it sound like science fiction belongs to males with European ancestors, and everyone else is there on sufferance, which is silly; no single ethnic group owns literature.

I was gobsmacked to read “That is the political reality today--progressives are mandating that all sci fi literature feature feminist -positive stories and gay lovers or else they will engage in yellow journalism--crying oppression if a writer doesn't want to do what they say.” That is it!? All you are saying is that if you don’t conform, people who disagree with you will say they disagree with you. Compared to gamergate and elevatorgate and milkshakegate and the rest, that is the soul of politeness. That explains why Newt Gingrich has not written any more sci fi novels recently - he is so terrified of being called an oppressor that he has switched to political thrillers and television punditry. There is plenty of science fiction that is hostile to liberal views , from the Left Behind series to books Jerry Pournelle wrote shortly before the end of his life and other books of military sf to niche works that appeal only to those with red pill toxic overdose. It is far from a monoculture.

Posted by Anonymous | 3:48 PM

Throwing false accusations and threatening to doxx people who say things you don't like is not politeness.

You are an imbecile.

"“interest groups infiltrating science fiction literature demanding representation” makes it sound like science fiction belongs to males with European ancestors"

Progressives demanding that science fiction be "decolonized" "SOUNDS" like they are asking that Whites be barred or discouraged from participating in it and that the CENTRAL THEMES of science fiction be SEXUAL ORIENTATION and RACE instead of science fiction.

Turning science fiction into an outlet for identity politics is not science fiction. It part of deconstruction. It is subversion. Social justice advocates do the same thing in every thing they infiltrate. They turn everything into propaganda. Video games...art...they reduce everything to INTERSECTIONALITY. They don't like comics, science fiction or video games. They just want to ruin those things for the people who had been enjoying them.
They want to drive them out and if possible REPLACE them. They want to punish their oppressors.

I've changed my mind about you. You're not an imbecile. You're lying piece of turd and you're not a very good one, either. And like a good little Communist, you have no shame in
the fact tthat you're horrible at what you do.

Posted by Saber Tooth Tiger Mike | 6:20 PM

Doxxing, or hreatening to dox people, is a rotten tactic, real gamergate territory. Your last post, though, didn't mention anything about doxxing. It only talked about crying oppression and presumably metaphorical tarring and feathering - basically, debate and critical, perhaps excessively nasty, comments. If the Hugogate people were busy doxxing anyone whose novels were not pro feminist or whose novels omitted an obligatory gay sex scene, why didn't you mention that straight off?

There are a lot of blerds, and a lot of women, who genuinely love comics and science fiction. And isn't science fiction about conceptualizing and understanding what is alien to you?

Posted by Anonymous | 7:21 AM

You know, you two pretty much represent the average right and left-leaning followers that contaminate this once great system.

Posted by Anonymous | 11:17 PM

When did bigotry and contempt of learning become synonymous with being right-leaning?

Posted by Anonymous | 8:26 AM

Because the lefts dumped all that "negative" stuff on their rivals first.

Posted by Anonymous | 10:51 PM

You know, Ms. Marvel (despite all the hype and good reviews about it), turned out to be a really dull and boring affair once I've read it, not to mention the tackiest and ugliest excuse for a bird head and claws for that one-shot villain the Inventor. And now I'm worried that the same thing will happen to Wonder Woman once Wilson switches books and any excitement that used to be found in that book will now give me the same amount of entertainment as watching paint dry.

Posted by Anonymous | 10:24 PM

How much difficulty is there in writing about polytheism mythology, especially to people used to being part of monotheism?

Posted by Anonymous | 7:31 PM