Did anyone feel like punching something after reading the last Countdown special?
No? Just me?
I mean, I love the concept of a gender-reversed world. I picked up the Countdown Presents: Search for Ray Palmer: Superwoman/Batwoman special overjoyed at the thought of Earth-11. It’s just such a wonderful tool when analyzing gender in stories, to run through a familiar story with a woman instead of a man and consider how and why things could be different. Would they think differently about their actions? Each other? Why? And how does the reader react differently?
Granted, there was an option to screw up, but I figured we were beyond writing alternate universe female characters as less capable than their male counterparts. I wasn’t worried when I read it.
I was partially right. We are beyond writing alternate universe female characters as less capable than their male counterparts. All of the female characters were very well done. The dialogue and the way the story was set up suggested that the gender stereotypes were still the same, and that the people meant to be heroes just happened to more often be female than male this time around (probably due in no small part to the most inspiring hero on that planet being the Last Daughter of Krypton as opposed to the standard Last Son). I’d love to see a Kylie Rayner story (or find out what’s going on with Jordan’s counterpart) or a few World’s Finest adventures with Superwoman and Batwoman. The art was lovely, the designs were feminized but not sexualized (I especially liked the effect with the Flash’s long hair). The characterization in general was that the characters were themselves as men or as women.
There was one exception.
One big hairy exception.
Apparently we are not beyond writing alternate universe male characters as less capable than their female counterparts. I hadn’t braced myself for that, so Wonderman threw me for a loop. But there he was, the anti-Wonder Woman. The closest personality in the franchise to him would have been Hercules, not Diana. I even thought he was possibly a male version of Hippolyta but when I went back and reread I saw that Superwoman called him Dane several times. That told me for sure that he was Diana, which made no sense.
I’m going to have to enter exposition mode to explain why (this is an alternate universe DC comic book I’m analyzing, and we need a history recap), so if you intend to read this story and be surprised you may want to stop now.
The story was set during Amazons Attack. In our normal universe, Diana disappeared for a year or so after the fallout for killing Max Lord in a very public manner (Sacrifice, Infinite Crisis, 52), blending into the fabric of the normal universe. After she comes back, her mother returns to life through Circe’s machinations and leads an assault on the United States because she thinks they arrested Diana and the witch messed with her head a little. As is traditional at DC, Wonder Woman spends the entire miniseries trying to make peace between the two countries, the writer spends the entire miniseries setting up another major crossover event, and the bloggers spend the entire miniseries complaining about the story quality and arguing over whether or not the rampaging Amazons are a comment on the feminist movement.
On Earth-11 there’s a big difference. After killing Maxine Lord in a very public manner, Wonderman is thrown out of the Justice League and banished to Elysium Island so he can think about what he’s done. He returns when the Amazon Men attack the United States — as the first warrior off the boat. He was naturally unhappy about being rejected. Wonderman handled things in a remarkably different manner from Wonder Woman. He yelled. He yelled violently and emotionally, presumably pumping his fist as punctuation. He was enraged. He was unreasonable. He seems to be leading the assault. Judging by dialogue of the female heroes around him, this was not unexpected.
Here is where things went wrong. This change could have been wonderful. There’s more than a few story ideas that could present this divergence as a great comment on gender and perception. As prevalent sexist attitudes stand, a burly male hero twisting the neck of a mentally powered female supervillain on television would have gone over a lot worse than the female hero twisting the male villain’s neck. People are not generally conditioned to see women are violent physical aggressors, so a female hero would get a certain disbelief from the populace. They’d rationalize it. A male hero would get much more brutal condemnation, because the stereotype puts women as victims of such violence and men as aggressors. People would believe what they had seen was exactly as it looked much more easily.
Thing is, when you do a commentary like that you shouldn’t forget the commentary. You have to put something in the story to at least imply that the assumption about men and women is wrong. Otherwise you just shovel more shit on the pile. One more story that paints men as violent buffoons and women as sweet reluctant heroes.
A lot of characterization is done through dialogue. We already know these characters through our regular universe, so some of the dialogue in this issue serves to show how the characters are the same. They spend a lot of time making regenderized versions of their standard dialogue (Green Arrow’s opinion about the Amazon Warriors, Kylie’s wearied plea to talk this over like reasonable adults, Batwoman’s lecturing) and those lines come alive because we know their personalities. They also spend a lot of time talking about what an unreasonable muscle-head Wonderman is. These comments could serve as characterization for everyone else. They could show how sexist they are. But because those sexist assumptions are confirmed by the story, they instead serve to characterize Wonderman.
There was nothing to suggest that the other characters were wrong about. There was nothing to suggest that Luthor’s description of Wonderman as a “testosterone-filled lout” (a description given before Wonderman is even shown in the story) was wrong. Superwoman doesn’t even correct her when she calls him that, she just changes the subject. Wonderman’s first appearance, surrounded by burly Amazon men and yelling at the top of his lungs about his vengeance supports this. Other heroes reinforce this with their quips. Their attempts to reason with him are half-hearted and peppered with other characters dismissing those attempts as useless (click on the image below to see the exchange between Martian Manhunter and Blue Beetle). There’s the implication by the Atom that he’s not in his right mind, but none of the characters seem to find his behavior surprising or out of character. They don’t wonder how he could be so unreasonable. They wonder how he could be so unreasonable.
And Dane is the only character with dialogue that shows how different he is from his counterpart.
It has nothing to do with the Amazons being Men instead of Women. The point of the Amazons, classically speaking, is that they act the same as men. True, Marston had some interesting beliefs about which gender was more fit for civilization, but the Amazons were rebooted to be closer to the classical version long ago. Themiscyran women act exactly as Ancient Greek men did, when left alone they build a peaceful civilization full of sport and philosophy, when dealing with the brutal rest of the world they pick up arms and start kicking ass. Diana was raised in peaceful isolation, so she has a different outlook on the basic nature of humanity. That’s why she always has to make peace between the Amazons and the rest of the world.
On Earth-11, the Amazon Men act as Ancient Greek warriors do but with Dane’s behavior there’s no indication they have a peaceful civilization at home. Presumably the male version of Diana was raised in the peaceful isolation as she was, but he came out of it with a martial temperament rather than a love of peace. Judging from the dialogue, this is not new. This is how he always behaves.
The only difference between these two universes is the gender of the characters.
Every other Justice League member does just as well as the opposite gender, except for Wonder Woman. The point seems to be that Wonder Woman’s peaceable character traits are incapable of manifesting in a man. The refined level-headed conscientious warrior who always tries the diplomatic route when the option presents itself is a blunt, hairy brute with a simple gender change. (They never saw fit to give Wonderman the “Chiseled Good Looks of Adonis” or anything close, even though they show the Gods are gender-switched too and a masculine Aphrodite would have been present at his birth. There are ways to draw a hairy man in a beard looking like the pinnacle of rugged male beauty, and this was not how it was done. He was not designed to be appealing.) The understanding woman who worked hard to regain the trust of the world after she’d lost it becomes a bitter man who brings an army to attack when that trust is lost — a bitter man who betrays his friend’s reputation where the female version would not. The defining characteristics of Diana, her confidence, her wisdom and her loyalty are not inherent to the character, they’re a side-effect of estrogen and a uterus. Traded in for male parts those characteristics disappear and all that’s left is pride and a thirst for vengeance.
And they say feminists hate men.
December 28th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
THIS. IS. WONDAH!!!!!!
I’m going out on a limb here, not having read hte issue, and say that I bet there was a little homage to 300 in the way Wonderman acted, and that’s where the writer was probably heading.
December 28th, 2007 at 11:34 pm
Ugly American — I don’t think you’re going out on a limb. I think that’s a distinct possibility.
But if it’s an homage it could have been done with a story that doesn’t reinforce the stereotypes. I mean, he can look like the lead of 300 and yell and be boisterous on this occasion and still at least have the other characters defending him as not normally such an idiot. Or be shown to actually be a somewhat reasonable person despite his initial appearance? The Themiscyrans fit the warrior Spartan stereotype in battle, but back on the island they’re all about learning and art. There’s two parts to them. I think there should have been something in the issue to show he’s the same as Diana underneath it all.
December 28th, 2007 at 11:42 pm
But that doesn’t really make thematic sense, since the Amazons were never based on the Spartans — far from it. If you’re right, Ugly American, then this is a case of a writer indulging a whim at the expense of consistent characterization and world-building, and thereby (whether intentionally or not) perpetuating the ridiculous and misandrist stereotype that men can’t be peace-lovers, can’t be both strong and gentle.
December 29th, 2007 at 12:35 am
DC writers indulging in whims? In COUNTDOWN? I’m shocked, I tell you, SHOCKED!
December 29th, 2007 at 12:51 am
Bah. He doesn’t get tied up nearly enough to be Diana.
December 29th, 2007 at 10:32 am
Remember that in the DCU-proper Themystica started as a place for victimized women who had been raped and taken advantage of by Hercules and his men.
On larger scale, I would expect that in Earth-11 it was Hercules and his men who got to Themystica — leaving the rest of the world for the women. This would make the mostly-female superheroes the legacy of that battle – the cooler, female heads won.
Themystica, would therefore be something akin to Sparta – as you pointed out.
To put it another way — Diana was everything that was expected of a woman in the Greek stories; she was akin to Pallas-Athene. Dane in turn is just what the ancient greeks expected from a man; an exellent warrior. Bugger the arts.
As such, we shouldn’t judge Diana like we do the other heroes – they only stand for America, which has history as we know it. Diana stands for totally hypothetical nation which is thousands of years back, and whose nation started as a safehouse for raped (and killed) women. Surely this isn’t something that happened at Earth 11; something else happened, and Dane must be product of this society, just as Captain America is that of Marvel-America.
December 29th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
I haven’t read a superhero comic in almost a year and the cover caught my eye. So I flipped through the book. The dialogue was beyond the usual corn, the story made no sense and as a casual reader I had no idea as to why the male superheroes were suddenly female. So I put the book down and walked out of the store, buying nothing. In other words, superhero comics are just as bad as they were a year ago.
December 29th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
I’m wondering if maybe they just needed a villain and thought the male counterpart to Wonder Woman would be choice that most readers wouldn’t automatically suspect and make for a more interesting story.
Somebody probably thought by chucking the internal consistency and making ‘Wonderman’ look bad they’d be making Wonder Woman look good in retrospect.
And they get a little fanboy tease at Marvel by making ‘Wonderman’ (and Hercules) a dumb, bad person.
December 30th, 2007 at 5:41 am
I think I wish Wonder Woman had a -little- bit more Wonder Man in her, but I suppose that’s really beside the point…
December 30th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Superwoman and Lex are friends too and Maxine killed Booster Gold :\ So there are some other changes to the universe… I didn’t know exactly what else changed in their history or why but there mihght be other differences
December 30th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
Interesting post. I would still have liked to see Wonderman less of the brute and more of the diplomat who’s been pushed over the edge. It would make a great character subplot.
January 1st, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Ya know, my other problem with this is a nitpicky one, but I think it’s important. In that panel with Wonderman, he calls his people Amazonians. This is the second time in as many months that this mistake has been made at DC. When did they move to the Amazon Jungles? They are not from the Amazon, and are therefore not Amazonians. It may not be a big deal to some, but that kind of inconsistency is lazy writing and lazier editing.
January 1st, 2008 at 10:43 pm
I haven’t read a superhero comic in almost a year and the cover caught my eye. So I flipped through the book. The dialogue was beyond the usual corn, the story made no sense and as a casual reader I had no idea as to why the male superheroes were suddenly female. So I put the book down and walked out of the store, buying nothing. In other words, superhero comics are just as bad as they were a year ago.
—————
Then you probably need to do better research other than just picking up a random book and reading it. You’re bound to find a pretty good book if you just ask you LCS owner or someone on a message board. Heck, just read Newsarama’s reviews or something. Just picking up a book that looks decent based on the cover and reading just to see if superhero comics are good is silly.
January 2nd, 2008 at 9:47 pm
That was sarcasm, right? Please tell me it was sarcasm…
January 2nd, 2008 at 10:27 pm
I don’t normally step in here, but really the “superhero comics suck” “no they don’t” conversation has nothing to do with this post and it distracts from a much more productive conversation.
Barry, since you have no interest in superhero comics you should refrain from disrupting a conversation about superhero comics. There are plenty of conversations about other things on this very blog, let alone the entire internet. If you really want to talk about what you think about superhero comics, I suggest a thread already on the topic of whether or not superhero comics are worthwhile, starting your own blog, or going to a message board and starting your own thread about it.
January 4th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Lisa, I do not agree with your view on this at all.
You blast DC’s take on “Wonderman” but yet state that it made you want to punch something.
Both creators of that book have experiece with strong female leads so I do not understand why you would go on to belive that the other characters in the book were served to characterize Wonderman.
As far as he “looks” I think he looks like a masculine greek hero and does not need to look like Adonis to distinguish himself from his counterpart.
The only valid point I feel you made was that about him being a male superhero breaking the neck of a female psychic would be viewed differently than the opposite. The repercussions would also have been different and could have caused a normally coolheaded, peaceful, individual to feel betrayed and see things differently. He seems to be just as pigheaded as Diana.
At first glance I thought this book was showing a feminist version of the DCU, but after reading it, it seemed to me that I was incorrect. It read and felt the same as it did in it’s current Earth-1 version .
January 4th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
Juho — Two things about that. 1) The Themiscyrans were peaceful and warrior-skilled before Hercules came along. Their culture was set before they all retreated (and not evne all of them retreated.) 2) Diana is the only person on that island who wasn’t brutalized. She was born free of that baggage, and her idealism and compassion stemmed from being free of it. The Themiscyrans and Bana-Migdalls hate the patriarchal world because of what Hercules and his men did. When they get warlike, it’s because of that victimization.
You also have to take into account that Themiscyra was clearly based on the high-minded intellectual ideals of Athenian Philosophers rather than Spartan Warriors. Athens was an absurdly male-dominated culture. Going by the narrative that a deity equivalent to Athena was behind the Amazons, there is no reason there would not be a male-dominated culture based on Ancient Greece that valued wisdom, reason, and diplomacy over war-mongering. The equivalents to the Themiscyrans in a reverse-gender world would just be male Amazons. If Hercules and his men left the world to women, they would have formed a peaceful society that valued competition and athletics, because that’s the nature of the Pantheon behind them.
No mass enslavement and rape necessary. (And I’d like to emphasize that to the next person who reboots the franchise.)
January 4th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
Mister Grimm — You blast DC’s take on “Wonderman” but yet state that it made you want to punch something.
There’s no contradiction there. I disliked their male Wonder Woman analogue. It made me want to punch something.
Both creators of that book have experiece with strong female leads so I do not understand why you would go on to belive that the other characters in the book were served to characterize Wonderman.
Okay, first off, having written a “strong female lead” in the past does not exempt writers from criticism. Good writers have bad ideas, bad writers have good ideas and, most importantly, readers differ on what is a good idea and what is a bad idea. I’ve seen nasty fights on whether or not Buffy was a decent female character.
Now, use of the other characters for characterization of Wonderman has nothing to do with either creator’s credentials for writing female characters. Either some of your comment was cut out when you posted or you misunderstood that criticism.
See, when writing, you have a number of different ways to characterizing people — using Character A’s words and thoughts, using other characters’ words and thoughts about Character A, and using the narrative to describing Character A directly. All characters characterize each other in one way or another, and saying that Character A’s dialogue characterizes Character B is not the same as saying that the only thing that Character A exists for is to serve Character B’s plot. That was not my criticism. My criticism was that the characterization of Wonderman was sexist, and my proof of that characterization was what the female characters stated.
Now, when Character B describes Character A, is isn’t always characterization of Character A. Sometimes it’s characterization of both, by highlighting what Character B notices and likes or dislikes but having the description ring true about Character A. Sometimes it’s just characterization of Character A. Sometimes it’s only characterization of Character B, by showing that Character B is making an assumption about Character A that is false (an assumption often based on race, gender, or religion). The writer shows this by contradicting Character B’s assumptions with the thoughts, words and actions of Character A (Think J. Jonah Jameson giving his opinion on Spiderman for a classic example of this) or directly in the narrative (“Jonah was wrong about Spiderman. At that very moment, across town…”). There was nothing in the narrative or Wonderman’s words, thoughts, and actions to contradict what the other characters said about him, so it was logical to take what the other characters said as truth. Therefore, what the female characters said about Wonderman’s emotionalness, unreasonableness, and testosterone was characterization of Wonderman rather than characterization of them.
As far as he “looks” I think he looks like a masculine greek hero and does not need to look like Adonis to distinguish himself from his counterpart.
Well, he’s certainly distinguished from his counterpart. The problem is he’s supposed to be similar to her. Beauty, Compassion, and Wisdom are god-given powers Diana has. Aphrodite and Athena gave them to her. In a completely gender-reversed world, a gender-reversed God of Wisdom and God of Love would have given those powers to Wonderman. In a world where just the particular heroes have their genders reversed, Apollo is able to at least bestow Beauty and Reason on a male character, Eros can handle Compassion.
Wonderman’s designed to look hairy and brutish. I remember from what I’ve read of the classical period (mainly we’re thinking the Athens-style Greece if we’re talking Themiscyra) that inspired the Amazons that the sculptures of Hermes, Apollo, and Adonis tended to be more idealized, while scraggily beards and hairy chests were reserved for depictions of Hepheastus (who was portrayed as unattractive in most stories), Zeus (who was old and fatherly), and Herakles (who tended to be portrayed as kind of a drunken lout, like Wonderman is). If he got the same powers Diana did, logically he’d look more like Apollo (physical and mental perfection) than Herakles (brute strength). It goes back to how, even taking the culture into account, there’s an argument here that Diana’s persona could still have manifested in a male character. The creators of the book decided instead to go by the route of “gender changes everything” including powers here.
The only valid point I feel you made was that about him being a male superhero breaking the neck of a female psychic would be viewed differently than the opposite. The repercussions would also have been different and could have caused a normally coolheaded, peaceful, individual to feel betrayed and see things differently.
This is possible, but nothing in the story suggests that Wonderman is normally coolheaded or peaceful. On the contrary, the dialogue of the other characters suggests that this is how he normally behaves.
He seems to be just as pigheaded as Diana.
How so?
At first glance I thought this book was showing a feminist version of the DCU, but after reading it, it seemed to me that I was incorrect.
Exactly my feeling on the book. Why do you disagree?
It read and felt the same as it did in it’s current Earth-1 version.
Do you mean “Earth-1″ as in the Silver Age DCU setup, or “Earth-1″ as in “New Earth” or “Earth-52″ where the majority of the books are set?
Either way, you seem to feel it would be a bad thing to read and feel the same as in the normal version. It’s supposed to be just like the normal DCU, except with reversed-gender characters. That would be the feminist version of the regular DCU, one that shows the characters would are basically the same even if boy parts and girl parts are exchanged.