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.

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.)

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 .

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.