Rewrite Wonder Woman? I Don’t think So!

So, if you know me, you know I love my Won­der Woman!

I am not sure if my infat­u­a­tion start­ed with the Com­ic or the TV Show, but either way it start­ed when I was very young.

I still remem­ber that I would gath­er every Sat­ur­day at noon to watch Chan­nel 9 for the TV Show.

I could care­less about Bat­man, did­n’t real­ly watch any Super­man. But any­thing with Won­der Woman in it, I watched religiously!

I even remem­ber my mom tak­ing me to a Comic­Con in the Twin Cities (even though I vague­ly remem­ber it, nor did I know what it was.) All I remem­ber was stop­ping to view any­thing Won­der Woman. I think I walked away with two but­tons and a T‑Shirt.

So for me, Won­der Woman has been icon­ic in my life. I have col­lec­tables, all the TV Shows, and more. I even have my kids hooked on the WW as well.

But with all things great, peo­ple feel the need to change it. DC is revamp­ing her look:

http://dcu.blog.dccomics.com/2010/06/30/j‑michael-straczynski-on-wonder-woman%E2%80%99s-new-costume/

And I feel it’s crap. As a design­er, I under­stand the impor­tance of change and fresh­en­ing up a look over time. You need to so that you can gain read­er­ship that you lose over the years. But this.…

An “Urban” Won­der Woman is not who she is. You can’t just re-write his­to­ry with a sim­ple “time­line” switch, just so that you can give her a new out­fit and a new sto­ry. She is an ama­zon princess. At her core, that is who she is, not to men­tion a one-time god­dess. You can’t just wipe that away and make her a street rat. I feel that is belit­tling who she is at her core, and to me, takes away the grace that she has had as a character.

This has been my frus­tra­tion with DC comics late­ly. I have been an avid sub­scriber for years for the WW line. Late­ly I have felt like I have been miss­ing gaps in the sto­ry line, or that they take a direc­tion, then just switch gears to a new sto­ry, with­out fin­ish­ing the first one. I have felt so lost.

And it bugs me to no end when they con­tin­ue the sto­ry in oth­er comics, like the JLA. So I sub­scribed to that one…and then she isn’t even in it any­more. GRRR.

Speak­ing of JLA, how are they going to adress that now? Is she going to be in the JLA? This time­line thing would affect most of their sto­ry arcs, not just hers. What about the Teen Titans, Troia is her “sis­ter” and one-time Won­der Girl in the Teen Titans, and what about the cur­rent Won­der Girl…how did Won­der Woman befriend her and get her to be WG and into the Teen Titans?

I don’t like it. But I espe­cial­ly don’t like the costume…

They tried doing this before and it did­n’t last either. Mat­ter of fact, this new look, looks vageu­ly famil­iar to what they tried before. Look at these photos:

Now, if you look at the first pho­to, I want you to notice a few things: The min­i­mize belt, the jack­et with stars on it. The Black tights, the gloves, the straps over the shoul­ders and the boots.

Now if you look at the last pho­to (or the one below, last ver­sion on the right), what do you see? Notice the min­i­mal belt, the jack­et with the stars on it, the black tights, (gloves, even though not shown here, were in the com­ic), the straps you can’t see, but the exact same type of straps were shown in the com­ic and the boots…plain black.

If it did­n’t work then, it ain’t going to work now. My only hope in all this is where the writer says this:

d) find some way to straight­en out the time­line and rec­on­cile what was to what is.

That at least gives them a way to revert back, if the fan base screams loud enough. Which I hope we do.

One of my favorite art­works of Won­der Woman hangs in my office, its a draw­ing that DC did when William Moul­tan Mars­den, cre­ator of Won­der Woman, passed away. It shows all the vari­a­tions of Won­der Woman over the years, and the var­i­ous Won­der Girls and Troia (Don­na Troy…not to be con­fused with Dean­na Troi from Star Trek).

So, I leave you with a gallery of some of my Favorite shots of Won­der Woman (and a recap of the images above)…who knows what comes next.