[Op-Ed] The Problem With Wonder Woman

As of this writing, Tom King’s Wonder Woman #3 is on the LCS shelves, and it’s yet another example of Tom King’s penchant for forced mischaracterization wrapped in a prickly blanket of ugliness. If you’re a fan of Tom King’s work, you have my sympathies, but for everyone else, King’s increasingly one-note stories are symptomatic of DC Comics’ continuing quality decline.

But today’s Op-Ed isn’t meant to rag on Tom King. Today is about making a plea to DC Comics to give one-third of their Holy Trinity the investment she deserves. It’s time to fix the problem with Wonder Woman.

The Lasso Of “Stuck In A Rut”

Tom King’s current take on Wonder Woman is another in a string of runs from creative teams who try to do something with the character but ultimately go nowhere.

Mariko Tamaki engaged in a lengthy battle between Wonder Woman and the Lex Luthor-ish machinations of Maxwell Lord and his neglected daughter, Emma Derapolis, aka Liar Liar. The run was not well-received because Liar Liar’s terrorist plans were poorly motivated and executed. The recognizable villain in Tamaki’s run, Maxwell Lord, turned out to be an uncaring father who would rather aid his longtime adversary than support his daughter.

Tamaki’s run ended near the commencement of Dark Knights: Death Metal, which culminated in Wonder Woman’s death. Her sacrifice saved the multiverse, sort of, which opened the door for a line-wide reboot of DC’s titles. That reboot never happened, and the DC titles were left in a slightly-to-semi-changed state. In short, Wonder Woman gave her life to save everyone, but the sacrifice amounted to little. However, Wonder Woman was still dead… or was she?

No, she didn’t stay dead for long. Wonder Woman eventually returned after an over-long arc and follow-up run by Becky Cloonan and Michael Conrad. Her resurrection was met by fellow DC characters with a collective shrug, and Diana simply moved back to standard adventures. However, her adventures were now frequently punctuated with current-day political tropes involving milk as a symbol of hate (I’m not kidding), evil misogynists who wear red baseball caps, and all the conspiracy tropes you’d mostly like find on 4Chan. The Cloonan/Conrad run ended with a lackluster series of mini-events involving Nubia (Trial of the Amazons) and a poorly-received arc about the Greek gods invading Earth… again.

What you see from this long string of attempts to make Wonder Woman meaningful is a lot of recycling. Stale ideas, the same villains, and similar themes keep popping up with little to show for it in the aftermath.

The Heart Of The Problem

The root cause of Wonder Woman’s troubles is clear – DC Comics doesn’t know what to do with her. That view is evidenced in three ways.

First, Wonder Woman’s rogues gallery is a lopsided mess with no standouts. If you ask casual comic readers to name the villains most associated with Wonder Woman, you’d certainly get Cheetah, maybe Dr. Psycho, and possibly Maxwell Lord. Regular readers would likely add Ares to the list, but you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone to name more than that handful.

Why? Because as villains, those characters aren’t particularly interesting or dangerous enough to be as formidable or more so than Wonder Woman. Ares comes closest to presenting a true threat, but he doesn’t get nearly as much use as Cheetah. In total, Wonder Woman doesn’t have any villains more powerful than her who would force her to push past her limits to win.

Second, Wonder Woman’s immortal heritage and social status are too hard for most modern writers to handle. Modern writers at the Big 2 are unduly focused on relationships, as they understand them, from our culture, but Themyscira is an isolated nation by design, absent of men by intent, and aside from Steve Trevor, Wonder Woman doesn’t have a track record of relationships on which modern writers can build.

Superman has his Lois. Batman has his Catwoman. Spider-Man has his MJ and on and on and on. Wonder Woman has a casually romantic connection to Steve Trevor that’s barely acknowledged or developed beyond the occasional smooch. That’s not to say Wonder Woman needs to have a love interest to improve, but she does need connections outside herself to give her motivation or motivate others. 

As it is, the only emotional connection brought up with any regularity is Diana’s connection to her mother, and even that relationship is strained. Humans are social creatures, so we partly relate to a character through their relationships. When Wonder Woman’s social network is best described as casual acquaintances, an on-again-off-agin romance, and a strained connection to her mother, DC comes very close to putting Wonder Woman in the loner category, which contradicts her espoused spirit of love and peace.

Third, the misogyny trope as the source of all of Wonder Woman’s conflicts is tired, played out, and in recent runs, downright silly. When you have a series of writers come in to take a crack at the world’s greatest warrior and Amazon, it’s shameful to realize the best this line of creators can do is push a message that Wonder Woman’s greatest perennial enemy is men.

By contrast, you never see Superman or Batman continually run up against a string of female villains because, as men, women are their greatest challenge. That would be ridiculous, and as a regular comic reader, you’d react to that trend almost immediately. So, why put Wonder Woman in that neverending cycle? 

Put all three problems together, and you start to see the pattern of poor imagination and poor development on DC’s part. When DC Editorial puts a perceived stake in the ground that says, “Wonder Woman is first and foremost a champion of feminism,” instead of treating her as a superhero first, the lack of growth is inevitable.

How To Fix Wonder Woman

Thankfully, fixing a character that’s stuck in a rut is simpler than fixing a character who commits a heinous act requiring a retcon. The first step is to decide on a new status quo for Wonder Woman and devote all storytelling to achieving that new status quo. Once achieved, let the stories flow.

If I’m making it sound simple, that’s because it is. I didn’t say easy. I said simple. Let’s take an example.

Wonder Woman, for all her strength and capability, is redundant in a world with a Superman, but Superman is vulnerable in the one area that sits firmly in Wonder Woman’s wheelhouse – magic.

It would make a world of sense to put Wonder Woman in charge of all magical, mystical, and supernatural events pertinent to Earth. Demons from the Underworld, cults from alternate dimensions, and gods from the multitude of Earht’s cultures and religions could all be developed and explored. Wonder Woman has already proven herself a good fit for Justice League Dark, so this idea extends an already-proven premise.

Is this the only way to go? No, of course not, but it’s a direction that makes sense. With enough Editorial discipline and reinforcement, this idea could be the right step in elevating Wonder Woman into the hero she has the potential to be.

It’s time to put the “Man’s World” rut to rest and give the world’s greatest warrior the world’s greatest challenges.

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