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Tweak says, "HORSES"

bluefall (bluefall) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-03-28 23:07:00

Entry tags:

char: wonder woman/diana of themyscira, creator: doug mahnke, creator: joe kelly, group: justice league of america, series: when wondy was awesome, series: world of wondy

When Wondy was Awesome, part 14 (Golden Perfect)
Thus far, I've mostly been showing Diana at her best; her defining moments of triumph and growth and victory. Diana being who she is, that is most of the picture; heroes are heroes because they get it right, unlike the rest of us. But even Diana fucks up sometimes, and, like Clark or Hal or Babs or anyone with that kind of crazy power, her fuck-ups can be catastrophic.

But entertaining!

So, let us observe one of these fuck-ups, by moving into the year 2002 and the Kelly era of JLA vol 3. It seems to me that Joe Kelly is very fond of Diana; he writes her in the forefront of the team and generally pretty well, with the exception of the idiotic Bruce/Diana romance (which is not only inappropriate on its own terms, but often causes him to diminish her for the sake of Bruce's masculinity). That comes later in his run, though, and we're here to look at his fabulous first arc, "Golden Perfect."

The timing here is pretty much immediately after "Our Worlds at War," although Diana's not being drawn with the Cheetah scar over her eye, so we're presumably post-Circe's battle of the sexes. Our story begins in an Athenean Women's Shelter, or a Wonder Woman Foundation home, or a Mindy Mayer building or whatever the hell they're calling them at that particular moment. This one is being run by actual amazons, and a woman speaking an unidentifiable language has come with her son, seeking sanctuary.

She has been chased.

We then jump to California, where Diana is helping J'onn face some inner demons with the lasso.

J'onn and Diana: they have a bond, folks. Also, I talked about this in more depth in re: her herself in the League of One post and will get around to it in terms of other people more fully with the Max stuff, but notice here yet another example of Diana neither fearing nor judging the most ugly and frightening inner, secret impulses of those around her.

Look! Diana has a sense of humor! And also, has Polly on the brain. A fair number of them got cut for space, but for those with the trade who're playing along at home, take a shot every time Diana says "Mother" in this arc and you'll get pretty damn drunk.

Um, yes, Plas. The correct answer is yes. (Kelly is not, particularly, fair to Plas, I think, but we're not here for him.)

The message, of course, is about the fight at the shelter, and the woman who was being protected there. The amazons failed to keep the monster from taking her son, and the JLA is debating getting involved.

Note Diana used the lasso on Ailani and knows her story is accurate. It is absolutely beyond question that Ailani's life in Jarhanpur was hell, and her child is a prisoner. That will be important in a minute.

So off they all go to the magic city Jarhanpur, only to discover that it is, apparently, a paradise. The people are happy, the architecture is glorious, and there's nary a whiff of brimstone nor a weeping child in sight. Diana, knowing from the lasso that this can't be taken at face value, is skeptical. Agressively so.

Diana calls for an instantaneous mental conference. Once again, I love these scenes for what they say about our heroes' self-perception. Diana's is totally beautiful, but I'm also a particular fan of Clark's Farmboy-in-a-cape.

Even though virtually no time at all has passed in the real world, Rama Khan is aware of their conference and, in fury at their "conniving," has forcibly expelled the lot of them from Jarhanpur.

Naturally, this results in a big fight. Diana is dead set on not leaving without the child, even though Rama Khan calls on the very earth to kind of whomp the whole League, badly. So she falls back on her old standby of using the lasso to force a powerful opponent to see the truth.

Ailani is right. Rama Khan is right. Diana is paralyzed.

The lasso, the unbreakable magic lasso, dissolves to shreds in her hands.

Minor digression here. J'onn and Supes both suffer from power glut. I don't mean in the sense that they're too powerful; it's that they have too *many* powers. Supes especially has so many powers that his powers have powers, and many of them are random and not easily connected by his theme as a hero. And I'm not even talking pre-Crisis here. This is true to the point that many of those powers don't see use for an entire author's run because he simply forgets the heroes in question even have them.

Diana, though, has it even worse than either of them. Her communion with animals and her immunity to fire are kind of off-beat and frequently forgotten, her resistance to and ability to sense magic is almost always forgotten; but I'd say her absolute most confused and underutilized gift is her at-will plane shift, the ability to wander freely around other planes of existence. Along with visiting Olympus whenever she likes, she's poached in the fields of the sun for healing golden fleece to restore a man to health, communed with Pan to understand insanity and save herself from Joker venom, and hunted for her mother's spirit in the realm of myth and metaphor. You can see why this doesn't get much play; it's too powerful and too ill-defined (try keeping someone in prison who can shift sideways off to another dimension with a thought). But it's nevertheless an established ability, and I give Kelly great credit for using it here and using it well.

Diana's being kind of childish here, but I can sympathize. The thing that is the very center of everything she is and has ever believed in has suddenly stopped making sense, and she's gone on an astral walkabout to find the Moirae and ask them what the hell is going on before she snaps completely. I would kind of want my friends to leave me to my self-hatred too.

Hmn. Here's your Runaways Skrull problem, right here. J'onn says he's asexual, and given that he's a shapeshifter, I'd like to believe him, but considering his behavior in everything else I've ever seen him in, he certainly seems to identify strongly as male, so... yeah, not so much.

That aside, the point of this is mostly that Diana needs a hug.

Meanwhile, in the non-astral planes where the rest of us have to live, weird shit is happening.

Funny, we are the center of the multiverse. I think the center of the universe would require time travel, though.

Incidentally, Rama Khan is still an asshole.

Note the general trend here - Earth as the center of the universe, women falling prey to a nusery rhyme. Truth has become subjective. Here, I'll let Atom explain it.

Gee, anyone have any ideas about whose fault this is?

Diana finally makes her way to the top of her astral mountain and finds the Fates waiting... covered in bugs and accusing her of rank arrogance.

Diana then disappears off the map completely; the League can't find her and J'onn can't touch her mind, and they're too busy for an exhaustive search because they're fighting the collective subjective consciousness of all humanity. The moon turns to cheese. The South really does start to rise again. Gods show up in ways that signal impending armageddon. And Batman fails to figure out the Riddler's riddles.

Batman does figure out what happened with Diana, sort of, and that she's gone to the obvious place.

J'onn makes a very good point here (also, I like how he says "we" even though this is all on Diana - it's a nice note of solidarity). The politics, particularly the race politics, of this arc are fairly troubling on some levels. But I give Kelly props for acknowledging that, and for the fact that the entire point of this story is that this decision isn't a binary right-or-wrong call. Still, this is a very dangerously white JLA to be telling this story with.

Oh, yeah, and as you might have figured, GL is Hal there because most of the world still thinks of Hal, not Kyle, as the League's "real" Green Lantern. I love this story. It hits like, two thirds of my literary kinks all at once.

Let's go back to Diana, shall we?

She's standing around in Jarhanpur, covered in the centipedes and other icky bugs that were crawling on the Moirae before, which are apparently lies given form. She's totally sanguine about this, which I have to say I admire. I would very much not be.

Rama Khan is still an asshole, by the way.

I like that Diana, of all of them, remains unaffected by outside perceptions. Yes, she's the epicenter and all, but I like to think it's really just a matter of Diana being Diana. Perhaps that's meta leaking in; I'm very comfortable with the idea that no matter how inaccurately some idiots may see her, not even ~~years of bad writing~~ reality breaking around her can change who Diana actually is - she's just too elementally Truthful for that.

Anyway, Diana's still not quite getting why the League has come and the fact that if it's her fight, it's everyone's fight. Because Diana has a really keen sense of responsibility, and would never assume anyone else should be responsible for cleaning up her mess. But she's happy they've come, or at least as much as she can be happy while she's going out of her mind with guilt and indecision.

Oh, Diana's face there gives me chills.

What is amazing about this scene? Diana surrenders her pride without surrendering her dignity. She gives a sincere, heartfelt apology, freely admits to her wrongdoing, and humbly seeks to make amends, and this in no way diminishes her. If anything, it makes her greater. That is a hell of a trick, particularly with a female character.

An even better trick: Diana figures it out. Notice Bruce and J'onn tell her what's going on and how to fix it... and they're completely wrong. That's incredibly important. Diana made this mess, singlehandedly; it's crucial that she be the one to clean it up, that she be the one who best understands how her weapon, her world, and her very calling actually operate. It's what makes her apology work, it's what makes this whole story work, that this is not Diana fucking up and the League bailing her out, but rather Diana fucking up and then making it right while the League supports her. Considering she isn't even always accorded that respect in her own title ::coughHeinbootcough::, to see it happen in JLA is astounding.

In other news, Rama Khan: still an asshole.

Diplomacy: Not always effective.

Jarhanpur: Not interested in being strongarmed.

Diana: Grateful for her friends.

I love how Diana has a sense of perspective about this. That sort of self-depreciating "I mangled reality because I want my mommy back" tells you just how aware she is of what a colossal fuck-up she was here. She's not a hypocrite and doesn't condemn Rama Khan for his blindness or pride. But neither does she absolve him of blame, and while she isn't happy about this disaster, she is satisfied that she, and the League, did the best they could in the end, and there is no place nor purpose here for guilt or recrimination.

Further key insight to her character can be seen in that, after almost destroying the universe because self-doubt in the avatar of Truth and highly magical nexus points don't mix:
- She calmly accepts that she screwed up and resolves to do better.
- She goes to work the next day.
- She finds her own answers.
- She re-asserts her beliefs and her value system.
- She remains confident in her decision once she's done what she feels to be the right thing.
- She accepts and appreciates the support of her friends.

It's impressive enough already that she's so awesome on her good days; I find it beyond heroic that she can respond so maturely and with such grace and honesty and self-consistency on such a very, very, very bad day as well.

Scans from JLA v3, issues 62-64, also found in the conveniently-named JLA 10: Golden Perfect.

Next time: Nessie Kapatelis returns, like you've never seen her before! Cassie is cool, for possibly the second to last time, enjoy it while you can! Secret and Empress cameo! Kon bitches about being an armadillo! Not one panel of Trevor-Sue Barnes! And I try very hard to present a Jimenez arc and remain unbiased! Everything is better with exclamation points!

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aaron_bourque
2009-03-30 09:55 pm UTC (link)

When something is a character's dominant portrayal for long enough, it ceases to be OOC.

I cannot disagree strongly enough.

When Diana is written as a moron, it makes her book annoying to read and her character look stupid. . . . When Bruce is written as an emotionally stunted, controlling jackass, it hurts Babs and Dick and Tim and especially Cass, it fucks over the Justice League, it gets characters killed (Steph, Ted), and makes half the DCU look twisted and foolish or cheap or overtolerant or like an abused spouse who comes back for more.

In other words, bad Diana effects only Diana (and maybe her ever changing supporting cast), whereas bad Bruce effects everyone. And yet, and yet, they keep . . . doing . . . it.

Either they need to get rid of the DC Universe as they intend it and bring back "each book stands alone", or writers need to stop thinking they have to put their mark on a character, and actually follow along with who that character is. Like with a bible, or frickin' editorial vision or something.

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bluefall
2009-03-30 11:16 pm UTC (link)

I cannot disagree strongly enough.

But it *has* to be. If I'm going to say that the platonic Batman is the real Batman, that no matter how shitty the Miller/Moore heir post-Crisis Bruce gets, it's always OOC and always wrong and the real guy is the Bronze Age/DCAU one...

... then I also have to say that the real Wonder Woman is the pre-Crisis boy-chasing weirdly sexist clusterfuck whose powers don't work when a man binds her wrists. I have to say the real Supergirl is the abhorrent thing Loeb dropped in our lap when she was introduced, no matter how much work they put into fixing her and no matter how golden she may one day become. I have to say the real Black Canary is the useless captivity-prone limp fish she was before Birds.

If I permit enough persistent and consistent writing and characterization to change my perception of a character for the better, I cannot forbid enough persistent and consistent writing and characterization from changing my perception of a character for the worse. Either how a character is presented matters, or it doesn't.

Like with a bible, or frickin' editorial vision or something.

I dunno, isn't current editorial vision kind of the *opposite* of "who that character is," at both companies? "Who that character was when I bought comics" or "what event can we jam this big name into" are the best you're going to get from the ~~IIC~~ EIC types these days.

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aaron_bourque
2009-03-30 11:44 pm UTC (link)

platonic Batman is the real Batman . . . the real Wonder Woman is the pre-Crisis boy-chasing weirdly sexist clusterfuck whose powers don't work when a man binds her wrists

But she's not the platonic WW, you've shown us the platonic WW.

Either how a character is presented matters, or it doesn't.

It does indeed matter. Unfortunately, nobody's listening.

isn't current editorial vision kind of the *opposite* of "who that character is," at both companies?

I don't know, anymore. When 52 was coming out, of the the interviews with whoever was giving interviews that week said that the writers and artists and editors were supposed to be caretakers of the characters reputation. That's the sort of editorial vision I was talking about, but you're right. Their caretaking has been more like neglect, strapping them into wheelchairs, rolling them to the window, leaving the blinds drawn, and sticking a tube of applesauce-like substance down their throat until they choke to death or the substance comes back up, leaving aside the whole "Yeah, I'm not gonna clean that up" approach when they soil themselves, and failing to take action when their body is covered in bedsores, but it's okay, as long as you always take your medication each day, and come and join in on the arts and crafts fun, see how much fun we're having during carefully regimented blocks of fun, why aren't you participating, do you want to be taken back to your room, now, do you want to lose your television privileges, and we were thinking of sprinkling some cinnamon in your [open verbal-fingerquotes]lunch[close verbal-fingerquotes] but if you don't join in the spirit of things, we may have to rethink that!

. . .

Sorry, my mom used to work in a nursing home. It was always a joy when she had a story about her day. And by joy I mean torture. And by story I mean torture. And by day I mean torture.

Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; and by torture, I mean torture.

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bluefall
2009-03-31 08:44 pm UTC (link)

But she's not the platonic WW, you've shown us the platonic WW.

But she only exists because somebody looked at pre-Crisis Wonder Woman and said "well, this is junk, let's change it, a different take would make her more interesting/compelling/a better sale." Which is exactly what happened with Bruce - DKR was a different take, somebody thought it was a more interesting one that would sell better, and they changed it. That thinking saved Diana. That thinking made Batman a monstrosity. That thinking made Tony Stark a supervillain, and it made Shulkie quite possibly the only female spin-off character ever to be massively interesting, important and successful completely unconnected to her distaff counterpart (Babs doesn't count, as Oracle is not a distaff Batman). Lo, the muses they giveth, and the muses they taketh away.

and by torture, I mean torture.

But what do you mean by "always"?

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aaron_bourque
2009-04-01 12:34 pm UTC (link)

but she only exists because

Tut tut tut. The point is she exists. One day, the same will hold true for Batman, I have to have faith that it will. And every other character out there. Because there is no such thing as finite awesome, or finite love, and someday, they will get their due.

I may even live long enough to see it! You never know! Human life expectancy is only in the 70s-80s now, but by the time we're in our 70-80s, it could be longer!

But what do you mean by "always"?

Enh, whenever.

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arrlaari.livejournal.com
2009-03-31 12:12 am UTC (link)

then I also have to say that the real Wonder Woman is the pre-Crisis boy-chasing weirdly sexist clusterfuck whose powers don't work when a man binds her wrists. I have to say the real Supergirl is the abhorrent thing Loeb dropped in our lap when she was introduced, no matter how much work they put into fixing her and no matter how golden she may one day become. I have to say the real Black Canary is the useless captivity-prone limp fish she was before Birds.

By this system, you'd have to say that the real Batman was the golden age guy who didn't blink when the bad guys died, (and I honestly don't know anything about him other than that he was so boring), not the totally awesome dude with issues (serious. issues.) in DCU/Bronze Age.

If I permit enough persistent and consistent writing and characterization to change my perception of a character for the better, I cannot forbid enough persistent and consistent writing and characterization from changing my perception of a character for the worse. Either how a character is presented matters, or it doesn't.

False binary. My policy is that my perception of how a character should be works like judicial review: There's stare decisis, but that doesn't hold against a good argument, e.g. "these qualities cause the character to suck, therefore the character ought not have such qualities." Excellence is the highest standard - the true Wonder Woman is the best Wonder Woman, regardless of what may have come before or after that Wondy, and likewise for Batman, Cassie, Joker, etc.

There's a presumption against a truly novel characterization, but that's reasonable. Such are, by this system, claiming to be the very best take on the character ever, and after the length of time and number of takes that have accumulated, that's a pretty tall claim.

As much as people mock Johns for retconning Hal Jordan's heel turn into "a yellow fear bug possessed him!" I feel a consensus that Evil!Hal was terrible and ham-handed, whereas redeemed Hal, under Geoff's pen, is as good and interesting as Hal has ever been.

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	darkknightjrk 2009-03-31 01:34 am UTC (link)
	There's also the phoenomon known as "fanon." Basically--your interpetation is as valid as the next guy. Want your modern Wondy next to a saner Batman? Why not? (Reply to this) (Parent)

bluefall
2009-03-31 08:36 pm UTC (link)

Excellence is the highest standard - the true Wonder Woman is the best Wonder Woman

Fair enough, when trying to decide "what the real" version of a character is. If somebody asks me to write "a Batman story," totally divorced from all other considerations, I am naturally going to use the Batman who is closest to the platonic ideal, something that resembles DCAU or Bronze Age Bruce, something like a genuine hero.

That doesn't solve the problem of "what version exists now," however. Paranoid, insane, emotionally stunted, hostile asshole may be OOC for the ideal, "real" Batman, but given the (essentially) coherent DCU, it is not out of character; it can't be. Ted Kord is still dead. War Games still happened. Sasha Bordeaux is still half OMAC. Cass is still... well, okay, Cass is a whole other issue, but you know what I mean. As long as these things are still true, Bruce still did those things, which means a consistent and repeated pattern of behavior exists, which means that that character is still that character.

Maybe the "real" Batman isn't like that. But DCU Batman is.

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