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Tweak says, "Leather walls breathing"

thebigapricot (thebigapricot) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-07-19 18:49:00

Entry tags:

char: big barda/barda free, char: huntress/helena bertinelli, char: wonder woman/diana of themyscira, title: jla

DC Divas?
So I broke down and bought "Marvel Divas". Maybe because the reviews weren't that bad. Or they had the groove-tastic 70's variant cover. Or maybe it was the two three margaritas I downed at the restaurant down the street during lunch.

So I got to thinking. What if DC did a Divas/SATC type story? You know, have some of their lead women get together to discuss their love lives. All while doing some female bonding at a spa.

Oh wait. They already did.

3 and 1/3 pages from a 10 page story from JLA Giant number 2.

Wonder Woman, the Huntress and Big Barda are in NYC fighting "a cadre of high tech devil worshipping freaks".

Huntress, being Huntress, is pissed because Diana and Barda jumped in and helped her. She doesn't need their help, she can carry her own weight. And then she tells Barda to go to Hell. Barda doesn't take this well. Diana intervenes

Diana suggests they all head off to chilax at "a far better place"(can you guess?)

Manis? Pedis? Half-dressed Amazons? Sounds like Paradise to me!

Diana goes off to say hi to Polly. But also to give Barda and Helena time to bond. In fact, Barda doesn't even know Helena's "real name". (Barda misunderstands her when she tells her and thinks it is Helen. like in "Helen of Troy" -- so the bonding isn't going too well) But then Helena starts spilling. And Barda does too.

So is Bats Helena's Mr. Big?

But it's spa time.

After Barda mentions love, Helena asks Diana about what's up with her and Aquaman.

Diana says the ladies have to stop acting like enemies. She suggests they undergo a trial that all Amazons undergo. Someone has to move a giant statue of Aphrodite. Diana suggests that Helena try it. (By now they are done with their pampering and are hanging out in togas. Mini-togas.) So Helena lounges in her mini-toga to figure out how she could possibly move this all by herself. Hmm. What if she had some help from her sisters?

Diana congratulates Helena on figuring out that she doesn't have to "carry the weight" all by herself. And this leads to the most gratuitous shot yet. I know hard to believe in a story that already had them half naked for most of it.

Stay classy DC. And don't you worry about the ladies' pedis because Diana notes "it takes more than a few moments of labor to smear Amazon nail polish."

Trial done it's off to more girl fun and female bonding.

As you can probably guess there were no women involved in the creative (no I am wrong the colorist was female). As this came out in the Fall of 1999 just at the end of the second season of "Sex and the City", I can't help but think this was driven by the show. Well, that and the desire to provide much fan service. The story is called "Madmen and Mudbaths" and was written by Jason Hernandez-Rosenblatt.

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	fleur_de_liz 2009-07-20 01:57 am UTC (link)
	Psh, Barda, you wouldn't have needed help. You could've picked that statue up all by yourself. (Reply to this)

	volksjager 2009-07-20 01:57 am UTC (link)
	Hmm I would have thought thats what "birds of prey" was. Thgo' this is nice. (Reply to this)

	fredneil.livejournal.com 2009-07-20 02:25 am UTC (link)
	And people say Marston typed his stories with one hand. Compared to this, his was the dignified, respectful version of Wonder Woman. Arguably, a less crack-filled one, too. (Reply to this)

	darkknightjrk 2009-07-20 02:45 am UTC (link)
	"So is Bats Helena's Mr. Big?" Wouldn't that really be Vic? I don't know--I only have second-hand knowledge of the show. Every time I saw it come on and I try to watch some, my brain would go, "Goddamnit I could be watching something far more entertaining. Like the Golf Channel." (Reply to this) (Thread)

aaron_bourque
2009-07-20 04:35 am UTC (link)

Oh, god, I don't even know where to start. Let me just say that Huntress and Batman's relationship has always been complex, so complex most writers tend to just go for the antagonistic superficial relationship, and leave it at that.

Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; actually, no. I'm not going to leave it at that. DC fucked up when they introduced Huntress after COIE by distancing her from Batman (originally, she wasn't even from Gotham, just a rape victim from New York who wanted to get even). Now, they've tried spackling over the problems by giving her a long and sometimes complicated troubled backstory, but that still doesn't help with the fundamental trouble: The Silver/Bronze Age Huntress was intrinsically tied to Batman. There was no getting away from it, even when Earth-2 Batman died of old age, she'd still show up at the JSA/JLA annual meetings and flock to Earth-1 Batman. She still kept her relationship with Batman, she still kept ties to Batman. Nowadays, it's almost impossible to get them in the same room together, and even if they do it's usually not long after they start acting like wet cats in a sack, verbally if nothing else. If DC wanted a female vigilante who wasn't part of the Bat-family, they shouldn't have used the Huntress brand, who as a hero was most tied up as BATMAN'S DAUGHTER!!!!! They could have made her Tigress, Lioness, Cheetess, Mama Bear, the Devil in Blue, something, ANYTHING. And then they compound the problem by making their relationship inherently antagonistic! Ridiculously so in many cases, and until Gail Simone was leaving BoP, they never progressed past that, so it seemed like a retread of a retread of a retread. In fact, I don't even know what they relationship is now, have they even shared a scene since Gail left BoP?

What I would have done was tied her to Bruce some how. Maybe like, when they were children, the Bertinellis ran in similar circles as the Waynes? Sure, Helena was much younger than Bruce, but Helena had a lot of siblings. Maybe, even if it was just once, li'l Bruce got pulled into this huge family and saw what it would be like to have a bunch of brothers and sisters, and Helena was one of them? And then later, after their respective familial tragedies, but before Bruce leaves Gotham to learn every skill in the world that might one day help him fight crime, they reconnect, and realize that they're not alone, that other people out there who have had to live through such sorrow exist . . . .

Yeah. I like that. Even if it's just brief, it's SOMETHING. Even minor moments in childhood can have big impacts on adulthood. So Helena leaves Gotham and gets training in assassination, and Bruce leaves Gotham and trains himself in EVERYTHING EVER OH GOD, and then Bruce comes back to Gotham and becomes Batman, and then later Helena comes back to Gotham and becomes Huntress. Yeah. And now they have an intrinsic tie--Bruce Wayne and Helena Bertinelli--and their relationship as civilians contrasts with their relationship behind the masks! Yes, I'm liking that idea a lot. It could be played for irony: as civilians, they had a shared contact, and both understand what it means to carry survivor's guilt, and anger at the tragedy and all, but they are both pretending NOT to be who they really are, so they can't quite connect they way they could as children, never realizing that if they actually let their masks slip they'd have EVEN MORE IN COMMON. It could be played for laughs: Bruce and Helena are friends, Batman and Huntress can't stand each other! It could be played for tension, dramatic, romantic, whatever: they share empathy with each others tragedies, they share the Gotham "night"life.

So.

Many.

Possibilities.

Damn it, DC. See what kind of opportunities you miss when you try to wall off your shared Universe?

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runespoor7
2009-07-20 06:29 am UTC (link)

Thematically, Batman and Huntress are still inherently linked. He saw his parents get murdered in front of him when he was eight, she saw her parents get murdered in front of her when she was eight. Apart from that, DC's mostly playing the connection to show her as a shadow archetype, but I think it's still acknowledging that link. Sometimes canon also asks the question whether she's unlike Batman or (too much) like him, as well.

All that only works for the themes, but changing Bruce and Helena being related meant that DC was going to have to sacrifice some aspect of their relationship if Bruce having biological (adult) children was out of the question. Helena being younger than Batman and having been a vigilante for less time than he at least gives some legitimacy to Batman attempting to order her around.

I would argue that Huntress is part of the Batfamily if not the inner circle, even before Oracle got involved, simply because she was an active vigilante in Gotham and her relationship with the (rest of the) Bats went beyond the strictly professional. Calling her Huntress means that she is part of the family, imo.

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	kingrockwell 2009-07-20 10:21 pm UTC (link)
	To be fair, Helena's Daddy Issues towards Bruce have been extensively explored in-canon. And you can call it plain ol' antagonistic if you want to, but I've always seen it as family on the outs. Bruce puts on his biggest super-patriarch hat when he deals with Helena. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

yaseen101
2009-07-21 02:02 pm UTC (link)

One reason why I couldn't connect with Huntress because whenever there is a scene with Huntress it comes with a side order of Bat-dickery. I mean when I see Bat Dickery, my brain practically shuts off and concentrates solely on the Dickery part. It's gotten to the point where even when Bats does have a logical and rational reason to be mad at Huntress, it makes her seem like the victim. Batman is suppoused to be a Detective/tactician, he should be the most rational and introspective one on the JLA, a good part of Detective work involves coming up theories and looking up stuff from different angles, he shouldn't be as one note as writers make him out to be.

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kingrockwell
2009-07-21 09:58 pm UTC (link)

Batman/Huntress: Cry For Blood #5 starts out with a moment of Bruce and Helena that actually pretty fair to the both of them, particularly Bruce's line "I'm trying very hard to trust you. You don't make it easy...but neither do I." Of course, seeing them deal with each other is a lot more fun when Vic Sage is standing in the background of every panel with the biggest smirk in the world!
Vic's line at the end, "Family's always embarrassing, huh?" just sweetens the pot even more.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	kingrockwell 2009-07-20 10:28 pm UTC (link)
	:D (Reply to this) (Parent)

	ashtoreth 2009-07-20 02:58 am UTC (link)
	I feel the urge to have Wonder Woman pimp for Amazon Nail Polish. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	a little part of me just died, but... parsimonia 2009-07-22 01:37 am UTC (link)
	"Tough as nails!" (Reply to this) (Parent)

seriousfic
2009-07-20 03:21 am UTC (link)

I can't help but think that the after-spa would be funner to read.

Scott: Hi honey, how was your day?

Barda: I fought the mighty legions of the Devil's acolytes, armed with the latest in military technology! Then, I went for a mani and pedi...

Scott: Umm...

Barda: Shaping the free edge as the blacksmith shapes the blade! Filing the nail like the hunter hones his arrow! Also a cuticle treatment and nail polish... lacquered like the blood of my enemies across the battlefield!

Scott: Your hair looks nice too.

Barda: It was disciplined by the most lethal of Amazon methods!

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	aaron_bourque 2009-07-20 04:36 am UTC (link)
	And then they have rampant sex. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	seriousfic 2009-07-20 04:43 am UTC (link)
	All my Scott/Barda anecdotes end that way. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	aaron_bourque 2009-07-20 04:56 am UTC (link)
	Not just yours. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	seriousfic 2009-07-20 05:05 am UTC (link)
	Yes. ALL SCOTT/BARDA ANECDOTES MUST END IN SEX. It's how Kirby would've wanted it. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	gargoylekitty 2009-07-20 05:58 am UTC (link)
	Trufax. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	(Anonymous) 2009-07-20 06:54 am UTC (link)
	"Monkey-fisted muscle-knots?" Yeesh... for some reason, that part out of all the others sticks out the most. (Reply to this)

	unknownscribler 2009-07-20 10:22 am UTC (link)
	How can you not post the money shot?? Please post it. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	thebigapricot 2009-07-20 11:54 am UTC (link)
	Which one? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	unknownscribler 2009-07-20 05:15 pm UTC (link)
	And this leads to the most gratuitous shot yet. I know hard to believe in a story that already had them half naked for most of it. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	greenmask 2009-07-20 10:26 am UTC (link)
	Some of those poses really make me want to shout laaand. Would I be wrong? I did not know that cucumber was ever a torso treatment! Well. I have learnt something today. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	thebigapricot 2009-07-20 11:43 am UTC (link)
	Not Laaand, Yannick Paquette. I have done my fair share of spa stuff and it was a surprise to me as well. I could see it being relatively cooling though after a bikini wax which all three women appear to have gotten. One would hope/assume the Amazons have "perfected" that art as much as they have that of manis and pedis. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	greenmask 2009-07-20 11:46 am UTC (link)
	Bikini waxes include the chesty area? D: D: (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	thebigapricot 2009-07-20 12:16 pm UTC (link)
	No, that's for the Amazon's salad bar. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	sistermagpie 2009-07-20 01:59 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, I totally didn't realize cucumbers exfoliated. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	mosellegreen 2009-07-20 01:59 pm UTC (link)
	"Amazon nail polish"? Sounds like something Marston would've come up with. (Reply to this)

	janegray 2009-07-20 04:29 pm UTC (link)
	Wait, "millennia"? How old is Barda? (Reply to this) (Thread)

seriousfic
2009-07-20 06:10 pm UTC (link)

Not that old. Going by most canon, she's as old as any other character, unless you want to spot her spending a lot of time either as a Female Fury before meeting Scott or after Scott's escape, which Byrne does in his retcon, but only a few hundred years' worth (which is still bullshit, because that's a few hundred years of Barda following Darkseid's orders after having the moral reawakening Kirby depicted. Yeah, don't think so).

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	kingrockwell 2009-07-20 10:31 pm UTC (link)
	Well, to this story's credit, at least it has the characters being heroic, and learning teamwork, blah blah blah. It actually uses the characters it put in the story, instead of projecting some other bullshit onto their names/appearance. Also, crack. (Reply to this)

	axolotl_lan 2009-07-21 07:25 pm UTC (link)
	There is much icon fodder in these pages. I really do love this story. (Reply to this)

ex_agata254
2010-04-13 09:54 am UTC (link)

I attended the Women in Comics panel at NY Comic Con and I can assure you that no one in the room expressed a desire to see female superheroes with SATC-style boyfriend drama. I did learn, however, that there are some pretty awesome women who write and illustrate comics and graphic novels. Put THEM in charge and maybe we can get a kickass foursome of superheroes that we'll actually want to read about.

mmm...latex and sex toys - what an arousing cocktail!

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