InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "let me be your oxygen"

mosellegreen (mosellegreen) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-08-05 10:05:00

Entry tags:

char: maxima, char: wonder woman/diana of themyscira

My Golden Age Wonder Woman posts are finished!
That's right, yesterday's was the last of 'em. Now, for other GA WW enthusiasts, I posted scans from every issue in the first four volumes of the Archive Editions, plus from the 70's collection with the intro by Gloria Steinem. So if anyone wants to pick up where I left off by buying volume five or later, feel free because I'm done.

For legality, here's something I found on the web last weekend. If it's been posted here before, I wasn't able to find it. There's been discussion here lately about whether the Amazons were lesbians, so when I found this I had to share it.

(Post a new comment)

	shanejayell 2009-08-05 03:02 pm UTC (link)
	lol That's Justice League Task Force, as I recall (Reply to this)

	selenesue 2009-08-05 03:04 pm UTC (link)
	Yowza! (Reply to this)

	icon_uk 2009-08-05 03:38 pm UTC (link)
	Meh, that seems rather... callow for Diana, I prefer the discussion during the first diplomatic visit from non-Themiscriyans to Themiscriya, where the Amazons are as honest and upfront about it as the Comics Code will allow. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	psychop_rex 2009-08-06 06:38 am UTC (link)
	I agree - catty humor is not her style. I remember, in fact, reading an issue of WW where Lois Lane does a whole 'day in the life' thing with Diana, and she mentions that, while her humor can occasionally get mildly salty, it never verges into bitchiness. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	mullon 2009-08-05 03:40 pm UTC (link)
	So they all think it is a good idea. Interesting... (Reply to this) (Thread)

	dr_hermes 2009-08-05 08:07 pm UTC (link)
	They're certainly pushing for an answer from someone who doesn't want to volunteer information. Not very polite. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	cardinalx 2009-08-05 04:12 pm UTC (link)
	2 things that I´m confused about here: 1) Is Diana implying that she´s had sex with some of the other amazons? 2) The "woman monarch" Maxima speaks of, is that Hippolyta? Apart from that scene with her stroking Phillippus´ chin, I haven´t seen any indication of her having an amazon lover. (Reply to this)

	dr_hermes 2009-08-05 04:17 pm UTC (link)
	Sexist remark from Vixen, there. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	khamelea 2009-08-05 09:39 pm UTC (link)
	You're projecting your modern sensibilities onto the work. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	icon_uk 2009-08-05 10:17 pm UTC (link)
	This is, what? 10 years old? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	khamelea 2009-08-05 10:18 pm UTC (link)
	And doesn't that make my comment funny? No? Bah. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	dr_hermes 2009-08-05 10:55 pm UTC (link)
	(I thought it was funny, kind of a running gag.) (Reply to this) (Parent)

	fungo_squiggly 2009-08-05 04:39 pm UTC (link)
	Maxima: "Lesbian sex is disgusting and unnatural!" Diana: "I might possibly have had sex with my fellow Amazons, maybe." Maxima: "Omigod that's awesome!" (Reply to this) (Thread)

	ccsharumun 2009-08-05 05:01 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, that's basically what I read too. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

dr_hermes
2009-08-05 08:06 pm UTC (link)

Maxima's tone of voice would make a huge difference. She could be saying "Cute" in a disdainful way, like, "Oh yeah, that's real cute" (as you'd say it when someone knocks something over. Or she could be adnmiring Wonder Woman's non-committalanswer. She's not clapping her hands and saying how much she likes the news. The undistinguished bare-minumum art makes it even more ambiguous.

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	cardinalx 2009-08-06 03:54 pm UTC (link)
	"Those amazons, do they...do they go, eh? Know what I mean, nudge nudge, nudge nudge." "Look, are you insinuating something?" "No, no, no, no, no...Yes." "Well? "Well, I mean, you know, you´ve done it...with a lady." "Yes?" "What´s it like?" (Reply to this) (Parent)

bluefall
2009-08-07 09:29 pm UTC (link)

I always read it as Maxima thinking Diana's joking - "har har, okay, I get it, you just all abstained or masturbated, whatever." Which also conveniently and cravenly allows DC an out from actually admitting anything about Diana or her people, because the readership is invited to laugh along with Maxima and Vixen if they so desire and agree with their apparent interpretation that Diana is joshing them.

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psychop_rex
2009-08-06 06:43 am UTC (link)

So just what is Maxima referring to? Is the 'woman monarch' Hippolyta? Does this take place on Themyscira? Those don't look like Amazons in the background, but I suppose anything's possible.
Oh, and am I the only one who wishes the sequence with Wondy had ended with her drinking from her cup, and the reaction shot from the others? Because that by itself is great - it comes across as a 'modesty forbids me' sort of moment. If she'd smiled and waggled her eyebrows or something, it would have been perfect.

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	cardinalx 2009-08-06 12:05 pm UTC (link)
	To me, Dianas look as she replies has a certain daydreaming feel to it, like just thinking about the other amazons and their 3000 years of lesbian experience makes her weak in the knees. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	psychop_rex 2009-08-06 08:35 pm UTC (link)
	Perhaps, but her line kinda ruins it. Anyway, I'm not sure I like the way this artist draws women's faces - I think the nose and lips are a trifle too exaggerated. The profile shots aren't bad, but there's something a little... off about the straightforward shots. It's like all the features were chosen from the same set - there's very little variation. (Reply to this) (Parent)

bluefall
2009-08-07 07:22 pm UTC (link)

They're at some hidden nation of women - amazon-style, somewhat, but not actually amazons, just some random totally other thing for the sake of making a lot of vaguely-tone-deaf, occasionally funny sex and gender jokes. J'onn has been undercover there, masquerading as female, and the queen has fallen in love with him and wants to force him to marry her. They're trying to figure out a way to get him out of it, IIRC, which is more complicated than a smash-n-grab because there's some kind of sociopolitical instability thing associated with the queen being unattached.

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psychop_rex
2009-08-07 08:51 pm UTC (link)

Huh. Well, THAT'S a missed opportunity. J'onn could have stayed there as the queen's consort - I mean, he's Martian, right? He's not generally attracted to either gender of humans (I say GENERALLY because he did fall in love with Scorch), and he's got a number of different cover identities all over the world - why not make this another one of them? It could have added a whole new side to things - I mean, there ARE no gay or lesbian rulers in the real world, as far as I know, and precious few gays or lesbians in the DCU as a whole (otherwise, they wouldn't be pointing at Batwoman and going 'Hey! Hey, over here! Look! WOOT! WOOT! Lesbian!'). It could've made for an interesting exploration into J'onn's personality - what IS the sexuality of a shapeshifting polymorph, and how would he use it when placed in a position of power? Instead, they're all 'ewww, this is gross but strangely titillating. Can't have that - must get him out of here ASAP.' Feh.

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bluefall
2009-08-07 09:26 pm UTC (link)

I think they did sort of *try* for that a little, because J'onn does come to care for the queen somewhat and there's some brief gender-identity angst where he decides he can't stay with her as a woman because it would be a lie, but I didn't get the sense that anyone involved in the writing process actually knew what they were talking about and the whole story hinges on a doggedly unimaginative perception of J'onn as very much a straight cis male like any average human (and of course the fratboy jokes about his discomfort pretending to be otherwise).

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psychop_rex
2009-08-07 09:53 pm UTC (link)

Well, to be fair, he DID have a wife and child back on Mars, which makes him the Martian version of straight, but he's a MARTIAN - no one on Earth is even his species. (Well, there's Miss Martian, of course, but I somehow don't think that'd work, given that she's the Martian version of a girl scout.) And even if he IS strictly a straight male in human as well as Martian terms - well, so he can appreciate her as a woman in manly a manly fashion, and receive pleasure from her in a womanly fashion. (I will confess that I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, being, y'know, a straight male myself, but really, you'd think that J'onn could be a bit more fluid about this.)

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bluefall
2009-08-07 11:16 pm UTC (link)

Well, sure, his attraction seems limited to women, and between his behavior (averaged over all authors from his inception till his current zombification) and what we've been shown about his culture over the years, martians certainly seem to have some form of relatively fixed gender identity. But there's really no reason to think that corresponds to a fixed body identity in his species. When they're in their normal conehead forms there's no visible sexual dimorphism, and J'onn seems equally likely to dress up as a female human as he does a male one, even in those decade-long take-a-dead-person's-life research stints of his. If his sense of himself as male carried over into his human physical traits you'd expect him to avoid long-term female masquerades... Plus we know nothing about martian sex, which if it's anything other than Tab A Slot B style, means J'onn's already doing weird abnormal-for-him shit with his tackle to suit his mate when he dates someone like Scorch.

Though, yes, in fairness, a lot of that hadn't been written yet - this stuff was written a little prior Ostrander's MANHUNTER series, so there wasn't much to contradict the default "he's a straight cis white Christian human male with a thin green veneer" take he'd inherited from the Silver Age.

I'm not sure anything excuses this scene, though.

(Oh, and on re-reading, the queen is actually a hermaphrodite, hence her queenly status - J'onn freaks out and bails on the consummation ceremony at the sight of teal peen. Which brings all those questions even more starkly into the light - not just the "how similar is martian sex" question, but the much more direct real-world issue of "what constitutes gender;" obviously the queen is female if she thinks of herself as female, but what does that mean for a potential mate whose gender attraction is more rigid, et cetera. Which is a huge issue in queer culture in my experience and frankly it's just as well PAD left it alone, given his handling of Andy over in SUPERGIRL.)

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psychop_rex
2009-08-08 12:14 am UTC (link)

Well, that does make things a bit different - hermaphrodites are pretty unusual in any species, and I can imagine someone getting a bit weirded out - you may be prepared for A or B, but not AB.
And really, the Martian reproduction process is complicated considerably by the fact that the Martians THEMSELVES are so damn complicated - I mean, there are Green Martians and White Martians and who knows what other kinds that I haven't heard of, who look nothing whatsoever alike, and then we find out that Martians as a whole USED to be 'Burning Martians', who reproduced asexually when exposed to a great enough concentration of flame and the pain and terror such a conflagration would cause. This was all changed due to the meddling of the Guardians, but who the hell knows what it means for the gender politics of the species as a whole. Do they still retain traces of that asexual nature? Obviously they do have 'male' and 'female' genders, but just how far does that carry? Can they still reproduce asexually if they want to - as a Martian, could you be a single parent AND a virgin both at the same time? And the White Martians were exiled for being warlike, but while they were still around, were there sexual relation between the different groups? Were 'Green' and 'White' just like racial terms, like we would call someone black or white on earth? Did Green girls date White boys? Oh, it's just a headache waiting to happen...

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