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Wonder Woman, interpreted

zuzu

While I’m not a comics expert, and never did any reading of DC Comics (when I read comics, it was the X-Men, it was the 80s, and can I tell you how much it amuses me that the movies were based on plots I was reading in high school, which themselves called back to late 70s/early 80s plotlines?), I did grow up in the 70s, which meant that I watched a lot of Wonder Woman on TV. Played a lot of Wonder Woman in the backyard, and at the Mudhole with my friend Ellen (invisible submarine!). So I find this (via John Lucid) to be very interesting. It’s a number of drawings of Wonder Woman by various artists, and I have to say, they really run the gamut. Everything from human-proportioned and fierce, to strong and fierce, to caricature-goofy, to Greek-warrior-with-sword (and, thank God, straps) fierce, to strong and pensive, to fierce with porntastic giant breasts, to a suburban mom with a passel o’kids (patronizingly entitled “The Real Wonder Woman”), to, well, this.

morgan.jpg

I guess that’s Sexual Objectification Wonder Woman.

Or Mary Jane comiquette Wonder Woman.

Or why-the-hell-do-women-have-to-be-drawn-that-way Wonder Woman.

40 thoughts on Wonder Woman, interpreted

  2. Apparently when men set out to draw a woman they cannot resist making her the Babe of their sticky dreams or a characture of the exact opposite.

    Only a few of these entries are worthy of serious consideration. My W.W. portrayal nominations:

    Michelle Gorski – young, agile, energetic, fierce
    Jeff Darrow – The mature, serious WW, strong with the weight of the world on her shoulders, the sign of a true hero, concerned always.
    Paul Conrad – I only mention because he’s the only one who restyled her outfit to not focus so much on her feminine physique, but damn them feets look big!
    Tim John – Yeah! Now there’s a superheroine!
    Cameron Blackwell – WW for president?
    Sam Kennedy – looks like every feirce young woman, very every-woman.

    Nominations for the most obnoxious:

    Greg Hardin – She’s falling down from her top heavy symmetry, someone catch her and take her to a reduction facility!

    Beau Hawkins – Kill with her innocent charm?

    Ken Hopper – Fuck you Ken Hopper ok? Just fuck you all to hell.

    The others fall somewhere between these extremes and a hearty fuck you to all who objectify her. Fuck you all to hell. (except Ken who gets his own special Fuck You for his worthless work).

    I don’t really care a fig for comics, but I stop and take notice when it comes to some asshat coming along and trying to trap women, even images of them, into the Sexy Lady Box once again. Then I give a damn.

  3. I don’t really get this post. Wonder Woman has always been a babe, just like Superman, Batman, the Flash, etc., have always been hunks. That’s why they’re superheroes.

    Yes, Wonder Woman probably taps into latent (or not-so-latent) dominatrix fantasies. But who doesn’t enjoy a good perverted thought now and again?

  5. I don’t really get this post. Wonder Woman has always been a babe, just like Superman, Batman, the Flash, etc., have always been hunks. That’s why they’re superheroes.

    True. But Superman and Batman are not hunks to the detriment of their characters. They’re allowed to be handsome and still do other things that are not tied to their physical appearance. Not so true with female superheroes.

  6. They’re allowed to be handsome and still do other things that are not tied to their physical appearance. Not so true with female superheroes.

    Huh? I haven’t read a comic book since I was maybe 15, but doesn’t Wonder Woman have super strength, or something? That isn’t really “tied” to her “physical appearance.”

  7. I was a teen in the 90’s, and became a comic book geek par excellence just as Image in all its porntastic glory came into power. I used to devour the Jim Lee-drawn WildCATS comics, and then, later, Gen 13. Ah, beautiful pin-ups! My own version of pornography.

    It’s bothersome for me, how problematic Wonder Woman is. She’s always been problematic. Is there a single comic superheroine who HASN’T been sexualized? I doubt it. Even angry hateful badguy Marrow from the X-Men was sexualized.

    I’d like to think that Wonder Woman, an icon of power, can be exempt from cheesecake and fantasy, but I doubt there will ever be a time when she’s just a hero, and not a female hero.

    Blah. Am rambling incoherently. Will stop now.

  8. It should be pointed out that Wonder Woman has a rather… odd history with regards to sexuality.
    She spent the first dozen years of her life as a bondage model and she was created by the loon that invented the polygraph.
    Then after Seduction of the innocent came out she went from being a feminist (mostly-ish kinda) to being a chick with super strength, and ended up requiring even MORE rescues from bondage.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonder_woman#Origin_and_creator

  10. I don’t really get this post. Wonder Woman has always been a babe, just like Superman, Batman, the Flash, etc., have always been hunks. That’s why they’re superheroes.

    “Just like”? Are there some pictures of Superman, Batman, the Flash, etc. running their hands through their hair and sniffing their own armpits in 3-inch heels that I should know about?

    I think the idea is that Superman et al. get to be adolescent sex-power avatars without getting put in poses of similar asininity. Wearing your underwear on the wrong side of your clothes is not exactly comparable to the blithering sexist stupidity of WW’s, and many female superheros’, costumes, either.

  11. (Ironically?) I think the Cameron Blackwell Wonder Woman might be the most sexy of the bunch—and, simultaneously, one of the least objectified.

  13. Huh? I haven’t read a comic book since I was maybe 15, but doesn’t Wonder Woman have super strength, or something? That isn’t really “tied” to her “physical appearance.”

    She does, among other things. Basically though, she’s a body. She’s hot. She’s beautiful. She’s got “porntastic breasts,” as Zuzu pointed out. But while the boys are “hunks,” their bodies also imply power. Big muscles. Wondy, on the other hand…

  15. I’ve always loved Wonder Woman, and I’m not going to pretend that it has nothing to do with having a crush on her. I remember Lynda Carter playing her in the 70’s, and I still remember the prepubescent boner she gave me. Having said that, I’ve recently been fascinated with female superheroes. I always have to think about whether they’re empowering or stereotypical, because let’s face it, they’re almost always drawn like something out of a Playboy fantasy.

    In the end I think Wonder Woman still plays a positive role for younger women, mainly because she shows that woman are just as capable as men, even in the realm of superhero-dom. That’s gotta count for something, even if she’s sometimes drawn with ridiculously huge tits.

  16. Are there some pictures of Superman, Batman, the Flash, etc. running their hands through their hair and sniffing their own armpits in 3-inch heels that I should know about?

    sophonisba, there’s a great little post here that makes fun of this very thing. It puts male superheroes in the same sorts of rediculous poses that artists usually reserve for female characters. It’s hilarious.

  18. I don’t really get this post. Wonder Woman has always been a babe, just like Superman, Batman, the Flash, etc., have always been hunks. That’s why they’re superheroes.

    It’s more the pose than the body, really. I blogged about this last time the issue came up.

    Contrast the armpit-sniffing picture above with, for example, this image of Phoenix. They’re both babes with unrealistic super-bodies. One looks like she is in the middle of kicking ass and taking names. Another looks like she’s having a shampoo orgasm like in the Herbal Essences commercials.

    While images of male and female superheroes in the kicking-ass-and-taking-names poses are plentiful, only female superheroes are seen in the armpit-sniffing, shampoo-orgasm pose.

  19. Having talked with a few working artists in the book cover/fantasy/games genre, they paint ‘sexy’ women because that’s what sells. They’re not thinking very deeply about it. Pouty women put money in their pocket. Non-sexualized women don’t fly off the shelf as fast.

  20. Having talked with a few working artists in the book cover/fantasy/games genre, they paint ’sexy’ women because that’s what sells. They’re not thinking very deeply about it. Pouty women put money in their pocket. Non-sexualized women don’t fly off the shelf as fast.

    That may be what they think sells, but that’s not really the whole story, and it only takes a few minutes of thought and research to realize how wrong-headed that notion is. Generally speaking, great art and good stories sell. If a book can provide those things, it’s got a good shot of doing well. A book that just uses cheesecake to try to sell a story, no matter how “hot” the cover-art is, is going to bomb. Look at how many early Image comics tried to use the “fill the book with T&A” method of comics production. Now look at how many are still around. The notion that you have to use T&A to sell comics just doesn’t bear out- World War Hulk was June’s best selling comic. Cheesecake? I don’t think so. Buffy the Vampire Slayer #4 was June’s tenth best-selling comic, at just over 100,000 units sold. That’s huge. And not cheesecakey.

    And, ultimately, I don’t think anyone here is confused about the fact that they think that T&A sell books- even if that were true, and comics were making tons of money by exploiting women’s bodies, would that make it okay?

  21. And, I just wanted to take a moment to throw out a tiny bit of self promotion. I wrote about WW’s costume back in May.

    Here’s hoping that Simone’s run (starting next month with issue #13) on WW is an improvement on what she’s become lately.

  22. Wonder Woman was the character chosen to break the DC Comics “do not kill” order… and was the first DC superhero allowed to kill a villain (Maxwell Lord). Most people agree it would have been a scandal if Batman or Superman had done it first.

    I’ve always found that interesting.

  23. The issue it not that she’s got a porntastic – best new word I’ve heard in a long time, Zuzu! – body, the larger issue is that nearly every woman in comics who’s meant to be taken seriously has an attractive, crazy-thin body, or is meant to be.

    Seriously. A lot of these women may be in great shape, but only the telekinetics and shapeshifters should have boobs like they’ve got: Phoenix, Wonder Woman, Emma Frost (though she’s open about having purchased hers), Black Canary, Black Cat, Catwoman, Kitty Pryde, Supergirl, Mazikeen (though her lover Beatrice looks more normal), Scarlet Witch, Wasp, Black Widow, Carol Danvers, Storm, et cetera. The list goes on, this is just me checking out my shelf.

    Who’s not hot? Granny Goodness and Aunt May. Oh, and Gert from Runaways, but she got killed off. Because she’s not hot, and she was dating a hot guy. And she was underage anyway.

    Beware, women of comics! If you are not gorgeous, make yourself so, else the mighty refrigerator will come to eat you!

  24. Wonder Woman was the character chosen to break the DC Comics “do not kill” order… and was the first DC superhero allowed to kill a villain (Maxwell Lord). Most people agree it would have been a scandal if Batman or Superman had done it first.

    I’ve always found that interesting.

    She was the first DC hero allowed to kill a villain in the modern times- don’t let anyone fool you, when Batman was still new, he killed a few of his enemies without a second thought. That being said, I think that Wonder Woman was a great choice, because it fits with her backstory in a way that’s believable. She’s a freakin’ warrior.

    But, yeah, it would have been a scandal if it were either of the other Big Three. Fans would have gone apeshit: Batman doesn’t kill because of his experience with death (although I think that a lot of writers still make him too violent- a Batman who doesn’t kill, but is willing to intentionally break bones? Meh), and Superman doesn’t kill because he’s so worried about the responsibility that comes with power, and because of his concerns about being alien.

    Wonder Woman, though, is supposed to have been trained as a warrior. Given the situation, I think it makes total sense to have her kill a villain like that. I didnt like the whole murder trial bs, though. Meh.

  26. I remember having been fascinated with the sexual tension between Batman and his villainesses long before I even knew what sex was, so the mere notion of non-pinuppy superhero comics baffles me, in much the same way a non-fragrant perfume would. (And then, this is WW at that, who, as Onymous already pointed out, has a long-standing subtext-y history. G-d knows I wanted to say “tie-in” here.) I’m not saying it’s not problematic — the pin-uppiness in general, and difference in portrayal between male and female characters in particular —, just that it seems a bit like saying, “I’d love to buy Playboy, if it weren’t for all those naked women inside!” But yeah, on an intellectual level, I see where you’re coming from, and I salute you, as far as “give them equal treatment” and “make them real characters” and “goddamn, we’ve had enough Women in Refrigerators” goes. Like, totally.

    But as far as giving them an idealized physique goes? That seems taking it a bit far. For many people, a story is more compelling when they can identify with the protagonist (or at least one of the characters), and why would you want to do that unless that character looked at least as good as you do? That’d be like watching a movie with only fugly people in it! (On the upside, as shows and movies go, I’m totally excited about Claudia Black in Stargate; she’s old, she’s not traditionally beautiful, and she’s totally hawt. Yay for non-Barbiesque casting! But my point still stands; you lose impact if people don’t care whether your characters live or die.)

    Lastly, FWIW, I stopped buying comics; I can make my own stories, and given that DC offers me the rape of Sue Dibny, the rape of Green Arrow, the rape of Batman instead, I don’t even have to be very talented to do better.

  27. I’ve never really been into Western Comics very much, though Girl Wonder is such a good resource for feminist analysis of comics that I’m now a sort of non-reader enthusiast. I recommend it if you like comics or feminism.

    The physique thing doesn’t work, because the physiques of men and women as drawn a la patriarchy aren’t equal. Big muscles for men = power and physical strenght. This is useful for superheroes- their crazy strength is kind of the point. Their clothing is also much more practical than the womens’ clothes.

    Big boobs, tiny waists, thongs and high heels =/= strength or power, or crimefighting ability. They are just meant to titilate the reader and are a symptom of the patriarchy that is everywhere.

  31. Wonder Woman comes off as interesting and genuinely bad ass in the Justice League cartoon. I was never really a fan before, but I am now. Just thought I’d point it out.

  33. I’m not saying it’s not problematic — the pin-uppiness in general, and difference in portrayal between male and female characters in particular —, just that it seems a bit like saying, “I’d love to buy Playboy, if it weren’t for all those naked women inside!”

    Eh. I don’t agree. The entire point of Playboy is the nudity (despite the whole “I read it for the articles” thing. Suuure you do). The point of most comics is not sex. In theory, at least, most of them are about power fantasies and visual story-telling. The super hero genre is certainly going to involve unrealistic bodies, but, as Anne Onne points out, the ways that they’re “idealized” doesn’t work. Men are made more powerful, women are made hyper-sexual. Men’s bodies are treated in a way that plays into male power fantasies. Women’s bodies are drawn in a way that plays into… male sexual fantasies.

    The thing is, a lot of male characters are drawn in such a way that they appeal to both men and women. Not always, certainly, but Bruce Wayne, Superman, and Spider-Man are frequently drawn in ways that make them both powerful and handsome. There’s no good reason why women can’t be drawn in a similar fashion.

    For many people, a story is more compelling when they can identify with the protagonist (or at least one of the characters), and why would you want to do that unless that character looked at least as good as you do? That’d be like watching a movie with only fugly people in it!

    Egads, yes. And who would want to do that?
    Well, except, of course, that I routinely watch movies full of people that I don’t necessarily find attractive. I don’t think that Christopher Walken is particularly attractive, but I think he’s awesome. Same with Steve Buscemi.

    And I love Sandman Mystery Theater, and Wesley Dodds is drawn as a slightly overweight, late-middle-aged man with a retreating hairline. One of Marvel’s most popular characters is Wolverine, and he’s not, historically, been drawn as attractive. Feral? Yes. The hotness? Not so much.

    I just don’t think you have to think characters are attractive to care about them. Suggesting that you do seems like it really feeds into the whole idea that only attractive people have worth, or, at least, are worth more, and I just don’t buy that.

  34. I just don’t think you have to think characters are attractive to care about them. Suggesting that you do seems like it really feeds into the whole idea that only attractive people have worth, or, at least, are worth more, and I just don’t buy that.

    No, only attractive women have worth. Men can look like, well like Wolverine, and still be a badass. Hell the Penguin didn’t get caught and tied up as much as Wonder Woman did, and at least he could escape on his own.

  35. Roy,

    The point of most comics is not sex.

    Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to say, the point of everything is sex, and then make the rare exception for a few things — including some comics such as Maus?

    Superhero comics though (at least in the non-powered genre, Green Arrow, Huntress etc. where I feel most at home)? Sexy people violating the right to due process, pretty much. If you take out the sexy, you’ll just be left with “everything that’s wrong with the US”, foreign policy- and otherwise, writ small, and that’s just offputting. I mean, that’s why they’re called vigilantes, non?

    If you take away teh sexay … what? You enjoy hero comics not for the art, but because you like operating in the simplified world model for beginners? Unless you only read Green Arrow / Green Lantern — The wandering years, aka, Oops, we can’t shoot arrows at poverty and equivalents thereof?

    They’re superhero comics. Any way you look at it, they’re a guilty pleasure.

    If you leave in the pornification, you get anything from pinups to fight-fucking. If you take it out, you’re left with some Bush-ist “What we are looking at is good and evil, right and wrong — a new world order.” I think there’s no escape within the media.

    Now, heroic tales tend to be larger than life by their very nature, and comics offer much leeway for visual exaggeration of any kind. As exaggeration goes, the genre-convention for superhero comics is that (female) characters are pin-uppy, a variety of “glamour”, and thus, of “larger than life.” Heroic portrayals of men also have a long history of “larger than life”, of course, canon of the nine heads and all that, but I have little trouble agreeing that “more muscle”-larger-than-life is not necessarily equivalent to “cupsize”-larger-than-life:

    Women’s bodies are drawn in a way that plays into… male sexual fantasies.

    And female sexual fantasies as per the male gaze, where you look at yourself from a male perspective, find yourself not lacking, and then get off on that. (I see now that my earlier snarky comment to that effect was too concise. :-/).

    Now, if we don’t eradicate the pinuppification, but tone it down, we might arguably get something like Kim Possible or Buffy: They’re heroic, they’re less obviously pinuppified, some might even call them girl-powery — and they’re still about “When does the hot girl find love/sex?”

    Women have agency therein, certainly, but men, and less than gorgeous women to the extend that they even exist, are supporting roles.

    Or consider Wapsi Square, a web-comic with women of very diverse body-types and race, and a real plot — and the question is still, “Nice plot, wanna — er, when are Shelly and Heather going to get together?” Shelly by the way does have a metric ton of muscle, and small breasts, and is way hawt. The menz though?

    The thing is, a lot of male characters are drawn in such a way that they appeal to both men and women. … Bruce Wayne

    Really? With sloppy art and changing artists, I’ve seen comics where I wasn’t even sure whether it was Bruce or Dick in the panel, because they were both such generic Cary Grant knockoffs. (I’ve seen panels with both where I wasn’t sure which was which, and dude, even if you can’t draw, there’s supposed to be a height difference!) But hey, male gaze, male characters are a function, female characters are an objet d’art / sexuel. In fact, I’ve never thought of Peter or Clark as attractive, they’re just man-shaped blanks. Ollie at least has all those beards so you can tell him apart from the other guys even when everybody is out of costume.

    I don’t think that Christopher Walken is particularly attractive, but I think he’s awesome.

    CW rocks, and the Brainstorm DVD is pretty much on the top of my rewatch stack. But like ActivistMommy said, we’re not conditioned to look at men that way, so your not requiring that attribute from CW isn’t really surprising. And to be honest, even an example actress probably won’t make a difference, otherwise I could point out (pre-Question) Renee Montoya as one example of “hawt so we’ll care” but “realistically-bodied” and very wrongly conclude that there isn’t really an issue with pinuppification in superhero comics, then.

    I just don’t think you have to think characters are attractive to care about them.

    I for one can care, but not as much as for the characters I’ll identify with, and as a rule with few exceptions, I see no point in identifying with someone less cool than real world me, because, let’s be obvious here, when the fantasy isn’t better than real life, I’ll just stick with real life, thank you. 🙂

    Or are you saying that all else being equal, you wouldn’t prefer being hawt to being fug?

    I agree that much is wrong with what we are trained to consider beautiful. But as I mentioned elsewhere, I look at Claudia Black, funny nose, funny teeth, lines around the eyes and all, and I help but think, whoa, she’s hot! Even when attractiveness does not require barbiefication, it’s still important who’s hot and who’s not, and who they end up loving, or making love to. So I certainly beg to differ on “what’s the point”: “Everything we do is for sex.” 😉

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  37. I see someone else has already mentioned girl-wonder, so I don’t want to belabour the point, but I think our gallery of male characters put into, as you put it, ‘shampoo commercial orgasm’ poses is worth perusal.

  38. Azundris: I may end up responding to your post over at my site, because there’s a lot churning around in my mind (you covered a lot of ground).

    For now, my response is this: I still maintain that you don’t have to be sexually attracted to a character to care what happens to it. It all depends on the type of story you’re telling. If you’re playing to a fantasy where you want people to become the character, it probably helps to have that character be attractive in some way- but not every story is about giving people a character they want to be. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be the main character of Concrete. I wouldn’t want to be Bruce Banner, or Ben Grimm- but that doesn’t mean that their stories aren’t interesting, and that I don’t care what happens to them.

    CW rocks, and the Brainstorm DVD is pretty much on the top of my rewatch stack. But like ActivistMommy said, we’re not conditioned to look at men that way, so your not requiring that attribute from CW isn’t really surprising. And to be honest, even an example actress probably won’t make a difference, otherwise I could point out (pre-Question) Renee Montoya as one example of “hawt so we’ll care” but “realistically-bodied” and very wrongly conclude that there isn’t really an issue with pinuppification in superhero comics, then.

    You’re confusing two things, here, though.
    You said that the characters had to be pretty to care about them, and you compared it to watching a movie full of ugly people. We aren’t conditioned to look at men the same way, no- men get much greater lattitude when it comes to what is considered attractive. The fact that men like Sean Connery were considered sex symbols long after their women counterparts were considered “past their prime” is evidence of this. That being said, an unattractive guy is still an unattractive guy, and is subject to social sanction for not being attractive. If you can care about unattractive characters in books or movies, that’s evidence that attractiveness is not a necessary condition.

    That’s not to say that the pinuppyness of comics isn’t a problem. In fact, I’d say rather the opposite. The pinuppyness and cheesecakeyness of comics is a major problem, precisely because it’s unnecessary. They don’t have to be that way. That they’re choosing to make them that way is a problem.

  39. Roy,

    I may end up responding to your post over at my site, because there’s a lot churning around in my mind (you covered a lot of ground).

    Yeah. Some of it is good stuff. Some of it looks like bunk because I edited it down too much (“I can care about non-attractive characters to an extent, but usually only if there is at least one character I find attractive enough so I’ll read the book in the first place”). Most importantly, about half of it probably is bunk and should probably be exposed as such. ;-/
    Long story short, I have subscribed to your feed. In your own time.

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