Wonder Woman

I just checked Medea's wikipedia page and she's listed as Circe's niece. I wonder how that would play out in Diana's story.

Could be interesting. Make her Circe's Bastard Understudy.

I think a big reason we don't get a lot of Imperial Japan-themed villains compared to Nazi Germany-themed villains is that a lot of people in Hitler's regime, both big names and relatively minor, were already cartoonish supervillains.
Who usurps Circe's place (seriously, there's a whole lot more to Circe than just turning dudes into pigs) in Wonder Woman's rogue's gallery in the finest Eviler than Thou tradition.

A man can dream...

edited 7th Mar '15 4:47:08 PM by Bonerfart

What resources and abilities do you guys think the Amazons should have?

So were quite a few of the senior Japanese staff, actually. Anyway, I'm not necessarily saying we should create more Imperial Japanese villains, but giving the one we've got some more screentime wouldn't hurt. In fact, how about a team-up between her and one of the Nazis, be it Red Panzer, Gundra, or one of the many others I'm forgetting.

Circe (fellow Greek myth geek here, I'm very familiar with her rapsheet, mythical and comic-book wise) would of course stage a comeback a few years later, reclaiming her position from Medea, and ejecting her out into the human world to fend for herself.

By the way, am I the only person who liked the whole idea of Wonder Woman's mom having served as WW during WWII? I thought it was great for a couple of reasons. First off, it explained the star-spangled swimsuit. Secondly, it provided the chance for Diana to inherit a lot of Axis-themed bad guys without needing an even more contrived explanation. Thirdly, it put an interesting spin on Hippolyta's insistence that the outside world was too dangerous for her daughter. I mean, if the last time you interacted with the outside world, you met such fine specimens of humanity as Adolf Hitler and Hideki Tojo, you'd probably want to keep your daughter inside forever too.

edited 7th Mar '15 6:43:26 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

I just figured that, as long as we were (apparently?) discussing how to reboot Wonder Woman, we should replace Circe with someone more thematically apropos. And did Japan have any German-style supervillains who weren't involved in their biological weapons research?

Also in how I'd make Wonder Woman more mythological-type, in addition to Gargareans and completely mortal Amazons who got rekt by Theseus, Ares would A) be a very important god to the Amazons (even after he becomes their princess' enemy; he's still their common ancestor, after all) B) be a bloodthirsty thicko (but not as thick as you'd think; write him off as an idjit at your own peril) and, most importantly, C) be a bitch-ass nigga whose first instinct when confronted with someone who can take him on his terms is to run away. And, most importantly... DON'T HAVE MONSTERS THAT WERE ONE OF A KIND IN THE MYTHS. NO HYDRAS. NO MINOTAUR ARMIES. NO HERDS OF WINGED HORSES.

Circe is pretty thematically appropriate actually. It's a conflict between the first feminist superhero, and a bonafide misandrist. Keep in mind, I'm not saying Medea isn't thematically appropriate either, she is, very much so. But rather than replace one with the other, why not have them both around in one form or another. Have Circe as the established villain with long-time cred, and Medea as the scheming up-and-comer out to take her place (and occasionally succeeding).

As far as Japanese villains go there were one or two who served in Axis America, in addition to Dr. Poison. There's not nearly as many as there are Nazis though, which is why I think it's a field ripe for further character creation.

As to Ares, I actually like Post-Crisis Ares. Sure he doesn't bear much resemblance to his mythological counterpart, but that's actually lampshaded and then justified in-universe in one of Greg Rucka's stories. I'm also willing to let it slide because mythologically accurate or not, he produces some good stories.

edited 7th Mar '15 11:20:14 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Is she a misandrist? Because as you and I both know, she gets up to more stuff than her appearance in the Odyssey. And I meant Japanese supervillains IRL, during WW 2. And what story was that? Haven't read as much Rucka as I should.

edited 8th Mar '15 8:32:05 AM by Bonerfart

Circe, like most of the "bad women" of Greek myth, has a definite anti-man streak. It's most obvious in the Odyssey, but other myths run with it too, including one where she supposedly had to flee home after either a) murdering her husband or b) blowing up her entire home island (including her husband). Moreover, whether her portrayal in the Wonder Woman comics is accurate or not, she's a well-established, well-liked villain, whose appearances typically draw in readers. She's in fact one of the few Wonder Woman villains who can make that claim, so from a writing (and sales) perspective, getting rid of her would be a mistake (as a comparison, Loki's portrayal in the Thor comics really couldn't be less accurate, but they're not going to get rid of him any time soon).

Since supervillains don't exist in real life, I assume you mean war criminals who could serve as a useful basis for a supervillain, the way that Dr. Poison is pretty obviously based on Ishii Shiro? If so, the answer is yes. To pick an example at random, meet Masanobu Tsuji, war criminal, special operations leader, and all-around lunatic.

It's the middle of Rucka's WW run. Ares informs her that scientific advancements, the advancement of other religions, and cultural shifts (including skyrocketing divorce rates, for instance) have weakened the other major deities, like Zeus, Hera, etc. Since love/lust, knowledge, and conflict are, however, constant, and indeed, growing in the modern world, Aphrodite, Athena, and he himself continue to evolve and grow stronger.

edited 8th Mar '15 9:45:00 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

For those who keep up with Superman/Wonder Woman, issue 16 has Circe return. Circe entered into an agreement with Hippolyta in which the Amazons would trade the male babies from the sex raids in return for Circe enchanting their weapons. The male babies would be transformed into Circe's Ani-Men for an army. However, Hippolyta had made a similar deal with Hephaestus. Circe has held a grudge against the Amazons ever since and is the one behind the new Magog who in the post-Flashpoint universe is a ten year old boy who lost his friends and family in the Apokalips invasion and blames Clark and Diana. Circe also refers to the Amazons being in chains, so we may get an idea of the Amazons' history.

So what do you think?

I think that so long as it continues to reference "sex raids" I will continue to not read it.

>NOT MUH AMAZONS

Yeah, Tsuji doesn't really excite me. Just another warmonger. Gimme someone I can sink my teeth into, like Goeth or Dirlewanger or Heydrich.

edited 8th Mar '15 10:37:07 AM by Bonerfart

Now, now I think he's entitled to how he feels about how the Amazons are written.

To be fair the switch from their post crisis state to literally worse than in myths created to be misogynistic is rather jarring.

Yes, how dare I be annoyed that they turned the protagonist's culture into a gang of raping, murdering stereotypes. I should obviously be completely cool with that, and consider it the finest qualify writing.

Read Tsuji's book sometime. Might change your mind. And while you're at it, read up on the Rape of Nanking.

edited 8th Mar '15 10:42:39 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

There was no rape involved in the sex raids! Murder, yeah, but the sex was consensual! And given that they seem to be a Dark Secret that a lot of participants only do because it's tradition, I can accept it. Complaining about it seems analogous to complaining about how post-Crisis Krypton was an isolationist crapheap.

Was there anyone involved in the Rape of Nanking that could be compared to German supervillains like the ones I listed? Not doubting, just curious. And where would I find his book?

Here's the thing—there's a world of difference between "unequal society" and "society that promotes murdering your sexual partners". Hell, the USA was once the former (and arguably still is), but no society—not even the most misogynistic and backwards—has ever been the latter. It also helps that Superman is, at its core, a story about an immigrant, with Krypton's issues—as represented by General Zod—symbolising everything wrong with the old country. In contrast, Wonder Woman is a story about female empowerment, about a woman from a society in which women have never been oppressed, interacting with a wider world in which they are. And that story loses most, if not all of its punch, if the society she hails from is built on murdering men. Finally, however ugly Krypton's past might have been, it was never used for titillation, whereas that's pretty much all that "sex raids" can be used for.

Tsuji's book can be bought online from most book sellers. Just punch his name in and hit "books" on Google search, you should find it. It's essentially a look into the mind of a high-functioning sociopath who thinks he's the greatest thing since sliced bread, that Japan has every right to whatever it wants to anybody who gets in its way, and does not give a good goddamn about how many of his men he throws away.

There are dozens of ugly stories that come out of the Imperial Japanese Army, and the Rape of Nanking provides many of the worst. One charming example? A pair of lieutenants who had a contest to see who could behead more Chinese (civilians and soldiers alike) with their officers' swords. The newspapers back home kept track of who was in the lead; by the end of the war they were both well into triple digits. You've got stories of live Chinese used for bayonet practise, the systemic, systematic, and indeed, government authorised gang rapes of little girls, old women, and everything in-between, the list goes on and on. The main difference between them and the Germans (and why you may not be as familiar with what went on in the Pacific/Asia) is that while in Germany the worst war criminals were in the upper echelons or running the camps, in Japan they tended to be in the lower ranks.

I find it very difficult to believe that "every" man on those boats just dropped their pants at the mere sight of a naked, beautiful woman emerging from nowhere. What about the men who were gay, in committed relationships/married or just didn't think with the head between their legs. And Diana not knowing about it makes even less when you consider that the Amazons make no secret how they feel about men and until she reached adulthood, she was under the impression she was the only Amazon that didn't have a biological father. If we are to assume that they are following ancient customs, Diana would have been deemed sexually mature at age 20 tops.

Furthermore, the way this revelation was handled seemed more there for shock value than anything of worth to the story. We meet the Amazons in the second issue, they get turned into snakes in the third, the revelation of their sex piracy is seen in issue 7, when there is not a single Amazon to even explain it and they are brought back in issue 30 were all of this is pushed to the background due to the war with First Born. We don't even no what -if anything- caused these women to develop such seething hatred for men. Azzarello might as well have not included the Amazons in Diana's story if he was going to ignore them in favor of her father's side of the family. Compare to how Heracles' invasion of Themyscira and his rape of Hippolyta was handled in Perez run.

And you better believe there were (and still are) people who hated the portrayal of post-Crisis Krypton. In fact, some have accused it of demonizing the main character's heritage in order to make him more accessible to audiences by playing on their fear of 'the other'. See this review of John Byrne's Man of Steel (the comic not the movie in case the title scared you off): http://www.comicscube.com/2011/08/why-i-cant-stand-john-byrnes-superman.html

Guess that's why I don't know about many of Japan's supervillains then. They were nobodies, whose individual dark deeds are lost in a sea of man's cruelty to man.
Disregarding all this talk of Amazons, that was a really interesting analysis of Byrne's Krypton. Not that I necessarily agree with it, just that I've never seen it looked at like that.

edited 8th Mar '15 11:43:22 AM by Bonerfart

The Japanese Army was essentially the cycle of abuse in the form of a military. Officers abused their subordinates, who then turned around and abused the enlisted men, who then took it out on the civilians. That's not to say the higher-ups weren't complicit, it's simply that rather than having to create death camps, Nazi style, they could simply take the leash off the enlisted men, and the result would be hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, with most of the apparent war criminals concentrated among the enlisted men and junior officers. If you want a really good look at just one horrible incident, I'll recommend Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking. There are some pretty horrific stories in there.

To bring this back to the topic of Wonder Woman, given her usual status as a peace ambassador from a culture that, while ready for war, hasn't actually gone to war in years, it isn't hard to see how a representative of the army I've just described could make a pretty solid foil. She's got or had plenty of Nazi-themed villains (Gundra, Red Panzer, etc), and she's got Dr. Poison representing the legacy of Unit 731, so having somebody who symbolizes the IJA itself wouldn't be out of place at all.

Sarcastically, wonder what's more fucked up: Azzarello's Amazons who regard their sex-and-murder expeditions as a shameful secret, or Marston's Amazons who openly kidnap and rape men◊.

Slightly more seriously, now what I think could do a good job with Wonder Woman? Jim "Samantha Brown! You have to get out of here! Your vagina is haunted!" Balent. Give him some Golden Age Wonder Woman comics for inspiration and let him off his leash.

edited 8th Mar '15 12:20:47 PM by Bonerfart

Only if you want a parody. I read an interesting post once that argued that the biggest problem with Wonder Woman is not the character, but the constant attempts by writers to "fix" her. You can check it out here.

Parody? No my good sir. The beauty of Balent is that he, like Marston before him, is not taking the piss.

Re: that blog post, I think the problem with Wonder Woman is that DC doesn't let writers fall back on her foundation like they do with their other main heroes, because her foundation is Marston telling us how his fetish can bring about world peace.

edited 8th Mar '15 12:48:14 PM by Bonerfart

The key difference being that Marston was writing in the forties. Honestly for all the bizarre stuff that happened in Marston's run, I give him credit for being a man, writing in the forties, trying to create a feminist character. It went to some strange and uncomfortable places plenty of times, but in the end he created a pretty iconic character, who had a decent core concept. Balent, on the other hand, just tends to write stories that really objectify women, and I'd rather he not get set loose on Wonder Woman.

In my opinion the best WW runs come courtesy of Perez (duh), Rucka, and Simone. Sadly, most of Rucka's efforts got thrown out post Infinite Crisis and Simone immediately was succeeded by Odyssey, so not much that they did got to stick.

Speaking of WW villains earlier, these two posts do a pretty good job of analysing some of her rogues and how they could be updated/modernised.

EDIT: The sad part is it wouldn't be that hard to alter Marston's core concept. Just play down the bondage, and play up the feminism, pacifism, etc. That's what Perez, Rucka, and Simone all did in various ways, and the results were pretty good.

edited 8th Mar '15 12:52:54 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

I believe Wonder Woman did have one or two villains from the Japanese side; the ones I remember are Sumo the Samurai (who was pretty much all bushido and every western samurai stereotype you can probably imagine) and another guy who was a bit more interesting, Kang (I think that was his name) who was a martial artist and a shapeshifter who could turn into animals. Kang, if I remember correctly, had experienced a lot of racism from Westerners (I think he was American, growing up in pre-WWII San Francisco) and this fueled his desire to work for Imperial Japan. Still, those are the only two I can think of.