DC's Hercules and Marvel's Hercules

Eh, I'm okay with him being a guy who happened to be an enemy from the Amazons' past. Or if they need a Greek hero to be a WW enemy they could use Theseus or Achilles who are way bigger douchebags.

The only versions of the Amazons I've seen involving a hero raping (in one or both senses of the word) any of them had Theseus doing it, not Heracles.

edited 13th Jun '15 2:10:13 PM by ElkhornTheDowntrodden

I recently came up with the theory that Beauty was her version of Invulnerability. As in flawless beauty that never tarnished under any circumstances. Grace is her courage (staying calm and cool headed in the most dangerous situations.

As for Zephyrus, either the Wizard mistook him for a girl, couldn't find a good female hero or god that fit, or he was must playing joke on old Z.

Yeah, Achilles did pretty much nothing his whole life but fight in the Trojan War. Odysseus recruited him when he was something like 12 or 13, and being disguised as a girl by his mother as part of her attempt to keep him out of the war. I don't know when he would have had time to mess with the Amazons, given that he lived the majority of his life on a battlefield, and died there too.

What if what SHAZAM! stands for is a backronym, and it just gives you traits like them, not their actual traits? Would explain the mixing up of Greek and Roman names.

I loved Azzarello's run but I thought the objections to his portrayal of the Amazons had less to do with the reversal of the Positive Discrimination aspect and more to do with kind of making it hard to use the Amazons going forward.

His take worked because for large swaths of his run, the Amazons were effectively off the board and there wasn't too great a focus on them. But then when you consider that other writers have tried to incorporate Paradise Island further into the story and even had Amazons as supporting cast members, I can see why this new take on them might make such a thing harder to do going forward. I mean barring a massive retcon I don't think many people would be enthused by Diana palling around with a sympathetic portrayal of a rapist baby-killer.

edited 15th Jun '15 5:58:15 PM by comicwriter

Wait I thought they didn't kill the babies and just gave them to Hephaestus instead?

You know what I meant. The point is they're portrayed in such an objectionable manner that it might make it harder for future writers to find a workable way to use them. Which is what I thought the major complaint about the reveal was.

edited 15th Jun '15 6:02:42 PM by comicwriter

The current run isn't any better with portrayal of the Amazons. Meanwhile, over in Aquaman Hercules debuts being described as the noblest of heroes. Gee I wonder why?

The Patriarchy?

edited 15th Jun '15 10:41:03 PM by ElkhornTheDowntrodden

This is why I say that Greg Rucka's and Gail Simone's runs on Wonder Woman were the best.

Also Simone's run had Diana with an entourage of talking gorillas. They were awesome.

edited 15th Jun '15 11:28:12 PM by alliterator

What's why?

Thread bump.

Marvels Hercules all the way. He started as a stand in for Thor on the Avengers, but went on to be one of the greatest Avengers of all time IMO. When he's written properly, he always gets a laugh out of me. It's criminal that he's not being hilarious in an ongoing right now.

As for DC Hercules... I've sometimes felt that he could be used better. Maybe as a male counterpart to Wonder Woman, but if they want to make him a villain, I see no reason why they shouldn't. The morals of the Ancient Greeks and the Ancient Romans were different from ours. Their heroes were usually ruthless, selfish, brutal, manipulative bastards. To them, heroism wasn't about being a good person. It was about being an exceptional person. Morality didn't enter into it. The character from the myths wasn't a saint.

thread bump.

So what are the odds of Heracles returning in the Reborth universe?

DC's Heracles was never really a big character, not in his own right like Marvel's Hercules. His purpose was simply to be an antagonist towards Wonder Woman, even if he wasn't an outright villain.

Still I think they can get more mileage out of him as a villain or hero depending on how it's used. I'd like to see how other people react to him in this universe.

Hercules did have his own title at DC back in the 70's. May not be quite the same Hercules as the one who's bedevilled Wonder Woman.

70s DC Hercules was set in the then-future, being released from the rock he'd been chained to for the last thousand years only to discover that World War Three had just now happened. The series was retconned along with the Atomic Knights in the mid-1980s to be just a virtual reality simulation gone horribly wrong; the "actual" Hercules had never been involved.

If I may chip in on the portrayal of the Amazons - it seems to me that by making them these sailor-killing marauders (and whatever else they might have been doing), in addition to making them rather difficult to use in a more heroic light - it's kind of playing into a rather misogynistic narrative of "societies where women run things are bad news", which...doesn't seem to be something that we should be doing in this day and age. Mind you, I haven't actually read these issues of Wonder Woman, but I've seen these accusations be tossed around a lot.

Now, you might talk about how it's "more faithful to the original myths" and "what Amazons were really like" and what not, but here's the thing...they were just that, myths, and ones that weren't particularly kind to women. As far as I can tell, while the Amazons were likely inspired by real warrior women, the Amazons themselves didn't really exist. Why should we honor such stories when they basically amount to paranoid, misogynistic ranting? Wouldn't a positive portrayal that still allowed for some - perhaps many - flaws make for a more nuanced portrayal of the Amazons?

Indeed it would. But remember, the Amazons are not only a society where things are run by women, they are a society of nothing but women. And one that, in past portrayals, has been portrayed as utopian. That has Unfortunate Implications all by itself ("See how much better things would be if we could only get rid of those pesky men" )

In this day and age, I think we see any society run entirely by one gender to be problematic. Reality has shown us as well that single-gender institutions have plenty of their own problems.

And actually, the story I'd heard was that the mythological Amazons were most likely inspired by men, by a non-Greek tribe that dressed and wore their hair in a way that looked (at least generally) feminine to the Greeks.

edited 11th Sep '16 9:49:44 PM by Robbery

I mean, sure, but saying "a society of only women would be a bunch of barbarians who kill men indiscriminately" or whatever they were pushing...is probably not the grand argument against a one-gender society that one might hope for.

I mean, anything that reminds people of "Amazons Attack!" is probably best avoided.

The solution to showing a one-gendered society as utopian is not to suddenly portray them as all vicious killers. The solution is to show that the society is quite as utopian as it seems and it does have its problems, which Gail Simone's run on Wonder Woman was able to do.

Something I've always wondered; does anyone in the DCU besides the Amazons know of Heracles' crimes?