| Posted: 16 April 2011 at 8:41pm | IP Logged | 12
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A common mistake being made here is the assumption that Wonder Woman was created to exist in a world with other super-heroes. She was not created to be weaker than Superman. She was created by individuals who had a different take on how "super-strength" would play out in their stories. The question, "Should she fly?" did not likely arise because almost no one at that time was flying. Hawkman maybe. Superman himself was still in his earliest stages and leaping from place to place (although with some wonky physics in play to allow him to steer, slow down, or go back up again at times.) It is unlikely Marston or Mayer ever said, "Let's not have her fly like that fellow Superman does... She should definitely be less than him in that respect, and many others besides..." Marston wouldn't have created a woman he deemed "less than" some other male counterpart. Marston was creating a story of an empassioned female supremacist sent to our world to impose peaceful and loving values upon a society apparently in dire need of them. World War II was central to her origin and most of the stories he was writing about her at that stage of the game. That so many here cannot see the value and inventiveness of an invisible aircraft during a time of war knocks me for a bit of a loop. Yes, she could glide from place to place, but in her origin story, she had to fly from her island home to Washington D.C. with an injured man as her passenger. How is accomplished through gliding? "Well, if she could fly like Superman..." Superman did not fly like Superman at the time! He would only begin flying a couple of years later in the Fleischer cartoons. "Okay, but after she joined the Justice Society, then she should have seen that she was a non-flying wimp..." No member of the Justice Society immediately began comparing notes against the others and making drastic changes in their own titles to "match" their fellow members or the foes they were fighting (except Sandman and that looks more like Simon and Kirby simply giving the editor a hero just like all the others from the Simon and Kirby shop.) Batman did not come home from a JSA adventure and say to Alfred, "There's life on Mars. Apparently, the men there keep the women imprisoned inside pumpkin shells, or at least they did until that short, Clara Bow-looking gal I told you about earlier challenged their king, P'Ter P'Ter, to a boxing match... To the gym, Alfred! I need to study up on Martian boxing techniques!" Titles used to exist in their own little universes. Even meeting up with other heroes did not mean that the books were all suddenly interactive with one another, nor should they have been. Wonder Woman met Martians who were specific to the themes and stories Marston was writing. He did not and certainly would not have been expected to create Martians who would be exactly like those Martians that might one day meet Batman. Or Superman. Or, oh, hey, we might buy up Captain Marvel forty years from now, so make sure those Martians are exactly the sort of Martains he might fight as well... That way lies creative desolation. No story is about anything except how well it matches up with everybody else's story which are also about nothing. Titles can no longer exist in their own world. There can be no funny-world heroes, unless they're nutso, wacky jobbers that the "more serious" heroes look sideways at. The idea of a hero living inside his own funny world, one uniquely envisioned and created by someone with their own voice and viewpoint is gone. You cannot have a hero whose world is one of constant light-hearted wonder. Maybe the hero can be light-hearted, but the world in which he lives? Sorry. Funny hero and Light-Hearted Hero have to work alongside Grim Hero this month. Grim Hero's city has just been demolished and Grim Hero is angry because he's still on fire. He's sworn the fire all over his body and in his heart will burn until the last fire threatening the lives of the citizenry in his beloved city has been extinguished. And then in next month's "Population X-Plosion Chapter Eleven" they all have to cross over with Space Bastich, Single Mother, DeathSprocket, ElasiBot, PVC-Cup, and Forensic Pathologist Chimp, so just write something that fits all of those guys... Oh, and get rid of that damned invisible plane! That's just stupid!
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