SUPERHEROS WHO AREN'T ST00P1D, PART 2

Read Part 1: The Incredible Hulk

Note: These top five are literally that – five Number Ones. I’m only listing them in the order I am because it’s my fucking blog, and I can do whatever the hell I want. So if you’re going to leave a raging fanboy comment, use it to point out how I’m an idiot because I’m not including Midnighter and/or Ka-Zar, instead of hoping I burn in hell because No. 5 should be No. 3 and No. 1 should be No. 4.

No. 5 IS No. 1.  No. 1 IS No. 5.  End of yet-to-happen st00p1d nerd fight.
 

Number 4: Wonder Woman

The Amazons live on the isolated, secret island paradise of Themyscira, where oily, erotic lesbian adventures may or may not happen on a daily basis. Their queen Hippolyta wants a daughter, but this creates a problem, because she also hates penises. So she makes a girl out of clay and has the gods of Greek mythology imbue it with virtues and life, I guess because they owed her one for all those free oily, erotic lesbian adventure shows. Diana grows into the most athletic and beautiful of the Amazons, and is well on her way to inherit her mother’s throne (and possibly associated oily lesbian erotica) when an American pilot fighting in World War II crashes on Themyscira. Hippolyta decides to kill the guy (possibly because he got in the way of an oily, erotic lesbian adventure), but Diana pulls a Pocahontas and offers to escort the penis-wielding intruder back to the “World of Men.” Though her mother is disgusted (what sane person – or god – chooses a road trip over the possibility of an oily, erotic lesbian adventure?), she gives Diana the right to choose. So Diana leaves her island home with Steve Trevor, aboard her invisible, telepathically-controlled airplane, which is either an invention of the Amazon’s magical technology, or the flying horse Pegasus transformed by that magical technology (six of one, half-dozen of the magical other…).

In America she takes on the alias of Diana Prince, puts on a pair of star-spangled panties (or miniskirt, depending on the decade), and joins the fight against the Nazis. When her mother decides to lead the Amazons to another dimension (possibly the Oily, Erotic Lesbian Adventure Dimension), Diana decides to remain in the World of Men and fight crime with her bullet-repelling bracelets and golden Lasso of Truth as Wonder Woman.

Okay, so the concept is stupid. Dr. William M. Marston, inventor of components of the polygraph machine (which apparently qualifies you to write comic books), more or less admitted that he only came up with the character because he didn’t think there was enough BDSM in ’40s comics. He also had the nerve to talk about how “educational” Wonder Woman books were, so he was either the most confused feminist in the world, or actually thought that children needed an illustrated how-to guide on the finer points of the Choke Game and stiletto fetishism.

Even if you agree with him, you have to admit that there is little chance something like this is going to stay popular for 60-plus years, at least not in the mainstream comics market. But Wonder Woman remains one of DC’s top sellers. Why? All I can offer are the two reasons I like her enough to put her on this list. One (and this is bound to get me in trouble, but I’m right, so there’s nothing I can do about it), there just aren’t any other good comic book heroines in the mainstream comics market. Sometimes DC’s Birds of Prey aren’t entirely horrible, but that all depends on which writer makes a fool of himself at the annual DC Christmas party and gets demoted to Oracle duty for the next six months. Please correct me if I’m wrong (though I’m not, so I don’t see how you could, but feel free to try), but other comic book superheroines are either sex-crazed simpletons in constant need of rescuing and ‘post-rescuing’, or unfeeling jerks who vomit token feminism at the least appropriate times, yet keep wearing what amounts to half a bikini because they are very poorly written, usually by middle aged men whose experience with vaginas begins and ends with their mother’s. Yes, Wonder Woman wears panties and a low-cut boob plate, likes kicking men in the face, and gets tied up and slapped around a lot, and all because she was written by a horny fool of a man. But at least she usually rescues herself from the tying, and doesn’t seem to mind when construction workers hoot at her panties, probably because both she and they know that if they ever get too close, she’ll just kick them in the face. Yes, this characterization is about as progressive as Sue Storm wearing a ‘Beck/Palin 2012’ t-shirt at CPAC. But at least it’s actually characterization. Yes, it is also probably entirely accidental. But so was the way in which most of us were conceived, and we still count as people, right? Well, most of us, anyway.

The second reason for Wonder Woman’s enduring popularity is that she IS actually nice to look at. You write a comic about a pretty girl tying men up and kicking them in the bad boys with bright red thigh-high boots, and you have successfully attracted the attention of sighted men the world over, gay or straight. And odd as it seems, women apparently find this appealing too, though I can’t tell if that’s more for the tying and kicking or the boots.

Best Moment: Probably the entire Silver Age. But not just because she fought an ape who turned into a woman but still spoke monkey in Wonder Woman #9. Or because of Wonder Woman #122, where a fish alien from Saturn transformed her into a toddler named Wonder Tot, then forced Wonder Tot to wear a blindfold, and THEN attacked her with a 300 foot robot version of Wonder Woman. Not that that last one isn’t especially awesome, since she still managed to kick the asses of both the giant robot and the fish alien.

But no. The Silver Age was Wonder Woman’s best moment primarily because she had to win against these impossible, crazy odds while also being treated like shit for having a vagina. Apparently sexism wasn’t just a fad back then – it was a goddamn religion, which even managed to convert Superman and Batman. It didn’t matter that Wonder Woman was a pilot, maintained a secret identity with a full-time job, kicked gun-wielding Nazis, and founded the JSA. No, she had the misfortune to be a woman during the Silver Age. So no matter how qualified she was, no matter what she did, when the day’s crime-fighting was done, she was expected to make some guy, somewhere, a sandwich, and be happy about it. And while she didn’t just shrug and do it, she also never acted bitter about it. She could have. She SHOULD have. But she didn’t.

Somehow, Wonder Woman was always classy and cool, no matter how many talking monkeys came after her, and no matter how many men acting like talking monkeys came after her afterwards. She could (and did) rescue Superman and Batman time and again from aliens and robots and alien robots trying to shrink them and keep them in  tiny glass jars. And though they only thanked her by being condescending the entire time and then threatening to spank her, she never held it against them, and it never pissed her off. The next time they got kidnapped, there she’d be again, ready to get them out of trouble while they talked down to her the entire time.

Don’t misread me. I’m not saying I think it’s better for women to keep their mouths shut when men treat them like crap. That’s the exact opposite of what I’m saying. If someone is condescending to someone else on the basis of anything other than the condescendee being a moron, I believe that the condescendee is perfectly justified in popping the condescender in the face. But Wonder Woman never did that, and it seems to me that she didn’t only because SHE KNEW SHE WAS BETTER THAN THE GUYS TALKING DOWN TO HER, INCLUDING OTHER SUPERHEROES. It’s like she didn’t hold it against them any more than you’d hold it against a dog for enjoying the flavor of its own ass. She knew all the guys around her were pitiful, irredeemable idiots, so she was the bigger person and just let it go.

And if you don’t think that kind of unflappable confidence is just as or even more hot than thigh-high red stiletto boots and star-spangled panties, whether you’re male or female, then you should probably go to a doctor and tell him your sex parts are broken. Or go back to Saudi Arabia, you backward pile of st00p1d.

Worst Moment: 2007’s Amazons Attack! miniseries. While the concept is cool – the Amazons with their magical Bronze Age tools and abilities hold their own against the entire modern US military – the story itself is a nonsensical pile of time-waste that turns the Amazons into that half-bikini-wearing bitchy token feminist that hasn’t been compelling since the late ’70s. Wonder Woman’s portrayal is especially annoying here because she barely shows up as a result of being “captured,” and when she finally does make an appearance she’s inexplicably indecisive, basically waiting for Batman to fix everything and point out that the Amazons are actually the bad guys in this case. Like she couldn’t figure that out based on the fact that THEY ATTACKED THE UNITED STATES AND STARTED KILLING CIVILIANS. Okay, to be fair, this was in retaliation for the US government being the group that in fact captured Wonder Woman, to torture her to get information about some super Amazon magic laser that…

...You know what? I think you get the point.