Straczynski to Helm Superman, Wonder Woman

Straczynski to Helm Superman, Wonder Woman

Mar 08

So, that’s going to start off pretty interesting and then drop off with a whimper after being plagued by delays, isn’t it?

There’s an interview with JMS on Newsarama that is pretty illuminating in regard to his take on the characters.  Surprise, surprise, he says that his goal with Diana is to pare her down to her core and get rid of the “layers of debris” around her.  Not only is this something that every new writer to come aboard Wonder Woman says that his or her goal is, it’s a goal that has never been strictly necessary.  On the other hand, he talks with a clear simplicity about Superman, a character that does have tons of baggage attached to him.

Look at it this way: If I were going to write a Fraption (you know, those caption bubble things that Matt Fraction uses in his Uncanny X-Men run where you get important facts about the character), I think that if you were going to simply skip over cleverness like “Wonder Woman: Is Wonder Woman” or “Superman: Is Superman” (both of which strike me as valid, honestly, just like Batman’s caption box would just read “BATMAN.”) then you could probably get away with “Amazon Princess. Kicks ass.” a lot better than “Last Son of Krypton. Mild-mannered reporter. Farmboy. Has awesome wife. Does basically everything. Except magic. And kryptonite.”  Or maybe I’m expressing a bias here.

I was trying to defend Superman to my girlfriend not too long ago.  She doesn’t like him because he’s too perfect. I did my standard thing about how Superman’s limits are only the limits he imposes on himself and that it’s those limits that define him more than his powers and that’s kind of beautiful yadda yadda yadda and I realized something – I don’t think I honestly care that much about Superman.  It’s a small sentence, but it felt like this big watershed thing for me.  Why I didn’t, I wasn’t sure, but I figured it out while I was reading that JMS interview.  I looked at the stuff that he was saying about Superman and realized that it’s the exact opposite of what I’ve always felt (that it’s more about the possession of his ridiculous power and not the judicious use of it) and I think I figured out that the funny thing about letting superheroes become your mythology is that you still end up with several incompatible theories of god butting heads against one another.  As much as I respect Straczynski, I don’t think I buy into his, just like I – a straight, male longtime comics reader who has read Wonder Woman on and off since the post-Crisis Perez reboot don’t really care for the way that the author kind of ghettoizes Diana as being just for girls, or even worse, the girl version of Superman when she is, in fact, completely different.

I like JMS a good deal a lot of the time, however; between Rising Stars, a majority of his Amazing Spider-Man and his relaunch of Thor, he has my reader good will.  I’m committed to giving Straczynski a chance with both of these books, but I’m keeping my optimism in check.  How about you?