Recently, DC Comics announced a new creative team who will be taking over WONDER WOMAN: Meredith Finch, who writes for Zenescope Comics, and her husband, artist David Finch, probably better-known to comics fans because of his work on CYBERFORCE from Top Cow Productions, NEW AVENGERS and MOON KNIGHT from Marvel, and the mini-series IN BRIGHTEST DAY and FOREVER EVIL from DC.
The Comic Book Resources website ran a nice interview with them this past week in which the couple discuss their plans for the book and the character.
Then we got to the last paragraph of the interview and hoo boy...
David: And for my part, I'm excited to be drawing Meredith's story and to be drawing such an icon. That's something -- since I've been at DC, it's been an incredible privilege to be able to draw characters like Batman, and to the limited degree I've had, to draw Superman, and now to get into Wonder Woman. I think she's a beautiful, strong character. Really, from where I come from, and we've talked about this a lot, we want to make sure it's a book that treats her as a human being first and foremost, but is also respectful of the fact that she represents something more. We want her to be a strong -- I don't want to say feminist, but a strong character. Beautiful, but strong.
"I don't want to say feminist..."
Well, sorry, Dave, but ya did.
To be fair, I'm sure Finch didn't mean to offend thousands of female comics fans and many more women who were inspired growing up reading Wonder Woman or watching her on TV. Part of it might be that comics fandom is still largely dominated by guys who are freaking because more and more girls are showing up in their treehouse. But a big part of it is that for many the word "Feminist" carries the connotation of the man-hating extremist.
This is frustrating, but sadly nothing new. I recently read a collection of essays by the writer Dorothy L. Sayers which included one titled "Are Women Human?" about how society and popular culture treats women as if they were some alien creatures or exotic fauna rather than as people with human desires, needs and ambitions; yet in her essay, which makes a strong feminist argument, she too backs away from the term "feminist", associating it with an overreaction that in its own way also denied women's humanity.
Back in the '70s, when comics writers started introducing feminist characters in the name of relevance, they frequently portrayed them this way, as the angry, defiant woman with the chip on her shoulder. Sometimes this was done to parody those crazy "Woman's Libbers"; sometimes the male writer was sincerely trying to portray a "strong woman", as the popular term to day goes, but didn't know how to do it without making her a ball-busting bitch.
When Denny O'Neil, the man who made Green Arrow a hippie and added social philanthropy to Bruce Wayne's portfolio, took over writing Wonder Woman briefly in that era, he tried to make the character more relevant by taking away her super-powers and her skimpy costume and turning Diana into a martial-arts fighter, like Emma Peel from The Avengers; (the other Avengers). He was shocked that this angered a lot of feminists like Gloria Steinem who regarded Wonder Woman as a role model -- as their hero -- and who did not regard stripping her of her powers as something positive.
Wonder Woman has always been a feminist icon, because she was always intended as one. Her creator, William Moulton Marston, girls ought to have a hero in comic books, and wrote her to be a positive and assertive role model. Her early appearances are full of her commenting on the relation between the sexes and expounding on Amazon philosophy. Often she leads by example, inspiring other women to excel in their own ways.
Granted, Marston had some wacky theories about the sexes of his own, and he had a fondness for bondage which frequently cropped up in his stories, to the bogglement of modern readers. But his Wonder Woman had a mission; not to punch out Nazis (although she did a fair amount of that) and not to "put men in their place" (although Hera help the male who tried to stop her), but to help women fulfill their own potential, to respect themselves and others, and to be confident.
These strike me as laudably feminist goals.
David Finch has since posted a "clarification" of his off-hand remark, which to me seems to say that he doesn't quite get what everyone is so upset about.
I wasn't saying Wonder Woman is not for being equal, and therefore a feminist. I just want her to be a human being, fallible and real.
I certainly apologize to anyone who can see how it could be interpreted that way, but it couldn't be further from my heart.
Still, it might not matter if David is clueless. He's just doing the pencils; Meredith is doing the writing. And speaking as a guy married to a wonder woman myself, sometimes the smart thing to do is to shut up and let your wife do the talking.
I hope Meredith does well with the comic and lives up to Diana's long and rich tradition.
The Guardian has a very good piece on the subject: Wonder Woman's feminism matters; So why would the comics industry reject it?