Scans_Daily

Except Final Crisis happens BEFORE Rise of the Olympian, hence the lack of Batman and Superman on the JLA.

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fungo_squiggly.insanejournal.com

Bah to your logic and timelines and whatnot!

(I know; I was just making a funny.)

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Completely unrelated, but I could have sworn on SD1.0, somebody was interested in seeing some Dinah from the Grell run. Was that you, or am I hallucinating?

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No, you're definitely a crazy person. I've already read as much of the Grell run as I ever want to.

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fungo_squiggly.insanejournal.com

Returning to the subject of "Barbara's tail gets cut off all the time, why would she be so scared," perhaps she's more worried that she's going to get dropped on her head in that position.

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From a foot up?

Though the way that rebar is hanging, I can see a couple ways where it might poke uncomfortably if she lands without divesting herself of it, so there's that I suppose.

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Idk. While she's definitely too frightened for the scene, I do think that just because she's had her tail removed before doesn't mean she's just going to lie back and accept it. You don't remember pain though you definitely recall that you don't want it to happened again. If you've had your arm broken(or even something smaller like your fingers) a couple times in your past, despite it being fixed up every time, you're still going to fight before letting it happen again.

Although I'm wondering if her tail regrowth has a solid reason like 'her Cheetah form is removed of damage when she switches back to human form' or if it's just one of those comic things that never sticks.

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... Only semi-related, but ... is there any in-canon reason given for why Cheetah now wears a costume that seriously makes it look like she's exposing her crotch to the world?

Every time I see it, I think T. Catt designed it for the CattHouse Studios Erotic Earth Jam.

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Poor planning (http://i44.tinypic.com/2cpcg06.jpg). As you see, when in human form, it indicates her Cheetah connection and looks marginally less stupid (though considering this is a middle-aged British professor and not a punky twenty-year-old femme fatale we're talking about, only marginally).

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[...] a middle-aged British professor [...]

... Who now dresses like a Suicide Girl, which, if they actually bothered to acknowledge this characterization discrepancy, could kind of be fun, depending on how willing they were to poken fun at themselves:

"Yes, Wonder Woman, when I transform into the Cheetah, it transforms my normally academic personality into something straight out of a teenage male virgin's fanfic fantasy, which is why I am now calling myself ... THE COUGAR!!! Oh, and say hello to Chad, my bare-chested 19-year-old henchman. He's a former student of mine, who's now majoring in bodysurfing at UCLA."

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... I must confess I would find that an acceptable substitute for Chuma.

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Seriously, it would be so much more awesome if they would simply ACKNOWLEDGE what they're doing with the sexualities of these characters, up front.

Keep Dr. Minerva's high IQ as The Cougar, but make it a condition of her transformation that it gives her ... an itch to scratch, so that Chad The Buff Henchdude could serve two purposes at once, even as she reacted with disdain to his own lack of intellect. It could be the new Joker/Harley!

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Chad needs a barbed-wire tattoo around one upper arm, I think. And if possible, an obvious nuance to his obvious British accent that marks him as a total chav. And he thinks Diana is hot and never fails to say so, which results in a lot of getting cuffed around by Minerva.

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NO NO NO

HE MUST HAVE A KEANU-ESQUE SO-CAL ACCENT

AND INSTEAD OF BARBED WIRE, HE MUST HAVE ONE OF THOSE MICRONESIAN TRIBAL TATTOOS THAT WERE ALL THE RAGE AMONG UPPER-MIDDLE-CLASS WHITE COLLEGE KIDS IN THE 1990S

AND PIERCINGS - HE MUST HAVE AT LEAST ONE NIPPLE PIERCED, AS WELL AS A TONGUE-STUD, WHICH HE WILL NEVER FAIL TO MENTION "DRIVES THE LADIES WILD, WHEN THE CHAD-MEISTER'S TONGUE GOES DEEP-SEA DIVING IN THEIR SWEET TRENCHES"

BUT YES, HE MUST TOTALLY GET A PAINFULLY OBVIOUS HARD-ON IN HIS SPANDEX SHORTS, WHENEVER HE SEES DIANA, AND HE WOULD TOTALLY TRY TO "BREAK UP" THE FIGHTS BETWEEN DIANA AND MINERVA BY SUGGESTING THEY COME TOGETHER TO FORM "A CHAD SANDWICH"

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I want to see him get in a fistfight with Snapper.

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Over what? Who could be the biggest hipster?

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That would be quite hilarious and utterly fantastic.

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I AM AMAZED THAT NO ONE HAS CREATED A VILLAINESS CALLED THE COUGAR OF CRIME, WHOSE ENTIRE M.O. REVOLVES AROUND COMMITTING CRIMES SO THAT SHE CAN ENTICE YOUNG MALE CRIMEFIGHTERS TO STOP HER, AT WHICH POINT SHE'LL PROMISE TO MEND HER WICKED WAYS, BUT ONLY IF THEY GIVE HER A PROPER "SEEING-TO" (AS MY UK FRIENDS WOULD PUT IT). OF COURSE, SHE WOULD BE LYING, BUT SHE WOULD BE RELYING ON THE EGO AND NAIVETE OF THE YOUNG MEN, TO BELIEVE THAT THEIR DICKS ALONE COULD SET HER STRAIGHT, AND AFTERWARDS, SHE'D MAKE A MINT FROM SELLING THE SEX TAPES ONLINE.

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chthonicspirit.insanejournal.com

She was originally shown wearing them in her human form, where of course they just look like pants with a cheetah crotch. But then artists started showing her wearing them in her Cheetah form as well, either because they didn't realize what it looked like, or possibly because they did.

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I suspect they designed the costume based on the first issue's script, which made it seem like Barbara was stuck as a human full-time.

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So, implying ... ease of access, so to speak?

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Well, Rucka *is* weirdly convinced that she's some kind of sex-kitten who's remarkably easy to get between the sheets. Perhaps that take rubbed off on Heinberg and Dodson.

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... Jesus Christ, the fanfic really does just write itself, doesn't it?

Which is weird for Rucka, since I seem to recall him not having Personal Issues When He Writes Women.

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Inorite? He's one of like, four Name Writers in all of comics who I'd give an A+ for Never Doing Stupid Sexist Shit (at least in his writing). His take on Cheetah has not ceased to baffle me since I first read it.

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magus_69.insanejournal.com

Who are the other three? I'm pretty sure that Gail is one, but who are the others?

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I didn't really have anyone in mind in particular, hence the word "like;" it was just a loose approximation of how very rare a gem Rucka is among guys with his level of status in the industry. I'm not even sure I can clearly delineate what constitutes a "name writer." I might toss Dini on the pile, though, if we're really looking to name names.

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khamelea.insanejournal.com

I'll never understand why they didn't just switch the cheetah pattern with a different pattern (or even just a different appropriate color scheme.) They could have basically kept the costume the same that way.

I'm sure there's something vaguely Pre-Colombianish or otherwise related to the Cheetah's background (wasn't the god that granted her her powers more than just a cat-god?) that could work for a stripe like that.

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arrlaari.livejournal.com (from insanejournal.com)

The cheetah is a god who takes humans as an avatar, the cheetah and its avatar are "married" to the plant-god Urzkartaga.

For the whole story, look up the first entry under series: the many faces of barbara minerva, a tag on this very journal.

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khamelea.insanejournal.com

Ah yes, the plant-god is what I was remembering.

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foxhack.insanejournal.com

Fanservice for the incredibly small amount of straight furry readers out there, like me?

(I kid, I kid.)

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greenmask.insanejournal.com

I do like it when WW wears not-the-usual.

Those attached bits of flag look particularly awesome, actually.

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You know, her tail is part of her spine, if she's really like a cat. I didn't like WW before and I like her less now.

In fact, here's the opinion of a couple of superheroines I DO like, Fire and Mary Marvel, and I'm glad someone finally said it:

(And I hope someone makes an icon out of WW in the last panel.)

BTW, it's been a long time--was that Genocide thing ever worked out?

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Ah, yes, the Superbuddies Diana. That's some really good writing, there. Totally captures the character. Reminds me of Frank Miller's award-winning take on Batman in ASBAR, or the epic success of Chuck Austen's X-MEN.

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Yes, anything that makes DC characters less iconic is bad. Though I'm not fond of ASBAR, but this treatment, unlike that, is plausible. You're telling me there aren't people who don't like Diana in the DCU? I'm sorry, but nah.

And this was more fun to read than anything DC has put out in the past three years, so eh.

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No, this treatment is light-years south of anything resembling reality. Deliberately so. Everyone in Superbuddies was intentionally out-of-character. Sometimes it worked and was hilarious (Fire most of the time, Booster and Beetle, J'onn, Batman's "I don't like anything" cameos), sometimes it didn't work and was stupid (Diana here, Captain Atom, the original, thankfully rejected decision to have Mary sleep with Guy).

There are definitely people in the DCU who don't like Diana. Fire is not among them. Even if she were, there wouldn't be anything remotely in Diana's character to justify it. This is Johns-level stupid.

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Minerva's had her tail cut off a bazillion times, as was noted earlier in this thread. And she'd just kidnapped and was currently holding Diana's close friend at an undisclosed location, using monster to torture said friend and put her in a coma (quite possibly killing her). She'd also just used the monster to kill a fuckton of people. (Not to mention the whole story arc is kind of about Diana kind of losing it)

And it could well have been bluffing. We'll never know if Diana went that far.

If I was Diana? It would be a hell of a lot worse than losing a tail (and cats have lost tails and come out of it not paralyzed so I don't really see the significance of the tail being part of the spine? It hurts a lot. Boohoo. A lot of people are dead or worse thanks to this woman. That hurts a hell of a lot more)

But, hey, you want strawmen reasons to hate Diana, go ahead.

And the Genocide arc will be over in two issues.

Not touching the Superbuddies thing. Pretty much everyone was OOC in that mini.

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*If Diana would go that far, sorry.

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Then punch her, or kill her or something. But that's an act of cruelty, and I'd suggest sadism like this is FAR more out of character than Diana being pompous.

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She needed Cheetah to tell her where Genocide was so she could save Etta. Threatening to hurt her was the only way. Cheetah did explicitly say "What are you doing, you're supposed to be better than this!" so it's likely going to be a plot point. Genocide has fucked with Diana's head pretty thoroughly at this point.

Now, Cheetah's pretty out of character here. She's never really been afraid of pain, and now suddenly the idea of going Lynx is cowing her. But that's another thing.

I've collected a good deal of the WW comics, and in them, she's never looked down on ANYONE, or expected anyone to like her, especially not because they're female (Hell, her first two villians were female.) The closest I can think of is when Minerva lied to her, and she was like "WTF is this, I've never seen another woman do something like this before!" But that was naivete, and she quickly got over it as she acclimated.

And she is buds with a lot of the characters here, she specifically helped Booster and Ted out and was one of the few not to go "losers" during the whole Countdown to Infinite Crisis thing. She treated them with respect and dignity. And she attended a freaking slumber party with Fire and the rest when they were on the team together, and they all got on very well, and in her first appearance in JLI, she got along with the rest of the team. I believe.

So yes, I consider her Superbuddies actions here more OOC than threatening Cheetah so she can save the life of a friend and put an unstoppable killing machine down

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magus_69.insanejournal.com

(Hell, her first two villians were female.)

They were? I remember Decay, but who was the other?

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Cheetah, then Silver Swan. I'm not really counting Ares, he's a god. A villainous god. Of War.

...look, they came very early in her career and they were very female and they did not like her. That is my point! :P

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Haha, now this is the debate I thought I might provoke with those scans. I was wondering when it would come up.

See, I think the contrast is really interesting, because in the Rucka scan, we've got Diana feeling so strongly that putting a stop to torture is important, that Garibaldi thinks she won't even answer Justice League calls during her meeting with the CHR. And then in the second scan, we've got Diana threatening, if not outright indulging in torture with her own two hands.

And the thing is, I don't find those two things at all difficult to reconcile. I don't think Diana's OOC, here, with the tail-slashing, but I do think she's being stupid (torture doesn't work in situations like this, and Diana knows it), and failing to live up to her own principles. It's not unusual for that to happen to people under extreme duress. Even to people who have no possibility of getting bad mojo vibes from having a direct magical line to their soul currently sewn into the body of an evil golem. Diana has lots and lots of reasons to be failing to live up to her own principles right here. That doesn't mean she doesn't still hold those principles *or* that she's acting OOC.

(Or, necessarily, that she's being unheroic; the standard Diana strives for is quite high, and an action could easily be moral but still insufficient by Diana's reckoning. Whether or not the torture of an evil woman in an attempt to save hundreds if not thousands of innocent lives is one of those things is an argument I have no real interest in pursuing.)

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Threatening torture?

She'd already cut Cheetah's face to get her point across.

Even if she stopped right there, she's already wounded a captured and defenseless Cheetah in order to get Cheetah to talk. The torture already started.

And I'm okay with that. I do think it's a remarkably dangerous "slippery slope" but many things heroes do fall into that category. I think most of the time things we call "torture" are unjustified, and unlikely to yield results anyway.

But I do allow for common sense, and I think it would be a poor stance for the "Avatar of Truth" to take, saying it's cut and dry/black and white. The truth of the matter is that things get complicated out there.

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I dunno, if you're going to count a superficial cut to the face as torture, you have to start counting things like Dinah punching Ollie off his feet or Bruce smacking the Cluemaster upside the head to keep him moving as torture, too. Minerva isn't even hurt by that, her only response is a big ole indignant WTF; Bruce breaking a guy's nose in a fight is more damage and more excessive than Diana cutting Minerva's face here.

(And Minerva's hardly either captured or defenseless. I still can't buy for even a second that that flimsy-ass coil of rebar could hold her in any meaningful restraint. Admittedly, though, that's probably either a writing oversight or a penciller failure, rather than an intentional indication of something more subtle in Diana's comprehension of the situation or Cheetah's behavior, so it's probably not relevant to the conversation.)

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The difference is that those things are not done with the intent of using the pain to coerce the prisoner into giving up information.

Batman uses psychological torture the whole time (and honestly, how much difference is there between waterboarding and dropping a guy off a bridge then grabbing him at the last minute?)

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Torture's not always about getting information. It can be about asserting dominance, instilling fear, coercing a particular behavior, or simply an exercise in sadism. Breaking a guy's fingers because he failed to come up with the money he owed you isn't going to get you information, but that doesn't make it any less torture. Beating and raping the new inmate because he needs to know he's at the bottom of the totem pole isn't going to get you information, but that doesn't make it any less torture. Branding the uppity POW to stop him leading prisoner revolts isn't going to get you information, but that doesn't make it any less torture.

Dinah hit Ollie to assert dominance. Bruce smacked Cluemaster around to coerce behavior. If torture is just (any degree of violence + motive associated with torture), they're both torturers.

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Well that's where it all gets a bit sticky, doesn't it? Because hurting someone to get information IS torturing them (and yes, there are many other things that are torture too), so where do you draw the line? Cutting the face is okay, cutting the tail is not? Or maybe cutting the tail and the face are okay, since she's got a healing ability, but something else isn't? Even in the real world it's all very murky, and we can make up all the rules we want, but it's not exactly science. We can't hook up people to a machine that beeps when what you're doing is getting dangerously close to being torture (and I'm not sure what kind of consensus we'd get if we went out and tested people to find out where they really feel the "do not cross" line is). It's not something that's clear and well defined at all and I hope that "The Avatar of Truth" doesn't end up saying otherwise.

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While I agree that she's hardly defenseless, I do think that the 'superficial cut to the face' counts as the torture being started. Cutting someone's face with something you just threw at them is a lot more of a threat than the action with the tail. The face is more visible and your head is home to the organs that perceive 4 out of 5 senses. It's serious, despite it not being treated as such. Also it wasn't done in a fight, so the comparison to Bruce breaking a nose isn't applicable. She wasn't stopping her, she was attempting to intimidate her.

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Also it wasn't done in a fight

Precisely why I used that comparison. Bruce's act of breaking someone's nose, in a fight while attempting to subdue someone, is excessive violence. It's extreme, over-the-top, painful and disfiguring and dangerous, more than is needed and more violent and cruel than can actually be justified.

It is in every way more extreme than a superficial cut to the cheek.

It is far more brutal compared to what is actually required to subdue someone, than a cut to the cheek is compared to what is actually required to keep someone subdued.

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Yes, it is and Bruce isn't Diana. Though honestly a good writer wouldn't have him doing such things.

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broblawsky.insanejournal.com

Wait, how is breaking someone's nose over the top when trying to subdue them? If you want to disable someone efficiently, you pretty much have to hit them in the face.

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Bruce can do this (http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/stephaniebrown/images/3/36/DetectivecomicsSteph1.jpg).

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The Genocide thing is STILL GOING?

Tell me if I'm wrong, but: wasn't that supposedly done with before the events of FINAL CRISIS chronologically? The events therein I mean? By which I mean: we pretty much know how WW will turn out from it.

DC: Scheduling is not our forte.

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Somewhere during the Countdown debacle, WW chronology just sort of stopped matching up with wider DC chronology, and hasn't really bothered to resume since. I find I don't mind in the least. Gives it a nice sense of separation from all the stuff happening in the outside universe that I don't care for.

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Well, as I have no dog in the fight anyway(seriously, it's only that Vertigo isn't what it was that ever induced me back into the DCU at all), it's all fine with me.

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Something just occurred to me about the Superbuddies thing. Remember that was the last time Sue Dibny was alive before IDENTITY CRISIS? (In fact, I think they accidentally overlapped in publication) And Ted was alive? And stuff like that?

I kind of choose to consider this canon and in character, if what came after is what I have to choose otherwise. See, I dislike most of that and I like this. And if DC writers can have their own sub-universes(say, Earth-Haney), so can readers.

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Wait, I'm confused.

You don't like Diana. But the Diana you don't like doesn't actually exist and never has. So, you're going to discard all of her canon everywhere and decide that your own personal Diana canon includes just this one completely doesn't-begin-to-resemble-her cameo, solely so that you can continue to inaccurately hate her?

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icon_uk.insanejournal.com

I confess I rather like Beetle saying to Gold "The merchandise will be silent". I don't want to know why he is saying it, because I'm bringing my own context and it's rather lovely! :)

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Can't unread it now, and don't want to.

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xandertarbert.insanejournal.com

And the, "If the collar fits!" line in the next panel means nothing to you? For shame.

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kagome654.insanejournal.com

I'll be honest, I tend to like Wonder Woman MORE when she's written like this, I just find it much more entertaining (much like the 'Out of my way, sperm bank!' characterization), but then I tend to go for characters that are difficult to get along with.

But it is so not proper Diana behavior. She honestly strikes me as the most accepting and least condescending member of the Trinity (I don't think Superman would intentionally condescend to anyone, but he still reads that way sometimes) and the most likely to support the Superbuddies (when they're not being totally irresponsible and ridiculous).* So yeah...Wonder Woman is a lot of things, but a bitch ain’t one of them.

*Though I’ll defer to one of the Wondy experts if my interpretation of her is totally off, I’m no expert. She could actually be a completely judgmental harpy and I just haven't read those stories

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You know, it's really the more "Why don't they liiiiiike me? They're my siiiiisters" that annoys me more than the bitchiness. On what planet is Diana that pathetic.

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kagome654.insanejournal.com

Hey now, everyone wants to be liked :(

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I think it's the combination of the two. Diana being a slightly more aware version of the Superbuddies take on Mary Marvel - an innocent sweetheart mystified and saddened by Fire's brattiness and the general inability of the Superbuddies to be friendly or responsible people, all "I don't get it, how can they act this way?" would... still probably not be *all* that funny, Mary's exaggeration only works because she's an ingenue, but it would at least be a legit parody of Wonder Woman. Perez' Diana really was too naive to live, and Jimenez played that disappointed dismay up too, so taking that over the top is definitely an angle you can take with the character.

Conversely, you could play her up as super-responsible and super-good to a point that's just silly. She's not mad, she's just disappointed, and she knows they can all do better, and that there's more to Bea than she's showing and she could be a good *example* to Mary and the boys, all uber-maternal in a way that aggravates the hell out of Bea and delights Mary (which also aggravates the hell out of Bea). And Diana understands that too and thinks that Bea should be better than that as well, and et cetera. That would also work, and be a natural and effective exaggeration-to-parody of the character.

When you try to do both at once, though, it's not "look this character can be taken to silly extremes" like everybody else in the cast anymore, it's "look, if we exaggerate wildly in two totally incompatible directions, this character becomes hypocritical, inconsistent and stupid, and aptly mocked by our other characters" and then you're on the Character-Bashing Badfic Failboat.

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So Gail's Diana is still a massive hypocrite. Good to know.

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Read above your comment.

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I have actually and it doesn't change the fact that Simone's Diana is a hypocrite.

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unknownscribler.insanejournal.com

How?

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Besides this, there is the fact that she has no problem with her mother even though she's caused far more innocent deaths then Genocide has.

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Mind controlled.

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Wrong. Circe gave Hippolyta a bit of her soul but that piece was never removed so she's still the same as when she destroyed Washington. And the Amazons that followed her have no such excuse.

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