Mythbusters: New52 Diana is Weak

[americanwonder]

It would, I agree totally, but only against a more conventional enemy.
Against someone like Giganta, yes it would save Diana from going for the ankles before she could go for the head, but Strife...not so much.

It may not be effective against Stife, but I don't see how you can say it doesn't give her more options and/or mobility.

[BeccaBlast]

Do you know this hasn't been true of the Amazons for decades now?*




(*if it ever was true)

This falls into the realm of "facts we choose to ignore, no matter how often they're pointed out." It's the most common tactic of arguing on message boards, and whether it's similar to or an outgrowth of current political discourse, I'm unsure.

In either case, it's totally distasteful and completely unproductive.

[Outside_85]

Do you know this hasn't been true of the Amazons for decades now?*

A far as I am aware, Gail Simone was the first to introduce actual crime to PI in the form of Alkyone and her bunch?

It may not be effective against Stife, but I don't see how you can say it doesn't give her more options and/or mobility.

That's what I didn't say. Putting a rope around Giganta top quarter and pulling is probably the best way to get her down on the ground without actually having to punch her. Flying here will ofc give Diana the chance of doing so without needing to strangle the woman because of the angle she can get.
What I did say was that against someone like Strife I doesn't matter if she can or cant fly.

[Dr. Hurt]

I call bull$#*t on all that, without flight we get images like this...





With flight we get this...

Leave that s*** for Superman and Powergirl. In most fights she's grounded anyway to the point that a casual fan wouldnt know she can fly. So what's the big deal?

Oh no, your waifu got depowered. All those poor women around the world!

[Dr. Hurt]

There’s not a time requirement, but what you were trying to prove was how much more awesome Diana is when flying compared to Diana on the ground. And again, to prove that you gave us 20 seconds of bullet-dodging vs 6 minutes of highly choreographic ground battles.


Here’s the thing: I’ve never said that flight is not useful.
I’m against the idea that Diana is weaker or downright helpless if she can’t do it, like you seems so convinced of.
If they removed her superstrenght or her ability to withstand powerful hits I would argue that yes, she would be weaker, but the fact that she needs to buy an airplane ticket to go from London to New York doesn’t make her suck at everything.


There’s still the link. So why don’t you get it together, sir?
Here, the right button does Wonders.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEIADT8V7jE

Agreed.

She wouldn't be dangling there like a Christmas-tree ornament for one. For two she'd be able to fly around Strife's neck a few times with the lasso and strangle her to the ground.

God forbid anyone kicks your waifu's ass for a change. Are you by any chance Stephanie Meyer?

Actually, she could have done that anyway.

Ever play tether ball? Same idea.

One can likely assume that Diana was surprised by Strife lifting her off the ground. Or maybe it was part of a plan to get her attention and start a dialogue. Since we didnt actually see how that conflict was resolved, its sort of up in the air.

But had Diana chosen to choke Strife, all she would have needed to do was leap over Strife's shoulder and let momentum carry her around. Such a scene, I think, would have been pretty cool and more interesting than her flying to accomplish the same too. But thats just me.

I also question whether or not choking Strife would have accomplished anything, as she's a god, but thats sort of neither here nor there for the purposes of this discussion.

What is, is the fact that Strife is a god. This was not Giganta Diana was fighting. This was a god. Diana seems to be able to drop their minions fairly easily, but the gods themselves likely go down a little harder. I think we can forgive Diana (and Azzarello) for not pwning Strife like she's a noob.

This said, I dont care much whether she can fly or not. I still like the idea of the stealth jet being used more, but if it turns out that she can still fly, whatever. Her ability to fly is not what I love about the character. And I dont see her loss of the ability as an insult either.

Dont waste your breath. According to him Diana should have beaten up Hera, saved the Amazons, and backhand slapped Strife in the first issue.

[Reginleif]

Leave that s*** for Superman and Powergirl. In most fights she's grounded anyway to the point that a casual fan wouldnt know she can fly. So what's the big deal?

Oh no, your waifu got depowered. All those poor women around the world!

My mom read WW as a child and watched the Lynda Carter tv show, and she does not know why she flies in the JL animated series, and now since she started reading my Azz's WW, she is probably really confused.

[Dr. Hurt]

How did you get from personal preference and opinion to reason and internal logic?

For starters, a humanoid alien gets the ability to fly from yellow solar power - that's logical?

Apparently Diana's daddy is the god of the heavens itself, but her flying would be without any internal reason?

Serious?

I'm saying that as the achetypal greek demigod that fights gods, it suits her more to be "flightless" than a copy of superman. Because that's what people want her to be. "If Superman can do X, why cant WW?"

Azzarello is finally giving her a very distinct world of her own, with its own atmosphere, rules, etc. He's making her a female Hellboy and it seems to work very well. But no, lets get back to female Superman with some greek mythology sprinkled on it for good measure, lets try for the 1000000000th time to see if people like it. There's already 2 female Supermen, PG and Supergirl.

If anything, duking it out with these powerful greek gods, especially without flight makes WW into a powerhouse. Because the Greek gods of the old DCU were jokes.

And as for the flight thing, you know who's the most powerful member of the Avengers? The green one that doesnt fly.
"I have an army."
"We have a Hulk!"

Or are Aquaman and Flash weak because they cant fly?

Seriously, who gives a rat's ass about flight? It's not like it was a big part of her iconography or her books. You'd get a nice flying pose in every 5-6 issues and the rest of the time she'd be on the ground, even fighting on the ground. But no, let's make a fuss because we wont be getting those cool poses every few issues. Lets make a fuss that she isnt like Superman anymore, when that serves her best, distinguishes her and gives her the 15th spot in sales, only dropping in the last month because of the AvX crap. Let's ignore all that because when she's in the JL she cant NOT fly when others can right? Not our waifu!!!

Hey, Batman cant pull the earth back into orbit (i'm talking about that pic Maximum posted the other day), he cant even dream of fighting the threats the others do, he doesnt have powers or magic, or anything but to me he's the most interesting character in the league. Because he's just a man and he's earned the right to be among gods, and we he talks, they shut up and listen. He's the goddamn batman and he doesnt need to fly, or shoot lasers.

In a similar way WW doesnt need to fly to be awesome. If anything, her bright and uplifting personality, and her fearlessness made her the best part of Johns' crappy (in my opinion) JL book.
"Darkseid? I dont give a f***!"


And i've explained numerous times how WW can have awesome fight scenes, and make up her lack of flight with jumping, parkour running, pole vaulting, etc. I imagine her as a leopard, fast, agile, and fierce.

[americanwonder]

A far as I am aware, Gail Simone was the first to introduce actual crime to PI in the form of Alkyone and her bunch?

Before Simone, waaaay back before the dawn of this century , we had Perez WW #1. "My daughters - you have failed us." Does that sound like nothing ever goes wrong? Personally, I don't recall a single issue from Perez onward that ever said nothing ever goes wrong among the Amazons. Not one.

Honest questions:

a) For you, does the absense of crime = "they were an 100% bonafied ideal society where nothing was ever wrong"?

b) Since you are aware there is/was crime and general imperfection (even if Gail was the first to highlight it), why use the statement "they were an 100% bonafied ideal society where nothing was ever wrong" when you know it doesn't fit?

c) Is it so hard to believe that a group of people could form a society with much less crime than we have in our societies today?

[SteveGus]

He's making her a female Hellboy and it seems to work very well.

This is a remarkable insight about the book. Sa-LUTE!

And here's the problem. Wonder Woman isn't and can't be a female Hellboy. Wonder Woman isn't an unbound demon with a heart of gold summoned to earth. I can see how the idea has a superficial appeal. As Hellboy, you get to fight Nazis and hellspawn. If and when Wonder Woman gets her superhero back on, this would be a good recipe for a couple of arcs.

But Wonder Woman is unique among the superheroes in that she is not the product of a hell, but of a paradise. Any version of the character that takes that away is a travesty.

[americanwonder]

... In a similar way WW doesnt need to fly to be awesome...

Aw, if not much else, on this we can agree. I never said she would be un-awesome if she she couldn't fly. But the topic isn't whether or not she's awesome (a very subjective term); it's whether or not she's weaker than before.

And, btw, Batman does have powers; his marketability makes him the Bink of the DCU (everyone around him has to slow down so he can keep up).

[WhitOro]

In either case, it's totally distasteful and completely unproductive.

Like jumping in a conversation that I've ignored from the beginning just so you could take a stab on another poster for an opinion expressed on what is not the topic of this conversation.

LET'S NOT TALK ABOUT THE AMAZONS' HISTORY OF CRIMES HERE.
There're already four or five threads entirely devoted to that subject, please

It is difficult for me, at least, to accept that Azzarello is not depowering Diana. She's lost her army, her home base, her entire place in the DC universe; this does depower her as a character even if she as an individual still has every superpower she did before the run. Since the entire run has been an exercise in removing most of the traditional elements from her backstory without replacing them, actually removing abilities from the character seems to be consistent with the general theme of the book as it stands now. It would seem that she doesn't have most of the gifts from the goddesses that Perez gave her, though some of those were always hard to figure and none of them were really used all that consistently by later writers.

You're taking "depowering" in a much greater sense, I'm talking strictly to Wonder Woman capabilities. Even if you remove the Amazons, that doesn't make her weaker physically, she still spent her childhood with them, she was still trained by them.
An home-base can be rebuilt (soon of that later), her place is be a superhero in a world of superheroes, taking away a group doesn't prevent the single from being his own thing, especially if he/she already found her own way, like Diana did.
I see the Amazons like the Kents. They're something important in the Superman mythos, but overall, If I could just see Superman do his stuff, I'm more than happy.

And again, I prefer not to talk too much about the Amazon issue, because I'm a big fan of Azzarello and I've seen do this tricks again: in his 12 issue Superman run, he made Lois Lane dissapear, the Fortress of Solitude was destroyed, Superman failed to save countless lifes, the planet itself revolted against him, Clark doubted his entire role, making him sad, "emo",s**t kept piling on him so much that the guy was almost driven to the point of suicide (he didn't considered it suicide but from any other hero prospective it was). Then, by the end, the Status Quo was back, and Superman was almost reborn, stronger and lighter than before. A key scene was when he rebuilt his Fortress, choosing a jungle: it was a place of glorious life instead a dead ice wasteland.
I think the same things will happen with Wonder Woman. I'm waiting.

Maybe I'm not following you, but doesn't this contradict itself and the OP? I mean, if the conflicts don't require the use of her superpowers, how do we know she's actually at the same level of power as before?

There're subtle proofs and moments where she shows the presence of superpowers, but the overall conflicts are shaped in a way where she doesn't need to use them.
It's the Superman argument again:
"Let’s go back to Superman: if an author decides to never use Kryptonite (thank god) during the course of his run, does that mean Superman is now immune from it? Does it mean Kryptonite doesn’t exist? Of course not. The same way if a writer never uses batragans during his 80-issue run of Batman, that doesn’t mean the crusader doesn’t have them anymore."
The fact that she doesn't use her superpowers, doesn't indicate a lack of them.

And, btw, Batman does have powers; his marketability makes him the Bink of the DCU (everyone around him has to slow down so he can keep up).

"I have the best superpower of all. I have so much money I can buy everything"

Hephaestus is not a fighter. Never has been. He's worked the forge for how long now? And the comic itself shows him with bad knees. I don't care how "bulky" he is, he's not the type to leap first into fighting. Dumb scene is dumb, and thus Diana (to me) can't look smart just because those around here are really dumbed down.

He's still a God and an incredibly rip dude. Bad knees or missing legs/arms never stopped comicbook characters from leaping into fights.
Fiction is filled with blacksmiths going inot battle because they're angry. Would that make every single scene with them dumb? They're dumb, maybe, but I can't see a scene like that be completly pointless or artificial just because a big arrogant gorilla decided to act like a big arrogant gorilla.

[Outside_85]

This is a remarkable insight about the book. Sa-LUTE!

And here's the problem. Wonder Woman isn't and can't be a female Hellboy. Wonder Woman isn't an unbound demon with a heart of gold summoned to earth. I can see how the idea has a superficial appeal. As Hellboy, you get to fight Nazis and hellspawn. If and when Wonder Woman gets her superhero back on, this would be a good recipe for a couple of arcs.

But Wonder Woman is unique among the superheroes in that she is not the product of a hell, but of a paradise. Any version of the character that takes that away is a travesty.

Also, Raven kinda has dips on the like-Hellboy angle...or should I say he has her angle since she is from 1980 and he's from 1993.

Before Simone, waaaay back before the dawn of this century , we had Perez WW #1. "My daughters - you have failed us." Does that sound like nothing ever goes wrong? Personally, I don't recall a single issue from Perez onward that ever said nothing ever goes wrong among the Amazons. Not one.

Just to finalize this, since our OP seems to be getting upset :)

1) "My daughters - you have failed us."; that was before they gained immortality and if I am not mistaken, just busted out of prison (where half the Amazons did what they were asked not to do). Second part of this; it was because of divine meddling that it came about in the first place.

a) Pretty much, because the absence of crime means that everyone is content with what they have, no one suffers, no one starves or have needs they have to resort to criminal activities to get. Also this was more or less what Marston intended the Amazons to be because of his personal philosophy of matriarchy being for the best.

b) General term, should have said 99%,

c) No, its not, but the Amazons are more or less an isolated experiment. You take a few thousand people, make them immortal, give them a few guide lines and leave them to it for around 3000 years. They probably couldn't have pulled it off if they constantly had to deal with the outside world like they've had to since Diana left.

[WhitOro]

Just to finalize this, since our OP seems to be getting upset :)

I apologize, maybe I sounded too harsh . It's just that this topic can already be discussed here:

http://forums.comicbookresources.com...e-DCnU-Trinity
http://forums.comicbookresources.com...mazons-actions
http://forums.comicbookresources.com...s-of-the-nuDCU
http://forums.comicbookresources.com...erous-Villainy

And it would be far too easy for it to take over this thread too.

[Reginleif]

I apologize, maybe I sounded too harsh . It's just that this topic can already be discussed here:

http://forums.comicbookresources.com...e-DCnU-Trinity
http://forums.comicbookresources.com...mazons-actions
http://forums.comicbookresources.com...s-of-the-nuDCU
http://forums.comicbookresources.com...erous-Villainy
And it would be far too easy for it to take over this thread too.

I honestly am tired of this and it is only going to get worse when #8 comes out and it is revealed that Wonder Woman is in fact Wonder Man

[BeccaBlast]

Like jumping in a conversation that I've ignored from the beginning just so you could take a stab on another poster for an opinion expressed on what is not the topic of this conversation.

LET'S NOT TALK ABOUT THE AMAZONS' HISTORY OF CRIMES HERE.
There're already four or five threads entirely devoted to that subject, please

I will try to be more careful in the future about which conversations you happen to be ignoring -- but apparently you're also ignoring ones where I've noted the same unproductive behavior on part of people you disagree with, as well, so perhaps you're only assuming I was making it personal.

I did not introduce the subject to the thread -- I remarked that the conversation was taking a well-worn trail where people ignore inconvenient facts. That's happening all across this board these days, and it IS distasteful and unproductive. Don't take it personally.