Etta Candy returns to plus-size in Morrison's WONDER WOMAN

**Nyssane** · 11-07-2012, 05:37 PM

Etta Candy To Return As An "Immense Girl" In Grant Morrison's Wonder Woman.

Apparently, Morrison wasn't too thrilled with the modernization of Etta in Justice League. He wants to make the definitive Wonder Woman, including Steve Trevor as a worthy love interest and Etta as Wonder Woman's "pal."

Pretty excited, I must say.

**MelDyer** · 11-07-2012, 06:43 PM

I liked Etta just FINE as a big, fat, white girl from a Texas (I think) rancher family.

Furthermore, I don't appreciate the political position it puts us traditionalists in, with new, ethnicized Etta in JLA comic, that we'd be okay with plain, old WHITE ETTA. We didn't ask for the character to be turned into a skinny or black woman, and I don't recall anyone ever identifying Etta Candy's race as the primary problem with the character. Again, nobody asked for any of this, but voicing indifference to Etta's present ethnicization unfairly makes us sound like racists.

Don't appreciate the position we're put in, here.

If creators/editors wanted, for no other reason than politics, to make Etta more thnically diverse, couldn't they have just added to what was there? Is there some reason that Etta Candy couldn't be, like Lynda Carter, a Caucasian woman with a mixed race background? Is there some reason Etta couldn't be a pudgy, sassy Latina, with a Mexican mama and a white dad?

Or a white woman, like Carol Channing, with an African American parent.

Bryan Azzarello's characterization of Zola is proof that all Etta Candy needed was a good writer, who believed in her and how much fun the WW comic could be with her in it.

**The Man From Room X** · 11-07-2012, 07:03 PM

Cool. Will she still be a POC though?

**MelDyer** · 11-07-2012, 07:44 PM

The bigger crime being committed here is that someone, in the interest of progress, decided that the world doesn't need to see overweight, stocky or thickly made people represented in this comic. This was a TERRIBLE, nearly unforgivable decision, considering all of the problems our American girls (of every race, ethinicity, bla'bla-bla) with eating disorders and healthy body image.

Plucky, two-fisted Etta, fat and whatever race we can get her, is needed, today, more than ever. She, in ways we couldn't see before, is as much a symbol of women's liberation, as Wonder Woman - the freedom to be a woman, happy with whatever shape that Nature gave her. Should there be something wrong with being a short, stocky woman, who doesn't look like a Cosmo girl or some anoerexic model? Is that really what we want our little girls to believe?

Etta's problem wasn't her race ..or her size. She was just fine, as she was, ..and that is what we should be teaching every young, impressionable woman, who's reading WONDER WOMAN.

**Sacred Knight** · 11-07-2012, 07:48 PM

Personally I don't really mind not glorifying obesity. And make no mistake, that's what golden age Etta is. Not non-supermodel size, but morbidly obese. She was fine post-Crisis, a bigger woman, but healthy looking. Making her massive again though? I don't necessarily think that's a positive at all.

**AdamYJ** · 11-07-2012, 07:51 PM

I like that someone wants to put the Wonder Woman supporting cast to rights again. She's barely been able to hold onto one since the Perez days, it seems.

**Zagreus** · 11-07-2012, 07:54 PM

I think Etta is definitely more interesting as a plucky, sassy, heavy girl. I can imagine Melissa McCarthy (Megan from Bridesmaids) playing her to a T if it was a movie, and it would be great, a heavy woman with a lot of self confidence and character. Current Etta is boring.

**MelDyer** · 11-07-2012, 08:58 PM

Etta could be a cute, thickly built girl, without being fat or morbidly obese. Etta's a big girl! Doesn't everybody have a big girl in their family? So, she's big?! So what? Making her a bobble-head, stick figure is a major copout, and everybody knows it.

And making her African American or Latina doesn't make that anymore forgivable.

Girls lose. Again.

**davidgrantlloyd** · 11-07-2012, 10:30 PM

Looking forward to this. I'm still kinda hoping it gets the title: All Star Wonder Woman

**MelDyer** · 11-07-2012, 11:24 PM

KATHY BRIER (Marcy, One Life To Live) will always be the ultimate Etta Candy, for my money. She's a pretty girl with a big mouth and a bigger personality - what an Etta, she'd be! Kathy's the perfect example of a lady, who makes big look good.

Anyway, young women, who are all shapes and sizes, need to see a character like Etta kicking ass with the heroes and getting a little glory. If Etta had returned to us a pudgy Black American girl or Chinese girl, I probably wouldn't be typing this, because what Etta represented, the everywoman, would be in-play. Mo'Nique and Margaret Cho are both great models for Etta Candy, as both women are or have been (at one time) these bombastic, exasperating, BIG, beautiful women. No reason Etta can't be a big, beautiful AND fit girl, and we need to see that represented now, as much as we did in 1942.

Making Etta a non-white character doesn't change that, and I feel a little manipulated by DC's changes to this great supporting character.

**Gaelforce** · 11-08-2012, 04:48 AM

So every single character in a comic is automatically a role model that readers are supposed to strive to emulate?

The average stick figure of a model wears a dress size 2-4.

The actual average woman? 12-14.

By putting an obese person in a comic book (I don't see anyone screaming for Harvey Bullock to lose a little weight, btw), you help portray the more average person in the world. Is obesity a health hazard? Yes, but so is the bulemia/anorexia encouraged by the ultra-scrawny, yet again, no one is howling for characters in comics to gain weight.

Gimme a few more 'average' people in comics, please, and that includes those who are overweight.

**hellacre** · 11-08-2012, 05:21 AM

No problem with Etta's size ...mind, if Etta is a military agent it is likely she would be like Gail Simone's Etta who was the best Etta I ever read. Not skinny but not obese either. As for her being black, Marston ideas about black people were backward as some sections of society back then..so unlikely he'd have conceptualized a woman of color as a friend for Diana. I just want Etta to be written as modern and spunky and not there for sympathy or to be the funny one because she is the fat one and fat people are happy and funny. It is another stereotype.

**Boonciaver** · 11-08-2012, 07:41 AM

I hope this means that the Holiday Girls will also be returning along with Etta too as well.

**gbshabo** · 11-08-2012, 08:48 AM

Originally Posted by Gaelforce

So every single character in a comic is automatically a role model that readers are supposed to strive to emulate?

The average stick figure of a model wears a dress size 2-4.

The actual average woman? 12-14.

By putting an obese person in a comic book (I don't see anyone screaming for Harvey Bullock to lose a little weight, btw), you help portray the more average person in the world. Is obesity a health hazard? Yes, but so is the bulemia/anorexia encouraged by the ultra-scrawny, yet again, no one is howling for characters in comics to gain weight.

Gimme a few more 'average' people in comics, please, and that includes those who are overweight.

THIS 1000 times! People come in all sizes. Diversity should be reflected in comics and obesity is rather common don't you think? I am heavyset I suppose, and that by no means, invalidates my ability to be a good role model. People look at me for what I've achieved, rather than judge me by my struggles with weight.