The Non-Fan's Perspective: WONDER WOMAN

I've decided that the term "non-fan" is clunky and I don't like it. But I can't think of any ready alternatives. I've heard "civilian" tossed about here and there, but that sounds vaguely creepy, like I'm part of some weird comic fan militia. And it doesn't help that it seems to be a pet word of John Byrne's. So "non-fan" it stays, I guess.

Well, anyway, for the week under discussion in this installment of The Non-Fan's Perspective, the class read WONDER WOMAN: GODS AND MONSTERS.

Conversation that occurred in the minutes before class:
SOME GUY: Are there any Political Science majors in this class who are going to completely tear into this book?
SOME OTHER GUY: Actually, I'd think if anyone would have issues with this book, it would be Classics majors.

Ah, good times, good times.

Surprisingly, the overall reaction to this TPB was positive; the class liked it for the most part. I'd have thought Greg Potter and Len Wein's wordiness would be hard to get into for non-fans.

I was also surprised when a few people opined that the gorgeous George Perez art was only mediocre (as one person put it, "eh") but, as I quickly realized, I shouldn't have been. I remember that when I first encountered his style (in his run on Avengers with Kurt Busiek), it left me lukewarm, too. Yeah, it was detailed, but so what, I thought. That didn't automatically make it good.

These days, I see that the level of detail is only the tip of the iceberg as far as the merits of Perez art go, even if it's the trait the fans harp on the most.

These days, I love it. But for whatever reason, I didn't when I first saw it. I guess it's just one of those styles.

The first several students to criticize GODS AND MONSTERS (all men) all prefaced their comments with something along the lines of, "I like Wonder Woman, but..." This was odd, as similar disclaimers where nowhere to be seen when the class discussed other characters. One of the facilitators totally called it when he said to the class, "No one's going to think you're some horrible misogynist just because you don't preface your comment with that." After that, it stopped.

The facilitators asked the Classics majors in the room for their opinion of the portrayal of Greek myth in the book. But it turns out either there weren't any or, if there were, they chose to remain silent.

However, a bunch of students who were not Classics majors chose this point to object to the portrayal of Herakles. They didn't like how unheroic he was here, how he was a villain of the piece.

What the heck. Who would have thought Hercules had so many fans among American college students. Is this the work of Kevin Sorbo or something?

The facilitators said that they had originally wanted to include more trade paperbacks starring woman superheroes in the course (GODS AND MONSTERS was the only one), but they found that most of them starred reformed or borderline supervillains. They felt there was a disturbing message buried underneath that, an implication that a woman needs a man to "set her straight," so they didn't include add of those characters to the reading list.

Is this true? I was going to, at this point in the entry, pull up both DC and Marvel's shipping lists for this month (and make no mistake, the course basically did limit its purview to the Big Two) to look for this trend. But it's getting late, so I'll edit it into this entry tomorrow. Or go through it in a separate entry.

Anyway, the facilitators then brought up the Women in Refrigerators website, explaining the whole thing. None of the fans in the class tried to refute it, though one guy argued the portrayal of women in comics was getting much better, citing Wildstorm and Image as groups he felt were particular trailblazers in this area. His examples of specific titles? Fathom and Gen13. And possibly one other I'm forgetting. Anyhoo...

Oddly enough, the facilitators had no idea Gail Simone was a comicbook writer. ("I think she's a journalist," one of them said.) This is especially odd when you consider that they almost certainly found out about Women in Refrigerators from the Internet, and even the most cursory of web searches would turn up the fact that Simone writes comics. In fact, I just typed "gail simone" (*without* the quote marks) into Google. The first result is a Wikipedia entry, and right below it are the words, "Gail Simone is an American writer of comic books..."

Like I said, weird.

The discussion about the portrayal of women in comics drifted to one about racial minorities in comics. Again, nobody tried to refute.