It looks like this 4th of July the misguided folks at DC Comics are removing the famously patriotic flair from Wonder Woman’s costume.
Well, they can take Wonder Woman’s patriotic pants, but they can’t take our Abraham Lincoln. I think his 147-year-old words are perhaps even more relevant today:
We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which has preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended power, to confess our national sins and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.
And a prayer for this patriotic feast? Here’s one I found a couple of years ago as part of this collection (author unknown). It might make a nice addition to your family’s celebrations this weekend.
God of liberty,
We acknowledge Your reign.For the freedom of our land
For the rights we possess,
For the security of our laws,
We praise You and thank You.Give guidance to our leaders
Watch over those
Who serve their country,
Raise up the poor,
And exalt the humble.
Make our nation great and strong,
Renowned in wisdom,
Prosperous in virtue,
And renewed in faith.Destroy all signs of division:
Take away hatred and violence;
Fill us with Your peace.
Make us one people,
United in praising You,
Through Christ our Lord.
Amen.
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Wonder Woman’s status and significance in the comic-book pantheon is unique: In all of Golden Age and even (I believe) Silver Age comics, she is the only heroine who is neither a knock-off of a male character (like Supergirl or Batgirl) nor a supporting character in a team book (like the Invisible Girl). (Wonder Woman did join the Justice League, but like Superman and Batman she also carried her own title.) Wonder Woman is a unique stand-alone heroine in her own right, a fitting female counterpart to Superman without being a copy of him.
And yet. There are problems with the character, including the costume. The bathing-beauty look doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for a character who is supposed to be an Amazon whose connections to classical Greek mythology were increasingly emphasized in later development. Plus, in a world in which men wear full-body suits that cover all of them except at most the head and hands, and sometimes not even that much, why should the woman be two-thirds naked?
The original costume at least gave her a skirt, which made a bit more sense. But the bare-shoulder look just doesn’t work as an Amazon design. It would be different if the costume had been made for her after she arrived in “man’s world,” but it’s supposed to be something that the Amazons came up with themselves.
Likewise, the patriotic American flag look is a problem, and the attempt to explain it by Diana’s identification with Steve Trevor is unconvincing. Superman’s costume with its red and blue was evocative of patriotism without actually identifying him with the flag in the manner of Captain America. (Originally Superman only fought for “truth and justice”; not until the 1950s was he also recruited for “the American way.” That was also the decade in which God himself was recruited in the pledge to the flag; in those Cold War days, it was important to emphasize that we had God—and Superman!—on our side.)
All of which is not to say the proposed redesign is a good idea. The jacket in particular I hate pretty much completely. With a character as iconic as Wonder Woman, you need continuity, and the costume design on display at the website is just as dissonant with Wonder Woman’s origins as the existing outfit. I would like to see a take on Wonder Woman’s costume that takes her Greek origins seriously and doesn’t try to make her fashionable.
On another note, I am not 100 percent sure about the notion of Abraham Lincoln “topping” Wonder Woman, not to mention “taking away her patriotic pants.” Somehow I’m reminded of the line from the theme song for the Lynda Carter series that went “Get us out from under Wonder Woman!” Maybe there was a comma.
Wow, Steven. Now I know where to go for all things comic-related. Awesome!
Heh. Actually, the real expert when it comes to DC Comics is Jimmy Akin! I’m more a Marvel man myself.
I wonder who was his ghost writer.
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