Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Wonder Woman

The Wonder Woman movie opens on Friday and I can't wait to see it. But I won't see it opening weekend. I prefer to wait for the crowds to thin; usually midday the following week is good. I loved the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman series, but a movie has been a long time coming. After all, Superman had movies starring Kirk Alyn, a TV series starring George Reeves, movies with Christopher Reeve, another TV series with Dean Cain, Smallville with Tom Welling, and another movie with Henry Cavill. Batman had a TV series and a bunch of movies, too. (I'm not counting animated versions here.)

Charlie Jane Anders, over on Tor.com, writes about her hero worship of Wonder Woman. And that made me think of my own relationship with Diana of Themyscira. I didn't start reading about Wonder Woman's adventures until I was in my teens, though I'd been reading comics since I was 7. My first real exposure to the character was in Justice League of America, which I started reading when I was 13 -- I was in junior high, so that age is approximate. I started buying her comic a short time later, maybe a year or two later as I needed a bigger allowance as I was already buying a lot of comics by then. And I loved her, but I'm an anomaly. I actually loved her more when she renounced her powers for a brief time and partnered up with the enigmatic I Ching. I loved, and still do, spy and adventure intrigue more than stories based in myths.

The character I idolized and looked to as a role model was not Diana, but Supergirl. She was the one closest to my age (until I discovered Donna Troy in Teen Titans). Kara Zor-El and I kind of grew up together. She was still in high school when I got there. We overlapped for a while in college, then grad school. We both grappled with indecision over our careers and our future. And while I doubt I'll ever see her get a movie, I'll always have the excellent TV show starring Melissa Benoist.

But on Friday, Wonder Woman comes to the big screen and that's a BIG DEAL. It's something I never thought I'd see. Marvel might be doing a Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers movie (Yay!) and maybe even a Black Widow movie someday, but DC is giving us a Wonder Woman movie, directed by a woman, NOW. And that means everything. So let's make this movie a success so we'll get more. Because in the current political climate, we need heroes, especially female ones, for all the kids -- boys as well as girls -- to see and admire, so they can all grow up to see possibilities, that girls can be heroes, too, and that's how it should be.

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