And there you go again, dividing the entire pool of Wonder Woman fans into two camps, "Perez-people" and "dumb-guys". Why do so-many Perez WW fans do that? I don't want to be confrontational (not my nature) but it's irritating beyond belief! I don't like to be insulted.
<kassandra>
sorry, andrew. that really was not my intent. to be quite honest, i've never noticed this going on, it usually seemed that fans who came on later during the more superficial (to me) runs had this very attitude toward anyone who so much as mentioned george's name. i'd hardly call you dumb. 
i think it's just that during the perez run diana had a depth i'd never seen before in my young life. i've always loved that diana, as we were close in age, and she embodied many of my own beliefs, yet always challenged me to think beyond what i knew.
</kassandra>
The Potter-Perez-Wein conception of Wonder Woman, which is Jimenez' major infuence, is not the only one that is "sincere" or "deep", though it may be the self-important (Eric Luke's was in strong contention on that last point, but of course it was a very unearned self-importance.)
<kassandra>
gods, luke was an abysmal letdown. there have been moments of sincerity sprinkled throughout, but i tended to find the majority of stories to be a shallow waste of the trees felled for them. luke's run might not have been so bad had he not insulted both diana and her readers with that silly "papa, do i have a soul?" nonsense. ugh. still, better than byrne's mad-on for all things kirby shoved down our throats.
</kassandra>
I assume you are referring to the pre-Crisis Wonder Woman's infamous Achiles heel, the loss of her powers when her bracelets were bound by a man...well it's not there for the sake of humiliating or lessening Diana. You've got to look between the lines on these early stories, see levels beyond what was aimed at the young or casual reader. Think of how ironic it is! Think also that perhaps it was a plausible limit comming from Aphrodite, remembering that the Greek gods were very tough when it came to conditions for their gifts. When she warned the Amazons not to submit ever again to male domination, she meant it! She would make no exception either when it came to carrying out the punnishment. And anyway when it happenned to Diana, the result was almost always an oppurtunity to show Diana's cleverness in overcomming her condunum, though occassionally it also meant a Mental Radio distress call for Etta and the Holiday Girls. That was good in a way too, a chance for non-superpowered women to prove themselves.
</kassandra>
see, that's what i loved about the golden age stories: diana was all about proving to people, mainly sisters, that they could do so much more for themselves than they'd ever thought possible. one of my favorite scenes is the one with diana surrounded by young girls after stunning them by performing extraordinary feats. somewhere i actually have an enlargement of that scene framed. marston's infamous preoccupation with bondage didn't really strike me until i was much older, having read the ga stories as a child in the steinem hardcover.
what really bothered me was that diana seemed so bloody codependent for most of my younger days. sure, the spark remained, though most often dim to the point of darkness. it really seemed like she had writers who were afraid to show how strong she really could be, and then there was the whole bungling of her spirituality, which would have been paramount to one coming from her culture. yet another thing for me to love about perez- and he got the greek names right!
</kassandra>
And when you say that Marston never showed us what Amazon culture would be like, you're kidding, right? Marston did that every chance he got! It wasn't the cry-every-other-second kind of exploration, but then that wasn't the way he was portraying them. Very much unlike the super-stagnant Perez model, Marston's Amazons were obsessed with moving their culture forward, and with improving themselves. These Amazons weren't heartless of course--they were as compassionate as anyone could ask for--but they were tough as nails. Who's to say this isn't a realistic and layered characterization?
<kassandra>
what didn't ring true for me was their preoccupation with psuedo science and seeming utter ignorance of their more mystical natures. yes, they were always striving forward, but there was just something not quite right, even though the stories were great to read. marston and perez gave us two very different amazon societies, and having studied quite a bit about matrifocal culture (the little evidence of their existence not destroyed by the patriarchy) i found perez' take to be more resonant. don't get me wrong, i liked the golden age amazons, but their psuedo science just didn't feel right to me, whereas pleas to the gods, and using mysticism seemed more spot-on.
</kassandra>
Marston didn't get behind Diana's skin to see the "woman within"? Now you're really joking. Just because this Diana didn't break down into tears everytime someone lied to her doesn't mean we didn't get to see inside her. There was a very shrewd and understated exploration of her character going on all the time.
<kassandra>
perhaps it was the constant turmoil over not being able to marry steve until she'd eradicated crime that grew old for me. marston seemed to equate marriage (big surprise!) with the loss of one's goddess within, that is to say that i always got the impression that diana felt she would be less in someway should she actually marry steve. why i wonder are so many bothered by phil's sensitive portrayal of diana today? have they so quickly forgotten the strength she displayed during our worlds at war? she wouldn't allow herself to grieve until after the war had been won, not once becoming unfocussed. losing one's parents, not to mention a daughters loss of her mother, has to be the most devastating thing one can go through. yet through it all, diana persevered.
time to go work out- more later!
</kassandra>
Andrew
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