Now, everyone at DC must be perfectly well aware of Wonder Woman's history, and they must have seen at least a few of the many bondage and spanking panels in her comics during Charles Moulton's tenure on the strip, so it would be understandable if they injected into a new story the barest possible hint that Diana is into this stuff. But they didn't do that - they try to titillate the readers by making it clear that a spanking took place, but they haven't the guts to actually show it. They are counting on readers who like spanking to buy this issue (worked in my case), but they haven't the courage to show any character feeling the same way. Thus, WW in describing the spanking to PG declares, "They didn't much care for it" - a classic case of protesting too much. The writer, Gail Simone, is going out of her way to make sure we realize that WW isn't into spanking, nor are her spankees, while all the time counting on spankos who expect the reverse to buy the book! Like so much else in this book, the spanking is gratuitous. Let us enumerate some of the other superfluous events and depictions:
- 1. WW and PG slug it out for several pages. Oooh - catfight!
2. PG wolfs down eight hot dogs - yucchh! This scene made me feel like a 15-year-old kid who reads his first Playboy Playmate Data Sheet - all my innocent illusions about girls are shattered forever!
3. WW remembers (in flashback), some words of wisdom from (wait for it) - Black Canary!
4. PG sticks her boobs out at every opportunity (see, e.g., the next to last panel posted in Part 1)
You know, there was a time back in the mid-80's when DC was riding high - they had
Dark Knight and
Watchmen while the best Marvel (then under Jim Shooter) could come up with was
Secret Wars and
Kickers, Inc. But rooting for DC is like rooting for the Chicago Cubs - you just know they're going to come up with some way to blow it before the end of the season. Before long, DC caved to outside pressure and quickly trotted out some internal guidelines (much like the old Comics Code Authority) to govern their content, and to make it worse, pretended they weren't caving at all. This cost them the services of their best writer at the time, Alan Moore (who may have been oversensitive to censorship claims, since as far as I know they never refused to publish what he wrote for them). The next thing you know, they were putting out
Crisis on Infinite Earths, which turned me off with its gratuitous deaths of established characters and its attempt to bring the benefits of Soviet-style central planning to the "DC Universe", then they killed off the Jason Todd Robin just for laughs (I refused to buy it), and by the time they were goosing their remaining hard-core fans with "The Death of Superman" I observed the proceedings from a discreet distance.
Stunts like those are a candid confession of artistic bankruptcy. Speaking of which, why is it that 25 years after
Watchmen, DC (and Marvel, too) are still using the same old characters from 50 - 70 years ago? Either comics creators today have no new ideas, or else they're too smart to create new characters only to have some corporation insist on taking all the rights. (More on this subject when I discuss the issue of copyrights in the Feedback Forum). By the way, this issue's title, "
A Murder of Crows", had been previously used in a movie, a record album, and an earlier DC comic-book story written by none other than the aforementioned Alan Moore! In fact, a few bare traces of Moore's technique can be found here, mainly the multiple first-person narrative viewpoints, but without his imagination, inventiveness, or diction.
When I picked up WW #41, do you know what else I found on the racks? The original Doom Patrol! The one that was killed off in their own book back in 1968 when I was a kid! DC is so bereft of original ideas, they've exhumed characters who died 42 years ago! Is it too much to ask that they come up with something new?
Well, there you have it - the story of how DC lost me, with an incidental review of a new WW spanking issue - just in case you were interested. Be glad I didn't tell you why I gave up on alternative comics, too.
- although it would be expensive to have so many characters drawn.
