'Nuff Said: American Graphic Media

Playwright Rebecca Gilman on Feminism, Class and Flawed Heroes The answer to the Wonder Woman problem?

A look at the teaser trailer for the Wonder Woman pilot you probably eventually see at some point in the future. I can't believe it will disappear unless David Kelley is really, really, really upset.

First Look at Adrianne Palicki as Wonder Woman - BLTv on Variety.com The buzz on Wonder Woman has been kinda middling in my mind. While the latest photo show a much better costume than the official costume photo, the real issue for me is that Wonder Woman probably isn't served by David E. Kelley's approach. Don't get me wrong, Kelley is a great writer, but Wonder Woman's problem is that writers struggle with the original premise. The reasons for discomfort are obvious. The creator of Wonder Woman, William Moulton Marston, a psychologist and inventor of the polygraph believed in the educational potential of the comic medium. Yet, the ideas he wanted to impart to young impressionable minds were far from standard. Marston had an unconventional home life, living in a polygamy/polyamory relationship with his wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston and Olive Byrne. Marston intended Wonder Woman to represent the kind of liberate woman he admire, one that would guide society by c...

The costumed crime fighter returned to primetime television Sunday with NBC’s midseason debut of The Cape . For all the emphases on superheroes in popular media, those heroes, at least on television, have shied away from costumes. They provided the function associated with superheroes, but not colorful form. Why then, the return to the costumed hero on the small screen? The Cape is a family friendly show about a wrongfully accused cop who takes on the persona of his son’s favorite comic book hero to clear his name and save “Palm City.” A genre show that draws on familiar themes, The Cape offers a fight for justice and an individual’s struggle against societal corruption. As with its big screen counterpart, The Green Hornet , The Cape returns places the pulp hero in the spotlight at a time when the value of individual agency is in question. This neo-pulp moment is both stimulated by and a reaction to social upheaval and economic uncertainty. Like superheroes, pulp character...

The ruminations over new activity to bring Wonder Woman back to the small screen once again remind me of the unique place DC Comic characters occupy in our collective mind’s eye. The struggle to produce a Wonder Woman film says much about the challenge represented by the Amazon Warrior/Princess who does not need to be rescued. Despite the growth of women’s role in society, we still assume a paternal and maternal model for men and women's in society. While Wonder Woman is not barred from motherhood, she is not seeking to place herself within the familial framework in an obvious way. Indeed, the recent runs of Wonder Woman have been better in part, because they have embraced the character as who she is--warrior, diplomat, and leader. Wonder Woman is one of the key characters from DC, yet she has not had the iconic stories similar to Batman ( The Dark Knight Returns , The Killing Joke , or Year One ) or Superman ( Greatest Stories or Red Son ) in print. Instead, many people k...