Jim McLauchlin's PANEL DISCUSSIONS: WONDER WOMAN - Gayest Character Ever
by Jim McLauchlin
Date: 10 July 2014 Time: 05:45 PM ET
Take a look at any second-grade playground and you’ll see a raft of
8-year-old girls with Wonder Woman tennis shoes and backpacks. There’s
little doubt: Wonder Woman is a merchandising bonanza for DC Comics, and
the sweet spot of that rich marketing field is little girls, and the
moms who buy their T-shirts at Target.
But take a look at The Castro in San Francisco, the “Boy’s Town” of
West Hollywood or Christopher Street in New York, and you’ll find an
equally dedicated, but perhaps less marketable fan base. There’s little
doubt: Wonder Woman is wickedly popular among…gay men.
Does it seem strange? That a character would find two such disparate
audiences, with seemingly nothing in common? It may be. But that’s
likely because Wonder Woman is the strangest of all comic book
characters.
(excerpt)
George Pérez tried to address the feminine. Pérez wrote Wonder Woman for a celebrated five-year run from 1987-92. He thinks a one-size-fits-all mentality, when it creeps in, is problematic.
“I think one of the problems that comics has in dealing with
superheroines is that they try to hard to make them superheroes,” he
says. “All they’re doing is the same thing that men do. Just the idea
that they’re no different that men, except in how they look, always
seemed a bit off to me. The difference between Superman and Wonder Woman
is not strength, or power level, or origin, but the fact that she is a woman.”
Pérez set out to make Wonder Woman a book that women would like…and
hopefully everyone else as well. “At the time I started, not a single
woman at DC Comics liked the book,” he says. “I insisted on having a
female editor to police me, and police the book. I figured if I could
please her, and make her proud of the character, then I was doing a good
job and providing a proper role model.”
Pérez was lucky in that Karen Berger, one of comics’ all-time top gun
editors, got the book. The title flourished under their direction. So
much so, that a young Phil Jimenez read and enjoyed the book, developing
an artistic style very close to Pérez’ own.
“I think there are two definitive versions of Wonder Woman: The Lynda
Carter version and the George Pérez version. Those two versions have
defined Wonder Woman for the past 30 years,” Jimenez says today. “I
think she became a gay icon with Lynda Carter.”