Lasso of Truth

hello and happy tuesday, comrades! i am sorry for my less than frequent blogging lately. i have had a hectic couple of weeks, between my bike seat getting stolen and needing to be replaced to bopping around on various social outings, my poor blog is being neglected. i dont often wish i had a cell phone, but if i had an iphone or a blackberry, i could blog on the go! that would be fun, and also much more like the early days of my blog when i was still in school and thus in front of my computer for many hours each day, blogging about all of my misadventures as they happened. but no matter, i am here now, and we can spend some much needed time together.
so, i have been debating all morning about what to post about. i could talk about my canada day hijinks, or the G20 (although i have to admit that would be a little late in coming) or about me hanging out with trevor and his boyfriend on saturday (which was really funny, considering it was gay pride weekend and they spent the saturday night of the weekend hanging out with their straight friends at trevors apartment, but whatever), but i have decided, instead, to talk about this:

this, in case you cant tell, is the new and supposedly improved wonder woman. to commemorate the 600th issue of the comic, dc has given wonder woman a new costume, and surprisingly, a new back story in an effort to boost sales. believe it or not, wonderwoman is considered to be part of the dc "triumvirate" of supers, the other two being, you guessed it, superman and batman, but she doesnt sell nearly as well as the two big boys. so here are my thoughts.
i have always despised wonder woman, particularly her costume. that american patriotic uncle sam crap irks the shit out of me and i have never been able to like her because of it. so in that sense, i like the new look. that being said, as a big comic book type of person, i can see how changing a back story would be really irritating. there are, however, different strains of some comic books, that take place in, say, parallel universes or whatever, which is how they do it. since i havent read the new book, i dont know what they have done to change the back story or how they justified it, so i cant really comment. all i can say is i can see how that would REALLY piss off the geeks. (i say it with love, dear brothers, i say it with love). that being said, it can be done. i mean, look at the most recent star trek movie. completely different back story, and i loved it. i will acknowledge that i know other fans who had a big problem with that, but i am not such a sci fi purist
i do think that wonder woman was in much need of some modernization. the reason i have always disliked her is because she represents everything that is sexist and wrong with women in comics. you see, female supers, in addition to being dressed like call girls, tend to have defensive rather than offensive powers, and tend to lie more on the madonna side of the madonna-whore continuum, while female villains are the opposite. this is only perpetuating the myth that you either want a woman to marry or a woman to fuck and not both, but its the defensive powers that really irk me. it just reinforces the notion that women are passive and nonviolent, but super heroes are supposed to be vigilantes! deliverers of justice! pissed off about crime!
anyway, i doubt very much that dc is going to go to the trouble of giving any of its heroes a complete overhaul like the one wonder woman needs. there is no way they are going to change her costume, backstory, sexual behaviour, powers and personality all in one fell swoop, but i think the costume change is a good start. maybe someday, there will be a wonder woman comic that this woman is interested in reading. who knows.