I find it so hard to come up with new ideas and rewritting someone else’s work can backfire. Particularly if you don’t know whether they are truly an expert in their field. The longer I work on the internet the more I wonder about most of the content. However, to be fair their are many aurthors in the print media out there that espouse their ideas as fact when they are clearly questionable. It is almost as easy to have a book published as an ebook.

Anyway, thanks for the great blog.

If Batman can have 15 bazillion books out, with Elseworld versions, 60’s versions, Neal Adams versions, Frank Miller versions, stupid antisocial unpleasnt to read versions,etc. etc. etc., … grrrr!!! Why can’t Wonder Woman have one cool manga version that I can buy for my daughters? I’d feel way less apprehensive about showing them Tintin’s version than the current DC continuity version.

STOP TRYING TO SELL MY FAMILY A UNIVERSE OF BOOKS!! One steady book is all we’d need, thank you very much.

Actually, no. There are a wealth of excellent articles about WW’s creators, the husband-and-wife team of William and Elizabeth Marston. In an oft-quoted article from the Winter 1943-44 issue of The American Scholar, Marston explained his rationale for creating WW:

“Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don’t want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women’s strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman.

While not all of his ideas awould pass muster today, it’s clear that his intent was to create a role model for girls, not a sexual fantasty figure for boys.

And why does mediocre work by a female “creatorâ€? deserve automatic credibility, not to mention drooling adulation?

What I liked about Pantoja’s proposal was that she made the story appealing to the kind of girl who identifies with the spunky, athletic heroines found in many shonen and shojo titles. Pantoja’s work reminds me of CLAMP and Ai Yazawa’s, neither of whom are considered sub-par talents by the manga world. Moreover, her proposal wasn’t just a crass attempt to win over little girls by “manga-fying” a classic heroine; it was an interesting take on WW done by an artist who actually likes the character and knows a thing or two about shojo. So I’m not just heaping “drooling adulation” on Pantoja’s proposal because she’s female–I’m praising her for the quality of her art and the integrity of her project.

Of course, these two images do not create a perfect comparison, in that one is a cover image and the other a page of comics. They have different goals. Still it was enough for Heidi to make her point.

Tintin’s pitch does whet an appetite for a manga WW. Possibly she is not the creator to pull it off, for reasons not apparent in this one page. I assume she submitted a little more then just this…

And is Shelley Bond the only DC editor who can approve this? Surely there are others with some vision?

I always like referring to Dave Fiore’s (sadly quasi-defunct) “Motime Like The Present” blog…I hope some of you find interesting what he wrote on Carmine Infantino’s “Daring New Adventures of Supergirl”: http://ynot.motime.com/post/242383

A picture is worth a thousand words. Those two pictures increase that exponentially.

Paul wrote me back every time and pointed me to Shelley. I never heard from Shelley.