Awful, Speculative Rumor Regarding Wonder Woman In New Superman/Batman Film

With Gal Gadot on board to play Wonder Woman in the new Man Of Steel sequel, it hasn’t taken long for the rumor mill to crank up about what that role may entail. Someone named Jett from a site called Batman On Film is speculating that Wonder Woman may get a new origin story:

With all that said, I’d bet a year’s pay – in MONOPOLY money, of course – that the “Amazons” of this cinematic DCU will be descendants of those “ancient Kryptonians” who attempted to set up Kryptonian outposts throughout spacedom thousands and thousands of years ago. Furthermore, I say that Wonder Woman will be powered-down, if you will, relative to Superman because these Amazons have evolved and adapted to living on Earth for hundreds of centuries. And since Kryptonians are produced without any “He’n and She’n” – Jor El and Lara excluded – couldn’t this original Kryptonian on Earth have used this reproductive science to create an all-female race? I say yes!

That statement was in response to answering mailbag questions on the site:

Responses to reader’s questions are based on inside information, industry scuttlebutt, and my opinion. Nothing should be taken as confirmed news unless explicitly stated as such.

Well, I’m hoping that Jett’s speculation turns out to be a nonstarter. Given that so far WB has managed to stick, more or less, to canon with the Batman franchises and much (though certainly not all) of the Arrow TV show, there is no reason for a script to toss out Wonder Woman’s origin story beyond complete and total ass-hatted laziness. I’m not interested in a “powered down” Wonder Woman, evolved from Kryptonians. Frankly, I didn’t like the Asguardians as more evolved alien race when Marvel did that for the Thor movies. It’s a cop out.

More Greek Than Italian

So the big mainstream comic news today is that someone named Gal Godot has been cast as Wonder Woman in the upcoming Zack Snyder-directed sequel to Man of Steel, Batman Vs. Superman (or whatever it will wind up being called). Godot was an Israeli Miss Universe contestant who turned model while turning Israeli soldier before going full Fast And Furious for a few movies and finally landing the role of Princess Diana.

Which is fine and which is good, because God knows that its about time that the final remaining leg of DC Comics’s Big Trinity gets an actual movie role… except it is potential terrible news for actual comic fans. Not because of the casting – I have no idea if Godot can or cannot act – but because of Wonder Woman’s role in a movie that Snyder announced at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con with a quote from Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns.

Because if Snyder intends for his next movie to even remotely follow Miller’s Dark Knight plot, well, Diana’s first appearance is in The Dark Knight Strikes Again, and it is only pretty much to fuck Superman stupid somewhere up in the sky (“It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s… a bird. Or at least something the color and general viscosity of bird poop just hit me in the eye. Bird poop that smells like bleach.”) somewhere between superhero wanna-bes and Dick Grayson being, well, a dick. It’s not a good move for the Wonder Woman brand, is what I’m saying.

But that is movie news. Which is well and good, but it is, after all, Wednesday. Which means that there are new comics, and no matter whether the movie version of Wonder Woman is a sky-fucking skank or a Mossad secret agent, it means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But there are some good looking books there, huh? There’s the first J. Michael Straczynski issue of Terminator: Salvation, the latest issue of The Superior Spider-Man, the latest issue of Think Tank (which really is the best comic book you’re probably not reading), another issue of Marvel’s Ultimate Universe Cataclysm event, and a bunch of other stuff.

But you know how these things go: before we can talk about any of them, we need time to read them. So while we do that…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Story Optional: Wonder Woman Fan Film / Demo Reel

This is actually kinda cool, if it is just, for all intents and purposes, a fan film by some folks with a particular amount of skill with the Adobe film suite.

Rainfall Films, a production company that’s done a bunch of advertising and music video work, has put together a two-minute fan trailer for Wonder Woman, directed by Sam Balcomb and starring Rileah Vanderbilt (who’s been in the Hatchet films). And when I say “fan trailer,” I mean more that it is a special effects showcase; there’s no story here, just Wonder Woman fighting some goons with guns on the streets of some city, alternating with Wonder Woman fighting with some giant monster on the island of Themyscira with some other Amazons.

But still: it’s pretty cool to look at, with a version of the Wonder Woman costume that is close enough to classic as to keep the underwear perverts who get their shorts in a twist every time someone comes up with a design that’s a little off-kilter from the original, and some pretty cool action and special effects for what amounts to a demo reel for a production company.

If nothing else, it goes to show that there are ways to shoot a Wonder Woman movie that doesn’t make it some cheesy, campy disaster, or worse: a David E. Kelley workplace dramady. And you can check it out after the jump.

Equitable Man Ass: Tony Daniel Sells Superman / Wonder Woman Badly At Toronto Fan Fest

Jesus Yammering Christ, is this what were reduced to now? Not just chasing that screeching tween Twilight dollar, but doing it hamfistedly and just fucking wrong?

All right, hold on; let me explain.

The Toronto Fan Expo was held this weekend. We did not attend this convention because we are still paying off our visits to the San Diego and Boston comic conventions (and are getting ready to pay our deposit for our emergency backup room for next year’s SDCC which, yes, we have already made reservations for), and because the nation of Canada has, based on a 1991 visit I made to Montreal, decided that my presence is so detrimental to their culture that even my American dollars don’t make up for it.

However, DC Comics was there, and as they do in most bigger conventions, they held a DC All Access panel to discuss upcoming books, such as Superman / Wonder Woman, written by Charles Soule with art by Tony Daniel and scheduled for a first issue release on October 9th. And Daniel was on that panel, and he addressed the impetus behind building a title around these two characters, who are two-thirds of a trinity of legendary characters created by DC.

And yeah: it turns out that that impetus wasn’t to tell legendary action stories. It apparently was to attract 11-year-old screechy girls and their sweet, sweet fistfuls of daddy’s cash.

New Clip From Beware The Batman, DC Nation Wonder Woman Short Preview

Rob is at a screening of Pacific Rim right now. Without me.

Now, I could be all pissed off about that, but I’m not. After all, he may have surrounded himself with giant robots and monsters, but, he left the whiskey here. With me.

So, as the whiskey and I spend the day together, we are finding our own entertainment on the Web. For example, behold the new opening sequence and promo clips from Beware The Batman:

Looks interesting. I’m not entirely convinced it will fill the hole in my heart that was left when DC/Warner Brothers abruptly cancelled Young Justice, but I think the important thing to remember here is that it’s not Teen Titans Go!, thank Christ.

So, what else is out on the Internetz?

You Damn Fool! You’re More Useless Than Aquaman: Justice League #15 Review

Since last year’s New 52 relaunch, Geoff Johns has made it his personal mission to rehabilitate Aquaman’s reputation. Which is a somewhat Quixotic task, since Aquaman never had much of a reputation to begin with. I remember years ago, when superhero Underoos were finally released for sale, my mom brought me to the store late enough that all that were left were Aquaman Underoos… and I told her that I would rather parade around the schoolyard in tightie-whities than suffer the indignity of having to pretend to be Aquaman. I was 28. But that’s not the point.

But hey, everyone has an unlikely dream that they harbor deep in their hearts, and I don’t begrudge Johns his, even though I don’t think he’s quite delivered on it thus far. Hey, I have the secret fantasy that someday I, a bloated and drunken 41-year-old, can smack the home run that wins the Boston Red Sox their third World Series victory since 1918 despite never having played even Little League baseball, so I’m not gonna rank Johns out too much for his dream to make Aquaman cool, despite it arguably having a lower chance at success than mine.

After fifteen months of chasing the dragon, Johns has begin phase two of his unlikely Aquaman resuscitation (actually, given Aquaman’s inability to carry his own book for longer than seven years despite more than 70 years of history, perhaps “presuscitation” is a better word) by making Aquaman the focus of a big Justice League event, Throne of Atlantis. So finally, Johns has his main chance to give Aquaman some relevance, not only in his own title but in the DC Universe proper, by making the poor, fishfucking sonofabitch the focus of a story… but for it to work, the story better be a good one.

Rebound: Justice League #12 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’ve had the blues, the reds and the pinks; one thing’s for sure: love spoils.

Well, that’s the end of the first year of the first post-reboot Justice League since Crisis On Infinite Earths back in 1986. That Justice League, at the end of its first year, had established itself as a solid action book with an interesting character-based humor element… and was already on its way to becoming far more focused on the comedy than it was on the action. It short, its best days were already gone by that first anniversary, having given or on its way to giving Guy Gardner a 70s sitcom level personality change, The Martian Manhunter an Oreo fetish, and Booster and Beetle a harebrained get-rich-quick scheme of the month.

So how does Justice League #12 compete? Well, by going in the opposite direction, coming out of an only okay character-based story while promising, in a Geoff Johns patented epilogue, action-packed tales including an attack by Atlantis, battles between Superman and Batman and Shazam, and a possible conflict between The Justice League and the recently-announced Johns and David Finch produced Justice League of America.

Oh, and it seems that we will spend some time witnessing Superman boning Wonder Woman. But you already knew that, and we’ll get back to that in a minute.

You Bust It Out. You Light A Match: Superman And Wonder Woman On Match.com

You might have heard that, starting in Justice League #12, writer Geoff Johns and artist Jim Lee will be starting a storyline where Superman and Wonder Woman take their relationship, shall we say, to the next level. They go from friends, to friends with benefits, provided my “benefits” you mean “The Kryptonian Armpit Gank.”

We didn’t jump on this story here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives because, after nearly 40 years of reading comics, this isn’t our first rodeo – we’ve seen these two crazy kids bump overidealized comic book uglies in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Strikes Again, and saw it intimated in Mark Waid and Alex Ross’s Kingdom Come, plus if you can spell the words “comic” and “slash” and find the enter key on your laptop, you can get all the super sucky-fucky you can shake your stick at. Besides, these things come and go in the comics – remember when Batman almost chucked the Bat Meat to Zatanna? These things never last, and we figured we’d address it in our review of the issue.

That is, until DC decided to hype the story by setting up profiles for Superman and Wonder Woman on Match.com.

On To Greater Glory – Review Of Glory #26 And Wonder Woman #9

Once upon a time, in 1941, the character of Wonder Woman was created by a Harvard educated psychologist (and apparent bondage enthusiast) named William Moulton Marston. Wonder Woman is/was an Amazon princess, sent to the world of man as an ambassador of peace. Marston created Wonder Woman to be the embodiment of a type of liberated woman who was atypical in that period of history. Indeed Marston wrote, “Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world.” (Wow. Auspicious.) However, “psychological propaganda” origins aside, the character has been popular with men and women for decades. In fact, in 2011, IGN named Wonder Woman fifth from the top on a list of the Top 100 Comic Book Characters Of All Time.

Meanwhile, in 1993, the character of Glory was created by comic book illustrator (and foot extraction hobbyist) Rob Liefeld. Glory was created for Liefeld’s Extreme Studios at Image Comics. Glory is a half Amazonian/half demon offspring, who leaves the Amazonians to enter the world of man and kick a lot of ass. Liefeld created Glory to have a Wonder Woman type character to run around in his Extreme universe and give him an excuse to draw cheesecake.

Since DC’s reboot this past fall has served to drag 90s comic book culture back kicking screaming to the profitable fore, it is not surprising that Image has decided to relaunch some of Liefeld’s past creations, such as Supreme, Youngblood, and Glory. What might be surprising is that Glory is a better Wonder Woman comic than the one being written currently at DC by Brian Azzarello.

Why?

Read on for spoiler laden comparisons, Scooby Gangs, and basement dwelling emo gods.

Dan DiDio Enrages Royalty, Turns People Gay

Historically, Dan DiDio’s panels at San Diego Comic-Con are amongst my favorites every year. The dude has, at least publically, a visceral enthusiasm for DC Comics that is infectious to a crowd… but one which has a fine, keen edge, that isn’t difficult to strike off of true. When Dan’s forced off script, there can be unintended consequences, from unexpected revelations to real tension. Just ask San Diego Batgirl.

Well, this weekend is Mark Millar’s Kapow convention in London, Dan’s been doing panels, and has made a few interesting revelations about the immediate future of DC Comics… the first being that Wonder Woman, ambassador of peace from Paradise Island and the most famous strong female superhero ever created by a polyamorous bondage nut, might be preparing to kill us all.