Wonder Woman’s new costume is pretty big news — it made the New York Times, and that hasn’t happened since at least Solomon Stone #2 — so ComicsAlliance is marking the occasion with a massive roundtable where we take a look at Wonder Woman’s costumes past, present and future!
Plus, I got to make maybe my fourth favorite picture I’ve ever made for the site:
That bitch stole Wonderman’s jacket!
I was wondering what Ugly Betty’s sister was up to these days.
Now I know.
So, who wants to start a betting pool as to when they revert to the more classic look of red and gold bustier and star spangled skirt/shorts/thong/whatever?
She has spurs! She can ride her invisible horse!
Does anyone remember when Megan Fox was mouthing off about the Wonder Woman outfit? It’s almost as if the character is being reworked for the sole purpose of getting Megan Fox to say yes to the role.
Costume change to get Megan to take another look eventhough she was sexualized alot more in Jennifers Body and the Transformers movie? Check.
Age Reduction so Megan’s lack of acting chops and gravitas can be explained away? Check
Gritty Urban enviorment meant to reduce the cost of FX. So we can go wild on the DC movies we actually care about? Check
Second-tier comic writer who is also a second-tier movie writer who will make the transition to film seamless? Check
Honestly? That’s the new costume?
Dude, it’s okay and all, but it ain’t Wonder Woman. It’s Spiderwoman.
From the waist down, OK. Flying characters shouldn’t wear skirts, period. But . . . the biker jacket, really? The ugly hairstyle, the, what, bracelet/gloves? She looks like she was designed in the ’90′s. Fortunately, given her track record the past few decades, she’ll only look like this for a year or two before they change her.
I got a theory about Wonder Woman.
She’s a really boring character that keeps getting dragged back because they need a girl to get some gender parity in the big teams. And she’s the only female DC character anyone remembers outside of comics fandom.
Also, she has somehow managed to steal clone Superboys outfit. I am not sure why anyone would do this.
Superboy!! Dang it, I knew I had seen new Wondie’s costume somewhere!
…
Good, a new excuse to go read Young Justice =)
There’s some good concepts but I agree with everyone that the jacket is terrible. Take the jacket away and you’d need to redesign the top a bit but that would improve things a lot.
And I’m not fond of those specific pants; I don’t need stars but I would have preferred something more colorful.
The costume doesn’t bother me.
Another retcon of her origin, bothers me.
Really.
The one thing the jacket does for me is it puts the stars on the shoulders. I don’t think it’s a bad costume (although I am a fan of non-costume costume design), but I’d give it maybe two years before it changes back. The next time they decide to do this, they should try a cape like Samaritan in Astro City has, where it’s kind of a toga-looking thing.
So, Laura Hudson was actually Wonder-Tot? Did she speak with that DC super-baby “Me am” diction?
But, you know, the new costume: no heels. Love it!
(I’d like to see Batman wearing high heels and then taking on Ubu. (Actually, I would.))
Change the jacket, throw on some real shoes, you got yourself a winner. (Seriously, Wonder Woman in some Converse All-Stars. it’d be awesome, and there are STARS on them.)
PS
Interesting that Supergirl lost her powers (well, they went on the fritz for about 2 years) about the same time as the “New” Wonder Woman appeared.
But I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.
What you don’t understand is that Jim Lee had only 30 minutes to sketch an outfit. Afterward he had only 50 dollars to spend at MOOD, and only 8 hours to hem stitch the final design before choosing accessories from the Blue Fly wall.
Couldn’t they just throw fifty bucks at one of the Project Rooftop contributors to come up with something with a bit more (and I hesitate to use this word because it’s Wonder Woman) character?
90s shoulderpads-equipped leather jacket, waitress black stretch slacks, ribbed sweater, goofy choker. This is pretty goddamn hideous.
The old WW outfit is a classic…through the constant reboots and inconsistent characterization, *it’s* what’s kept her published for 70+ years. I mean, am I the only one who never saw anything offensive about it…little girls have been wearing this outfit on Halloween for decades. It’s charming. The notion brought up during the roundtable that she looks like a stripper in her old costume is just…I don’t know…have you guys ever been to a strip club? They’re not wearing armor plated one piece bathing suits, I can assure you.
It’s not pants Wonder Woman’s been needing, it’s interesting stories.
It strikes me, as a man, as the sort of thing I could believe that a woman would put on to go out and fight crime, particularly those four of five days in the month when the one thing that someone like, say, my missus wants to do is kick the crap out of the nearest man JUST BECAUSE, DAMMIT !!!! AND WHERE’S THE RUDDY CHOCOLATE ???
It’s like Black Canary’s costume during the Keith Giffen/ J M DeMatteis JLA period – it looks sensible, comfortable and won’t chafe or press uncomfortably. The run down of Wonder Woman costumes at CA only emphasise that her costumes tend to be designed by men and are hardly practical for the everyday situations women can find themselves in. This, on the other hand, at least allows her to move across a city on those dark nights without the street lights bouncing of her spangly costume or highlighting her barely clad mid-rift, and thus making a handy place for your average cowardly and superstitious felon to point his gun.
Erm, gatchamandave, I don’t think WW is trying to be all Batmany. Plus, she has the whole bullets and bracelets thing. And since when are superhero costumes supposed to be sensible?
Also Chris, you look at Superman and see Flying Cop? Do the cops around your part of the world dress in bright colours, wear capes and have a big S on their chests? (More like Flying Circus Performer to me)
I really think DC HAS to set the record straight on what the hell is Wonder Woman supposed to be.
Is she supposed to be Greek goddess or demi-goddess? Then make her regal. Cover up her ass and make her look like an ancient Greek princess. Or make her look like an ancient greek warrior: give her Athena’s battle armor or the Aegis or something that evokes her Greek mythology background. Or maybe she doesn’t even need armor or a costume. She can be all-powerful in regular street clothes (not Jim Lee pin-up outfits; I’m talking normal clothes here). The thing here would be to make her awe-inspiring, and being a goddess is awe-inspiring enough.
Is she supposed to be the archetypical super-heroine? Then don’t shirk away from acknowledging her oversexualized, male fantasy status. Have her posing suggestively in every frame. Have her making porn faces all the time, even when ordering ice cream. Make her ridiculously curvy and barely clothed… in short, make her like she normally is, only a little bit more so.
Is she supposed to be a symbol? Then what does she stands for? Superman stands for institutions, truth, justice and the American Way. Batman is the night, justice, revenge and fighting what innocents fears. What does Wonder Woman stands for? Feminism? She is a male masturbatory fantasy, so no. Peace? Don’t think so, she has pledged allegiance to a military potence. Hope? Don’t think so, at least, not like Superman does; if Wonder Woman comes to save the day, things could go either way, but when Superman arrives, you know he will get the job done.
That comment about the classical Greek warrior look made me think that if they wanted to revamp her, why not something more along the lines of Erica Durance’s faux Wonder Woman outfit from Smallville last season (I think the episode was called Warrior)? Google “erica durance wonder woman” and you’ll see it.
Bring the colors more in line with the traditional WW costume, and they can even add tights (seems a bit pointless, since the kilt and leg guards cover almost all the legs).
[I]“What you don’t understand is that Jim Lee had only 30 minutes to sketch an outfit. Afterward he had only 50 dollars to spend at MOOD, and only 8 hours to hem stitch the final design before choosing accessories from the Blue Fly wall.”[/I] Plus, the contradictory advice. One one hand he keeps getting told that his designs are too costumey and that he needs to “make it work”, and then he gets insulted for following said advice.
Seriously, though, I sometimes wonder how super-hero costumes would look if they were made by actual fashion designers. Would it solve the problem (if there indeed is one)? Not really. But it’d be interesting.
@Repulsive Ray: You just did a more succinct and eloquent version of the post I was trying to write last night. Well said.
I thought the roundtable did a pretty good job of hitting on most of the reasons why I’ve been complaining about Wonder Woman’s costume for years.
Even though “sexy warrior from a remote island full of hot Lesbians” is totally in my wheelhouse as a horny nerd, I fail to see how Wonder Woman’s traditional “ceremonial armor” swimsuit accurately reflects any of the stuff she has supposedly represented over the years.
About the only reason to keep dressing her like Lynda Carter is that it’s what people are used to, and that has never been a very compelling reason to me.
Considering that Amazons understand and use actual armor and wear vaguely Greek casual clothes, the George Perez explanation for the old costume makes no sense at all and I’m tired of people bringing it up all the time. I have never been able to suspend disbelief long enough to accept that they would come up with “armor” that looks like what you might get if Julie Strain became Captain America’s new sidekick.
That goes double for the ridiculous hooker boots that are totally impractical for an awesome martial artist and monster hunter who can run at incredible speeds.
You don’t see the Flash trying to rock high heels or going around half-naked and trying to claim that his costume still protects him from friction. You really can’t justify Wonder Woman’s regular outfit on any grounds other than geeks hating change.
And if she’s still supposed to be the ambassador to Man’s World, she needs to do something beside occasionally wearing a cape. Pants and sensible foot wear were huge steps in the right direction. Ambassadors don’t show up at the U.N. looking like burlesque show dancers.
Even if the real motivation for the costume change was to design something that would look good on Megan Fox, I’m reasonably satisfied with it because (like people have already said) it looks like something a real woman might wear to go fight crime. If Wonder Woman is supposed to be a positive feminist icon and a role model for little girls and all that stuff, it’s a good idea to put her in something that wouldn’t annoy or possibly even offend female readers.
Okay, maybe they could change the jacket so it doesn’t cause so many knee-jerk “Aaugh! Nineties fashion!” reactions. Otherwise? I really don’t get the complaining. The regular artist isn’t super faithful to Lee’s design, so Wonder Woman still has her normal hair and we still get to see plenty of cleavage.
And frankly, the “patriotic” stars all over her naughty bits have made me uncomfortable for a long time. I can’t really blame John Byrne for feeling the same way.
“About the only reason to keep dressing her like Lynda Carter is that it’s what people are used to…”
And what, pray, tell, is wrong with that? That’s basically the only reason for keeping most costumes superheroes wear. Batman’s outfit has a certain logic to it (look like a bat), as does Zatanna’s (female stage magician– though, fishnets?), but off the top of my head, very few other costumes make a lot of sense. Just generically, capes? Ridiculous, and, as The Incredibles illustrated, potentionally dangerous to the wearer.
I freely admit that part of the appeal of the traditional costume is its sexiness, but, given that a lot of the costume characters have outifts that are indistinguishable from body paint, is the fact that her arms and legs are exposed really THAT big a deal? There are images of Harley Quinn or Catwoman that are a LOT sexier that a lot of the images of Wonder Woman, and, they’re a lot more covered up than even this new version of Wonder Woman.
And to be totally honest, most of the panels that have been shown of the variations on the traditional costume (as in the CA article) aren’t really all that sexy. Like every other character, Wonder Woman looks sexy when she’s purposely drawn to look sexy, and putting her in anything short of a burka complete with eye covering veil isn’t going to change that.
In fact, the more I think about it, the redesign probably IS part of a plan for a Wonder Woman movie, but not to create a more realistic costume, or even, as suggested on Attack of the Show, to allow her to do action scenes involving high kicks without her vagina falling out. One of the biggest impediments to a live action film, I have always thought, is that most actresses can’t believably wear the traditional costume; most simply lack the physicality and presence to pull it off, and they’d come off looking more like Laura in that one pic than a sexy, powerful amazon. Even Lynda Carter, who is still quite the looker, doesn’t always look great in the outfit; there are some pics of her from the show (usually the first season) where her arms look like pipe cleaners, for example; she’s a lot hotter in that Western getup from the episode with Roy Rogers than she is in some scenes with the regular costume.
And that, I think, is the point of the redesign tied in with a live-action movie. Given the physical limitations of most real human beings, they’re going to have a lot more ability to make WW sexy in the new outfit than they would in the old. And that sort of stealth objectification, especially when they seem to be trying to de-objectify her, makes the whole redesign kind of insidious.
“I freely admit that part of the appeal of the traditional costume is its sexiness, but, given that a lot of the costume characters have outifts that are indistinguishable from body paint, is the fact that her arms and legs are exposed really THAT big a deal?”
Not just her arms and legs. Her shoulders, her throat, her whole head, part of her breasts and (depending on the artist) part of her butt are all exposed.
Since the costume is supposedly “armor”, it’s pretty silly to leave that much of her body vulnerable. So, it’s a dumb costume purely for in-story reasons.
Perez (or somebody else after COIE) tried to justify her “bullets and bracelets” schtick by giving her some kind of crazy personal force field that will protect her from most forms of damage but won’t stop bullets or arrows. So she still needs to deflect stuff with her bracelets despite being resistant to fire, able to survive having giant boulders dropped on her, able to survive in outer space without protective gear and so forth.
Since regular old conventional bullets are basically her kryptonite, it’s pretty dumb to leave vulnerable areas like her face and neck completely exposed.
It’s not quite as bad as when they put Huntress in a bulletproof costume that left her thighs and mid-riff exposed, but still… The whole “ceremonial armor” thing is a pretty dorky reason to keep her in something that existed in the first place mostly because Marston was a really kinky dude.
Marston had some weird sexual hang-ups and he was basically the Golden Age version of Jim Balent. He and his artists just had to be sneakier about some of the content because they couldn’t get away with haunted vaginas or group sex scenes yet.
I’ll take “stealth objection” over the totally blatant objectification that was pretty much the whole point of the character until Denny O’Neill came along.
I prefer Bond’s redesign
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/planetbond/4751880639/)
And it doesn’t seem like it wouldn’t work WITHOUT the jacket…
Dude, seriously, you’re gonna attempt a triple negative? In that getup? Good luck sticking the landing.
I kid, I kid.
I admit that Wonder Woman’s costume needs a change, but I feel they went in the wrong direction. They really should get rid of the jacket because it makes her look way too juvenile, like an angry confused teen with a large chip on her shoulders and her “W” marked bracelets seem incredibly tacky (like Adam West Batman) though J. Michael Straczynski stated that HE wanted a more modern “street fighter” look. Unfortunately, this is a look that belonged and stayed in the 90′s. I found it very hard to take her seriously because she doesn’t quite portray that classic sense of maturity, self-confidence, and pride that I found so appealing with the classic look.
If they really wanted a new look to succeed, then maybe they should have her costume look more like that of an ancient Greek Warrior. Lose the pants and give her Pteryges (armored leather pleats) with a signature belt and tall light-armored boots (still show the skin of her legs and shoulders, just not all of it, to really help define her physic). This could help give more to the respect that she IS a proud Amazon and warrior because with the new look, we only have her word that she is an Amazon, not the visual portrayal, which is very important for any super hero.
The new look could possibly work if they got RID of the jacket (it’s just too juvenile, would work for Wonder Girl, though) made a few tweaks to the cuirass, brought back a tweaked version of her tall boots, and did away with the “W”s on her fists (way too tacky).