By Mel Dyer
Wonder Woman is at her best - her most entertaining - under fire and rising to a challenge! Game-changing stakes and characters, who challenge her freedom-loving, Bohemian ideals, distinguish her as more than a female Man of Steel; they uniquely define her, ..as Wonder Woman.
Certainly, one of the greatest challenges to her Amazonian mettle, ever created, ..has been classical literature's superman, Hercules.
I don't think Wonder Woman’s creator, Dr. William Marston or most of the writers, who followed him, have ever fully reformed Hercules, an alternately quarrelsome, thuggy companion and outright enemy of the Amazing Amazon’s, ..since her launch in World War II. Even 1950s writer/editor Robert Kanigher, after making him one of Diana's fairy godfathers, lending his magical strength to her own, ..typically wrote him, as an unrepentant jerk. Like so many other male supporting characters, who are not perennially neutered boyfriend, Steve Trevor, and don't behave like him, ..something (usually a writer) has always lumbered into the comic's narrative engine room ..and squandered Hercules's unapologetically antiheroic potential.
Hercules unbound and 'Rebirthed', ..just in time to get killed off, by Darkseid's daughter! (Carlos Pagulayan art)
George Perez saw his Amazons forgive Hercules, who forswore them his strength, because they worthy of it. (George Perez art)
I think 1980s writer George Perez's attempt at full redemption and reformation of Hercules (sometimes, called 'Herakles') was very ..Marstonian. In Perez's WAR OF THE GODS #4, moved by Wonder Woman's forgiveness of him, the man-god, who had ravaged and enslaved her Amazon sisters in ancient times, devotes his divine strength to her mother Queen Hippolyta's service, that the Amazons might call upon it, whenever they should need it. Honoring his pledge, reformed, forgiven Hercules leaves Heaven to fight at the Amazon nations' side, ..leading them into battle against (at the time) their worst enemy, Circe! With that brilliant curveball of divine intervention, the best moment in an otherwise torturous mess of genre excesses, the legendary, transformative power of Wonder Woman's compassion ..is wholly realized.
For those of us, who are fans of the best of Perez AND Marston, this was one of the high points of the otherwise unforgivably horrible WOGs. It was a huge thing, considering everything that had transpired, between Hercules and the Amazons, before. However, thanks to the WW comic's chronically short-sighted and unspired editing, it was short-lived and swiftly, entirely ..undone!
With John Byrne taking the reigns, in what was probably the comic's most publicized and anticipated run, since George Perez's reboot in 1986, the Lion of Olympus was re-introduced, as a moustache-twirling, shape-shifting, woman-hating villain! Why should the loss or mishandling of his role in the comic be so important? As in the past, one of the few heroic males in the WW comic, who isn't a eunuch - who might challenge Wonder Woman, in a way that defines her - is written shabbily and quickly done away with...
That's why.
Poor Herc's always getting his can handed to him, in the pages of Wonder Woman. (Terry Dodson art)
Unlike Diana's handsomely manicured pets, Steve Trevor and Nemesis, Hercules's expression of masculinity, deplorable as it has been, at times, is shaped by his struggle with his own humanity and has never been slavishly dependent on the favor of the star-spangled leading lady. While he's a classical mythology star - like Peter Pan, the mere mention of him evokes fabled magic and power - Wonder-fans continue to express (mostly online) mixed feelings about his role in the comic...in the mythos. At best, Perez gives us a potentially complex anti-hero in his reformed Hercules, who, if written well, might challenge the leading lady to do something that could surprise us - something that shows up the seventy-plus year invisible marriage, with neutered Steve, ..for the barrel of boredom it's always been! For that reason, Hercules and brash, fiercely independent, playfully adversarial and unapologetically masculine characters, like him and Jack Kirby's Orion, bring a tonal balance to the WW comic, ..that Colonel Steve never did.
The comic needs that. Wonder Woman needs Hercules and what he represents: man, classically ambitious and apocalyptically powerful, ..struggling to be more.
Hercules had a nasty date-rape habit, ..before he met Wonder Woman's mom and a few thousand Amazons. (H.G. Peter art)
I think those of us fans, who can't accept George Perez's rehabilitation of Hercules, into a recurring, heroic or anti-heroic companion for Wonder Woman, are being a little short-sighted. What are we saying, ..when Diana treating Cheetah and Circe, both mass-murderers of mortals and Amazons, with compassion, goes without controversy, ..but, her forgiveness of Perez's Hercules, who stands with the Amazons in their darkest hours, against their most fearsome foes, cannot be accepted? It's illustrative of a double standard for the comic's male regulars, that is, as plainly wasteful, as it is misandrous. I think we have to have the courage to be honest about the unfairness of that, ..if we're espousing the principles of our fictional avatar, Wonder Woman.
No, Wonder-creator Dr. Marston never forgave, redeemed or reformed Hercules, but, if we still believe in her, ..Wonder Woman can.
Note: This entry was previously titled "Redemption Song For Hercules, Long Overdue".
Edgr Miraculous (Mel) Dyer, without his fine, coyote-hatin' Goldiweiller, Kirby (now moved on to that big, coyote-hatin' hate group in the Sky) continues a somewhat bleaker, dogless existence in the Capitol Hill area of Washington, DC. He has been an active member of the Latino Citizens of the Capitol Hill Area and the Kiwanis Club of Capitol Hill.
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