By Edgar Miraculous Dyer
Reading several decades of Wonder Woman, from the Golden Age Forties to modern times, I have long thought the comic needed an iconic city, like Batman's Gotham or Superman's Metropolis to help define its super-heroic leading lady, and even to help writers develop her best stories.
Imagine...
Sleek, ultra-modern, Californian Gateway City, ..a quirky, over-militarized super-Washington ..or a brand-new Roswell proxy, in America's scenic Southwest - the setting for a second golden age of Wonder Woman stories! I imagine Diana's city being a port city for supernatural beings, ..like classical Amazon freedom-fighters, from a time-lost utopias, Venusian monarchs ..or roguish Asgardians. Like all immigrants, they've come to the city to make a better life for themselves, and Diana should conceivably be the protectress of their hopes for the future.
In the middle of all of that, the Advanced Research Group United Support (ARGUS) - a fictional, occasionally sinister cross between DARPA and a unified combatant command*, is silently watching over it all, threatening their freedom, with its myriad plots to control and exploit the 'aliens' and 'freaks' - putting Diana between her newfound friends ..and the awesome, hi-tech authority of the US military!
[*Unified combatant commands are REAL! Check this out, kangaliers... the United States Joint Forces Command!]
Imagine...
From the stage of this iconic city, Diana's stories launch her into the wildest, far-flung, most imaginative adventures that DC Comics has ever published! From her myth-inspired origins, as daughter of a once-enslaved race, Diana travels the world and beyond, challenging all, who would subdue or terrorize others, ..as her own Amazon nation was subdued, in classical times! The city, as much as her origin, could reinforce for readers, while just standing in the background, why Diana became Wonder Woman and what she is doing in Man's World. As Coast City, Midway City, Ivy City and Central City weren't added, until the 1950s (Silver Age), I see no reason why Gateway City or Holliday College could not be equally unique and iconic places, from which to launch Diana's adventures.
Making this iconic city, the X-files capital of all DC Comics stories and a port town for beings from magical realms, alien dimensions and lost civilizations seems, like a perfect fit for Diana's home in Man's World. I imagine it, as an over-militarized caricature of Washington, ..with huge, central headquarters for ARGUS, right smack in the middle. With all of that in play, a new, literal gateway city could cinch together, ..her friendship with Colonel Steve, the US government's interest in the paranormal, weird worlds, magic and other popular Wonder Woman comic elements. I think this Wonder-town (and call it whatever you like) would be a winner, all the way around!
Want to KNOW WONDER WOMAN, the way I know Wonder Woman? You've got to get ALL THE WAY down to the... STAR-SPANGLED PANTIES!
For proof of that workin', somewhere - how it works, ..look no further than the Supergirl TV show.
In one season, Supergirl’s fictional, iconic city, National City, a name which recalls Wonder Woman's Golden Age roost, Washington, DC, has become central to the concept of the show. Supergirl's storylines, involving social injustice issues and LGBT characters, make the Girl of Steel - Kara Danvers - the champion of the DC Comics Universe's minorities - time-travellers, space aliens, ..world-famous, freedom-loving Amazing Amazons - and this paranormal sanctuary-city roots that idea - fastens it - to the narrative. No matter what's happening in Supergirl, National City is there, tying Kara to the immigrant experience and every delightfully complex thing, that comes with it?
Conceptually speaking, I still feel National City and the role it plays in that show ..might have worked, very well, in Wonder Woman's comics.
ARGUS, at its worst, like Supergirl's Department of Extranormal Occurences (DEO), ..is just one more conquest-driven monster for Diana to protect all of us from. Diana's archenemy, whoever that turns out to be, should probably be a reflection or extension of that dynamic, in her enmity, with Diana. When Diana isn't battling Queen Clea, Atomia, Villainess X, etc, ..ARGUS and its X-Filesy presence should help keep Diana's mission, conceptually on point, in her stories. Her iconic city should accomplish that, in the same way Metropolis and Gotham do for their respective champions.
Gotham and Metropolis exist in an editorial vacuum, in the sense that we expect to see the Daily Planet and Gotham Clock Tower, whenever a story is being told, in these places. Over the years, writers have added things to these cities that whatever writers and editors, who follow them, have to keep up with. Comparatively speaking, we are much more familiar with Washington, DC's Washington Monument, U.S. Capitol Building and memorials, but, these real-world, historic landmarks have nothing to do with Wonder Woman's stories, specifically - like Marvel's use of New York City, ..this Washington, DC is merely a backdrop. Much easier for writers to set Diana's stories, there or Boston, without fussing over newly added details (a clock tower, etc,), because, in the Wonder Woman comic...
There are none. No laser-dome on an ARGUS Defense Citadel. No, Kanigher's Department Store, full of sight-gags, from the 1950s Wonder Woman comics. No Wonder-Washington, filled with over-sized tanks and gargantuan monuments...
Nothing.
Gotham's got the Batcave, Wayne Manor and, well...Gotham? Metropolis has Lexcorp Tower, Project Cadmus, Suicide Slum, the Daily Planet. So, what would Wonder-town look and feel like? Unable to shake my musings of Wonder Woman in the American Southwest, in the X-files Capital of the DC Comics Universe, ..I created one for this blog post, with a weird, HQ for ARGUS, ..a quirky, Kanigher's department store ..and Etta Candy's Holliday College. As I see it, Wonder Woman needs a cool, iconic town (somewhere NOT in a big, northeastern city, like Gotham or Metropolis), ..full of cool, weird, iconic stuff!
At its center, I think ARGUS needs something old and Who-ishly funky to distinguish it, from the futuristic stylings of S.H.I.E.L.D. I did not know, until yesterday, that ARGUS first appeared, in New 52 Justice League #7 (May 2012), and was not created, as part of the Wonder-mythos, specifically. This is problematic, because the Wonder Woman comic has no exclusive claim or editorial control over what is happening with ARGUS, or whether ARGUS even exists, when a writer wants to use it, in a story!
Still think it would look hot, in a fictional, iconic city for the Immortal Amazon.
And, yes - my badass ARGUS Defense Citadel (with LASER-DOME) is a perfectly absurd and silly building! In a time, when newer comic fans regularly mock the Invisible Jet, I think the Wonder Woman comic needs more patently absurd things, possessed of incalculably destructive power - not less! Perfectly absurd and silly things made great comics and greater TOYS, once, and we connected to comics, through toys, in ways that younger modern comic fans have been denied. Whether it's an ARGUS laser-dome, Queen Clea's Venturia Island or the Kanigher's Department Store, hiding Diana's mystical armory, ..the world of Wonder Woman desperately needs more imagination.
We need more Coke-bottle jets to imagine flying around in! Whoopee!
More than just a launching pad, a Wondertown would launch Diana in a coherent direction that, for writers, ..shapes and informs her on-going narrative. That's what an iconic city, in a superhero comic, is for. Something will be missing in the Wonder Woman comic, ..until Diana finally gets her own.
Look alive, Kangaliers!
Edgar 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 Culture Council of the Capitol Area (El Consejo de Cultura Latina – La Zona del Capitolio) and the Kiwanis Club of Capitol Hill.
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