Everyone Gets This Major Thing Wrong About Wonder Woman (And The DCU Better Get It Right)

Wonder Woman is one of the most important and influential superheroes to ever exist. She was the first superheroine to take off and defined exactly what an A-list hero should look like. Wonder Woman is one of DC’s Trinity, embodying everything that DC believes a hero should. She’s been around since 1941, and ever since then, she’s been pushing the boundary for what a superhero and a woman in comics looks like. However, despite her insane popularity and importance, almost everyone gets one major thing wrong about Wonder Woman. Especially in adaptations. Wonder Woman should be silly, and the DC Universe needs to get that right.

Wonder Woman can be a very serious character. Her stories often tackle themes of feminism, reforming evil, and dealing with the darkness of the world. She regularly tackles the worst parts of human nature in an attempt to drag it out into the light so she can prove it wrong. Sometimes, she even goes against the gods themselves in her battle to prove that love is stronger than hate, and you can imagine the existentialism some stories include when divine beings don’t care about the right thing. Yes, Wonder Woman can be serious, but if you forgo her happy, silly nature, you lose an essential part of her.

Wonder Woman Is Funny

Ever since her introduction, Wonder Woman has been a pretty funny and playful character. Granted, every character in the Golden and Silver Ages was funny, but that was due to situations that were hilarious due to their strangeness. Wonder Woman’s stories were specifically structured to show why she was a funny character in her specific way, not in any inadvertent way. Simply put, Wonder Woman comics drew a lot of comedy from the classic “stranger in a strange land” dynamic. Typically, Wonder Woman would get into a situation that looks positively insane, she would respond in an equally, if not more, insane way, and another character, usually Steve Trevor, would blanche as the straight man.

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While this dynamic continues to this day, it has evolved with the character. As Wonder Woman grew more familiar with Man’s World, she stopped questioning things that are obvious to us, but she didn’t lose her humor. She grew up on a literal island paradise, and there she learned to love and appreciate all the little things in life. Instead of a humorless warrior, she became a woman who loved to laugh and chased it whenever she could. There are panels of Wonder Woman sticking her tongue out at lizards and stories where she stops bad movie adaptations with talking gorillas. Those are Wonder Woman (2016) #12 and Wonder Woman (2006) #25, respectively. Wonder Woman can be serious, but she should never be dull.

Superheroes Are Supposed To Be Fun

All too often, superhero media is looked on as something for kids. It makes sense, in a way, because what kids don’t love the idea of dressing up in fantastical costumes with awesome powers and saving the day? To try and be taken seriously, writers will often make the story darker or tackle gritty themes. However, they can easily push too far and replace all the fun and whimsy with hardboiled drama and cynicism. This goes doubly for female superheroes, as they need to work twice as hard to be taken seriously as a hero and as a woman. In that vein, Wonder Woman can easily be written as mature as possible, which involves serious plots and serious themes with no room for jokes.

This is an inherently misguided view. Superheroes are meant to be wacky, strange, and fun, but that does not mean they cannot be taken seriously. One of the great joys of superheroes is that they can tackle gritty themes without giving into cynicism themselves, offering hopeful looks at dark situations. Superheroes are made to appeal to the child inside of each of us, and when writers focus too much on appealing to the adult, they lose the magic that makes superheroes work in the first place. 

Wonder Woman is always going to be weird. No new coat of paint or grimdark story would ever change that. Instead, it must be embraced. Wonder Woman cannot run from her silly nature, because if she does, that’s turning her back on what she stands for. She is an ambassador of the truth, and that means not trying to be something she’s not. In short, Wonder Woman is funny and should be allowed to show that, because if a character only acts seriously, then they lose the magic of their wacky origins. We can only hope that her DCU adaptation embraces that truth.

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