GRANT MORRISON TO PEN WONDER WOMAN: EARTH ONE

YANICK PAQUETTE DESIGNS FOR STATUE
YANICK PAQUETTE DESIGNS FOR STATUE

AMBER LOVE 20-JULY-2015 An interview on the Nerdist Network with comic book legend Grant Morrison addressed his plans to create WONDER WOMAN: EARTH ONE for DC Comics. While it’s not the mainstream title for the Amazon princess, it’s getting tons of attention because it’s Morrison. The series will be drawn by artist Yanick Paquette who drew several issues of Wonder Woman in the late 90s.

The plot detail which fans have picked out of the interview as being significant about Morrison’s feminism is that he and Paquette have redesigned Diana’s invisible jet to be shaped like a vulva. He doesn’t even use the correct anatomical term for this ludicrous display of exploitation. He calls it a vagina. Not even vaginal to allow for some interpretation. But okay, that’s really nitpicking the grammar. Vagina is fun to say.

“Wonder Woman’s Invisible Plane is now shaped like a vagina, it’s the most incredible thing. It opens up in the back and it has a little clitoris hood, everything is a female-based design. It’s all based on shells and natural stuff.” ~ GRANT MORRISON on nerdist.com

Are you kidding me? Is this some kind of joke? Please tell me this is not real.

Mr. Morrison and Mr. Paquette, you are not Georgia O’Keeffe.
I have read Morrison’s SUPERGODS and felt such immense admiration for who he is as artist because he’s open-minded and loves exploring taboos such as a straight man wearing women’s clothing; his commitment to mysticism also spoke to me deeply. He knows his shit. No doubt about it. But like the appropriations of culture that are examined on a racial plane, men choosing what’s symbolic to feminism always comes down to genitalia and reproduction.

you-said-vagina-h4rvo0

Do they even realize that the porn industry is criticized and mocked for this daily? It’s why there’s strength in the modern movement for women to make their own porn. And Morrison/Paquette swoop in and decide that a functioning jet design would be to change the male phallus (which is for aerodynamics, not getting off) into the only symbol of womanhood for an adult female character they could come up with. They didn’t choose the Venus of Willendorf as inspiration. They chose porn. And let’s not overlook that one of the reasons this doesn’t fit the character nor the Amazon society is that she’s not presented as a sexual being; romantic, yes, but not sexual.

GEORGIA O'KEEFFE "BLACK IRIS"
GEORGIA O’KEEFFE “BLACK IRIS”

Morrison knows magick and mysticism, as you probably are aware. That means he’s well versed in the pagan stages of womanhood: Maiden, Mother, Crone. They are taking only the “mother” aspects of femininity and defining Diana rather than seeing her as a person. The plot discussed by Morrison in that interview says there won’t be any fighting and alludes to the belief that the Amazons’ science would obliterate any foe, so they simply don’t bother. That ignores the sense that any female tribal colony would need a defense system or that they would ever come to the aid of an allied region in a time of some other country’s war when diplomacy fails – which is probably Diana’s role in the upcoming BATMAN V. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE.

It would come off as ostentatious if I were to say that Morrison/Paquette were in a state of arrested development of a couple of 14 year old boys drawing pornographic cartoons on school desks; but that’s the image in my head right now as I think about their motivations in this particular plot device about Wonder Woman’s jet. Unlike The Mary Sue’s Teresa Jusino, who I respect but often disagree with, I’m not excited about this at all. I think it’s a problem about how male creators see Wonder Woman as a flying orifice for their dicks. Sometimes a jet is just a jet.

EXCERPT FROM THE NERDIST ADDRESSING WONDER WOMAN
EXCERPT FROM THE NERDIST ADDRESSING WONDER WOMAN

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1 Comment on Morrison & Wonder Woman – Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

  1. “Wonder Woman’s Invisible Plane is now shaped like a vagina, it’s the most incredible thing. It opens up in the back and it has a little clitoris hood, everything is a female-based design…”
    It gives a whole new meaning to the word “c***pit!”

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