(Comic Books) While Marvel Comics has made great strides in recent years to increase its public profile, rival DC Comics is another matter altogether. Case in point: the latest issue of Wonder Woman finds the titular heroine cutting her hair short and donning a camoflauge bra (pardon me -- "bustier"). It doesn't sound like major news, but tell that to MSNBC:
"The makeover is part of Wonder Woman's latest six-part adventure, a harrowing scenario in which she gets amnesia and must fight demons without her superpower strength. Luckily, her brains out-muscle the brawn.
"In Issue 190, Wonder Woman decides she must go undercover if she is to survive her ordeal and reclaim her identity.
" 'She's bright and when she realizes she's getting attacked she thinks she probably ought not to look like herself,' said Wonder Woman writer Walter Simonson of DC Comics. Simonson expects readers to have mixed reactions to the new look."
Not exactly an Earth-shattering change, right? Wrong. This is, after all, an American icon we're talking about here, however faded she may be. Just this simple cosmetic change led to the above Associated Press puff-piece appearing in newspapers here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here, and on local news websites here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. I should note that this is only a partial list.
This begs the obvious question: if DC Comics can generate quick press through such a flimsy excuse, why doesn't it do so more often? Why is it Marvel can grab pixels and column inches seemingly at will, while their Distinguished Competition remains almost narcoleptic by comparison?
I have an anecdotal answer to the question. Years ago, I had a friend who was ugly -- we're talking Joey Ramone ugly, here -- shallow, self-absorbed and only superficially able to communicate on any meaningful basis with the opposite sex; the sort of weaselly, backstabbing cad who'd prompt you to take up arms if he ever got too close to your sister. Yet, to the astonishment of me and all my friends, the guy seemed to be in the pants of a different beautiful woman every week. He never had a problem living off the wages of some reliably employed girl or other; I never saw him work an honest day in the years that I knew him, and he always seemed to have several girls to screw around with behind the back of the woman supporting him at a given time.
Befuddled by the carefree way he violated my otherwise high opinion of feminine common sense, I once asked a mutual female acquaintance how he could possibly get away with it. Her sardonic reply: "If you dangle it in our faces long enough, we're likely to eventually give it a try the first time we find ourselves bored enough to notice." As Peter Bagge once noted in an old Hate letter-column (I'm paraphrasing here): "Stinky gets laid because he asks the ladies!"
Marvel tries; DC never bothers. It really is as simple as that.
