Unfounded speculation about Wonder Woman's new costume...

Disclaimer: all of today's post is from someone who doesn't regularly read Wonder Woman, and should fall under the heading of unsolicted guesswork. But, apparently we have to talk about Wonder Woman's new costume, 'cause everyone's doing it.

What surprised me about the change, is that it didn't seem to be leaked or hyped or anything, until just before the issue came out? Is that right? I mean, usually, a big change like this (putting aside the relative permanence or not of the change) is trumpeted for months ahead of time, isn't it? Maybe I wasn't paying attention and missed the hype, or maybe DC thought "Hey! Look! New costume in three months!" would step all over the tailend of Gail Simone's run. But I know there was some hoopla over J. Michael Straczynski taking over the book...

To be honest, and this is a pretty nerdy issue, I would've thought more people would be more upset about Straczynski altering Wonder Woman's timeline, even if that's going to be temporary. Are we not supposed to mention that WW's continuity is a bit dicey? Like, Hawkman-level dicey? OK, originally post-Crisis, Diana didn't arrive in man's world until, what, the Legends mini-series? Was she the first Amazon to arrive here, or did her mom come over around WWII? Was Diana a founding member of the Justice League of America, or was she not a a member until a brief stint with Justice League Europe? Comics Alliance's WW writeup mentions that retroactively altering Wonder Woman's timeline also retroactively jacks up Donna Troy's and Wonder Girl Cassie's to boot.

And that's the problem I have with it, the timeline: altering Diana's timeline would have a ripple effect on the entire DCU, but probably not for long: someone as important as Wonder Woman, who's been at least peripherally involved with dozens of extinction-level events for earth and the entire universe; can't have crucial moments in their history altered without catastrophic results.

...and since I'm not a Wonder Woman fan, I can't think of any, so maybe JMS is on to something; but hear me out: look, if Wonder Woman wasn't there at the right time to save the day, then maybe the day wasn't saved, and everything could be different as a result. Of course, the timeline's being altered by the gods, and it's going to be changed back at some point (probably) this still bugs me since it would affect other books. Or at least it should, but it's not going to.

(An example of that was Black Canary's use in the Justice League, especially in JLA: Year One, a book I loved to death that seems to have been removed from continuity. Since at the time, Wonder Woman didn't come in right away, Black Canary was moved up to her spot as a JLA founder. So, in old pre-Crisis Justice League of America stories that were still in continuity, if you saw WW, she was Black Canary retroactively. This is kinda problematic in that BC had a completely different power set than WW--Canary can't pick up a car, for example--and that this fix wouldn't make allowances for the stories with both characters. Whee! Poking holes in old comics is fun!

It does occur to me that that is a pretty dicked-up way to treat women, even if it's not intentional: can't use Wonder Woman in a story? Ah, just throw in Black Canary, and tell the colorist to make sure she's blonde...

Off-topic, but hey, one thing Crisis got right? Cleared up Black Canary's origin like Proactiv. Have you read the old one? It's got Earth-1, Earth-2, and some kind of limbo in there, and her living in her mom's body or something. Just terrible.)

ANYWAY. As is often the case around here, we're way, way off topic. Back to Wonder Woman's new costume: y'know, when I first saw it, the picture was only from the hips up, so I didn't realize she had pants now. I thought she was wearing a little black dress. And I approved. Practicality be damned...

Of course, the acid test for this costume, will be how quickly it gets an action figure. Both Blackest Night and Star Sapphire versions of Wonder Woman got figures pretty quickly, as such things go.

And I'm fully aware that this change is probably hoping to drive more clothing sales than action figures...or comics, but there you go.