“You weren’t so quick to get rid of me last night.” “I notice you like to think you’re in control.” That’s the Wonder Woman of an alternate reality Justice League, talking about sex. She stabs lots of people with a big, black... sword.
The newest installment of Justice League: Gods and Monsters Chronicles isn’t quite as shocking as the Superman and Batman shorts that rolled out earlier this week. Like those characters, this Wonder Woman is more violent than her mainline counterpart. It’s the focus on sex—for better or worse, always part of the conversation with Wonder Woman—that differentiates this short from the others.
It may seem like randiness for its own sake but this vignette gestures back towards the character’s creation as an erotically charged symbol. Submission and domination were major subtexts of the Amazon’s earliest adventures, but any themes of control dynamic shifted over the decades. A Wonder Woman who explicitly controls her own sexuality is more interesting than one where people act like it doesn’t exist.
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