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Wonder Woman Is An Even Worse Mother Than Before In Justice League #29 (SPOILERS)

Published Wed, 20 Sep 2017 06:00:52 -0500

Last month, Bleeding Cool ran an article about an earlier issue of Justice League in which the League's children from the far future have come back in time to put right what once went wrong hoping each time that the next leap will be the leap home.

And that the character Hunter Prince was the son of Wonder Woman – a son that she had abandoned on his birth, allegedly consistent with the Amazon warrior way to raise only girls. Instead, he was raised by Clark Kent and Lois Lane, alongside their own son Jonathan Kent. Basically dismissing Diana as the worst mother possible – although holding out the hope of some kind of rationale and explanation that would excuse what the character did. And then everybody died, everything went to hell and he attributes this to Wonder Woman's actions in the past.

Which is why in a reverse-Oedipedal fashion, he now intends to commit matricide along with the rest of the Justice League of Runaways, to save the world.

Not that mummy, dearest will make it easier. And yes, as Freud would attest, there is a lot of grunting. There has been much comment, admirably even, of Wonder Woman's use of a sword of late. This may be more in keeping with the warrior image, but the original conception of Wonder Woman saw her hardly ever used a sword, preferring the pacifying power of the lasso. There are gender issues here, the sword being a phallic symbol in fiction, with the lasso being more, well, yonic. And yes, that does make for an interesting rereading of much of the original Western pulp literature.

So you can read whatever you want into Hunter taking Wonder Woman's sword from her in the heat of battle, only for Wonder Woman to retrieve said sword…

…and use it to threaten the life of her son unless all the Leaguelings step down. Yeah, Hunter, you pull that face. Whether you buy into the sexual interpretations or not, that's hardly a good look.

The origin of Wonder Woman is also tied up in the rise of planned parenthood in the USA. Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston's polygamous girlfriend Olive Byrne was the niece of Margaret Sanger, the founder of that movement. Wonder Woman can be interpreted as a symbol of the decoupling of sex and procreation, with women very much being given the right to choose what they do with their body.

But portrayed in this fashion, whichever way you look at it, the symbolism is pretty awkward.

Justice League #29 by Bryan Hitch, Fernando Pasarin, Oclair Albert, Andy Owens and Brad Anderson is published today by DC Comics.

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