Author’s Note: This is a long one. At first glance it may look like a critique of Brian Azzarello’s Wonder Woman. And it is, although there are many aspects of his work I don’t touch upon. But it’s actually a discussion of the almost-universal Paternal Narrative, the scarce-as-hen’s-teeth Maternal Narrative, and the way female-centric stories are represented (or not) in DC Comics and elsewhere - all seen through the lens of Wonder Woman #1-35.
Wonder Woman and the Paternal Narrative: the Rise of Wonder Woman, the Fall of Women
“We’ve cleaned her up. You can describe who she is now. She’s got the specific description now just like Batman or Superman. She’s the daughter of a god.” - Brian Azzarello
In heroic literature there is a tradition called the Paternal Narrative, also known as “Luke I Am Your Father” Syndrome. (I’d say Patriarchal Narrative, but that word is used in so many different contexts that its meaning gets overloaded.) It states that, if a hero’s parents are important to his story, the father will be of most importance; the mother will be secondary or even irrelevant. The father may be a powerful man - heroic or villainous - from whom the hero gets his skills, personality, or powers. The hero will try to measure up to, oppose, reconcile with, or redeem his father. The mother may be given some interesting backstory, often after the main tale is told - or not - but mainly exists to link child and father.
This is, of course, common throughout the primary tales of Western literature (Hercules, Jesus), modern popular culture (Luke Skywalker), and certainly mainstream comic books. It’s rife in DC Comics, and always has been.
As a child, Hal Jordan sees his test-pilot father deliberately and heroically crash his plane to save innocent people on the ground. Jordan goes on the become a test pilot, and then, as Green Lantern, a great hero, overcoming fear and risking his life for others just like his father did. Can anybody tell me what Hal Jordan’s mother did? Did she have a job? Raising three sons as a single mother is an eminently respectable and difficult thing to do, but the Hal Jordan story does not highlight or even depict this in any way, or suggest how it causes Hal to become the hero he becomes. It does not drive the narrative or the characterization.
If you read Superman over the decades, you see Jor-el as the most brilliant scientist on Krypton, who predicts Krypton’s destruction when everyone else gets it wrong. He is the creator of the spaceship that takes the infant Kal-el to Earth, as well as virtually every important invention on Krypton, including the Phantom Zone projector. In some stories he gets to come to Earth briefly before Krypton explodes and be a proto-Superman. Silver Age stories traced his ancestry through a lineage (all male) of amazing scientific minds. Throughout all this, Lara is… his devoted wife.
Modern stories may try to flesh out Lara a little more - she’s a member of a warrior clan, she comes from an important family too. (She’s even given a maiden name!) But it doesn’t add up to much, and it doesn’t stick. Read this description of Jor-el from The New 52’s World’s Finest #27 (“The Secret History of Superman & Batman”), published in the “post-feminist” year of 2014: “[He] strode across the giant planet like a titan, a last genetic remnant of the ancient days when their sun was strong, their lives long, and their deeds a song of glory.” (Admittedly Lois Lane, telling the story, mentions that this is Clark’s version, and he “always did tend to overdo the melodrama.” But she doesn’t contradict him.) Here’s Lois’s report on Clark’s description of his mother: “---“. In this particular story, Jor-el’s attempt to save Krypton results in its premature destruction, and Lara has to suggest that he use the tiny rockets he has built to save some children. But none of this is played for irony; Lara and Lois still praise his brilliance, courage, and integrity. Certainly nobody thought the story might be centered around Lara instead.
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| "And your mom - I hear she was nice." |
In every version of Krypton that we’ve seen, children take their family names from their father - it seems to be a default for all worlds in the DC multiverse. And so we have Kal-el, Kara Zor-el, and characters who wind up being named Kon-el and H’el despite their more tenuous relationship to the family. There are countless references to the House of El. The House of Van? I can’t tell you much about that.
Bruce Wayne sees both his parents murdered before his eyes, and admittedly the image of his mother’s pearls falling to the ground is common. But when he sits in the Frank Miller chair in Wayne Manor, bleeding to death, he calls out to his father - not his parents - for a supernatural sign that he shouldn’t die. And he constantly encounters busts of his father in the house; they must have had a mold made. In some Silver Age stories, Thomas Wayne dons a costume and acts like a proto-Batman. Martha Wayne, like Lara, has been given a little backstory in recent years, but the idea that in any version of Batman - Earth 1, Earth 2, New Earth, anywhere - his mother would be the admired doctor from a wealthy family, and his father a helpful sort who uses his spouse’s money for philanthropy, seems outside the character’s mythos. And would inevitably be condemned by some as “too P.C.”.
The Paternal Narrative applies to female characters as well. Kara Zor-el’s father was, for most of his existence, a literal twin of Jor-el, both biologically and as a character. He saved Argo City, created the Survival Zone, and built the rocket that sent his daughter to safety and her superheroic role. If you want to know how much thought went into her mother’s role, look at her name: Alura. She’s alluring, we get it. (In some stories, especially the New Krypton saga, she gets to do more. These are not typical or lasting.) Helena Wayne, the pre-Crisis On Infinite Earths Huntress, is the daughter of both Batman and Catwoman - but is generally known as “the daughter of Batman,” as he is a far more important and better-known character than Catwoman, who is essentially a member of his supporting cast. (The Huntress’s origin, including the death of her mother, was built around Selina Kyle’s fear that her husband Bruce Wayne would judge and reject her for unwittingly killing someone in the past. He judges, she fears.) After CoIE, Helena Bertinelli’s origin as the Huntress was based on the fact that her father was a Gotham City mafia boss; her heroism is defined in opposition to his criminality, and her struggle not to be as brutal as he was. If her mother is anything other than “the wife of a mafia boss,” I’ve never heard it. (In one storyline Helena discovers that her father was actually a different mafia boss, who had an affair with her mother. This revelation is a key point in the plot. Her mother is still a cipher.) In The New 52, the Huntress is again the daughter of (Earth-2’s) Batman and Catwoman. But count the number of times she mentions her father compared to mentioning her mother. She was Robin to his Batman. Batman’s life on this Earth is, as usual, of vast importance; he, Superman, and Wonder Woman died saving the world, and there is a grand statue celebrating their sacrifice (Earth 2: World’s End #1). Catwoman is unceremoniously blasted out of existence by a parademon, and people don’t really talk about her after that. When Huntress, corrupted by an evil New God, confronts her grandfather Thomas Wayne, she screams “Where were you when my father died?” Presumably she remembers that her mother died too, but she doesn't mention it. (Oh, yes, it turns out that Helena’s paternal grandfather, Thomas Wayne, is alive, and takes on the Batman identity after his son dies. Catwoman’s remaining family, if any, is not part of the narrative. It’s all daddy stories around here.)
Jade was a popular (and much-missed) DC superhero, the daughter of Alan Scott, the Golden Age Green Lantern, and Rose Scott (nee Canton), the briefly reformed supervillain Thorn (the Golden Age “Rose and Thorn”). Jade’s powers, down to their color-coding, were taken entirely from her father, and her storylines were heavily influenced by her relationship to him - their finding each other, accepting each other, becoming truly father and daughter. Her mother, believed to be dead, showed up for one arc and then conveniently died. There was a single 8-page story that toyed with the concept of her having some of her mother’s plant-based powers, but it was immediately forgotten because it didn’t fit in with the character concept: Green Lantern’s Daughter. (Her brother Obsidian’s powers - shadow-based rather than light-based - were not derived from their mother either, but from the influence of either the villain Ian Karkull or the alien force Starheart, depending on the story. And his stories also heavily Alan-Scott centric. Really, their mother could have been anyone.)
My examples are taken from DC superheroes, but they don’t need to be limited to them. From my earlier days reading Marvel, I know a great deal about Reed Richards’ father Nathaniel - his time machine, his disappearance, his schemes. I know nothing about Reed’s mother. Indiana Jones spent an entire movie having an adventure with his father, leading to their reconciliation. I suppose he had a mother at one time. For three “episodes,” Luke Skywalker yearns for, recoils from, and is finally saved by his father, from whom he inherited his midichlorian powers. His mother is not even mentioned until the following three prequels, where she exists mainly to explain Anakin’s character development; she dies in childbirth, and her specific character traits and history have no direct impact on Luke’s story - and she has no powers to pass on. Clark “Doc” Savage, Jr…. Well, you get the point.
There are some exceptions. Aquaman inherits his powers and royalty from his mother, although I feel sure that readers are far more likely to remember his lighthouse-keeper father; Atlanna’s fate - and powers, if any - were always so vague and mutable to making it hard to say exactly how she influenced her son’s heroism . (Another aquatic hero, Namor the Sub-mariner, was more influenced by his mother. These stories were inspired by old legends of human men taking mermaid or selkie brides.) Some second-generation heroes avoid the father-based narrative - Infinity, Inc.’s Fury (Hippolyta Trevor) was the daughter of Wonder Woman and the entirely human Steve Trevor; after Crisis on Infinite Earths, she was ostensibly the daughter of the earlier Fury (Helena Kosmatos), although there are large gaps in that story that never got filled in. (Digression: this is one reason I was unhappy when The New 52 took hold - mysteries from the previous continuity would never be resolved.) Other legacy characters, however, such as Jesse Quick, were based on their fathers even when both parents were superheroes. In any case, these examples pale in comparison, in both number and narrative strength, to the far more common Paternal Narrative.
And now I’ll tell you a secret: I am not opposed to the Paternal Narrative. I’ve used it myself sometimes. It’s familiar. It resonates with stories familiar to us from childhood, from Greek myths to Biblical tales. (Admittedly those stories stem from sexist cultures, but most of us are not about to throw them out.) It is useful in some cases precisely because it does not challenge assumptions that a writer may not wish to engage with in a particular story. It even has a (weak) “bioliterary” excuse: given the facts or pregnancy, it’s easier to write a story in which characters are surprised by who their father is than by who their mother is. Although I’m not sure “easy” is always the best storytelling choice.
What I am opposed to is the Paternal Narrative’s relentless ubiquity, the way it can be expected to pop up in almost any story. It is so standard, so easy to make a key element of a story be:
“The hero’s father was a hero/villain/adventurer/inventor,,,,”
“The hero wishes to live up to his or her father’s example; or is afraid of becoming just like his or her father....”
“The hero’s life changes when he or she discovers that his or her real father is….”
Fathers, in these stories, have significant traits, character arcs, influence. Mothers are generally far less well defined, mainly used for their biological function: she gave birth to the father’s child. Not much more needs to be known. The message this communicates is that the hero’s father has a vital and specific role in his child’s narrative, the mother a generic role that could be played by any non-specific woman. Men’s personalities drive the narrative, whether the hero is male or female; women give birth, and don’t need much of a personality. (A mother with a strong personality would often get in the way in a story like this. It’s no surprise so many die in childbirth, or not long after.)
There was exactly one well-known, easily recognized - “iconic” - DC superhero (not second-generation, not a legacy) that not only avoided the Paternal Narrative, but subverted it, presented us with a real counterpoint to it. Exactly one, and that was Wonder Woman.
