Wonder Woman: "And you call yourself a Superman!"

Jim Lee and Frank Miller, Published by DC Comics, Batman and Robin All Stars #5

DC Comics has renovated their superhero "family" storylines many times, which from the beginning have often dealt with their stable of superheroes getting along with each other much in the way a 1940s-50s family was apparently supposed to get along: some friction, but always a happy ending.

Since then, DC Comics' Justice League stories, even when they get all hoary and disturbed as with the "infinite Crisis" storylines, still have a certain glue that binds together the idea that superheroes would naturally have an affinity for each other, versus an automatic repulsion akin to egomaniacs meeting.

Frank Miller tries to turn this surrogate family ideal from DC Comics onto its head, but instead I think he creates just an extreme version of the already existing paradigm of opinionated professionals putting up with each. They ultimately coalesce when the chips are down, and would have sooner if it wasn't for an operatic need for combat on every level.

Miller's version of Wonder Woman takes Moulton's Amazonian ideal of an anti-male, brazenly demigod being and pushes it outward into one woman's pure emotional and physical frustration. With an idealistic sense of justice, certainly there would be enough anger and rage to turn Wonder Woman into a battling vigilante anyway, but Miller has the woman going into a whole other realm of anger (while raging crazily about having Batman's head cut off and presented to the 'authorities' as a gift, having Wonder Woman declare Bats a 'psychopath' looks like sheer projection).

Incidentally, in this panel from the comics they're arguing over capturing Batman because he's been misbehaving badly and this is a national problem - - which doesn't fit the original DC Comics model in which heroes performed vigilante acts within their various home cities and it only created problems on the local state level at best (true, Superman eventually was off fighting the Nazi's and talking to FDR but that's after Superman had evolved away from Seigel and Shuster's original smart-alec version.)

In Miller's world, superheroes have problems on a national level because there is always an insanely attentive, neo-fascist presence that won't mind its own business, primarily a governmental entity and its hand-maiden press. This difference from the Marvel Comics vision of government (especially as finalized by Chris Claremont with the X-Men) of a prejudiced and small-minded government that operates out of fear and manipulates a gullible citizenry. Both viewpoints elevate the superhero as an individual who transcends society.