Some Musings About Wonder Woman's New Costume

First off, the image is compliments of DC's The Source. Surely by now you have heard that Wonder Woman is undergoing a costume change, away from the blue panties and breastplate and into this new, more "urban and stealthy" garb. While I consider myself a Wonder Woman fan, I haven't found any enjoyment from her main title in sometime, settling for sustenance via my favorite author's runs over on the various Justice League books. When this dropped, I didn't think I was going to have any particular opinion about it, but after talking with Shelley from Bat Romance and Andy from I live sweat, but I dream lightyears.. I realized that I did.

While not a fan of the blue panties specifically, I always dug the iconic nature of Wonder Woman's costume. It is recognizable in a way that very few heroes are, much like Batman, Superman and Spider-Man. A few weeks back, Mahmud Asrar  posted this rendition of Diana that he did that I absolutely fell in love with:

Image is from Mr. Asrar's Twitpic account, findable here.

I absolutely dig everything about this. The boots are updated to a more military look: the bracelets are full out bracers, the panties are replaced with a skirt, the breastplate is more armored looking while the split cape evokes a bit of ancient general/warlord/Xena feeling that still translates to the superhero world. Yes, there are no straps on the plate, but given the magic nature of the costume, I'm willing to suspend some disbelief and imagine that the chest piece is magically fitted. It preserves functionality, looks cool, maintains the iconic nature of her costume and does away with seeing her gluts.

This new costume... just doesn't do it for me. Like Superman, Wonder Woman to me is all about the bright colors, and adding black leggings, a black choker and a leather jacket just makes it too Black Canary for me. I do dig the gauntlets, but everything else just feels so muted that the pros seem few and far between. I understand that there are some story motives that went into this design, and I'm willing to wait until I see a few more artists draw it before I turn in a final judgment, but if I just glanced at this picture, I would have never known it was supposed to be Diana.