Etta Candy disapproves.

[alexandraerin]

There's only one possible circumstance under which DC's redesign of Amanda Waller - a popular character and an iconic and recognizable character in their successful, decade-spanning DCAU - as a skinny woman with a completely redesigned face and hair is remotely acceptable. And that's if they've offered Angela Bassett a fabulous multi-picture deal to anchor their answer to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the way that Nick Fury does for them. In that circumstance, redesigning her comic character to be more recognizably the same character that Bassett played in Green Lantern wouldn't be my favorite creative decision but I believe it would be justifiable.

Now, I haven't seen Green Lantern but I just did an image search to find images of Bassett as Waller. She clearly doesn't have Waller's frame, but I have to say her appearance in the movie was more in keeping with the classic character than the redesign is.

Far more likely than this being a consequence of the movie appearance is that somebody at DC decided they need to "sexy her up" and didn't even bother to think about how problematic it is to tie sexiness to skinniness and white norms of beauty. And even more likely than that is there was no decision at any level that would register as a decision - drawing a woman as thin and "sexy" (for a very specific value of sexy) isn't the sort of thing that a comic artist needs to decide on. It's the default.

And of course, that's where the "No Malice Chorus" is going to chime in on this. Nobody meant any harm! There's no conspiracy! They took a strong, powerful and large woman with African features and turned her into someone who could pass as a Bond girl, but nobody meant anything by this!

And I can believe that. There was no intended message here.

In fact, they removed a message. That message was "Sometimes, the people in charge look like this:"



And Amanda Waller has always been in charge of whatever she did. Before the reboot, this woman even served as a cabinet-level secretary. (One of two African-Americans in Lex Luthor's cabinet, but I don't think that's what history would have remembered him for if it hadn't been erased.) Like so many other characters, she's been placed by the reboot into her most iconic role: director of Task Force X/Suicide Squad.

But she's been made absolutely unrecognizable in the process. This isn't like Superman's costume change. She's not a superhero. She doesn't have heraldry or an emblem that says "Yes, this is Superman you're looking at." Not only that, but Superman-the-person is still being drawn more or less the same way, within normal variance for differing artists and styles.

DC Comics, this woman



is not The Wall.

She's barely even The Partition.