odditycollector

Over on tumblr, I talk about what some characters mean to me, personally:

Kira Nerys

Kara Zor-El

Amanda Waller

Just now saw a picture of the rebooted Amanda Waller -- here's a link, which leads to a comic book rendering of a thin, young, conventionally attractive woman in a cleavage shirt and glossy red lipstick. Also she appears to be smiling somewhat vacantly.

Which would be fine, if it was ANYBODY BUT AMANDA WALLER WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK

FUCK THIS SHIT.

FUCK IT INTO DC COMICS’ FACE.

Fresh from this week's Secret Six, here's a *much improved* ( page of Amanda Waller. )

Reposting this from the tumblr because it makes me happy.

Amanda Waller knows how to push everyone’s buttons. ( Including her own. )

I've been updating the FuckYeahAmandaWaller tumblr more frequently. (Look, some people started following me, I felt neglectful.) Someone even submitted a couple posts for me; I am pretty sure that's how one knows one's arrived.

So if you have been missing some Awesome in your life, maybe you should check back there once more!

I've just watched the Smallville episode Checkmate because of how it stars Amanda Waller. I made it all the way through this one!

( Spoilers: Amanda Waller is cool and Clark Kent is kinda dumb. )

Also, there was a SkyTrain in one scene. That is *plus* the exploding one in the credits. I mention this because apparently it is the most exciting part of the series.

*I am not a liar.
 
PS, not that you *need* the reminder: FuckYeahAmandaWaller.

I assume everyone's heard about Amanda Waller being in the new Green Lantern movie? If not, uh, Hey, everyone! Amanda Waller's going to be in the new Green Lantern movie!

I am happy about this, because it means a live action Waller not written by the Smallville people! Even if Angela Bassett, who was cast, is not exactly my mental image of the Wall.

But I'm a little confused about the choice to put her in the *Green Lantern* movie. Have Amanda Waller and Hal Jordan ever had interesting interaction? I would have put my money on seeing her in one of the Batman sequels - she's a much better foil for Bruce Wayne.

See, Waller and Batman share an origin story: "My family has been brutally and senselessly murdered; I will prevent this from happening to anyone else by turning myself into something really damn scary."

But Waller never had the privilege of Bruce's romantic self-pity. She didn't have a billion dollars to fall back on, and pretty soon she didn't even have a place to live, and she still had three surviving kids to keep safe and get educated... and if you think doing that alone is easier than an overseas tour of martial arts styles I don't want to have a conversation.

And yeah, bats are scary. But Amanda, she knows what being ground under the weight of the System can do. A pointy eared cowl is nothing compared to a piece of paper stamping you *official*.

(When I googled to find a relevant news article, I came across someone on a message board declaring "Honestly, when you look at the character, her race really isn't a very big part of her." Which. *Really*, random message board fanboy? *Really*? The woman had her life destroyed in the Cabrini-Green projects, and her race is *surface details*?)

Batman will sacrifice a lot in the name of the Mission; his health, his happiness, his loved ones, his life. But he won't sacrifice the Mission itself, its precisely drafted moral angles. Batman doesn't kill, right? We all know that. Even when it seems like the only option that makes sense.

But Amanda Waller will do whatever's necessary, until she's half forgotten where the line was. What she's capable of scares her, when she gets a chance to think about it. There are people in the government machine who condemn her, but it doesn't stop them from sending her problems to solve. *Someone* has to the dirty work in the name of a brighter future.

Maybe Waller goes too far. Or maybe Batman doesn't go far enough. Or maybe that's a false dichotomy; but it has the potential to be an interesting question.

...Anyway, while I'm rambling, here is some pop psychology. You know the theory that Bruce is still stuck at eight years old in his soul, and that is why he collects Robins to play with and gets annoyed when they grow up and, like, is always building himself a (screwed up) family to replace the one he lost? And then cutting himself off from them?

Well, everyone's heard of "the Wall", but the people in Amanda's squad have been known to call her "Mama Waller" as... something like an endearment, to be used when she's not around to hear. And they're not imagining things. Waller really is a mother figure to the Suicide Squad, though one cranky and angry and who won't give you any sympathy you don't deserve and hardly any you do.

Waller collects supervillains and inessential government agents and aimless D-list superheroes; people considered *expendable* by society at large. (Like her son, dead from gang violence he had no part of; like her daughter, who wasn't offered justice; like her husband... oh, but I forgot. Race is *inconsequential* in this story.) Everyone in the Squad is fucked up and at each other's throats, but Waller keeps them mostly in line with ridiculous threats she'll follow through on and promises that aren't bullshit either. She'll protect her people, if it's appropriate. They're all one big dysfunctional family with machine guns. Then Waller sends the Squad on missions where chances are they won't come back.

And then she buries them. Again, and again, and again.

I was rewatching Superman/Batman: Public Enemies for reasons which will hopefully become apparent, and this is the conversation Lex Luthor and Amanda Waller were having in my brain.

It's also pretty much my answer for why they don't team up very well.

( Cut for images, not spoilers. )

A while ago I ordered a couple commissions, and I'm always on the side of there being *more* awesome in the world.

The first time around, I was torn between getting a Kara pic or an Amanda Waller one. I finally went with the Kara one because my love for the artist was all about the action pics, and Amanda rocks the potential energy pose far more than the kinetic. But lately he's been showcasing a wider range of pictures, and my trust, it got big enough to team up with my niggling sense my collection was incomplete.

So was it right? YOU TELL ME YOU GUYS!

 
( LOOK EVERYONE, IT IS AMANDA! )