#tomorrow i'm going to rant about how much i hate post maxwell lord era & how everyone dropped her & it hurts .
well it isn’t tomorrow but today is that day. buckle up.
now i know the comics don’t always do a good job of showing that the main three from dc are actually friends and sometimes they retcon it in there, or like in jla in the first issue i believe, they dedicate it to showing how they’re actually friends, their history, etc. and then never really touch on it again. point being: she, superman and batman are friends, even if writers don’t always do a good job of showing that side of things til later on.
now they are more like work friends in that they don’t hang out all of the time and share all the juicy goss, and often have to schedule their hanging out around their jl duties and insane schedules. that’s just how it be. but still, they’re friends.
or they’re supposed to be.
the thing i hate about the maxwell lord incident isn’t even that it happened, or that diana was forced to kill in a no-win situation. it’s that, when push came to shove, bruce and clark didn’t stand by her and, worse, didn’t give her the barest courtesy of hearing her out.
now, okay, yes killing is outside their code. and i understand why the league as an organisation and entity might’ve had to distance itself from her, totally. but clark and bruce literally drop her as a friend, they don’t ask or seem to care how she’s doing in the aftermath of something that could’ve easily been traumatic (not only the killing, but it being broadcast, suddenly being in the spotlight, her worst moment played on tv, and subject to everyone’s critique in a new way, this also happening because batman’s brother eye was taken over and broadcast it, but i digress).
she doesn’t get to have her soul searching in peace or in private, she loses / gives up her title as ww, is literally aimless and gone for that whole year.........and nothing out of bruce or clark, really. bruce does show up in the ww books to help her get her secret identity and get back to work but, again, it’s been a year later. the brunt of everything she’s had to shoulder on her own.
i just. it’s really hard to believe in this unbreakable friendship between the trinity when clark and bruce drop her so quickly ? ? despite the fact that she saved their lives. again, there was literally no other choice: maxwell lord makes it clear that if she ever lets him go, he’ll take control of supes to finish what he started and, in the alternate universe where booster gold saves ted kord and maxwell lord isn’t killed, lord uses a mind-controlled superman to create a police state that’s so bad that ted kord goes back and lets himself be killed.
just think about that.
& diana could see it too.
but because they refused to see that / didn’t want to, they left her to hang out to dry. and like. it’s fine, if they had such irreconcilable principles but the thing is.....again, it’s really hard to believe in the power of the three and the power of their friendship when both of her friends in the trinity decide ‘nah’ and ostracise her and only later decide she can join the table again. they weren’t there for the painful process of self healing, they had no interest in her welfare or well being in the aftermath of shouldering this burden. they decided she deserved nothing for everything she did until a year later when she came back into action (and not because of them, but because donna needed her help and there was no way anyone would stop her from helping her sister).
honestly, it just makes me so sad for diana. yes, her moral code deviates from theirs sometimes in what she will do, but 1. she wants the same thing 2. she doesn’t go around killing for the sake of it, this was a very special case and one without another solution; literally it was the trolley problem in a comic and no matter what she chose someone would’ve died 3. the most hilarious thing is they patch things up by reaffirming they all want the same thing, justice......which literally never changed. and they would’ve known that if they bothered to sit down with her sooner. it’s just so lonely to think about.
i just can’t imagine how isolating it must’ve felt to have her two best friends, arguably, cut her out for making the hard choice. and in comics verses, it definitely colours the relationship they have going forward. not that she holds a grudge, but she now has the knowledge that they aren’t really friends through thick & through thin. and that’s their right, but it means she’s less close to & with them for a long while afterward. i don’t want to say forever, but there’s definitely a rift that could stay or maybe could be healed with time but. yikes.
she really deserved better, emotional support and a shoulder from her friends during that time &, as such, i’m accepting applications from new friends who were actually there or tried to be for her in any way during that low year.