British Spider-Man Invasion, Wonder Woman Trades Bathing Suit For Pant Suit and Star Trek V Gets A New Frontier? : This Week in Geek

 Lynda Carter weighs in on the new costume debate. 

[Pic of the week from funkship.com]

The colossal news last week was that DC has changed Wonder Woman’s costume in issue #600.  They put her in leather pants and a jacket and got rid of the swim suit . “She’s been locked into pretty much the exact same outfit since her debut in 1941,” New writer J. Michael Straczynski said. “If you’re going to make a statement about bringing Wonder Woman into the 21st century, you need to be bold and you need to make it visual. I wanted to toughen her up, and give her a modern sensibility.”

While it’s a very effective ad campaign, and controversial for the redesign and removal of patriotic colors, the real question is: how long will the change last? Major costume changes rarely last in comics, so what are the odds that the costume change will last past twenty issues? I give the odds at 23% They’ve tried updating iconic superhero costumes before, and it doesn’t work. Remember Superman’s Mullet? Spider-Man’s armor? Captain America’s black suit? While the early publicity will sinking sales, the costume is far too unrecognizable. You can bet there will be pressure to put her back in her familiar duds. 

This week, we weigh in on the campaign to make something decent out of the awful Star Trek V and the casting of a British actor to play an American superhero.

• Campaign To Give Star Trek V DVD A New Frontier – TrekWeb has a campaign to convince CBS/Paramount to allow director William Shatner to produce a DVD for his movie Star Trek V – The Final Frontier, with a new edit and remastered FX. The film, according to Star Trek producer Ralph Winter, was so bad that it “almost killed the franchise.” Is there anything that could be done to save this film?

  Maurice: The story of searching for god was pointless and confusing, so unless he can create a whole new plot with editing and special effects I can’t see how it could be any better.

  Monkey Migraine: I remember reading an article about what was supposed to be the ending, but they ran out of money. A bunch of creatures were supposed to come out of the “god head” and chase them around. Not much of an improvement. But, Shatner is always good for laughs, so I say go for it.

• Should Spider-Man Be American? – Its been announced that British actor Andrew Garfield will play the role of wall-crawling superhero Spider-Man in the next movie. When they were casting Captain America, the director insisted that he should be played by a American actor. Should they have put the same restriction on Peter Parker?

  Maurice: They should have. Spider-Man is the flagship character of the American comic company Marvel and now he’s British? Admittedly, there would have been more irony if the Captain America had been German.

  Monkey Migraine: He’ll most likely do an American accent and no one will know he’s British. I don’t think it matters. 

• Happy Anniversary Roswell Aliens – This week, July 8, 1947, a “flying disc” crash-landed in New Mexico and became known as the Roswell UFO incident. This is one of the most well-known alleged UFO crash in history. The incident sparked debate for decades and inspired dozens of science-fiction films including Independence Day. It also inspired television shows like the 90210 clone Roswell, The X-Files and the hilarious FOX “documentary” Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this week’s news!

UPDATE: Changed the title to add the tag.