On Absolute Amanda Waller
[Viola Davis, photo for Vanity Fair]
DC Comics is doing an AU where - roughly - the universe was founded on the principle that any object at rest will begin to arc towards the worst case scenario.
It is really an excuse for some very good comics creators to scratch out everything they think they can get away with from the backstories of the DCU's main cast and then see if they still get recognizable Batmen, Wonder Women, etc, out of it.
I've borrowed a few trades from the library, it's a good endeavour. rahrah up with this sort of thing.
Anyway, I started wondering how I'd reimagine Amanda Waller in this AU. (Disclaimer: I've only read some trades, maybe someone else got there first. it would ruin my fun to check.)
In the DCU, Amanda's family lived in poverty, and she lost half her kids and her husband one by one to horrific violence.
So in the Absolute Universe… Waller and her husband are financially comfortable. Not rich, but the sort of lifestyle you'd've called middle class in the 90s. A big-enough house they own with a backyard, the yearly trip to disneyland, all their kids have the option of college.
Because all their kids are, of course, alive. And happy! Extended family too. The whole damn clan, and when they're all together Mama Waller's the center holding things together like how the supermassive black hole in the heart of our galaxy anchors the spin of its stars.
The Wallers teach their kids stuff like if they work hard and have good values and follow the rules, they'll get ahead. That merit outweighs racism. And this time it works for them, or close enough. The world is corrupt and imperfect, but the world has ever been corrupt and imperfect. You build the best life you can anyway.
(A sidenote: the reader has to like them. As individuals and as a family dynamic. Not via 'this is a good person!' telegraphed shorthand, or cheap or cutsey tricks, but real emotional investment. The Absolute comic line has been generous in giving its creative teams the space to build out their stories, and this where you've gotta invest. You want the reader with Amanda, you need the reader to fucking love these people.)
Once Amanda Waller's youngest kid is leaving high school, she decides to get into politics for the same reasons other middle age women whose kids are leaving high school get into politics. She's got the time now. The energy. The habit of being looked to. And the world IS corrupt and imperfect, and someone should probably get around to doing something about that.
She works hard and earns her politics party team player points and starts local, city council maybe, and she is in the public eye a lot, no hiding in the shadows for this Amanda Waller, and she DOES get some small but flashy wins against corruption, the public respects her, likes her even, she's elected into greater and more important things……
Until she lands on a position with any kind of actual power.
(She thinks it was hard work and merit, but no. Someone in charge had kept an eye on the nasty streak in her. She was given the position. She was allowed to have it.)
And then… a choice.
Do The Powers That Be in this universe threaten her family to bend her to their bidding? She has so so so much more to lose in this world.
But that seems foolish -- it would make an enemy of her, and she's a bad enemy to have.
Maybe The Powers That Be in this universe have a different solution to the problem of Amanda Waller. She got into politics to make a better world, same as lots of people. Maybe TPTB tell her the truth. Explain to her that their world is a cracked mirror version of another reality, that one based on hope and optimism and flying men with their underpants on the outside, and happy endings, and half of Amanda Waller's family dying one by one from brutal violence, unremarked on and unmourned except by her.
And maybe TPTB explain that that sort of setup is not stable, that only one of the worlds will make it in the long run, and that there is planning for a big crossover event on the topic going on already.
And that they could really use her skills and her resolve to ensure that the reality that survives is this one. The one full of suffering, founded by an evil god. The worst of possible universes.
And hey, why not, they'll even throw in the presidency.
The end, right?
Every parent knows there's only one possible side to take.
....Except.
If they've shown Amanda Waller the mainline DCU, they've shown her what she can survive losing.
And OG Amanda Waller's tragedy was forever 'mortgaging her own soul to pay for a better world.'
Cut everything away from her tragic backstory, and it's funny, because here we are again.
