I don't know how many herein share my taste for animated film and/or the superhero genre, but there's a dandy addition to the catalog that was just released. DC Comics is doing some new takes on old favorites and each has a fresh new spin that's highly appealing. The third, just released, is Wonder Woman.

This stuff is not aimed at kids - maybe younger teens and up but even adults will be surprised at the content. The film opens with a gruesome battle between Hippolyta's Amazons and the force of Ares, and there are impalings, beheadings and grue galore. Characters die - some very wrong characters die - a sympathetic character is unexpectedly murdered by another formerly sympathetic character. This is not kidvid.

It's a nice reboot of the origin story, and worth seeing for the fresh take on the WW mythos. In 1941, her female power got softpedaled and while extreme for the time, seems quaint and antiquated in the postfeminist era. This film doesn't get really down and dirty with the topic but plays it with a surprising edge. A couple of lines:

Diana: "Look, I can lift a car. I don't think I'll have trouble with a car door handle."

And better - Steve Trevor has just crashed on the Amazon's island and is being questioned by Hippolyta (voiced by Virginia Madsen - a plus in my book) while wrapped in the golden lasso of truth. He has just been forced to define "crap" for her. ("It's another word for excrement. Are you happy now, lady?")

Hippolyta: "What other depraved thoughts do you have?"
Trevor: "God, your daughter has a nice rack!"

Throw it on the Netflix list. You won't be disappointed. Oh - I was also highly impressed at the portrayed physics of a pitched jet fighter battle. Trevor even uses a "Pogachev's Cobra" to ditch a pursuing enemy; tracers describe a curve as the planes turn, etc. Nice detail.

Do guys watch Wonder Woman for any reason other than to see whether it'll finally show what they think is going on on on the "island of her sisters"?

By the way, in the you-can't-make-this-stuff-up department, there are two adjacent towns on the 101 in western Washington called Sappho and Beaver. No kidding; look at a map. I've driven through them. Nothing worth stopping for. (Insert could-use-a-lick-of-paint joke here.)