Awful DC Comics Characters: Etta Candy

The comic book landscape is littered with sidekicks; sometimes annoying, sometimes cool, almost always at the hero’s side providing wit, another set of fists, and adolescent, hormonal rage in a tight spandex package. The point, I suppose, was that comic books started out very much as a kid’s industry, so superheroes were given young wards to draw in the young readers, thereby giving them a conduit to say really uncomfortable, nigh sexual things to their favorite caped crusaders.

Marvel’s never really been hip to this game (though Wolverine had Kitty Pryde and Jubilee), but D.C.? They’re the masters. Everybody and their sidekick has a sidekick. Batman has Robin. Superman has Superboy and Supergirl. Wonder Woman? Two words, baby: Etta Candy.

What’s that? You’ve never heard of her? Silly me – she’s hardly appeared since Crisis on Infinite Earths (Gail Simone, bless her heart, just reintroduced her), but believe you me, she’s better than Robin, Superboy, and Supergirl combined.



That's right, Etta, the pride and joy of Sugar and Hard Candy (not a lie), first met Diana (that's Wonder Woman's alter ego, for the uninitiated) when Diana saved Etta's life by curing her diabetes or something. Saved from the effects of her gluttony, Etta goes back to eating candy, as her name dictates (Etta Candy is about as dead a giveaway as "General Grievous," or the new "General Loathsome," who evilly demands a liquid in The Clone Wars).

This isn't your run of the mill Wal-Mart fattie though, oh no. Etta's a tough broad, charging headlong into battle with Wonder Woman against Nazis, Japs, mooks, gooks, and whoever else just so happens to be tying Wonder Woman up that particular issue, all while running a sorority and knocking out men who don't tell her how attractive she is.



I suppose it's to Etta's credit that she doesn't give a damn how much she weighs, because Wonder Woman's insistence on patriotism and the affection of men is, honestly, kinda sad. A life on Paradise Island, and she's got to fall for the first freakin' man who crash lands there? Seriously, just pathetic.



That constitution line is priceless.

So Etta is fat, likes chocolate, and pals around with both Wonder Woman and Diana. She doesn't need men, because she eats enough chocolate that she's on a near constant supply of endorphins - no need to orgasm. What of her adventures? Without going into the time she was Wonder Woman for a day (she was skinny and weight conscious by then, anyhow), there was the time when she went to the circus with Diana, only for Wonder Woman to show up when a performer was crushed by a poisoned elephant.



After crushing the elephant, Wonder Woman saves the performer and then puts on a show, provided that the attendees, who've already paid for admission, throw their money in a bucket to provide for the soldiers overseas. This allows Etta to work her pick up line magic on an unsuspecting, starstruck Joe.



I don't care how you read that sentence; the image it conjures up is disturbing. After collecting a bunch of money, Wonder Woman decides to solve the mystery Scooby Doo style. This means one thing: Elephant disguise.



Etta, being the sidekick, is relegated to the hind legs. I don't want to imply anything, but the hind legs seem like a perfect spot for Etta. She doesn't want to catch men, wants to eat candy all day - hello, Wonder Woman's candy shop hind quarters! Seriously, scope this middle panel and tell me that something isn't going on:



Yeah, that's what she said...

After successfully fooling the circus goers (despite Etta's demands the the kids stop throwing peanuts and start throwing candy), they're taken back to the elephant rest station or whatever something like that is called, where Wonder Woman witnesses a weird, Burmese ceremony. It's the Burmese who are killing the elephants!

Unfortunately, one of the elephants in the back catches on that this baby elephant is really a fat chick with her head stuffed up a skinny chick's ass. I don't know how, but it might have been the dull, lifeless eyes and the unchanging facial expression. The elephant somehow lifts the duo into the air and squeezes off the head, revealing the foreign devils! The elephants demand a sacrifice. Seeing as there aren't any shrubberies in the area, Wonder Woman and the fat chick will do nicely. Wonder Woman thinks that this is a grand old idea, calming Etta with a quick "Sacrifice is good for the soul!" Oh, and there's bondage. Glorious bondage!





Wait...what? This dude has a rope around your neck! He could snap you like a twig! You're worried that the cave isn't made of chocolate?! Wow. Why not just say "If only this were a Super Rope, so I could chew right through it!"? Fat women aren't always about the candy, you know.

That's the last of Etta in that particular story, her commenting that she wishes icicles were candy instead of worrying about how to break free. The Burmese man was really a "Jap spy," and after a quick fight, they're taken care of.

Later in the issue (This is Wonder Woman #1, which at the time was a quarterly magazine with four stories), Etta pops up again, trying to contract Wonder Woman telepathically.



Well, she's clearly saying "Eat chocolate," but that's neither here nor there. See, Etta has a brother, Mint Candy, who fractured his skull because he's officially to stupid to warrant a pulse (see below). Etta asks Diana to come down to Texas with her to be her brother's "heart interest," which is a really odd way of saying that Etta wants Diana to give her brother a boner. He has a skull fracture, you see, and the thought of having sex with Diana will do him wonders.



Mint, after cracking his skull, meeting a Mexican chick, and smoking a joint, comes down with a case of loose lips, promptly giving away information that may very well sink a few ships. Wonder Woman and Etta, after clearing the Mexican chick on account of her being blackmailed, are captured and tied up by the Japanese. Awesomeness follows:



Fat encumbrance or not, Wonder Woman thinks Etta is worth having around, so she saves her from her grisly fate (baww), allowing the Japs in her car to careen into a tree and die (yay!). They then single handedly defeat the Japs, all before Steve Trevor shows up for dinner. As for Etta's promise to lose ten pounds?



She prefers her Jabba-like girth. Good for her.

That panel brings up another concern though - Why did the golden age DC heroes consider their heroic halves to be their rivals? Clark Kent often mentioned Superman as his rival, and here's Wonder Woman as Diana, calling herself to the floor. I guess that's a topic for another time.

Etta - well, I just don't know. Perhaps she's the result of William Marston writing a comic about "the liberation of women," or perhaps she's the result of William Marston having a complete misunderstanding of the female psyche. She's fat, she's sassy, and she likes chocolate; yet somehow, she's the head of a sorority. Fat, sassy, and chocolate tend to exclude one from sorority circles, I've heard, and isn't as fun as Etta makes it seem.

The candy fixation...I'm not sure anybody can explain it. When faced with the prospect of death via sacrifice, one shouldn't wish for stalactites to be chocolate. Robin - he might have a spare Batarang. Supergirl? She'd be far enough away from the Kryptonite that she could laser-vision her way out of a trap. Etta? Completely useless. So useless that the Japanese would rather risk damage to the undercarriage of one of their cars than take on the massive task of keeping their hostage fed.

It's strange and a little frightening that it isn't just Wonder Woman being tied up in every story. WW's always been about kink, but hell, she can just bust loose. Etta? Not so much. She's a normal girl with a healthy appetite, but odds are that a criminal is carrying more than enough rope to tie her up, too.

The best part of the Etta Candy story is that she marries Steve Trevor in the end. She snatches Wonder Woman's man right out from under her! The worst part of that is that she loses all that fat sass, becomes extremely weight conscious, and loses the fat. I'm not sure if it plays out any more realistically than the scene where she's asking the porter for her suitcase of candy.

What do you think of Etta? Is it ridiculous that one of DC's trinity has a sidekick of this nature, or is it better than your typical Wonder Girl style ward? Is she really an awful character, or do you need more scenes of her going "*huff* eat *puff* chocolate" before you're convinced?