Disclaimer : Do I look like some guy at DC comics who owns anything? The answer is no. Don't sue me for my goodness. I will cry.
- - - - -Dear Wonder Woman,
Hello, and let me be the first to congratulate you on another week of having prevented anything from happening to the world. When I was younger, I always looked to you and wondered (pardon the wording) what was going on in that pretty head of yours. I won't lie to you, you weren't my first role model. That niche is reserved for my mother. But you were a role model during a crucial time in my life. You were the epitome of Girl Power, and for that I thank you.
However, the past few years have been disappointing, to say the least. Although I must say the haircut and new costume is a definite improvement, I can't understand your methods anymore. It's such a strange feeling, to see the person who most represented equal rights in my young mind, now stifling and forbidding those rights. Although I suppose I can't complain, you seem to be an equal-opportunity oppressor. I guess the real point of this letter is : Why? Why the change? Why aren't you the same hero I looked up to as a little girl? I know several little girls… Why aren't you the role model for any of them?
I know this letter is directed to you, but now I must extend my question to your fellow Lorder's. Why is it that Superman doesn't seem to smile anymore? I remember when my brothers used to fight over who got to don the red towel "cape" and pretend to be the Man of Steel. Now I see t-shirts with that S insignia and nobody wearing them. My cousins used to idolize Green Lantern, now they don't own a single green-colored item. Batman used to be a game kids around my neighborhood would play after dark. Then it became something to do in the light of day. Then it became taboo. Why? My best friend's cousin was missing once, and Martian Manhunter found her. He used to be everything she talked about. Now when she mentions the Justice Lords and especially him, she sounds betrayed. Am I making sense to you yet? Whatever you're doing, whatever the change was, it wasn't a good one. Short term, it was a good idea. The major threats aren't threats anymore. The minor threats aren't, either. There's no such thing as a threat. But then, for some reason, things that weren't threats were treated as if they were. People became scared to hold up a sign. The ones who didn't get scared were hurt, jailed. Some were killed. The line between protector and oppressor blurred. Why?
My favorite aspect of you heroes used to be your humanity. I knew that you would never, could never hurt an innocent, bring misery to people, break a family apart, kill a man for voicing his opinion. But now you do these things as if they're normal. Natural. The way things SHOULD be.
I don't know why, but you're not human anymore. I don't know what it is you have become. But I hope and pray that maybe, one day, you'll look back and realize that you're not human anymore, either. Maybe then you'll understand.
Maybe.
- - - - -Kelly Burnham was fifteen years old when the Justice Lords' new regime began. She was sixteen years old when she realized that she was not content to just sit back and watch her world become an oppressing, bland dictatorship. She was seventeen years old when she drove across three states, walked into the first public library she found, and posted the now-infamous "Dear Wonder Woman" letter on several message boards and mass-emailed it to several hundred people using an email address that she created for just such a purpose. A year later, it was considered one of the most dangerous pieces of literature you could have in your possession. Evidence of it having ever been on your hard drive led to a month in prison and months of random interrogation sessions. A print-out copy could land you life in prison, or worse.
This greatly amused Kelly and her closest friends, who all noted that her epistle to the reigning Lords of the world had quite the opposite effect than the one she'd intended. She did not let a little thing like the threat of impending doom prevent her from reading the "wrong" books, wearing the "wrong" clothes, and doing things, like dance through the park wearing an outfit that would have looked at home in a Renaissance Fair, that were considered "wrong". Her behavior was called into question many a time without her knowledge, and a few times with it. Luckily, she was dismissed as merely eccentric, but analysts determined that she had the potential for trouble later on.
She was ordered to attend state psychological exams once a month. Each time, she displayed a decidedly nonviolent, neutral stance on dangerous things- politics, the Justice Lords. She also expressed amusement at her situation, and talked to her psychiatrists about trivial matters. The delay of the new Star Wars movie, the time she was a nine year old Girl Scout and she tripped and knocked over a huge display of cookies. The Halloween that she dressed up as a court jester and was almost arrested because her blue and yellow costume bore too much resemblance to that of the criminal Harley Quinn. The time she pigged out on fried chicken while she was sick with the flu, and vomited all through the night. Trivial stuff. Funny stuff. She never let on that she was training herself to be not only an athlete, but a fighter. A warrior.
Kelly knew she wouldn't stand a chance against the likes of the Justice Lords. That made her alternately angry and disappointed. She read every newspaper article, every biography she could get her hands on. She knew that Batman was the only member of the JL without metahuman abilities. She knew that Superman had a Kryptonite thing. She knew Green Lantern had a Hawkgirl thing. It wasn't enough. She despaired that she would only ever be able to match Batman's physical prowess at the very best, and would lack the resources at his disposal.
At the age of nineteen Kelly was a journalism major at Metropolis University, and had a dual goal. She dreamed of becoming a gonzo journalist like her hero, Hunter S Thompson, and she secretly wished to be the kind of hero the Justice Lords USED to be, before Flash died, before Lex Luthor almost catapulted the world into war and died at Superman's hands, and before the word "justice" ever appeared with the tagline "overlords and dictators."
At the age of twenty Kelly's father was taken in for questioning concerning a traffic incident in which the victim of a hit-and-run identified the car that struck her as a blue Ford pickup truck with the number 487 on the liscense plate. There were four vehicles in the Metropolis area matching that description. Two of the drivers gave decent alibis for the day of the accident and were set free. The other two, her father and a man named Johnson, remained in custody for six months. The victim later died of an infection that had been caused in part by her injuries sustained in the accident, and Mr. Burnham and Mr. Johnson became murder suspects. There was only one way the new America dealt with murder suspects, and Mrs. Burnham received her husband's cremated remains in a small box a week after the death of the accident victim.
At the age of twenty-one Kelly was granted special permission to interview any one of the Justice Lords for her final project.
She chose Wonder Woman.