Category Archives: Wonder Woman

July 5, 2023 · 5:15 am

Wonder Woman will someday have a daughter!

So DC has announced that for Wonder Woman #800 writer Tom King and artist Daniel Sampiere will jump us twenty years into the future to meet Trinity, who partners with Damien Wayne and Jonathan Kent, now grown-up as the new Batman and Superman (I gather). Together they form the new incarnation of the Wonder Woman/Batman/Superman “trinity,” though Trin’s battle name comes from carrying three lassos with different magical powers. Her real name is Elizabeth Marston Prince, a hat tip to WW-creator William Marston’s wife, who had a big influence on the series.Even though I don’t like most of King’s writing he’s done well on Human Target and Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow so who knows, maybe lightning will strike again. But this set up still bugs me, putting me in mind of Tim Hanley’s observation that no matter how much DC emphasizes Wonder Woman as the third leg of the trinity, she hasn’t had comparable comics success in a long time, nor has she had as many iconic stories as the two guys.

Years before Damien became part of the comics, he was conceived in the graphic novel Son of the Demon. Superman married Lois, then eventually they got a kid. Wonder Woman’s daughter, by contrast, comes out of nowhere, other than an appearance IIRC as an alt.universe character in the DC series Trinity some years back. We don’t know who her father is, we don’t see Diana as a parent; her father’s identity is a mystery the series will explore.

So perhaps what’s bugging me is that Diana’s never had the kind of stories that could lead smoothly into her having a kid. Or that because she’s the iconic female comics character, writers have had trouble writing her love life since the George Perez reboot. Think how much harder it would be writing her bringing up a kid, given all the sexist stereotypes to avoid, and all the flak a woman, even in fiction, can get for being a working mom.

By contrast, Lyta Trevor, daughter of the Earth-Two Wonder Woman, felt perfectly grounded when she appeared in Wonder Woman #300. The Earth-Two Diana had married Steve Trevor, they’d had a kid, no big. But she wasn’t the star of her own series.

None of which is a claim Trinity’s a bad character or that this is an inherently bad idea. But it still bugs me.

#SFWApro. Upper (I believe) by Sampiere, lower by Perez, all rights remain with current holder.

Wonder Woman, classic stories and misogyny

As I said Sunday, Tim Hanley’s book on Wonder Woman disappointed me but it had enough interesting points to be worth reading. One of the things he brings up is that while DC now counts Wonder Woman as part of the “trinity” along with Superman and Batman she’s never had a landmark story to compare to theirs.

It’s not that the Masked Manhunter and the Caped Crusader have been consistently better written. I don’t think any fan of either man would disagree that both have suffered long stretches of crap, though we might disagree where the bad times lay. Batman’s freak transformations——and lots of Silver Age Superman are forgettable. I find much of 21st century Batman unreadable. Even so, they do have stories that get ranked among the greats: The Dark Knight Returns, The Death of Superman, Batman’s early battles with R’as al Ghul — they’re all considered classics.Heck, that cover image alone is classic.

Wonder Woman doesn’t have any stories that get the same regard. Ironically I think the depowered years at the dawn of the 1970s get referenced more than any other period, maybe simply because it’s such a contrast to the regular Wonder Woman image. George Perez’ opening six-issue arc is excellent but perhaps because it’s specifically intended to set up the series, it doesn’t press the same buttons. John Byrne’s run has been enjoyable but hardly redefines Diana the way he did Superman. William Messner-Loebs had Diana replaced as Wonder Woman by another Amazon, just like Superman and Batman were replaced, but it barely seems to have registered (keep in mind this is my subjective observations, not based on studying marketing or sales reports) with people who weren’t fans already. Of course the art of that era was way 1990s in its emphasis on boobs and butts so that may be a factor.

Is there something fundamental about WW that keeps the creative teams from hitting it out of the ballpark? Is it simply harder to work with an iconic woman character because there are so few of them? Or because Diana’s role as champion of women’s rights (not something she’s been consistently, I admit) make it hard to handle her? Is that she’s simply too low on people’s radar for her stories to become landmarks? Or is it that most characters don’t have a Dark Knight Returns-classic in their history — I don’t think Green Lantern, Flash, Thor or Iron Man do? I have no definite answers on this point, only questions.

Another point Hanley makes several times is that starting in the Silver Age, DC has moved away from creator William Marston’s distinctive vision. This is true of most Golden Age heroes: Superman isn’t the brawling rough-neck and outlaw of the 1930s either. But I agree with Hanley that one thing they could keep is the idea that Amazon training can turn any woman into someone exceptional: Marston’s Wonder Woman is closer to Black Widow or Batman, the product of super-intensive training, than to Thor.

Another aspect I don’t think Hanley mentioned is that the idea of Diana fighting misogynists has also faded. The Golden Age Dr. Psycho was a vicious woman-hater horrified that women were getting jobs in the military industrial complex; the Perez reboot version is just a twisted psionic sadist. Marston’s Mars wasn’t simply opposed to Wonder Woman and the Amazons because they stand for peace; to him, women exist purely as slaves, to be taken as spoils of war. That hasn’t been part of his character in at least fifty years. Perez’ Circe debuts as Diana’s opposite number, sewing hate and distrust between men and women, but that aspect disappeared in her subsequent appearances.Would having WW take on real-world misogyny grab more attention? Sex trafficking, preachers who think women should submit to spousal abuse, the right to abortion, rape apologists — would tackling those topics in a superhero context make the series stronger? Could it be done without getting heavy-handed? Would DC have the stomach to try it? Too bad they didn’t try that around the time Green Lantern/Green Arrow was tackling serious issues —— but I doubt that occurred to anyone. Comic books lagged behind on feminism much more than issues like civil rights. Heck, even in the 21st century, some writers think it’s cool to team up Wonder Woman with a sexist jerk.

In short, I doubt that’s the miracle solution to Wonder Woman’s blues. But I’d love to see them try it anyway.

#SFWApro. Cover images top to bottom by Sheldon Moldoff, Neal Adams, H.G. Peters, Brian Bolland and Adams again.

A book about a hero, two disappointing books about superheroes

MARCH: Book Two by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell picks up where V1 ended, with Lewis becoming active in the civil-rights movement. Here we see him trying to integrate movie audiences, participating in Freedom Rides (except for a fluke of chance, he’d have been on one bus that got firebombed by white bigots) and participating in the groundwork for the March on Washington. While the struggle is dramatic, I was more intrigued by the politics within the movement, from debates over nonviolence (was it a tactic or a moral principle?), to the widespread conviction the March would be nothing — feel-good speeches by government-selected stooges, what good could it do?

MARVEL COMICS: The Untold Story by Sean Howe traces Marvel’s history from pulp and men’s magazine publisher Martin Goodman deciding to dabble in comics through the lean pre-FF years (Goodman might have shut the line down but he’d seen the industry revive before) through the glory years beginning with Fantastic Four #1, the chaos of the Bronze Age with multiple inexperienced staffers as editors in chief through Jim Shooter’s era as micromanager and onward to the Disney era (surprisingly there’s relatively little on the movies, or Marvel’s earlier TV ventures).

As a comics nerd this is fascinating but the book is so full of errors I can spot I’m not sure how much I can trust it. Among other errors, Howe confuses the Serpent Society mercenaries with the white supremacist Sons of the Serpent, identifies Nick Fury’s infinity formula (an immortality drug) as a Silver Age invention (it was late 1970s) and he claims Batman’s New Look era was a campy attempt to copy Marvel’s style (it wasn’t — see the link for details). That’s sub-par editing by everyone involved.

WONDER WOMAN UNBOUND: The Curious History of the World’s Most Famous Heroine is the weakest of Tim Hanley’s books I’ve read so far. In fairness, that’s partly because I’ve read so much Wonder Woman and a fair amount about her so a lot of what Hanley has to say isn’t new. He does have some interesting material though, such as pointing out where anti-comics crusader Fredric Wertham made a case for Batman and Robin being a homoerotic fantasy for gay kids, he assumed flat out that Wonder Woman was lesbian, no proof needed (having read The Ten Cent Plague on anti-comics censorship, I think Hanley’s more generous to Wertham than the man deserved, however).

Hanley also discusses how Ms. Magazine‘s book on Wonder Woman plays up the aspects of William Marston’s original philosophy they liked (women can do anything!) and ignored the bondage and female-dominance elements. And he does have a point that the George Perez’ reboot ignores one of the best ideas in Marston, that any woman with Amazon training could become their match and at least in theory equal Wonder Woman.

I disagree, however, with a lot of his interpretations. When Diana tells Steve she can’t marry him until she’s wiped crime from the Earth, Hanley sees her as really, really wanting to quit her job and be her housewife; I hear “Steve, what we have is wonderful, I don’t feel like changing anything” (even when she’s jealous over Steve’s interest in others, she’s not bemoaning having to stay single). And Hanley’s dead wrong to argue Marvel in the late 1960s/early Bronze Age embraced feminism where DC was stuck in the 1950s: while I wouldn’t recommend DC comics of that era to anyone who wants great female representation, Marvel was definitely the weaker (I’ll come back to this point in detail another time). Hanley’s also off arguing that Marvel, with its superior characterization (something it did have, no argument) didn’t do the silly romantic triangles DC did; that requires ignoring Sub-Mariner/Invisible Girl/Reed Richards, Peter Parker/Betty Brant/Ned Leeds, Matt Murdock/Karen Page/Foggy Nelson and quite a few more. Howe’s book does a much better job nailing Marvel for sexism. However Hanley did touch on a couple of points I’ll discuss later this week.

#SFWApro. Covers by Jack Kirby and H.G. Peters, all rights remain with current holders.

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Tagged as Wonder Woman: The Perez Years

April 30, 2023 · 5:23 am

Women protagonists I’ve encountered recently.

The WONDER WOMAN SILVER AGE OMNIBUS Volume 1 collects stories (by Robert Kanigher, Ross Andru and Mike Esposito) I already have, but in a large color format that makes them much more eye-catching. Just look at this sequence from Wonder Woman #114, after aliens suck parade balloons up into the air with their trucks attached —It is, as the watching bystanders say, one amazing stunt and it looks sooo much cooler in this format. The volume runs from “The Million Dollar Penny” which kicked off the Kanigher/Andru/Esposito team on the book through the story right before the Wonder Family era began. It also includes several sample letter columns, showing that yes, Wonder Girl really was popular with fans and that fans weren’t as knowledgeable back in the day — lots of questions about WW’s origins and who is that “Great Hera” person she swears by? Gale Simone’s introduction is fun, pointing out the strengths of this run, though she’s wrong to assert Wonder Woman is reluctant to kill — she has zero qualms about blowing up alien invaders or sinister foreign submarines. I’m looking forward to V2 later this year.

HOW TO BUILD A GIRL by Caitlin Moran worked better for me than I’d have expected as 1990s coming-of-age stories are hardly my thing. Nevertheless I really enjoyed the tale of Johanna, a British teenager in 1990s London reinvents herself as a hard-drinking, chain-smoking Goth rock reviewer with viciously snarky putdowns of bands that don’t measure up to her standards. Moran’s character style and first-person voice kept this fun but the pacing is off: so much time spent on the era Before Johanna takes action, then her stint in her new identity, then a sudden rush to finish, realize the moral (reinventing yourself shouldn’t mean becoming a shitty person!) and course-corrects. This may reflect that it’s the first in a series but it still lessened my enjoyment.

I was ambivalent about the return of SAGA after the “meh” previous volume but taking a break does seem to have recharged creators Brian Vaughn and Fiona Staples. With Marco gone, Mom is doing her best to keep her family going, even if it means shady dealings, while a variety of players still want her and little Hazel dead. Entertaining though if you can’t stomach gendered insults (the “c word” for women gets tossed around a lot) this ain’t for you. And while this series has never made any pretense it’s a realistic future culture, it still annoys me that suddenly the characters are tossing around “woke” as common slang which they never did before.

I KISSED SHARA WHEELER by Casey McQuiston has Chloe, a bisexual student at a conservative Christian Alabama high school, become obsessed with the disappearance of Shara, the principal’s perfect daughter and Chloe’s only rival for valedictorian (and the Most Obnoxious, Most Irritating Girl She Ever Met, so we know where this is going). That Shara’s leaving cryptic notes for Chloe and others doesn’t do anything to cool Chloe’s fixation. I enjoy McQuiston’s voice but Shara dropping her enigmatic clues came off a knock-off Batman villain ; I dropped out half-way through the book, skipped to the ending and didn’t regret it. Keep in mind, though, I’m not the target audience so YMMV.

#SFWApro. Art by Andru and Esposito, book cover by Allison Reimold, all rights remain with current holders.

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April 5, 2023 · 5:23 am

From Darkseid to Doomsday: John Byrne’s first year on Wonder Woman

As I mentioned when I wrapped up rereading William Messner-Loeb’s Wonder Woman run, I thought so little of John Byrne, who followed him on the title, I debated skipping it. But I have the DC app on my phone, it includes the Byrne years, so I thought hey, why not? I’m glad I did because Byrne does better as writer/penciler than I remembered, though I can see why I wasn’t thrilled either.

First off, there’s her hair, which looks like she’s overdosed on conditioner.Or here.It looks ridiculous, as if Byrne were swiping from Marvel’s Medusa. And while I normally don’t worry about the drawbacks of Diana’s shoulder-length hair in battle, this much hair reminds me of Foz Meadows’ critique of the perfect hair problem.

The second reason I took a dislike to the run is that it opens with the Amazons battling Darkseid and the forces of Apokalips. Darkseid is a great character but way overused — as Keith Giffen once said, DC editors pass Darkseid around like a bong — and most of the time not used well. He’s not used well here, where he could be almost any alien tyrant.

The first four issues have Darkseid attacking Themyscira because he wants to hunt down the Greek gods. Byrne’s Genesis crossover event revealed that all of Earth’s mythological gods were created as a side effect of the war in New Gods that destroyed the old gods; Jack Kirby thereby gets credit for created the Asgardians, the Olympians, the Tuatha de Danaan and so on. I found that a terrible idea and apparently so did George Perez, who specifically retcons it out. Here, Byrne retcons it back in. Even without that, this is a listless opening.

Things improve after that though. Diana moves to Gateway City — former base of operations for the Silver Age Hawkman and Hawkgirl — becomes friends with a local museum curator, meets the Phantom Stranger and the Demon and battles Morgan LeFay who hopes to steal Amazonian immortality. The final arc has her battling a clone of Doomsday, giving Byrne a chance to show Wonder Woman is truly in Superman’s league.

His depiction of Diana’s strength is easily the best thing in this. In one story she encounters crooks using a high-tech tank for a robbery; she grabs it with one hand, hefts it up and smashes it down without even breaking a sweat. I like that. Otherwise, while not as bad as I remembered, it’s more “readable” than “great,” definitely not up to Messner-Loebs or the best George Perez issues.

But having launched, I’ll stick with it, so more Byrne (and the spinoff Artemis: Requiem series from Messner-Loebs) before too long.

#SFWApro. All art by Byrne, rights remain with current holder.

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Tagged as John Byrne Years

March 8, 2023 · 5:15 am

She wants candy, baby: The many lives of Etta Candy

Next to Steve Trevor and Hippolyta, nobody has been a part of Wonder Woman’s adventures as much as Etta Candy. Unlike them, there have been huge stretches of the series where Etta disappeared from the cast and her portrayal has varied much more wildly through the years.

Etta shows up in Sensation Comics #2 as a student at Holliday College where she’s a leader in one of the sororities. Wonder Woman’s engaged in a battle of wits with Doctor Poison (yes, the villain from the Gal Gadot movie) and needs to distract some Axis spies. She contacts the Holliday Girls and Etta leads them in distracting the villains. It’s no great sacrifice: the girls were always shown as happy to flirt with men.

My memories of Etta from the few Golden Age stories I’d read were mostly negative: William Marston and artist Harry G. Peter present her as a fat young woman constantly obsessing over Candy. Reading the Golden Age Wonder Woman Omnibus I discovered I was wrong. Yes, Etta’s a glutton constantly complaining about not having enough candy or losing it in a fight but she’s also daring, unflinching in the face of danger and extremely capable in a fight. She’s also a Texan heiress.Etta continues attending college and fighting alongside WW until 1950, then she vanishes. In 1960 she returns in Wonder Woman #117. She’s once again a college student (DC’s reference guide from the 1980s, Who’s Who quips that having stayed in college so long she’s clearly a genius who’s racked up multiple degrees) accompanied by three sorority friends: toy-loving Tina Toy, tiny Lita Little and tall Thelma Tall. They crop up in several more adventures but they’re just a cheerleading section for Diana rather than mixing it up with villains Golden Age-style. After four stories Robert Kanigher dropped them; even when he rebooted the series to tell Golden Age stories he didn’t include Etta.

That left her MIA until the Wonder Woman TV show included Etta Candy (Beatrice Colen) as a character but this time a corporal rather than a college girl. When DC followed the show’s first season and shifted the comic book to World War II (the Wonder Woman of Earth 2 if that means anything to you) they brought back Etta Candy too. Once again she was military, which became part of her character from that point on. She also got a subplot of her own involving a Frenchman romancing her for ulterior motives, but the WW II era wrapped up before we learned his agenda.

When the Earth-One Wonder Woman adopts a military secret identity again, Etta returned as a military member and new buddy for Diana Prince. Regrettably she wasn’t a fighter here either and her struggles with weight were probably her main characteristic (with Diana grumbling about how men in Man’s World are so shallow not to see past the surface).

Etta got better storylines in the George Perez reboot. Perez wrote her tougher and more capable, plus Steve was now a friend to Diana rather than a boyfriend. That freed him up to start dating Etta. Perez planned to marry them off in his final issue but wires got crossed and he was told to hold it over for the next writer. Ironically William Messner-Loebs, who took over the book, didn’t get around to marrying them either.

Since DC’s New 52 reboot Etta has been rebooted to be both black and lesbian; with Steve back as Diana’s lover, Etta’s now dating Barbara Minerva, the Cheetah. I’m a few years behind on Wonder Woman so I’m not sure if any of that’s changed.

#SFWApro. Art by Peter, Peter again, Ross Andru and Perez. All rights to images remain with current holders.

Steve Trevor, wonder man

I’m finally working my way through John Byrne’s Wonder Woman run and so far it’s not as bad as I remembered. However it’ll be a while before I have any posts on those issues so I thought I’d look at two of the three most important supporting characters in Wonder Woman’s world, Steve Trevor and Etta Candy. First up: Steve.

Steve Trevor was literally there from the first story, a backup feature in All-Star Comics #8 that preceded Diana’s series in Sensation Comics. Shot down over Paradise Island, he’s the first man Diana ever saw. She saves his life by developing new Amazon healing technology. Having fallen in love with him she opts to become Wonder Woman, travel with him to “Man’s World” and fight injustice there (Robert Kanigher was one of several authors to drop the idea she’s only leaving her home out of love for a man). It’s a good origin though I don’t think it’s as classic as Batman’s or Spider-Man’s — and it’s retold way too often.

As Trina Robbins once put it, Steve was the Lois Lane of the series. He’s a military officer, brave and daring but his primary role is to get himself in trouble so Wonder Woman can come and save him. I’ve known fans who think he’s useless; others love him precisely because he’s willing to play second fiddle to a woman who’s stronger, braver and more heroic than he’ll ever be. As witness “The Lawbreaker’s League” in which a device makes Steve stronger than his sweetie; when WW says she could never be happy with a man who can dominate her physically Steve smashes it without a second thought.

In a later Kanigher story Steve tells Wonder Woman he’s such a screw-up he needs around full-time to save his life; she agrees that if she has to save him three times that day, she’ll marry him. That’s amusing but it’s also typical of Silver Age Steve, forever trying, like Lois, to trick Wonder Woman into marrying him. She’s Superman, determined to stay single; her duty to fight evil takes precedence. That’s cool but by the end of Kanigher’s run things got a lot more annoying, with Diana constantly mooning over Steve (Kanigher imported a lot of romance comics tropes) and Steve’s tricks getting creepier. In one issue he traps her in her lasso and forces her to go with him to a Justice of the Peace to get married. It doesn’t work but still!

Then came the radical reboot that depowered Wonder Woman and killed off Steve. After her powers returned, along with Kanigher, we had several stories showing Steve alive again, without explanation (as noted at the link, this brief period was a mess). It wasn’t until 1976 that the gods, and author Marty Pasko, resurrected Steve in #223 (yep, that’s him under the hood). It was an awkward resurrection: Steve took a new identity (Steve Howard) and felt much more frustrated at being WW’s Lois Lane. He’s arguing with her more, gets a new job as a spy and clearly Pasko had some ideas about their relationship … but then the Linda Carter series took off and we were back with Diana and Steve in WW II. When that was over and we returned to the present, new writer Jack C. Harris killed Steve again.

This time he stayed gone until 1980, when a parallel-world Steve Trevor crossed over to Earth-One and became Diana’s new/old love (she’d chosen to forget Steve to ease her pain so the relationship felt new). They stayed together until 1986 when they married right before Crisis on Infinite Earth erased them in favor of George Perez’ reboot.

Perez’ Steve was an older man, tough and smart and soon a friend and mentor to Diana, but never a lover; romance was, for better or worse, not a thing for her in the Perez years. Eventually they saw themselves as siblings, when Diana learned Steve’s mother had landed on Themyscira years earlier and died a hero, inspiring both Diana’s costume and Hippolyta’s choice of what to name her daughter. Steve did fall in love with Etta and Perez’ run was supposed to end with their wedding. Due to some confusion, after Perez had finished the issue he had to redraw it so new writer William Messner-Loebs could handle the wedding — but he never did, for whatever reason.

A few years ago, Greg Rucka finally paired off Steve and Diana again (Etta’s now gay) and I believe that’s still the status quo. However I’m not up on recent developments so don’t hold me too that.

#SFWApro. Covers by Edward Hibbard and Ernie Chan, all rights remain with current holders.

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Tagged as The Diana Prince Years, William Messner-Loebs Years, Wonder Woman: The Perez Years

June 14, 2022 · 5:18 am

The life and death of Artemis, the new Wonder Woman

As I wrote last week, the death of Ares Buchanan plunged Boston into a gang war as Longo and the widow Sazia both vie for control of the mobs. Longo forms an alliance with the corrupt White Magician; Sazia starts recruiting supervillains. Meanwhile, however, Wonder Woman finds the Amazons.

In a dreadful two parter by guest writer James Owsley (later known as Christopher Priest), Circe reveals that she transported Themyscira away, just to be mean. Outside of his later work on Black Panther, Owsley was a dreadful writer and this is a dreadful couple of issues. Circe’s just a laughing maniac with no discernible connection to the woman Wonder Woman fought before.

However the Amazons are back. Initially, Diana couldn’t be happier. When she lands on Themyscira, though, she discovers the Amazons are shell shocked from what for them has been long years in a nightmare dimension. The Bana-Mighdal Amazons have returned to the fold, but there’s definitely a caste system: the Themysciran Amazons look down on their barbarian cousins. Annoyingly, Mike Deodato depicts the outsider Amazons — dark-skinned in their original appearance, having interbred with Arab men — as lily white, and very much in the 1990s Boobs and Butts style.

When Diana meets her mother, Hippolyta eagerly asks for a performance appraisal: Has her daughter ended patriarchy? Freed oppressed women somewhere? Anywhere? When Diana admits that nothing has changed, her mother proclaims a trial where Diana will compete with the other Amazons to prove she still deserves the title and costume of Wonder Woman (not the first time Wonder Woman’s had to retest).

Diana is hurt by her mother’s disdain. Visiting an Amazon shrine, she also starts receiving visions of her mother’s past. In the visions, contrary to the official story, Hippolyta can’t bring herself to turn against Hercules even after he captures the Amazons and enslaves them. It’s Antiope who takes the lead in freeing them; because she believes Hippolyta will be the better leader, she gives her the credit, then heads off into the world. The idea her mother submitted to Hercules and betrayed her sisters horrifies Diana, as does the implication in the visions that she’s Hercules’ daughter.

Despite freak events, like a whirlpool that only traps Diana, it’s Artemis and Diana neck and neck at the climax. At the last minute, Diana stumbles and Artemis crosses the finish line first. To me it looks like Diana’s angry and threw the race, but it could be the freak events just took too much out of her (Hippolyta’s later confession implies they were her way of ensuring Diana didn’t win). Either way, Artemis heads back to Patriarch’s World in Wonder Woman’s costume.

I’ll pause here and note DC was doing this a lot in the 1990s. After Superman’s death fighting Doomsday, several new heroes came forward claiming to be Superman resurrected. Sales boomed. Before long Bruce Wayne had his back broken, after which a guy named Azrael stepped in to replace him in the suit; and Kyle Rainer replaced the now insane Hal Jordan as Green Lantern. Artemis fit right into this mode.

To Hippolyta’s surprise, Diana refuses to stay on Themyscira, instead returning to Bosto, adopting a new costume (again rather boob-revealing) and working to clean up the town. Things heat up with villains including the Joker, Poison Ivy and Cheshire coming to town; fortunately Diana has an ally in the Cheetah, who goes to work for Sazia but secretly saves Diana (who rescued her in an earlier issue).

Artemis meanwhile takes a hard-core approach to toxic masculinity. She has no qualms beating up sweatshop owners, abusive husbands and rain-forest polluters, unaware it’s all for show: her enemies are actors hired to distract her and defeating them doesn’t improve things at all. This appears to be the White Magician’s work, though I can’t figure out why he’d care — did the big money hire him to deal with her?

Diana has a sense things are moving to a climax but before facing it, she returns to Themyscira to ask her mother about what she saw in the vision. Mom confirms that yes, she did submit to Hercules, though Diana is not his child, and Antiope saved her. She also reveals that she had a vision of her own, that Wonder Woman’s death was inevitable. The contest was her way to cheat fate, by appointing one of the unwanted Bana-Migdhal warriors as Wonder Woman long enough to die. Horrified, Diana flies back to the US to save her sister.

After an encounter with Circe, she realizes the sorceress isn’t herself (a commentary on the Owlsey issues?) and figures out why. As part of her plan to revenge herself on Diana (how she returned after War of the Gods remains unexplained), she turned herself into a sleeper agent, one who could get close to Ares Buchanan and then strike at Diana. Trouble was, she had to erase her memories to avoid Ares detecting her; Donna Milton was now a complete person, one capable of becoming Diana’s friend. When Diana reveals this, Donna freaks out.

Finally it’s time for a showdown with Randolph Asquith, the White Magician. Artemis, having learned he’s been tricking her, attacks first, but Asquith has upped his game. Pacts with hell have made him physically into a major demon, plus he’s turned the Cheetah and his former lover into slave warriors to fight for him. Even after Diana joins the battle, things go badly. Donna, arriving with half of her memories of magic recovered, teleports Barbara Minerva and Asquith’s lover away, evening the odds against Diana (“You’re my only friend.”). Asquith is still nigh unstoppable and deals Artemis a lethal blow. She gives Diana one of her weapons, the gauntlet of Atlas, which multiples the wearer’s strength by ten; that didn’t make Artemis strong enough to stop Asquith but Diana’s already super-strong. Donna, arriving with half of her memories of magic recovered, teleports Barbara Minerva and Artemis away; Diana, Wonder Woman again, takes Asquith down.

Despite the loose ends it’s an epic end to Messner-Loebs’ run, and with typical touches such as Diana even being able to turn Circe to the light side. John Byrne took over with #101 but as I’m not a fan of his writing I never bought any of that run. I didn’t like the writers who followed him either until Phil Jimenez’ excellent run that started with #164. Now that I have the DC streaming app I can easily read all those issues, but that would amount to a year of stuff (reading at a rate of one issue a week) I don’t particularly care for. So maybe I’ll jump to Jimenez after Messner-Loeb’s spin-off series, Artemis: Requiem.

You’ll find out in my next Wonder Woman blog post.

#SFWApro. Covers by Brian Bolland, all rights to images remain with current holder.

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Tagged as William Messner-Loebs Years

June 7, 2022 · 5:10 am

Taco Bell! Ares as a mob boss! Wonder Woman 73-87

Goodness, it’s been a year since I last wrote about my Wonder Woman reread; I think you can blame work on The Aliens Are Here for sucking up so much time and blog posts until I simply forgot. To set the stage: at the end of William Messner-Loebs’ first year, Wonder Woman returns from space to discover Themyscira has vanished, her room at Julia’s house has been rented out and the JLA have reported her as KIA so she can’t get her paychecks opened up. Where will she go? How will she support herself?

Would you believe working at Taco Bell — er, Taco Whiz?

Superheroes stuck working crap jobs in their secret identity is not new. The Silver Age Shield got jobs, then had to blow them so he could rush off and fight crime. Nova in the New Warriors was constantly working minimum wage to support himself. WML, however, puts a completely different spin on it. Instead of grumbling about living in wage-slave hell, Diana’s grateful. Her boss Hoppy has given her a chance to put a roof over her head — she’s going to be the best darn employee the company ever had! She’s in it to win it. It’s very true to the post-Crisis Diana.

Dark clouds are forming in Boston, however. Mob boss Ari “Ares” Buchanan isputting increasing numbers of increasingly powerful weapons on the street, to the point of causing dangerous instability and a looming mob war. Diana doesn’t know that Buchanan’s nickname isn’t idly chosen. When the Olympian gods left Earth during the Perez run, Ares couldn’t let go of his desire to spread chaos and war. By filling Ari, a loser low-life thug, with part of his essence — in the god’s phrasing, Ari is the potato, Ares is the chili-cheese stuffing — Ares will be able to keep sewing discord without technically violating Zeus’s decree.When Buchanan’s assassin Mayfly almost kills Diana, things ironically turn around. Donna Milton, an attorney with a tragic backstory (left homeless by boyfriend after she got pregnant, sexually assaulted by boss), strikes up a friendship with Diana. She gets Wonder Woman’s paychecks restored and together they help Hoppy collect back child support from her mob-muscle ex, even though he’s under the protection of the Antonio Sazia crime family (the story where they squeeze the cash out of him is delightful).

Alas, Donna is not what she seems. She’s a calculating, power-hungry woman who met and fell in love with Buchanan — the man is, after all, raw power — and its his baby she’s carrying. Her job is to lure Diana into Ares’ clutches. She does, but when she sees Diana helpless before him, facing death, it isn’t as satisfying as she thought. She’s totally not turning soft, nope; she doesn’t like other women, couldn’t stand her time with those saps Diana and Etta, would never give up her position as consort to a man of power … ah, crap, who’s she kidding? When she tries to win over Buchanan by telling him about the baby he shoots her and tries detonating a black hole-based weapon. He winds up dead; Diana and Donna, against all odds, survive the black hole, falling a hundred feet into an ice cold underground river and being buried under tons of debris. Diana even delivers Donna’s baby in the midst of all that.

So everything’s fine … well, except that with Buchanan gone, it’s open gang war on the streets of the city. They have high-tech weapons and some of them have magic: Randolph Asquith, the White Magician who sent Diana into space in the previous arc, throws inn with Paulie Longo, providing him with demonic muscle. Sazia buys it but his widow, Julia Sazia, promptly takes the helm.

And then, as we’ll see in my next WW post, the Amazons return …

This was a good, fun run, though Wonder Woman’s failure to confront the White Magician after learning he’s a villain never made much sense.

#SFWApro. Covers by Brian Bolland, all rights remain with current holder.

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Tagged as William Messner-Loebs Years

January 22, 2022 · 5:10 am

Too much for one movie and not in a good way: WW 84 with spoilers

So last weekend I watched WW 84 (2020) at last — and yes, that is the title we see on-screen. There were several things I liked in it but it did not stick the landing or, indeed, most of the flight.

The opening is great. Young Diana is competing with the adult Amazons in an athletic event that combines running, combat, archery and horse-riding. When she’s unhorsed by a branch she cheats to get back in the lead, but her mother (Connie Nielsen) knows. She stops Diana crossing the finish line and tells her taking the short, easy route to get where you want to go is never the solution. It’s obviously setting up for a dilemma later … that never actually happens.

Then we get some delightful scenes in 1984, showing off period fashion, videogames, shopping malls. It’s at one of them that a gang of crooks try to steal some black-market antiquities from a jewelry store, only to be stopped by Diana in a neat little action sequence. She leaves, telling the witnesses not to mention she was here. I’m not sure why, other than to explain why Superman and Batman haven’t heard of her when she “first” appears in Dawn of Justice.

Cut to Diana, working as an archeology expert at the Smithsonian. She’s distant from her colleagues, at least the male ones, but strikes up a friendship with newbie Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wig). Yes, that Dr. Minerva, the Cheetah. A nerdy, insecure gemologist (as well as multiple other “ists” — she’s a brain) she’s able to connect with Diana when she has trouble with everyone else.

Happily they’re both assigned to investigate and identify the antiquities recovered from the jewelry store. Unhappily, one of them is a magic wishing talisman; when Diana wishes she had her old boyfriend back and Barbara wishes she could be more like Diana, they get their wishes granted. Steve (Chris Pine) returns to life and Barbara finds herself becoming increasingly strong and graceful.

That could have set up a heck of a movie but then they throw in Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal), a wheeler-dealer come positive-thinker entrepreneur. Investor Simon Stagg has discovered Lord’s company is built on sand and intends to shut it down. When Barbara shows Lord the talisman, he pulls the “wish for more wishes” trick by wishing to become the talisman. Now he can grant the wishes of anyone he touches, in return for taking from them whatever he wants. For example, he grants a Mideastern nobleman’s wish to control all his ancestral lands and drive out all foreigners, but in return takes the potentate’s security force. When the public lashes back against the noble’s wish, he has no defense.

Before long, Lord is working his way up the chain of power, taking over media empires and political offices. Diana’s out to stop him but the talisman’s taken something from her too — she’s becoming weaker and more mortal. The only way to reverse that is to unwish Steve and ultimately to unmake all the wishes. Trouble is, Barbara’s now in love with her new self, her beauty and her feral power; she’s not willing to give it up (the price, in her case, is her human decency). When Diana tries to confront Lord, Barbara fights to save him. After she and Lord escape, she tells him being Wonder Woman’s equal isn’t enough: she wants to be better, an ultimate apex predator.

At the climax, Lord, who’s losing his life to the power of containing the magic, goes on TV and broadcasts an invitation for everyone to make their wishes. In return, he gains health and strength while the wishers (“I wish you were dead.” “I wish the cops would drag your kind back where they came from.”) make the world worse. Oh, and Ronald Reagan wishing for more missiles to dominate the USSR has resulted in missiles suddenly materializing in an apparent attack, which the Soviets are ready to retaliate for. Can Diana save the w0rld? Will Steve have to make the sacrifice? Can Barbara, now half-woman half-cat, regain her soul?

The movie felt like someone had drawn up plans for a Wonder Woman TV series and then squeezed the results down to 2.5 hours. And not in a good way. Wig is charming as Minerva but that’s part of the problem; sure, she’s a little socially awkward (something carrying over from the Golden Age Cheetah rather than the Minerva version) but she’s cute and likable. We see that even the person who hired her has forgotten she’s there but she’s simply too personable for me to buy it (unlike Famke Janssen’s turn as a shy teacher in The Faculty). Given more time to develop, that might have worked, but we didn’t have it. And while Wig’s able to convey her pleasure in becoming stronger, the jump to “I want to be a Cheetah” doesn’t make much sense. Plus it’s previously established it’s one wish to a customer.

Lord is much closer to the comics version than the character that appeared in Supergirl a few seasons ago (including the comic book version’s weakness for bleeding when he uses his mind-control powers). He’s not evil at first but he’s a conniver and promoter with ambitions beyond his ability. But at the climax it turns out he’s a tragic figure, the product of a bad family and an abusive (or at least extremely critical) father. And he loves his son, which to be fair was set up from early on. It’s too late in the film to make Lord redeemable and Pascal’s performance up to that point always felt shallow.

The there’s the talisman. In an Easter Egg, Wonder Woman identifies it as a creation of the Duke of Deception but it’s not primarily deceitful — Diana gets exactly what she wants and so does Barbara. The issue isn’t so much that it twists wishes as what it enables Lord to take in return, like one of the cursed antiques in the Friday the 13th TV series or the direct-to-video Wishmaster. It’s not good when a movie shooting for A-list quality makes me think of crappy predecessors.

And the issue of cheating and taking short cuts never does come up. I suppose you could argue that returning Steve to life is a cheat but Diana has no idea that’s going to happen. Nor do I buy that she’d have done it knowing the consequences (I’ve read complaints that Diana spending the past 60 years mourning Steve is a bit much, and that’s a valid criticism too).

Godot is great, some of the action scenes are awesome and so are some of the little bits. There’s an early moment in Barbara’s transformation where a janitor spills a bucket in front of her and she deftly leaps over it — in heels. But most of the movie doesn’t rise to that level.

#SFWApro. Covers by George Perez, HG Peters and JL Garcia-Lopez, all rights to images remain with current holders.

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Filed under Movies, Wonder Woman