Before Greg Rucka’s run on Wonder Woman, he and Jeff Jones turned out a 2002 graphic novel, WONDER WOMAN: The Hiketeia. A young woman invokes the Hiketeia, an ancient Greek ritual, to gain Wonder Woman’s protection. Trouble is, she’s just murdered the Gotham City crooks who sex-trafficked and killed her sister; now Batman shows up and demands Diana give up the killer, never mind about this oath stuff.
Astonishingly the cover is accurate: Wonder Woman kicks Batman’s butt. The “bat god” concept has become so dominant in this century, I absolutely loved seeing him in over his head.
Beyond that? The plot could have been comfortably fitted into a single regular issue. At 90 pages this is a showcase for the art and while Jones is good, he wasn’t 90-pages-with-little-plot good.
In the afterword to BOWLING WITH CORPSES AND OTHER TALES FROM LANDS UNKNOWN writer/artist Mike Mignola said he’d begun thinking of himself as in semi-retirement, then decided nothing he could take up in retirement would be as fun as writing and drawing comics. He adapted the title story from an old Italian folktale, then developed the Lands Unknown as a place to put them. These stories of witches, ghosts, creepy inns (“Don’t share your bed with a corpse, even if the landlord offers you a discount.”) and yes, bowling with a group of flesh-eating corpses, don’t break fresh ground but they’re good and the art is typically amazing.
The follow up volume, URI TUPKA AND THE GODS: A Tale From the Lands Unknown has the eponymous heretic fleeing the inquisition only to encounter bandits, hermits with horror stories, pirates, demon frogs, finally learning the truth about why the gods have withdrawn from the mortal world. The art is again amazing but this spends too much time on the history and geography of the setting. The lurking horror also feels too close to the Oghdru Jahad of Hellboy’s mythos
TRASHED by Derf Backderf is the story of a slacker who winds up taking a job as a garbage man, discovers it’s disgustingly dirty and gross — wow, you could almost make a metaphor for the human condition out of this! This is way too talky and not interesting talk: lectures on how we’re doing sanitation and waste management wrong, how absurdly much waste we create and constant grousing about how shitty the life of a garbage man is. I’d agree with a lot of the sentiments but that doesn’t make them interesting.
Covers by Jones and Mignola; all rights to images remain with current holders.
Following the Phil Jimenez run on Wonder Woman, Walt Simonson took over for a brief arc which I somehow never got around to reviewing (soon, though). This post is about the first year under Greg Rucka, who took over writing next, and also about the first year of Absolute Wonder Woman.
Rucka first worked on Diana in a standalone story, The Hiketeia, which I haven’t read yet. Wonder Woman #196 (cover by Adam Hughes)started a run on the book that ended when Infinite Crisis rebooted everything. For the first year the primary plot driver is Veronica Cale, a Texas businesswoman who bitterly resents that Wonder Woman gets so much applause and acclaim — Cale is the real wonder woman, dammit! Employing skilled PR, Dr. Psycho and the Silver Swan, she sets out to destroy Diana.
In addition we have Eros prompt Zeus to lust for Artemis, leading to Hera hurling Themyscira into U.S. coastal waters. America is wary; the Amazons are equally wary to see US warships patrolling around them. Can the two nations avoid coming to blows?
And as the year winds to a close, Circe helps the gorgons resurrect Medusa. Cale then sends her to kill Diana …
I glanced Rucka’s run a couple of times when it was on the stand. It certainly wasn’t bad but it didn’t give me any urge to buy it. Reading it on the DC app, that hasn’t changed. The heart of the story isn’t the superhero battles, it’s the politics. The challenges on WW as an ambassador for Amazons and a speaker for women’s equality. The mundane day-to-day running of the embassy, with a minotaur as her chef. Cale’s PR maneuvers to discredit Diana. The gods are dressed in modern fashions, reflecting their connections to various modern spheres — our quest for knowledge makes Athena strong, our interest in sex boosts Aphrodite (Zeus doesn’t realize his power is fading by comparison). It feels like this is where Rucka’s heart lies (that’s my impression, not something I know for a fact) but it doesn’t work the way Astro City does with a similar approach.
Take Cale. Her resentment for Diana is the same as the Golden Age Cheetah (cover here by H.G. Peters). Her desire to kill Diana feels way over the top; it’s easier to accept such unhinged hatred when it comes from a woman crazy enough to dress up in a cat costume.
I didn’t expect much better from Absolute Wonder Woman by Kelly Thompson and Hayden Sherman (who does the cover here). The Absolute Universe is one where the creators strip characters of their usual accoutrements: who is Batman without Bruce Wayne’s wealth? Who is Wonder Woman without the Amazons? Yeah, right — like “Wonder Woman without the Amazons” isn’t a go-to for a soft reboot ever since the Diana Prince Years. When I checked V1 and V2 out of the library however, it turns out they’re as good as everyone told me they were.
In the first issue we meet Circe, trapped on an island in the Greek underworld. Apollo drops an infant Diana off, informing Circe that the Amazons are gone — and the very word ‘Amazon’ is forbidden.Years later, Gateway City is under siege by demonic forces when Wonder Woman appears, riding her winged horse Pegasus, as on the cover. Which she explains to Steve Trevor at one point is the real Pegasus, killed and damned to hell by Zeus for some reason. We alternate scenes of Diana’s life in the underworld with her efforts to defend the city from increasingly nasty demonic forces. We also meet her mortal supporting cast: Steve, occultist Etta Candy and reporter Barbara Minerva (so far a “name only” character with no similarity to the original).
In the first arc she saves Gateway City (I’m not sure if that’s a callback to her operating there in John Byrne’s run or the symbolism of the name), then descends to Tartarus for a confrontation with Hades. She wins her freedom at the cost of never returning meaning she’ll never see her mother, Circe, again. Persephone, however, has arranged for Diana to eat a pomegranate seed, which compels her to return for one month of every year. This is a running theme, even if we don’t know where it’s leading: the male Olympians are vicious, the goddesses are backing Diana covertly.
In the second arc we meet the Absolute Veronica Cale, here a hot-shot national security official who sends a version of Dr. Poison against Wonder Woman. This leads to the reveal of a magical maze in which Diana might be able to find other Amazons. Entering she battles against monsters and the Golden Age foe Queen Clea. The current arc involves Cale sending Zatanna against Diana — bad news as Diana is a sorceress like her mom and Zatanna has managed to tap her magic and use it against her (I’m now reading on the app but I haven’t gotten any further yet).
For my money, this is the best WW since the New 52 reboot, possibly the best in this century. Part of the reason is, of course, that it’s a solidly entertaining story. It’s hard to go wrong when Wonder Woman shows up riding a skeletal undead Pegasus. Part of it is also that they get Diana in a way many authors don’t.
A recurring tendency since the New 52 has been to treat Diana as an Amazon warrior first and foremost; there’s a scene in one JLA story where monsters attack and her response is “Yay, something to fight and kill!” In the“Tower of Babel” arc in JLA, the trap for Diana is a mental fantasy in which she’s battling as a warrior, endlessly, something she doesn’t want to break free of.
Not here. There’s a flashback where Artemis wants to test Diana in combat. The young Amazon refuses, having seen too much senseless violence in the underworld. A disgruntled Artemis considers hunting a passing turtle for sport and suddenly Diana’s in her grill: No. You do not hurt it!
In another scene she visits Prometheus for help and convinces the eagle gnawing on his liver to stop.
When she has to send Steve home from the underworld she needs a sacrifice big enough to work such a potent marriage. She sacrifices her right arm, replacing it with a prosthetic of magic.
This is who she is. This is who Wonder Woman should be. I look forward to reviewing Year Two in about eight months.
