Who the Hell is Wonder Woman? pt. 2

Okay.

Now that anybody who actually read my last entry is a Wonder-history-buff, it’s time to look at 2006’s Wonder Woman #1.

It's all fun and games until all your eagle pals are sucked into a jet engine.

The issue was released in June of 2006, four months after the final issue of Wondy’s previous series.

Superman doing what he does best: crushing women and American soldiers with a tank.

The issue was written by Allan Heinberg, who you might recognize as a writer on shows like Sex and the City and Grey’s Anatomy. Prior to working on Wondy, he created and wrote Young Avengers over at Marvel, which is basically a super-gay ripoff of DC’s Young Justice.

They add a couple chicks to their team a few issues later. They're not happy about it.

Art chores were handled by Terry and Rachel Dodson, a husband-and-wife team of cartoonists well known for their cheesecake art. They became popular for their work on Harley Quinn (the clown girl from the Batman cartoons) and some Spider-Man/Black Cat miniseries that I’ve never read but I think was written by Kevin Smith and which we can probably assume was awful. They turned out some spectacular work on Wonder Woman, and made some slight adjustments to Wondy's outfit.

Boobs: The Series

It’s important to understand how high fan expectations were with this issue. Wondy had gone months without a series of her own, and the series that had just wrapped up had been mired in dreary politics and self-doubt. The last issue of her series wasn’t even really about her; it was about Superman. Fans were hungry for material.

In addition, you had DC’s blowhard editor-in-chief, Dan Didio, hyping up Diana’s new series at every opportunity. Here are some choice quotes to keep in mind for later:

“So, what I’m hoping is that one arc leads to the next leads to the next. We might give him breaks in between, but Allan is a guy who wants to be involved in Wonder Woman’s history for a good period of time, and we’re happy to let him play as long as he wants.”

From Heinberg:

"She's arguably as strong as Superman and as cunning as Batman, but she's not the archetypal Boy Scout or Dark Knight. She's been a princess, a goddess, a politician, an author, and a superhero. She's a pacifist, yet she's arguably the DCU's fiercest warrior. She has one of the most complex histories and supporting casts in comics history. But with Wonder Woman #1 we have an opportunity to peel back the layers a bit and simply ask, ‘Who is this woman? What does she want? And what's she going to do about it?’”

Sounds exciting, right? Lots of people thought so. It had been quite a while since someone who actually liked Wonder Woman and was familiar with her earlier comics history had written the book, and after years of Greg Rucka’s heavy-handed political and mythological stories, the promise of a fun, kinetic super-hero comic was very attractive.

This anticipation definitely showed, sales-wise. Wonder Woman #1 sold 132,600 copies the month of its release, and was the second-highest-selling DC title that month (only behind the $1, 80-page Brave New World special). That’s a huge number for Wondy, whose previous title used to move around 30,000 copies per month, and whose book currently pushes around 40,000. A really ugly variant cover courtesy of Adam Kubert boosted these sales.

Diana tries out her new superpower: an enormous fucking hand.

So how was the issue? Not that bad, actually.

In it, we find out that Wonder Woman’s sister Donna Troy took over for Diana during her year off. To her credit, she put together an outfit that didn’t primarily function to showcase her ass. So that’s something, even if it does look like she watched Spartacus too many times before getting dressed in the morning.

Donna makes a typically subtle entrance in a gorgeous two-page spread by Terry and Rachel Dodson.

Donna herself is an… interesting character. She’s sort of like DC’s low-rent answer to Marvel’s Jean Grey in that she has number of code names and occasionally gains god-like powers and goes insane. She also has the most fucked-up origin in comics, being a mirror-twin magical clone of Wonder Woman who was tortured for 1,000 lifetimes before being raised by the Amazons and eventually beginning a career as Wonder Girl.

Donna debuts a new costume in 1969's Teen Titans #33 on the right, and flies toward us in the first issue of what turned out to be an utterly irrelevant miniseries with gorgeous art by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez.

Over the course of the issue, we also find out that she’s totally incompetent. Three of Wondy’s regular villains – Cheetah, Giganta, and Dr. Psycho – team up in an attempt to bring Diana out of exile. Donna engages them, is immediately incapacitated, and spends most of the next four issues being worn as a necklace by Giganta, a character who’s code-name is only slightly less subtle than if she were named “Huge-ella.”

There were some wonky aspects of the issue. Donna’s incompetence is one; at one point the Cheetah just sort of waltzes up to her and grabs the golden lasso from her. Donna has her shit totally wrecked by the powerful telepath Dr. Psycho a few pages later, when he forces her to hallucinate being attacked by a crazed, murderous Diana.

Defeated by her one weakness: phallic imagery.

The big reveal at the end of the first issue is… Diana! Fresh off her year of self-discovery and dressed to impress in a skin-tight white cat-suit, hot pink-tinted glasses, and those weird moon boots that the Dodsons insist on putting everyone in. She is introduced as Diana Prince, a name not used regularly by Wondy since the mid-80’s.

So what exactly is going on? What has Di decided to do with her life? Will Donna prove to be anything other than useful? And just what is the horrible truth of this story’s release schedule? We’ll find out next time.

Diana, still unaccustomed to wearing an outfit that doesn't leave her boobs hanging out all over the place.

Who the Hell is Wonder Woman? pt. 1

Before we get into the first story arc of Wondy’s third volume, it’s time for a crash course in recent Wondy history.

This gets a little rough in spots, so I recommend making a drinking game out of it. Here’s a simple guide –

Take a drink every time:

• Wondy’s costume changes for no reason.
• A member of Wondy’s supporting cast vanishes forever with no explanation.
• Wondy fights Superman.
• Wondy dies.
• A character, superpower, or outfit that hasn’t been seen since 1973 suddenly turns up without explanation
  
• A writer or artists makes a nonsensical reference to the old Lydna Carter TV show.

Those rules should get you so sloshed that you might even be able to enjoy Jodi Picoult’s run and Amazons Attack by the time you get to them (and don’t worry, I’ll cover those abominations in later entries).

Okay. Check it.

Wonder Woman’s series was relaunched from issue #1 in 1987, following the cancellation of her first series that had run for nearly fifty years. The mastermind behind the series was superstar cartoonist George Perez, who changed a lot of things about the character that are only really that important to nerds like me.


Wondy’s origin is basically thus:

Hippolyta is Queen of the Amazons, who live on Paradise Island, totally separated from the modern world. After living on the island for a couple thousand years, Hippolyta decides that she wants a baby (just like a woman!) and asks the Greek gods to help her out. She carves a baby out of clay (and for Diana’s sake, we hope she had a pretty extensive knowledge of sculpting, to say nothing of human anatomy; suffice it to say that if I tried to sculpt my own baby, it would have a velociraptor head and lobster claws), the gods give it life, and bam: insta-birth.

Diana grows up on the island, until one day the outside world is threatened by Ares, god of war. The Amazons hold a contest to decide which of them will become the ambassador of the Amazons and go to Man’s World to fight Ares. Diana wins, leaves the island, and becomes Wonder Woman.

Keep in mind that this is a really simplified version of a series of events that has been retold and contradicted so many times that it really doesn’t even make sense anymore. You can check out a very pretty, truncated version of her origin here.

Believe it or not, there’s actually a backstory regarding her ridiculous outfit. It turns out that it was actually designed to honor a fallen Amazon heroine, and the fact that Diana winds up running around Boston catching bank robbers and saving babies dressed like an overly-patriotic cocktail waitress in Vegas is pure coincidence.

Like most battle armor, Wondy's costume is made of spandex and leaves almost her entire body uncovered.

Anyway, this series lasted until 2006. Over that time, the book was handled by a number of different creators, including William Messner-Loeb, John Byrne, Eric Luke, and Phil Jimenez. Generally, one writer’s take on Diana had little to do with any others, so Diana’s costume, personality, supporting cast, base of operations, powers, and hairdo tended to be completely different every few years. During this time, she joined (and briefly led) the Justice League, died twice, became a goddess twice, had a couple love interests (but no sex; ouch), worked at a fast food joint, lost the title of Wonder Woman at least once, watched her mom die, turned back into clay a few times, fought Superman a few times, and reduced the amount of fabric in her costume to a terrifying degree.

That pose is getting old, Diana.

She did have some great covers, though. Brian Bolland did a fantastic series of covers in issues #63 - #100, and Adam Hughes did the same from issues #139 - #197. True, Hughes’ Diana did have a tendency to look like a star-spangled blow-up doll, but I think his heart was in the right place. Or at least a very horny place.

We've secretly replaced Wonder Woman with a sex doll. Let's see if anybody notices.

The last writer to tackle Diana before her second series ended was Greg Rucka, who penned the book from issue #195 to # 226. This period of the book tends to be really divisive among fans, but I think it sucked. Essentially, Rucka took Diana – who is supposed to be a symbol of empowerment, strength, and independence – and turned her into a moronic, sniveling wimp. The phenomenally talented J.G. Jones managed to turn out a series of washed-out, boring-looking painted covers for this period, as well. Anyway, I’ll cook up an entry to whine about that later.

For a fun game, speculate how the image on the left might have led to the one on the right.

Immediately before the end of her second series, Diana was involved in a big DC mega-crossover called Infinite Crisis. The less you know about it, the better.

Wondy’s involvement was basically thus: A C-list DC character named Maxwell Lord was mentally controlling Superman and basically causing him to freak out and start punching all his friends. Wondy had a huge fight with Supes (seriously, it took up an entire issue) and finally got fed up and, after slashing Superman’s throat with her tiara, tied Max up in her lasso and snapped his neck.

What now, motherfucker?

And that’s why you don’t fuck with a girl wearing star-spangled panties and a tiara.

Anyway, a bunch of Wondy’s fellow superheroes were miffed that she had resorted to taking a life (which I guess is easy to say when Superman didn’t just try to throw you into the sun), and she, herself, was pretty shaken up by the experience, so she decided to take a year off from super-heroing and find herself. You’d hope that someone who can lift mountains and has saved the world every other week for most of her life wouldn’t have to resort to the same thing a 22-year-old does when he graduates college and doesn’t want to get a real job, but maybe that's what happens when you spend most of your adult life punching monsters. Instead of backpacking across Europe, though, Diana decides to hang out on a mountain in the Himalayas or something. It makes less sense the more you think about it, so don’t bother.

Okay, so that makes two entries in which I haven’t even addressed the story I’m supposed to be writing about. Now that the stage is set, next time we can get into the story itself. What did Wondy do with her year off? How did the world get along without her? What will she do when she gets back?

Find out in "Who the Hell is Wonder Woman?" pt. 2.

It's double danger!!

Hola.

Now, there’s no shortage of comic blogs out there. We nerds are a blog-happy bunch. It’s cool; I’m owning it.

That being the case, I don’t really want a long “how I came to blog” preface here. So let’s get right to the good stuff. It was a foregone conclusion that I was going to wind up writing about comics. DC comics in particular. I read practically every comic under the sun, but I’ve always been a DC guy at heart. Ever since my dad bought me issues of Justice League (the far-cooler International variety), the DC universe has always been special to me.

The Justice League: Blue Beetle, Fire, Martian Manhunter, General Glory, Ice, Lightray, and Guy Gardner. Exactly.

It’s no secret that the entire thing has basically gone to rot in the past few years, and that fact will undoubtedly lead to all kinds of fun entries in the future where I can talk about how much I hated Infinite Crisis two years after every blogger on the internet has already done so.

A DC fan in general, I’m a Wonder Woman fan in particular. We Wondy fans have it tough. Our gal is widely misunderstood, prone to being pulled in ten directions at once, and frequently just shows up in stories to serve as a punching bag for Superman or to show us how good she is at posing so we can see her boobs and her ass spilling out of her tiny costume in the same shot.

Told her back it up like berp, berp

Perhaps as a result, Wondy fans are a vocal bunch. It’s not enough for us to grumble as we toss on the pile yet another comic in which we marvel not at Diana’s fantastic powers, but at her uncanny ability to keep her titanic breasts from popping out of her “Ceremonial Armor” (and believe me, that’ll be an entry all its own). No, we have to catalog our hardships. People need to know.

Whatever you say, Di.

That said, I’m going to kick off this blog with a multi-part look at the story that launched Diana’s third ongoing series. I’m hardly the first person to do it, but I think that it’s especially worth going back and taking a look at this story, as we approach the one-year anniversary of its having finished.

So check out my first official entry as we explore the startling history of…

Allan Heinberg’s Wonder Woman!

May include fewer eagles than advertised.