Wonder Woman

[DisneyBoy]

There isn't a thread about her yet? For shame!

 

There has never been more to discuss, from her romance with Superman, to the Sensation comics, her main title, her Lynda Carter '77 series and soon...her big screen debut!  What have you been interested in?

 

I am liking the variety in Sensation comics but find it odd how so many Bat villains have appeared.

 

I bought the printed '77 Special and generally enjoyed it. Are there more digital first stories coming? Is this an on-going series now?

 

What are the Finches doing in the main book?

 

 

[Kromm]

The demi-goddess new 52 reboot of her seems like such a mixed blessing, reinforcing the ruthless violent interpretation of her, but I've heard the Sensation stuff walks that back a lot (although I admit I haven't read it).  

 

Nor have I really seen the new team on her main book.

 

The Justice League "Superman's girlfriend" stuff was pretty sickening, although it sounds like from stuff I've read they've finished up with that finally.

 

Supposedly the next upcoming huge DC event after this current "Convergence" thing (another I haven't read), called "Darkseid War", will be the first event since that uber-shitty Amazons Attack one years back to focus on Wonder Woman.  Since Amazons Attack ruined the character for years after, they certainly can't do as bad a job again, can they?

 

JOHNS & FABOK SAY WONDER WOMAN LEADS THE CHARGE IN "DARKSEID WAR"

[DisneyBoy]

The demi-goddess new 52 reboot of her seems like such a mixed blessing, reinforcing the ruthless violent interpretation of her, but I've heard the Sensation stuff walks that back a lot (although I admit I haven't read it).

 

Sensation is a pretty mixed bag. It seems like a lot of the writers are going by their recollections or impressions of the character. Sometimes an "era specific" story will seemingly crop up, but then the artist won't draw the character as they appeared at that time, or there just won't be the page count to let the story properly breathe and unfold. People have also been pissed that so many tales focus on Diana fighting Batman villains, and that whenever a male character shows up in a story, he's usually being a sexist jerk. There have been some bright spots, but also a lot of "hun? Okay." I hope the book gets a bit tighter and lets various eras be represented as well as new visions. But hey - it's better than having to read the mainstream stuff!

 

...though to be fair, I did hear that the Superman/Wonder Woman book did have some fun romantic stuff in there and enjoyed exploring them as a couple. Still not enough for me to get over her new attitude/origin/outfit, though.

 

And I have no clue where things stand with Steve Trevor in the new continuity. I've heard he popped up a few places but didn't really get a stable status quo.

 

Did any of you read Wonder Woman '77?

Edited June 12, 2015 by DisneyBoy

[Lantern7]

Curious to see if anybody else read Earth One: Wonder Woman from Grant Morrison and Yannick Paquette. I think it's the best Earth One story yet, and it probably would have served as a great basis for the upcoming WW movie (World War I? Seriously?!?) Also, I didn't feel the urge to punch Etta Elizabeth Candy. Woo woo!!!!

DC is going to put out a bunch of trade paperbacks. All I remember is Gail Simone is one of the authors. I like her a lot, but her run on the title wasn't as great as Secret Six or Birds of Prey. She did a great two-parter where the Queen of Fables sends Diana to a twisted movie version of her life. It's worth reading.

[DisneyBoy]

Only two arcs really worked for me in the Simone era - The Circle, which gave us a new take on Nazis and Diana's relationship with her Amazonian sisters, and the Queen of Fables, which riffed on Hollywood's treatment of women and Diana's hopes of becoming a mother. Nice stuff there.

The rest - Genocide, Achilles and the Manazons, Space Amazons and a 4 issue Norse-ish adventure - didn't pan out well or didn't align with my tastes.

Great to see DC celebrating WW though. I hope to see more good stuff made available...

[Kromm]

re: Issue 1 (the real issue 1 not the 'rebirth" issue 1).

Damnit Rucka you got me. That was... fantastic.

[Lantern7]

I keep missing Rebirth issues because I'm working. What happened?

DisneyBoy . . .what about the gorillas? Did you like 'em? How about the Khund fangirl?

[Kromm]

1 hour ago, Lantern7 said:

I keep missing Rebirth issues because I'm working. What happened?

I wouldn't do Rucka's story justice by trying to encapsulate it. 

The confusing thing here is that we got two issues in a row that both are numbered "#1" AND which have a Rebirth banner across the top. The first was "Wonder Woman Rebirth #1" and the second simply "Wonder Woman #1", although you wouldn't know it simply from looking at the covers.

This is also seemingly going to be true of all of the other rebooted #1s too. 

While I've actually be shockingly impressed by how good the Rebirth/rebooted titles are overall (far better than anyone would expect from anything growing out of the liquid garbage called "New 52"), Wonder Woman seems to be on the high side of good, even in that company, so it's one to track down even if you're giving a pass on most of Rebirth.

The Rebirth WW issue was, again not to undercut Rucka's work by shortcutting it, very thoughtful and had a lot of ideas in it. One could argue very little happened in the issue, but really it was all about those ideas, and setting up her new motivation/mission.

The actual #1 has a lot more happen, from the POV of a number of different characters, and like a lot of the Rebirthed titles seems to really be about setting the character on a course that ropes her back to the classic version, and makes the process and reasons for that into a plot element rather than just hand-waving it.

Edited June 23, 2016 by Kromm

[starri]

I'm a lot less enthused by it than others, I guess.  I didn't think it was bad, it just didn't quite satisfy me, because there's not really an abundance of plot to be had.  Which was my problem with Rebirth #1.  I appreciate Rucka making sure to feature Steve and Etta (and yet they still cast a white actress in the movie), and I suspect the Boko Haram-esque subplot will be bigger than it appears, and I think that's a very good thing for WW to address.

But the big reveal of 

Spoiler

Cheetah

left me colder than I expected.

[Kromm]

4 hours ago, starri said:

I appreciate Rucka making sure to feature Steve and Etta (and yet they still cast a white actress in the movie)

I understand why.  Aside from her race being a relatively recent change in WW history, there's also the issue that the Wonder Woman movie is set in the nineteen teens.  A black woman being portrayed as a soldier, and one with any influence would be impossible in that setting. Or if the movie is going with the early position of Etta, if she was simply an "assistant" type character, then we get into all kinds of potential outrage if a black woman is simply shown as the "perky assistant" to the white woman.  You know... the servant.

[starri]

I grant that a black Etta would be challenging, but then I also wonder why they needed to move the setting to WWI in the first place.  There actually were African-American WACs in WII, and it would have been an easy way to add diversity to what otherwise looks like a REALLY white film.

And not for nothing, but the corners of the internet that usually cry forth when there's a white character made into a minority are curiously silent here.

[Kromm]

2 hours ago, starri said:

the corners of the internet that usually cry forth when there's a white character made into a minority are curiously silent here.

Come on. You know better!

They're silent because they already weren't reading the book. A book starring a female. If they've heard at all that Etta Candy got raced changed, assuming they even have any idea who she is... they don't care.

[Kromm]

I see where Rucka is going with this two timeline thing now. It makes sense.

BTW: big surprise.  The issue acknowledges lesbianism. It's a bit odd. It's confirmed that the other Amazons are reborn murdered women from the outside (interestingly they're called "the daughters of Harmonia and Ares"). Diana is not. There's a panel where several of them are watching a naked Diana bathe, perving a bit on it, and speculating that she's in a relationship with one of them named Kasia (or one of several others named). So we are left with Woman Woman maybe dating women, but a definite confirmation that the Amazons as a whole do.

Oh, the whole "daughters of Harmonia and Ares" sounds weird to a classic Wonder Woman reader, but this is Rucka actually going back to actual real Greek myth. The so-called Children of Ares were enemies of Wonder Woman in previous runs, but in line with real mythology (where at the very least the known mythological figures Antiope and Hippolyta are) the DC Amazons now ARE the Children of Ares.

[DisneyBoy]

I'm wondering when it will seep into the public's awareness of the character that she is bisexual. I'm wondering if DC will allow that...or play on it crassly. We shall have to see...

[Kromm]

Recommended: the 75th Anniversary Special Issue.

Was pleasantly surprised that DC actually had the wisdom to give Gail Simone the last story in it. A really really sweet one which gets totally to the heart of who and what Wonder Woman is.  The rest of the issue is fairly good too. A few clangers, but most of it isn't.

[Lantern7]

Before we get Gal Gadot, here's Lilly Singh on Epic Rap Battles of History.

[starri]

Is Etta being a lesbian new to Rebirth, or was that established in New 52?  Because I was very surprised by that.

She and Barbara Ann have been the best part of this story.  I would really love to see a story where Etta is forced to team up with Amanda Waller, because they seem to be mirror images.

[DisneyBoy]

That's part of what bothers me about the reinventions we've been seeing lately. I'll be honest and admit that I've never really met a white woman named Etta so it makes some amount of sense that she'd be black, but I feel like she's become too similar to Amanda Waller visually and in terms of her profession. I miss the curly haired white gal. And it's startling the way Rucka has integrated so many gay or bisexual leading characters into the book all at once. Diana, Barbara and Etta are all under the umbrella of LGBTQ now...!

 

Don't get me wrong: it's high time the book addressed Diana's likely sexuality in an honest matter-of-fact manner but I'm rather thrown by all of these changes happening at once in a comic book in a way that I don't know if I would be if it was simply a reboot of a TV series or movie franchise. I guess I'm so used to seeing progress take a lot longer in comics than it might take elsewhere.

[starri]

17 minutes ago, DisneyBoy said:

And it's startling the way Rucka has integrated so many gay or bisexual leading characters into the book all at once. Diana, Barbara and Etta are all under the umbrella of LGBTQ now...!

It's about damned time.  DC, while doing a lot better now, really fell down on that score for a while.  And in some cases, the a few of the characters (Poison Ivy, Harley, Catwoman) seem like fanservice and giving the straight guys fantasy material to wank to.  I don't mind it so much with Poison Ivy and Harley, because that was subtext for a long, long time, but Catwoman seemed like a token.

It's much less tokenistic with Diana, because Rucka was really keen to incorporate that into his first run, but got overridden by DC editorial.

I really like Etta's current incarnation.  I know she's there to sub for the now svelte Waller, but she's a White Hat in comparison to Waller's Grey, and the contrast is interesting.  That's why I'd like to see them in a story together.

[starri]

So, Etta and Barbara Ann actually are a couple.  Huh.

[DisneyBoy]

That's....different. So...how many gay characters are there now? 4?

Nice reveal of Ferdinand being back in the latest issue...

[starri]

Rucka is starting to fill in Diana's Rogues.  In the most recent issue of the past half, he reintroduced Veronica Cale and the Rebirth version of Doctor Cyber.

There's also an impossibly cute panel of Diana, now exposed to the world as Wonder Woman, appearing on a talk show with Barbara Ann.

[starri]

Goddamn it, Rucka.

[DisneyBoy]

Hun?

[starri]

Without getting into specifics, something happened to Barbara Ann which is going to undo a lot of what my favorite part of this story has been.

[starri]

Wonder Woman gets a new creative team.  This after Greg Rucka wraps up his reintroduction of Diana.

It's also only the second time (I think) where both artist and writer are women.

[Chip]

I just caught up on the Rebirth issues. Both storylines worked well together.

[Lantern7]

In case you didn't hear . . .

1. New creative team for the main title starting in September: James Robinson, Emanuela Lupacchino and Carlo Pagulayan. Insert joke about Diana getting hipster tattoos here, even though Cable, Nick Fury [II] and C3P0 have gone without ink.

2. Gail Simone returns to writing Wonder Woman with a six-issue miniseries co-starring Conan the Barbarian. Artist: Aaron Lopresti.

Wild guess: the DVD comes out in September, right?

[starri]

You know what I liked about Rucka's run (I mean, apart from everything)?  She wasn't using the sword.