Superman/Wonder Woman #2 – Review

By: Charles Soule (story), Tony S. Daniel (pencils), Batt (inks), Tomev Morey (colors)

The Story: When her boyfriend’s in trouble, Diana goes for her family hook-ups.

The Review: I’ve never been all that fond of the grab-bag style of comic book storytelling—you know, a plot in which all of a character’s biggest villains get thrown in at once for some dubious reason and ultimately get disposed en masse.  This seems like it would increase the scale of a story, but the effect is often overinflated.  As with most things, quantity has little relation to quality, and the more villains we deal with, the less consequential the story feels.

This is especially true once you get to a certain caliber of villain, the ones who can ordinarily support an entire arc or more by themselves.  Crowd them together and you may give the hero a bigger challenge, but you’ll diminish their viability.  So from the moment Doomsday revealed itself at the end of last issue, I’ve been hoping Soule would do what almost no writer has done and focus on finding any layers that may have been lying in secret within the monster.  Soule disappoints by instead eroding Doomsday’s importance with the appearance of a more defined Superman foe, which feels suspiciously like the start of a grab-bag story.

Wonder Woman #24 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (story) Goran Sudžuka (art), Matthew Wilson (colors)

The Story: Diana learns that family reunions are indeed the worst.

The Review: The end of Villains Month marks the official start of the DCU’s third year since its relaunch.  Needless to say, its landscape has changed a great deal during this period of time.  Nearly half of the original 52 titles are with us no longer, most of them deservedly, and many of those that are left have lost the spirit that made them seem so exciting when they debuted.  Only a few, like Wonder Woman, remain steadfast to the direction and principles they started with.

As critical as I’ve been about certain points of execution, I have to admire how Azzarello has managed to stick to his guns on this title, somehow staying above the fray of tacky promotional campaigns, pointless crossovers, and pushy Big Events.  In a market saturated with angst and loud, hyperactive action, the fact that Wonder Woman still makes a living off mythological intrigue and family dynamics is remarkable indeed.

Wonder Woman #13 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (story), Tony Akins (pencils, Dan Green (inks), Matthew Wilson (colors)

The Story: Nothing starts off your divine reign like a pool party.

The Review: From day one, Azzarello has taken advantage of one defining feature of the Greek gods, the one that continues to capture our fascination to this day: the power struggles and family divisions within their divine community.  After reading any number of myths, you’ll notice how every time a conflict breaks out among them, sides are immediately taken.  Natural alliances arise (e.g. Apollo and Artemis), but more often than not, surprising changes of allegiances occur.

This never-ending cycle of devotion and backstabbing remains as intriguing as ever.  Apollo took his father’s throne for one reason only, and that was to protect himself.  Inviting his half-brothers and sisters to the renovated Olympus isn’t a signal of trust, but one of mutual benefit.  Aside from his sister, none of the others express much in the way of loyalty (Hephaestus claims he came only for the sake of family), and others reject Apollo’s overtures outright.  As with all fiction, the absences mean more than what’s present.

Wonder Woman #10 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (story), Kano & Tony Akins (art), Dan Green (inks), Matthew Wilson (colorist)

The Story: Woman hath no fury like hell scorned.  No, wait…

The Review: One of the great evolutions of Wonder Woman’s character over the years is how she has become the paragon of warriors in the DCU, regardless of gender.  Yet this focus on her fighting spirit and ability leaves little room to appreciate her sensitivity and compassion, a common conflict for many women in positions of power.  Yes, she can kick nearly anyone’s butt six ways to Sunday, but she’s also capable of incredible depths of tenderness.

At first glance, this series has shown many different sides to its star—her cleverness, her never-say-die persistence, and that all-consuming desire for truth—but love doesn’t quite shine through.  In retrospect, it’s because the kind of love Diana indulges in is very, very tough.  She can be warm and affectionate, but never expect her to be sweet or lavish.  She’s actually quite maternal, but she’s not the mom who bakes you cookies after you come home from school; she’s more like the mom who gives you a hand after you fall off your bike, then shushes you as she puts iodine on your skinned knee.  She wants the best for you, but she won’t brook any nonsense.

Wonder Woman #9 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (story), Tony Akins (pencils), Dan Green (inks), Matthew Wilson (colors)

The Story: Not even the god of death can keep crashers from his wedding.

The Review: As I read this month’s issue of Wonder Woman, I suddenly thought about All-Star Superman and what made it such a great, timeless story for the Man of Steel.  Writers tend to pay attention to superheroes for their power sets and fantastical backgrounds, but in All-Star, Grant Morrison managed to craft tales which got to the very essence of what made Superman beloved in the first place: a character who makes you believe anything is possible.

The reason why any of this is relevant to Wonder Woman is because Azzarello is attempting the same feat with comics’ leading lady.  We haven’t seen a lot of physical challenges for our heroine, which at first seems a waste of her strengths, but now I begin to think Azzarello wants us to put her bodily gifts aside.  The obstacles he’s set in her path may not require outstanding bouts of warrior prowess, but they’ve been no less demanding on her.

Wonder Woman #8 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (writer), Cliff Chiang (artist), Matthew Wilson (colorist)

The Story: Don’t take this the wrong way, Diana, but death really becomes you.

The Review: My favorite creative writing professor in college loved Ernest Hemingway, and he got us to love him, too.  Even though Hemingway was a morose, chauvinist drunk who treated nearly all four of his wives unconscionably (third wife Martha was forced to take a ship full of explosives to meet him in London because he refused to help her get a press pass on a plane), his ability to craft stories of great depth from few words made him a master of the highest order.

Azzarello may be the Hemingway of comics today.  Whereas most of his contemporaries love to embellish their scripts, filling up panels with long captions of text, Azzarello goes for sparse bursts of dialogue which, like Hemingway’s famous “iceberg” analogy, contain profound levels of meaning beneath the surface.  He doesn’t impose his own interpretation of the story on you; he leaves you space to fill in with your own understanding and perspective.

While in the underworld, Diana is aghast to find the souls of the dead are indeed all around her—making the composition of hell itself.  Hermes claims that since mortal souls can thus reinvent themselves eternally, they have greater freedom than the gods, who must remain bound to their natures for their immortal lives.  Diana doubts any soul would wish to be “reinvented” into such horrors.  In response, Hermes says, “…Free will is a funny thing.”  The ambiguity of the statement leaves you free to interpret it as you wish.  Perhaps it’s noting how we’d prefer to endure pain rather than stagnancy; maybe it’s a commentary on how free will allows us to choose evil; it could also be Hermes’ way of saying we humans waste our freedoms.

At times, Azzarello’s minimalist scripting can be a double-edged sword.  It gives each word a semblance of import, but also produces ambiguity.  Hades says to Hermes, “You came here with one, but to get another.  So…which child of Zeus is your ‘we’?”  It’s a rhetorical, if confusing question, but for some reason it makes Hermes fly into an uncharacteristic rage.  Even now, after several readings, I confess I don’t know why Hades’ words provoke such a reaction.

Wonder Woman #7 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (writer), Cliff Chiang (artist), Matthew Wilson (colorist)

The Story: Getting rid of the sibling is one way to cure sibling rivalry, I suppose

The Review: Soldierhawk and I had this convo about Wonder Woman before, but I still think that the biggest reason why she has such iconographic status and yet doesn’t really connect with anyone is because she’s imbued with such power and virtue that it tends to overwhelm her reserved personality.  We come away respecting her, admiring her, but not really understanding her.  She is akin to Greek statuary—beautiful, proud, dignified, but remote and lofty.

Azzarello has striven to bring her closer to us by removing some of the qualities of her character that made her seem so much higher than us.  He gave her flesh, complicated parental issues, and most importantly, vulnerability.  These are all steps in the right direction, but I’m not so sure we yet have a Wonder Woman who resonates on the same level as her peers.

Part of the problem is that even in her own ongoing, it frequently feels she spends much more time reacting to the events around her rather than being an active protagonist on her own right.  Possibly the most deliberate thing she’s done this entire run was pit Hades and Poseidon against Hera so she could blind the queen goddess for a while, only it turns out the whole idea came from Lennox, her half-brother of hardly a three issue’s acquaintance.  And consider how much time she spends in this issue absorbing exposition in comparison to the time she spends doing something about what she learns.  For sure, there’s something to be said for a hero who does more listening than acting in haste, but it also makes her seem rather passive.

It doesn’t help that nearly every time she does raise arms and summon the warrior spirit we expect from her, Azzarello throws in a twist which turns all her effort for naught.  If it’s not striking a blow against one god only to be backstabbed by another, it’s attempting to rally a downtrodden people to regain their pride, only to discover they’re not downtrodden at all and their pride is very much intact.