TPB REVIEW: Wonder Woman Gods and Mortals

[Ed Liu]

Howdy,

This is the first installment of what I hope to be a monthly or possibly bi-weekly feature at the Toon Zone Comic Book Culture Forum: the TPB review. The idea is to do for collected editions or long-form works what Emerald Archer does for single-issue comics, although probably not in quite as much detail.

Books I review here will fall into one of two categories:

1. A work of sequential art more than 48-pages long. This page count is selected to weed out prestige-format comics and smaller.
2. It’s something I feel like reviewing.

The review may or may not be linked to the "This Month in Comics History" post, but anniversaries are as good a time as any for reflection and doing this also satisfies the self-aggrandizing centers of my brain.

Any given review will focus on at least these elements:

STORY SYNOPSIS AND REVIEW
This section will be a “traditional” review, giving a brief and hopefully spoiler-free synopsis of the plot and a traditional review. This is the stuff you can get anywhere, except it’s me writing it, which will be either a Good Thing or a Bad Thing, depending on your point of view. Neil Gaiman calls reviews articles that boil down to, “If you like this sort of thing, then this is the sort of thing you will like,” and that’s what I’m aiming for here.

THE COLLECTION/“DVD EXTRAS”
This section will talk about the book as a product, discussing paper quality, cover stock, reproduction values, and value-for-the-money. I will also compare the collection to the monthly books, in the event that something has been changed or edited from the original printed versions, and present and critique the extras in the book, if any.

At a minimum, I expect a collection of monthly comics to include covers. Beyond that, I’m not too picky about what else comes, and I can’t begrudge a comic book company for wanting to sustain their monthly book business by including other stuff in the monthlies that they don’t put into the trades. I don’t expect an original graphic novel to contain anything extra at all, although I’ll comment on whatever else happens to be there.

CRITIQUE
This is the part where I get to sound like Chris Stevens talking about graphic novels. In other terms, it will aim to be the kind of thing you’ve come to expect from posts by TZ members like Maxie Zeus, the Old Maid, CaptainInfinity, and Emerald Archer in their longer form posts. This section will be LOADED with spoilers as delve deeper into the book itself, and will be best reserved you’ve read the book. I’ll probably dump these into separate posts to make it easier to skip out on it if you don’t want spoilers.

There’s really no hard-and-fast definition about what I’ll talk about here. It could be a page layout or panel sequence that I think is particularly good or doesn’t quite work. It could be something thematic, like the planned babble I have about Fables’ appeal coming from to its resonance with the American immigrant experience. It could be a brief discussion about the history behind the comic and why it’s neat or funny or important.

For the moment, anything I review will be a book I spent my own money for, or a book pulled out of my Friendly Neighborhood Public Library. This may mean I'll do things like skip over the latest JMS Spider-Man in favor of some obscure comic from Oni Press, but I do plan on giving a number of classics the treatment. Anybody else here is perfectly free to steal as much or as little of the format if you think I’m not getting to a favorite in time.

In commemoration of the fact that William Moulton Marston was born and died in May, and both Adam Hughes and Mike Deodato have birthdays in May, the first book I’ll review will be Wonder Woman: Gods and Mortals, the first collection of the much-acclaimed George Perez post-Crisis reboot of Wonder Woman.

-- Ed/Ace

 

[Ed Liu]

WONDER WOMAN: GODS AND MORTALS
Written by George Perez, Len Wein, and Greg Potter
Pencils by George Perez
Inks by Bruce Patterson
Colors by Tatjana Wood
Letters by John Constanza

In 1987, after the Crisis on Infinite Earths was finished, the DC Comics Universe was looking for a few good artists and writers to restart their major iconic heroes. Frank Miller was the logical choice to do Batman, since his groundbreaking The Dark Knight Returns graphic novel had just finished with its fourth issue. John Byrne was selected to revamp Superman.

This left Wonder Woman as the last of DC’s major icons. A series of accidents, half-finished proposals, and dumb luck resulted in George Perez getting the assignment to update the Amazon Princess for a new era. DC Comics has finally begun reprinting his run on Wonder Woman, starting with this trade paperback.

STORY SYNOPSIS AND REVIEW
In ancient Greece, the goddesses of the pantheon created the Amazons, a race of women intended to teach humanity the way of Gaea. However, a disastrous encounter with Hercules shames them, and prompts the gods to charge the Amazons with guarding a mysterious portal on the island of Themyscira. There, they remain until an apocalyptic vision from their oracle prompts them to find a champion and save the world from oblivion.

This champion, of course, is Princess Diana, formed from the clay of Themyscira itself, daughter of Queen Hippolyte, and the only child the Amazons have known in their thousands of years of exile. After proving her mettle in the trials, she is granted the ceremonial warrior’s garb of the Amazons and receives her magic lasso as a gift from the gods themselves.

The remainder of the book deals with Diana’s dual challenges of discovering and foiling the plot that threatens the world, while acclimating herself to some 3,000 years of dubious progress. Aiding in the former task is Col. Steve Trevor, transformed from a dreamboat young hotshot pilot into a grizzled and much older Vietnam veteran, visually much older than Wonder Woman. The other classic Wonder Woman supporting character to make the jump is Etta Candy, who has been promoted from a cartoonishly rotund sorority girl into Lt. Etta Candy, Col. Trevor’s capable attaché and assistant without a “Woo Woo!” in sight.

Assisting her transition into Man’s World is Professor Julia Kapatelis, arguably the greatest contribution Perez made to the post-Crisis Wonder Woman. In addition to being an independent and self-sufficient woman (she has a daughter named Vanessa, but Mr. Kapatelis is never seen or even mentioned in this book), her role as a classics professor at Harvard makes her a literal and a figurative bridge to Diana’s classical Greek background.

No superhero is complete without a villain, and Diana’s new arch-villain is Ares, god of destructive war and here presented as a foe of the Amazons from before they were born. Perhaps the greatest benefit to using Ares as Diana’s arch-nemesis is that the issue of motivation is easily answered – as the god of war, with two sons dedicated to fear and terror, Ares’ malevolence is less a question of “why” as it is “What else would you expect?” The gods act as they do because they are personifications of concepts, and thus have no other options available to them. This can make for powerful storytelling, but also allows them to be the greatest plot devices known to writers anywhere.

Unfortunately, it can also result in some rather unsatisfying deus ex machina storytelling, except that these gods don’t bother with the machines. There are many instances where the interference of the gods leads one to question why they need Diana at all. Finally, the ultimate ending to the Ares plot manages to be completely logical and rather oddly unfulfilling. Perhaps these are unfair quibbles – the gods move in mysterious ways, after all.

In his introduction, George Perez notes that he was influenced by the work Walt Simonson did on Thor. Simonson revitalized the flagging title by infusing it with a vast amount of the original Norse mythology. In a similar manner, Perez streamlines the Wonder Woman mythos to hew closely to Greek mythology (rather than the Greek and Roman amalgam used by William Moulton Marston). In so doing (with the assistance of Greg Potter’s plots and Len Wein’s scripts), Perez pulls off the interesting trick of transforming Wonder Woman from a superhero comic book into a fairy-tale, with a princess quite capable of saving herself without the help of a gallant prince. This also makes the sometimes ponderous and overly-expository dialogue seem like less of a fault and more of a deliberate aesthetic choice, an impression that is reinforced by the very modern speech and thought patterns of people like Col. Trevor or Prof. Kapatelis.

No review of a George Perez comic book can be complete without an appropriate amount of effusive praise about his artwork. Wonder Woman lives in two worlds: the mythic and the modern, and any good Wonder Woman artist must be able to do both, sometimes simultaneously, with equal skill. Perez meets this challenge head-on and presents us with some of the definitive Wonder Woman artwork of her sixty-year run in comics. His imagery of Mount Olympus is classic Greek architecture blended with M.C. Escher, subtly reinforcing the point that the gods don’t think or live like we do. In contrast, his Boston is recognizably modern, even when there happens to be a divinely created force of nature rampaging through it.

This collected edition has gotten a digital sprucing up by Heroic Age, and their work is entirely to the benefit of the artwork as a whole. The reproduction is extremely clean, with Perez’s finest linework coming through beautifully and with the colors popping off the page, despite the use of non-glossy paper.

According to interviews, Perez picked up the post-Crisis Wonder Woman despite promising himself that he would never work on a monthly comic again. Modern comic readers owe him a debt of thanks for beautifully refurbishing the third of DC’s “Big Three.”

THE COLLECTION/EXTRAS
DC has done a solid job in packaging this reprint. The paper is the same high-grade newsprint used for their monthly comics and most of their other trade paperbacks. The cover is a glossy cardstock and is perfect bound. The binding is very well done, with neither two-page spread in the book suffering from being excessively chopped.

All of the original covers are included in this collection, including the 2-page wraparound cover to issue #1. DC has removed all the old cover indicia, except for the “Wonder Woman” title itself. George Perez also provided a new Wonder Woman pin-up for the cover and a 2-page introduction, where he recounts the odd path that led him to Wonder Woman and willingly shares the credit for Wonder Woman’s revamp with Greg Potter and Len Wein.

The final extras are a page of Wonder Woman artwork from the History of the DC Universe prestige-format book and several Wonder Woman-related entries from an old issue of “Who’s Who in the DC Universe,” almost all of which are now very out of date.

(Note: the critique will be coming soon...)

 

[Ed Liu]

Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman can be viewed as three different approaches to solve a problem. Superman is fundamentally about the judicious application of colossal force. Every one of his powers and abilities is offensive in nature with the exception of invulnerability. Batman’s approach is analytical, logical, and deductive, aimed at ultimately out-thinking an opponent into defeat. When this fails (or, sometimes, even when it succeeds), Batman can still fall back on his own martial arts prowess and his various gadgets in the utility belt to pulp his opponents.

Wonder Woman is, at heart, a diplomat and a pacifist. The objects most often associated with her are her bracelets, which are used to deflect bullets, and her magic lasso, which subdues opponents and compels them to tell the truth. Both weapons are fundamentally defensive in nature, intending to peacefully subdue an opponent rather than beat him into a pulp. Despite coming from a race of woman warriors, and despite making her debut in warrior’s garb, the only offensive weapon she carries is her tiara. Even then, it is a weapon used of dire last resort.

No wonder so many comic book writers seem to think she’s boring, or say they don’t know what to do with her. Of the three members of DC’s “big 3,” she’s the last one you’d expect to punch someone through a wall to solve a problem. This is also why her depiction in Kingdom Come is as shocking as it is. The defensive bracelets and lasso give way to a blade that can cut atoms and a take-no-prisoners attitude. It also says much about the average comic book reader that this is the only Wonder Woman many readers like – the one who’s less interested in peace as she is in terminating with extreme prejudice.

One aspect to Perez’s work that is worth examining more closely is the denouement in her showdown with Ares. This moment, more than any other in the book, demonstrates that her magic lasso is the most powerful weapon she has at her disposal. It’s Truth in malleable form, compelling anybody entangled in it to speak and to see the truth, even the gods themselves. Diana uses it to show Ares the consequences of his actions: a nuclear wasteland with no worshippers left to honor him, leading ultimately to his crumbling away to dust. This is the diplomat’s way of defeating an opponent: compel them to recognize that continuing on their present path will ultimately lead them to ruin.

As interesting as this moment is, however, it is somewhat undermined by what follows. With a wave of his hand, Ares disperses the nuclear showdown and then sets Diana on her mission: “There is a difference between destruction and oblivion…and it falls to you to teach it to man…to save man from himself.”

It’s not the first time a comic book super-villain has shown a symbiotic relationship with the hero. Alan Moore explored the same territory between Batman and the Joker in The Killing Joke, and it seems that the trigger to create super-villains is the creation of super-heroes. In this case, though, the relationship doesn’t hold up to close scrutiny. Ares may have sent Diana to teach man the difference between destruction and oblivion, but the distinction between the two will be virtually lost on Diana. Her true mission is to end both, and that is ultimately the path one feels she will take from Ares’ command, if she even heeds it at all. This doesn’t set up as much of a symbiotic relationship as one where Ares has sown the seeds of his own defeat.

Maybe this isn’t as much of a weakness in the story as one would think. Sowing the seeds of your own defeat is a pretty common plot element in Greek mythology. Uranus is told that his children will overthrow him, just as he overthrew his parents. One would think a course of celibacy would be more prudent, but instead he opts to eat his kids as they are born. Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter for favorable winds to get to the Trojan War, only to fall to the murderous impulses of his own wife, driven mad from grief over her lost daughter. The problem here is that Ares’ action doesn’t seem to hit those mythical high notes. It seems more like a way to get him offstage quickly without eliminating him as a threat.

In any event, this is the one hiccup in an otherwise superb work in the superhero comic book genre. As mentioned before, Perez took Wonder Woman and elevated her to the realm of storybook fairy tale, and perhaps even the mythologies that form her own foundation. I believe people have a “mythical tuning fork” buried somewhere deep in our heads that resonates in response to a powerful story, granting it import far beyond what its individual elements would suggest. I think the best comic book superheroes can hit that tuning fork – from Spider-Man’s “With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility” origin story, to the iconic image of a young Bruce Wayne kneeling before his fallen parents in the harsh glare of a street light. Perez taps into that strongly for this take on the Amazing Amazon, and the result adds up to far more than the sum of its parts.

NEXT REVIEW: Continuing in the vein of the post-Crisis origin stories (and to commemorate the fact that Action Comics #1 debuted in June 1938): Superman: The Man of Steel by John Byrne