Wonder Woman: Guts (volume 2) review

Seeing the reaction to Wonder Woman has been nearly as entertaining as reading the comic itself. It appears to be a very divisive title; readers either love it or hate it. It makes sense when you consider what the creative team is doing. In essence, they’re rewriting the character’s past and her entire mythos along with it. I don’t think the problem is that he’s re-writing the character. It can be very interesting when a character is rewritten but of course, it can also end in a poor storytelling resulting in a comic that isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. Thankfully, this series is well worth the paper, and even a little more but Wonder Woman has its faults. The biggest flaw of this comic is its depiction of Wonder Woman.

I’m unsatisfied with this version of Wonder Woman because she’s basically just muscle. She’s showed as a very skilled fighter in many issues but other than that, her character is a little hollow. It might be surprising to make such a comment about a character who’s been around since 1941, but how much of the old Wonder Woman has stayed the same? Azzarello is really changing some fundamental elements of who she is as character. For all intents and purposes, unless I’ve seen it in the pages of the New 52 series, any previous characterization of Wonder Woman do not apply to this particular take on the character. Most of what we’ve seen so far is her being manipulated by her “new” family and kicking some ass.

For the first 12 issues, Wonder Woman is reactionary. Worse, she’s characterized as someone who thinks with her fists, not with her head. Diana (Wonder Woman’s name) is constantly learning about secrets that have been hidden from her for her entire life. She’s being led around blindly by her god siblings and some of them are even using her as a means to an end in their own affairs. She appears to be making decisions on her own, but really she’s out of her depths and that’s why she’s unable to successfully protect Zola. Her talent is that she’s physically strong and good at combat. Some of her siblings share her impressive physical strength (such as Apollo and Artemis) but they all have a more cunning mind than her and they use it to her advantage.

It can be frustrating to read these issues because it’s very difficult to believe that her heritage has been kept a secret for so many years. It’s also surprising that Diana is routinely caught off guard by elements of Greek mythology. Even if she wasn’t aware of her status as a bastard child of Zeus, the Amazons of Themyscira were pretty well steeped in that same mythology.  If she knew anything about the gods of Olympus, she would have acted more defensively around them. She should know that she should be mistrusting of her new family because all they do is bicker and fight amongst each other. You would think that she would expect Hades to bargain unfairly and double cross her. But really, how can she? Wonder Woman is just Amazonian muscle, right? I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that it’s the dumbing-down of the character that has long-time fans of Wonder Woman annoyed with the New 52 series.

The hook for me is the extended cast. What are their motivations? How will the story play out and ultimately, who will get what they want and who will have to pay the price for it? After 12 issues there are patterns developing and I’m starting to question why people trust who they trust. A lot of the gods so far have made remarks implying that Hermes frequently tells lies. As a messenger, he doesn’t appear to be very good at relaying messages correctly – or at least without omissions or modifications. This inability to tell the truth, and the comments made about it, don’t appear to register with Wonder Woman. Once again, Diana is blind to something, something even I’ve been able to puzzle together: don’t trust Hermes. Really though, the important thing is that even if Hermes doesn’t do anything to confirm the mistrust his family has in him, I haven’t been trusting him blindly. My guards are up and that’s a sign of good storytelling. The creators have me engaged and interested in what’s going on in the pages of Wonder Woman. The comic isn’t perfect, it has its share of faults, but it has my attention and that’s something few comics in DC’s New 52 can boast.

Another reason the comic has my attention is the crisp art of Cliff Chiang. I previously mentioned that I like his designs for the gods and his redesign of Wonder Woman’s costume is pretty great. It’s familiar yet fresh but most importantly of all, it looks good. What really works for me though is the colouring by Matthew Wilson. It adds a lot to the consistent look of the art, even on the issues where Tony Akins takes over the pencilling duties. It’s also interesting to see how he uses a palette of colours that really pop on the page. It’s almost a throwback to the comics of decades ago where bright colours where the norm. Wilson regularly incorporates more traditionally feminine colours, such as purples and pinks, into the palette of specific scenes. The purples, especially, work really well. It suits a title in which the main character is a woman but Wilson isn’t overbearing with it. His choices of colours work well with the different scenes and he’s rather good at capturing the mood and the tone in the artwork by Chiang and Akins. The colours manage to be bright without sacrificing the more serious tones necessary for some scenes. I don’t recall noticing his work on another series but I’ll be looking out for him name from now on because I’m rather impressed with his work on Wonder Woman.

The end of the second volume of Wonder Woman feels like the end of the first chapter of the book. There is a sense that a certain culmination point has been reached and the last page teases the reader by showing us a bit of what’s to come. Wonder Woman’s creative team is building towards something and though it feels like that certain something is still several issues away (perhaps even the series climax), the ride so far has been very enjoyable if a little bumpy at times. It’s not just Wilson’s colouring that has my attention, but also everything else about this comic. After an entire year’s worth of issues, it remains one of the New 52’s more interesting and engaging series. 

Wonder Woman: Blood (volume 1) review

It’s been interesting to reflect on how my comic book reading habits have changed since I stopped collection comics in single issue format. There’s certainly some good along with the bad but mostly, I think it’s been a positive change. Some of the bad includes how I fell out of tune with recent comics. I’m not longer following the ups and downs of comic publishing on a monthly, or even weekly, basis. On the other hand, one of the positives has been that I spend less time chasing after and reading new comics and I’m able to focus more on acquiring and reading good (or at least interesting) comics, whether they’re new or old. For some readers this might sound a little silly. Why couldn’t I do both? Well when you consider that I’m an adult working in the modern world and I have responsibility and interests outside of comics, keeping up with monthly titles and having the opportunity to discover older and worthwhile works is a difficult thing for a person to do. The key thing to keep in mind though is that comics is but one of my interests. You just have to look at the archives of Shared Universe Reviews to see that I like reading novels, too and even though I don’t write a lot about movies, I really enjoy watching them.  

Before I quite the world of monthly comics, there were a few titles that I really enjoyed but I had to drop them when I changed my reading habits. I say “I had to” because cutting myself loose was a decision I made at the same time I moved to a different city. There were some series that I was leaving behind knowing I would return to them someday, mostly because I enjoyed them so much. Wonder Woman by Brian Azzarello, Cliff Chiang, and Tony Akins (SPELLING FOR ALL) is one of the series. I’m now trade waiting for this series and now that the third trade paperback volume has been released, I thought it’d be a good time to revisit the series.

In the very first issue, heck the first few pages, this latest Wonder Woman reboot marks itself as a different take on the character. Characters from Greek mythology have long been a part of Wonder Woman’s stories but here they take on a new look and feel. Even Diana’s portrayal is influenced by how Azzarello integrates the Greek gods into the story. He pushes that angle of the story much farther than any incarnation of the character I’ve read before. It immediately makes this comic worth checking out, not necessarily because it’s different but because the differences that Azzarello weaves into Wonder Woman make it an intriguing story.

Overall, these first six issues are about family and an individual’s identity within that particular social construct. It’s made more complex (or complicated, take your pick) by the fact that most of these characters are gods or demi-gods. The comic begins shortly after a young woman, Zola, has slept with Zeus. She is attacked by a couple of centaurs and after being rescued by Wonder Woman and Hermes, she finds out that she’s pregnant. The centaurs that attacked her where sent by Hera, Zeus’s wife and queen of Olympus. Angered by her husband’s latest infidelity she’s determined to put an end to the pregnancy before the child is ever born, even if it means killing Zola. Wonder Woman is determined to protect the child and in doing so she gets pulled into the family drama of the gods, learning disturbing secrets along the way. Meanwhile, Zeus has disappeared. His unexplained absence has put in motion some familial politics and some of his children vie for the throne of their father.

One of the interesting things about this latest Wonder Woman series is how it compares to previous versions of the character. It’s very interesting but also very different from the Wonder Woman comics I’ve read before. Azzarello is taking advantage of the New 52 reboot of the DC Universe to create a story that is unencumbered by continuity and previous incarnations of the character. I agree with his decision to do so, especially because it’s a choice that seems encouraged by DC’s line wide relaunch. I’m also the kind of fan that doesn’t get too upset when continuity changes take place. Superhero comics books are part of a shared universe and even if creators and editors worked together to maintain consistency throughout years of publishing, it would be impossible to do for a character as old as Wonder Woman in a shared universe as old and as complicated as DC Universe pre (and even post) New 52. Even in the relaunched series, of which several are coming up on their third year anniversaries, there have been some pretty serious inconsistencies between series that use the same characters. Wonder Woman is one of those characters, where how she’s portrayed in her solo title doesn’t match up with her appearance in other books, like say Justice League. Even with the books where continuity seems to matter it’s a mess so why not choose to ignore it for the most part and focus on telling an interesting story? I say kudos to the creators of the New 54 Wonder Woman for making a smart storytelling decision.

Really the best thing about this book for me is how Azzarello embraces the aspects of Wonder Woman’s previous mythology and its reliance on Greek myths. Instead of having Greek mythology as part of Wonder Woman’s mythology, he makes her a part of theirs. It’s a nice perspective and it’ll likely provide a lot of potential for future stories. For now the fun is limited to meeting members of the pantheon, such as Hermes, Apollo, Poseidon, Hera, Hades and a few others. I also appreciate this kind of approach because it doesn’t feel like he’s trying to shoehorn the Greek gods into a comic book story, instead he’s allowing this far older and in my (and I would imagine most everybody’s) opinion, better mythology, to raise Wonder Woman’s story to a new level. It’s also surprising just how familiar yet mysterious the gods can be in these first few issues. Chiang has done some really interesting characters designs and obviously some are better than others. My favourite is probably Hermes but I did get a kick out of seeing Ares being based on Azzarello himself. I enjoyed this issues a bit more the second time around but the constant, and often not all that clever, wordplay is tedious. I think it bothers because most of it is part of the characters dialogue and it sounds really awful. Thankfully the sub-par dialogue doesn’t take too much away from the rest of the comic. Without any doubt, Wonder Woman was, and is, one of my favourite titles from the New 52.