Things you should be reading – Wonder Woman

I started reading Wonder Woman with #600.  I thought the “Odyssey” storyline would be interesting, and a good place to jump on.  We can discuss the merits of that decision another time.  When the New 52 started, I saw that Brian Azzarello was writing it, and decided to give it a chance.  I had enjoyed Superman “For Tomorrow” and Batman “Broken City.”  And now, here we are 20 issues in (let’s not forget the #0 issue), and this title is one of my favorite monthly titles.*

From the beginning, Wonder Woman has been protecting a lady named Zola, who was pregnant with a child of Zeus.  Zola needed protecting because of a prophecy that said a child of Zeus would take the throne of Olympus.  (Some believe the prophecy says “last” child.)  So, all manner of Greek gods and goddesses have gone after the child.  All for their own selfish reasons, of course.  For instance, Hera isn’t happy about Zeus having a bastard child, so she just wants to kill.  Others want to see it’s death, because they see the child as someone that may get in the way of them taking over throne.  Or they believe that if they control the child, then they will control Zeus.  So, needless to say, there is a lot of betrayal and backstabbing going amongst all of the characters.

And it is quite a colorful set of characters.  Seeing Cliff Chiang’s designs for the mythological characters is one of the joys of the book.  Each appearance is unique, and well suited to their particular duties as a deity.  I’m not going to post any picture, because honestly, that would be a lot of work.  Just Google it.  Or Bing it, if you prefer.

Unfortunately, only a little over 49,000 people are buying the monthly title.  Sure, that puts it somewhere in the 30s in the rankings, but that number is far too low for a quality book like this.  (Hawkeye is lower,  but that’s a plea for another day.)

For your enjoyment, here’s a page from the most recent issue.  Not drawn by Cliff Chiang, but someone that is trying to mimic his style.  Oh, and that is Orion with her, who’s been a pain since appearing a few issues ago.

*Those other titles include Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Batman, Fables, and Hawkeye.

Highlighting something good

All too often, we focus on the things that upset us.  It’s just often easier to write about things that upset us, rather than things we enjoy.  It’s also usually more entertaining to read a critique, rather than praise.  That’s just the way things are.  But every now and then, something comes along that pleases me so much, that I feel the need to highlight it.  Today, that thing is J. H. Williams III’s art in Batwoman #14.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I always enjoy his work, but this issue stood out for me.  What was unusual about this issue is that it had 20 uninterrupted pages of story.  And, it had to go completely uninterrupted, because with the exception of pages 1 and 20, everything else was a double page spread.  To me, the remarkable thing about this is that he is able to do this at all.  It surprises me that DC would be fine with putting all of the advertisements at the end of the issue.  Because honestly, who actually looked through the ads at the end of the issue?  I didn’t.

Looking back through this issue, all of it didn’t need to be double page spreads, either.  Sure, they look prettier with the panels contained within the larger image, but it would not be difficult to keep them as single pages.

After the break are a couple examples of these two-page spreads.  The first is one in which there really isn’t much of a need for the two page format, and could probably have been done in single pages.  The second image is one that I think uses the two page format really well. 

Weekly Readings

Welcome to this week’s edition of “Weekly Readings.”  This week includes:

• Team 7 #0, in which the team is gathered as part of the Majestic project.
• Justice League #0, in which Billy Batson receives the power of Shazam.
• Wonder Woman #0, in which Wonder Woman is trained by War.
• Nightwing #0, in which Dick Grayson becomes Robin.
• Fables #121, in which we learn if Dare’s actions were successful.
• Batwoman #0, in which we learn of the training that Kate Kane went through.

As always, spoilers are below the break. 

300 Word Rant – Missed opportunites with relaunches`

Let me just say that, generally, I don’t mind relaunches, reboots, retcons, etc.  It may be because I don’t have a good mind for continuity anyways, so I don’t exactly remember what they’re getting rid of and replacing.  So when things like the New 52 or Marvel Now happen, I don’t really mind.  I may poke fun at the marketing and hype behind it, but really, I don’t care.  You keep me entertained with your stories, and I will continue to give you my money.  But there is one thing about relaunches/reboots/alternate timelines that bugs the hell out of me, and that is missed opportunities.

For the best example I have, let me take you back many years.  I read friends’ copies of Ultimate Spider-man up until they stopped getting it.  Somewhere in the 120s, I think.  And the book entertained me, but there’s something that kept bugging me about it.  There was nothing that was really new about the book.  Sure, it claimed to have it’s own continuity, but it really didn’t.  It was still tied greatly to the Marvel-616 universe.  With the Ultimate line, we simply go a different version of characters and stories that had happened before.  That is until Spider-man started dating Kitty Pryde.

You have no idea how happy this made me.  Happier than a person should be about a fictional relationship between fictional characters.  It wasn’t just that Spider-man was specifically dating Kitty Pryde, it was that he/Peter Parker wasn’t dating Mary Jane.  I don’t have any problems with Mary Jane, but you can already find where that’s been done before.  This is a different universe that you are creating.  You don’t have to include Mary Jane in the damn thing, because you can do whatever the hell you want to.  Unfortunately, that didn’t last long.

And yes, the Superman/Wonder Woman kiss is what brought this up.  I am not sad that we may not have a Superman/Lois Lane relationship because if I want that, I can go read back issues.

Superhero Olympics: Rowing

Today’s event is Rowing.  Specifically, the Women’s Quad Sculls.  That’s just a technical way of saying “4-person.”  These competitors were chosen not because they specifically have anything to do with rowing, but because their power makes them prime candidates to row.  Today’s competitors are:

Wonder Woman, Power Girl, Big Barda, Knockout

vs.

Ms. Marvel, Rogue (assume power absorption), She-Hulk, Monet St. Croix

A fighting game for the New 52

I’m not normally the type of person to post trailers for movies or games, but I came across this trailer on the blog Joystiq for the game Injustice:  Gods Among Us, and just had to post it.

To me, it looks ridiculous.  The Flash’s armor highlights the worst of the New 52 redesigns.  On the comic page, I haven’t really minded it being armor, because all it has added are a few lines for seems, but here, it’s a bit over accentuated.  And oh yeah, Wonder Woman is wearing pants.  It looks kinda like what was supposed to be in the Wonder Woman TV show.  Guess the developers were planning on that show still being around.  Or have been around to begin with.

I’m not much of a fighting game fan, but the thought of having two different classes of fighter, power and gadget, sounds somewhat interesting.  These classes determine how the character interacts with the environment.

Comic Book Movie Review – Justice League: Doom

Justice League:  Doom is the latest DC Animated release.  The story is loosely based on the Mark Waid written story “Tower of Babel,” that appeared in JLA #43-46.  This is also the last project that Dwayne McDuffie worked on before his untimely death last February.  Overall, the best thing about this movie is that it mostly reunited the voice cast from the Justice League cartoon.  Only mostly because Hal Jordan is the Green Lantern that is used instead of John Stewart, or Kyle Rayner, who was used in the comic.  That’s not to say that the story is bad, but I do have some issues with it, which I will get into after the break.  There are spoilers.

Justice League:  Doom

Directed by  Lauren Montgomery

Written by Dwayne McDuffie

Starring
Kevin Conroy as Batman
Tim Daly as Superman
Susan Eisenberg as Wonder Woman
Nathan Fillion as Green Lantern
Carl Lumbly as Martian Manhunter
Michael Rosenbaum as The Flash
Phil Morris as Vandal Savage

A comic book bust (har har)

Let’s talk about Power Girl’s boobs.

Yes, fine, that was a statement that was designed specifically for a search hit (from those who have yet to realize that in the same information superhighway they are using to search for comic breasts, there are far more pictures of actual breasts), but our topic today does regard Power Girl and her ample bosom.

Co-writer J.R. pointed out to me a short while ago that in his mysterious and confusing corner of comicdom known as the “DC Universe” Power Girl has recently gotten a wardrobe change and received the fanboy huff that goes with it.

Perhaps the casual comic fan might not know that much about Power Girl, like that she’s the Supergirl of an alternate Earth (it was Earth-2 before the relaunch, I don’t know what it is now) and sort of a cousin to Superman…I think.  That may because Power Girl always sat in the middle of the sort-of famous DC heroes like Green Arrow, the Kyle Rayner GL, and Red Tornado.  More than likely, the most people should know about her is that she was the heroine with the giant rack…even in the comic book world of gravity-defying breast enormities.

Seen here: breasts.

So what’s the big deal about a wardrobe change for Power Girl?  It’s not that they’ve changed anything about her.  It’s not really even that it seems to look strangely similar to best-left-forgotten Image hero Supreme.  No, it’s that they’ve gone and taken away the questionable cleavage flap that was the signature feature of the character.

Now you can't tell if she even has breasts.

You might tell by this point that I’m not really minding the wardrobe change.  It’s not like Power Girl was that big of a character.  Sure, the costume has replaced cheesecake with generic, but it’s not even the worst thing she’s ever worn.

Head held in shame for good reason.

So what’s the hubub all about?  Let’s talk about it.

Crossover Madness

This month’s featured crossover is Superman:  Sacrifice.  I’ve selected this crossover because it is a good example of how poor execution can derail what would have otherwise been a well written story. While the collected trade has 8 issues in total, we’ll be dealing with the main four issues that were initially titled “Sacrifice.”  The other four issues in the collection deal with a little setup, but mostly reaction to the “Sacrifice” story.

Sacrifice

Issues: Superman #219, Action Comics #829, Adventures of Superman # 642, Wonder Woman #219

Writers:  Greg Rucka, Mark Verheiden, Gail Simone

Always mindful of spoilers, the summary and review are after the break. 

The Wonder Woman Experiment

Before Wonder Woman #600, I had never considered reading or buying a Wonder Woman comic. Sure, one may have slipped into a crossover, but reading the ongoing itself never once crossed my mind. Wonder Woman was never a character that was interesting to me. Every writer I had read, with the possible exception of Mark Waid and Alex Ross on Kingdom Come, wrote the character far more motherly than I would ever like to read.

However, when DC announced the dramatic costume change and revamping of the character, something made me want to check it out.  Maybe it was that it was going to be a fresh start for the character, or maybe it was because there was some much backlash to it from Internet fans.  I don’t know.  Either way, at issue #600, I started buying it, and have lasted longer than Straczynski did writing it.  In all fairness, it still is his story, but now Phil Hester is scripting it.

In a nutshell, I’ve enjoyed the book.  I like the younger take on Wonder Woman.  We still have the Amazon warrior princess aspect, but now we’ve lost the acting like your grandmother aspect.  Sure, the story itself has been up and down, but not so much to distract from the establishing of just who this character is.  Also, not sure if it was the story content or not, I like Hester’s dialogue better than Strazynski’s.

Although, I’ve said this before and still think it, I do believe that this story was originally intended to be an Earth One story.  Back in August, DC released Superman:  Earth One, which was written by Stracynski.  I remember when DC initially announced that book, they also announced a Batman:  Earth One book.  I get the feeling that this Wonder Woman story was a pitch for a Wonder Woman:  Earth One story.  The change in the character’s background and attempt to update her image would line up with the Earth One stories.  It also seems like the scenes in which there is a reference to the old character are thrown in, and not really important to what’s going on.  Not yet anyways.

With all this said, Wonder Woman hasn’t quite gotten on my pull list yet.  When I started, I did so with the understanding that with the first issue that bored me would be the last issue I bought.  With that as a starting point, it has at least earned the benefit of the doubt on an issue or two.  Maybe in a couple issues it will gain my confidence enough to put it on my pull list.