Tag Archives: Diana

Jul 18 2013

Wonder Woman 22

wonder woman 22Today, Taylor and Scott are discussing Wonder Woman 22, originally released July 17th, 2013.

Taylor: Brian Azzarello certainly has a way of making us do a double take while reading Wonder Woman. The man has a talent for bending his plots in unlikely directions while also making us second guess everyone’s motivations with almost every new issue. It’s likely that when Wonder Woman was rebooted, some were similarly thrown for a loop when Azzarello depicted the gods as being petty, mean, and downright hostile to just about everyone but themselves. While anyone who has ever read a Greek myth recognizes the dickish mentality of the Greek pantheon, it seems likely that others might have been surprised. The popular conception of heaven and god(s) in today’s culture takes a much more touchy-feely approach with our deities. Instead of being something to be feared, we like to think of deities as being righteous, compassionate, and selfless. Azzarello seems to understand how these two forces are at odds and in issue 22 of Wonder Woman he asks us to compare the Greek gods with their New God alternates. The question is, are they the same or are they different?

Continue reading →

May 16 2013

Wonder Woman 20

wonder woman 20

Today, Drew and Scott are discussing Wonder Woman 20, originally released May 15th, 2013.

I said, war, huh
Good God, y’all
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it again

— Edwin Starr

Drew: War is ugly. There’s death, there’s destruction, there’s misery, but I think the ugliest thing about war is that we’ll never be free of it — it’s in our nature. Things quickly escalate from the desire to protect the people and things we care about, to a “the best defense is a good offense” mentality, to tit-for-tat reciprocity. It’s all too easy to see how vast groups of people — motivated only to do what is right for their loved ones — could be compelled to all-out war. In his Wonder Woman run, Brian Azzarello has traced this trajectory with grim fascination, simmering the tension along as the situation slowly escalates. This month finds that tension boiling over with three factions engaged in war — with the added complication that War itself is also a character.  Continue reading →

Apr 18 2013

Wonder Woman 19

Alternating Currents: Wonder Woman 19, Drew and Scott

Today, Drew and Scott are discussing Wonder Woman 19, originally released April 17th, 2013.

Drew: Wonder Woman 18 ended on an atypically happy note — Zola was reunited with her baby, Diana and Ares seemed to have patched things up, Hera had found a bottle of wine — but the end of those good times is lurking around every corner. Unfortunately, Diana and friends may be caught unawares, mistaking their recent battles for the coming war. Indeed, when wagering on the outcome of that war, Poseidon discounts Diana, suggesting that he “always bet[s] against a player who doesn’t know they’re in the game.” Poseidon has made the mistake of underestimating Diana before, but he may have a point: while her adversaries are arming themselves, Diana seems to be distracted by more basic team maintenance. Continue reading →

Mar 21 2013

Wonder Woman 18

Alternating Currents: Wonder Woman 18, Drew and Scott

Today, Drew and Scott are discussing Wonder Woman 18, originally released March 20th, 2013.

Drew: Wonder Woman is a hard title to pin down, which makes sense, given that its hero is equally slippery. Detractors might cite Diana’s unknowability as weak characterization, but as we saw in issue 9, that distance may be the sharpest weapon in writer Brian Azzarello’s arsenal. Azzarello seems to relish ambiguity, focusing on heroes that are anything but predictable. Issue 18 multiplies this effect, capitalizing on his large cast of equally oblique characters to produce a staggering parade of surprises.

Continue reading →

Feb 26 2013

Batwoman 17

batwoman 17

Today, Patrick and guest-writer Suzanne are discussing Batwoman 17, originally released February 20th, 2013.

Patrick: We’re posting this two days after the Academy Awards, but I’m writing this at 9:25PM, Pacific Standard Time, the Thursday before the ceremony. I’m being so specific because I want to make a prediction: Lincoln will not win Best Picture (editors note: called it!). For everything Lincoln does well, it does not earn the sentiment expressed in its many soaring speeches. Endings are so naturally powerful, and it’s a shame how frequently Spielberg employs John Williams’ moving score and the impassioned performances of some of the best living Hollywood actors to approximate the feeling of catharsis. It’s a shortcut, it’s phony, and it stinks. J.H. Williams III and Hayden Blackman employ no such tricks as they wrap things up in Batwoman 17 and every single moving moment — and there are many — is earned.

Continue reading →

Feb 25 2013

Wonder Woman 17

wonder woman 17

Today, Scott and Taylor are discussing Wonder Woman 16, originally released February 20th, 2013.

Scott: Early on in Wonder Woman 17, Lennox calls Diana out for the ever-expanding “motley crew” she surrounds herself with. It’s a moment of self-awareness on the part of Brian Azzarello, who gets a lot of attention for his habit of constantly incorporating new characters into the Wonder Woman universe. It’s something that can be off-putting for readers who are not immersed in the universe, and it’s a daring move in a medium that published monthly. I’m sure some casual readers flipped through this issue and found it thoroughly confusing and, save for the giant shark attack, kind of boring. But for readers who have kept up with the series, this issue did not have a dull moment.

Continue reading →

Jan 28 2013

Wonder Woman 16

wonder woman 16

Today, Shelby and guest writer James D’Amato are discussing Wonder Woman 16, originally released January 23rd, 2012.

Shelby: Gods, gods everywhere. Brian Azzarello does not take a “less is more” approach when it comes to the pantheon; we’ve got old gods, older gods, demigods, new gods, and non-gods. Not to mention ice giants and cyborg women. If it all sounds a little confusing, well, it is; Azzarello is juggling a lot of chainsaws with Wonder Woman. On top of it all, we’ve still got the $64,000 question that everyone seems to have forgotten about: where is Zeus?
Continue reading →

Jan 24 2013

Batwoman 16

Today, Drew and Jack are discussing Batwoman 16, originally released January 23rd, 2013.

Drew: The notion that myths gain their power from our belief in them has been a primary focus of Batwoman in the New 52. It’s a theme that has come up explicitly in the text — as Maro conjures the myths that haunt our dreams, and as Kate seeks out the myths that inspire us to greatness — as well as implicitly in our analyses. Indeed, we’ve made the case that comics are modern mythology so often, I’d forgotten what “myth” might mean besides “story.” It’s parsing that very detail that makes Batwoman 16 such a pleasure to read, as J.H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman remind us of the pleasures of form afforded to modern storytelling. Continue reading →

Sep 25 2012

Wonder Woman 0

Alternating Currents: Wonder Woman 0, Drew and TaylorToday, Drew and (guest writer) Taylor Anderson are discussing Wonder Woman 0, originally released September 19th, 2012. Wonder Woman 0 is part of the line-wide Zero Month.

Drew: There’s a lot we take for granted in art. We accept the two-dimensionality of the canvas or the artificiality of a omniscient narrator as givens. It often takes an artist commenting on the arbitrariness of those boundaries for us to notice them at all, but that in itself has become almost expected. In comics, those expectations manifest in creative layouts and narrative devices, but it’s rarer that a creative team might challenge the arbitrariness of their tone. In Wonder Woman 0, writer Brian Azzarello and artist Cliff Chaing set out to do just that, delivering a brilliant deconstruction of modern comics via an apparent deconstruction of the Silver Age. Continue reading →

Aug 17 2012

Wonder Woman 12

Today, Patrick and Peter are discussing Wonder Woman 12, originally released August 15th, 2012.

Patrick: One of the biggest strengths of Brain Azzarello’s Wonder Woman is the richness of its details. The gods are reinvented for comics and the resultant designs are full of specifics that delight by their own virtue. It’s not uncommon in this series to meet a new character or a new creature just because it’s going to be really really really cool. I took Demeter’s introduction last month to be one of those knock-me-down detail-fests that I love so much, but that was shortsighted of me. In any other narrative, introducing a character at this stage in the game would automatically foreshadow that character’s involvement in the conclusion of the story. It turns out that was the case here, but I was too suckered by the writing to see the authorial gears grinding away behind it. That’s awesome.

Continue reading →