World Famous Comics: Wonder Woman: Who is Wonder Woman?
Wonder Woman: Who is Wonder Woman?
By: Allan Heinberg Publisher: DC Comics Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: DC Comics Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 144 Publication Date: March 05, 2008 Release Date: January 07, 2008
Product Description: In this volume from acclaimed writer Allan Heinberg (The OC) , the Amazon warrior Diana has gone missing, leaving Donna Troy to take up the mantle of Wonder Woman! When Diana returns, she goes under her former alias Diana Prince, acting as a secret agent and member of the Department of Metahuman Affairs. Her first assignment is to save Donna Troybut will she re-take the role of Wonder Woman?
Docks review A good book that kept me interested. More and more comics books have grown darker and more realistic. It is nice to see some background and connecting data that explains that storyline more fully.
DC...Why Don't You Just Shoot Her In The Head And Get It Over With? DC....Are you TRYING TO DESTROY WONDER WOMAN? Please DC..........Don't you get it? Don't you read the reviews? First, Lose the Diana Prince thing. We DON'T LIKE IT! NO ONE LIKES IT! Please Bring back Diana of Themyscira! It's her we love. It's her we want to read about! This secret identy thing does not work for her anymore. Losing the secret identity was the best change of Diana since the title was re-worked in the 1980's. WE are the readers! Change it...Please.
And these stories are just crap. How can you publish such awful crap? ARE YOU TRYING TO DESTROY WONDER WOMAN??? It sure seems like it! The stories are awful. It would be more merciful to just shoot her in the head and get it over with. DC, Are you TRYING TO KILL OFF WONDER WOMAN? DC Don't you get it? Don't you read the reviews? DC,We DON'T LIKE IT! NO ONE LIKES IT! Please Bring back Diana of Themyscira!" And Please get some decent writers and artists.
Hitting the ground running In an interesting start, Jodi Picoult was called into write the restart of Wonder Woman. Ms. Picoult is quite a novelist and I wondered how the transition would work in a different medium (she expresses similar musings in her letter on the first page). As it turns out, not too bad. I thoroughly enjoyed this start to Wonder Woman as the author explores Wonder Woman's uncertainty as to who she is (thus the title). I find it as a similar parrallel to Peter David's Supergirl/Linda Danvers story line, which I liked as well. Terry Dodson's art is crisp and clean. The expressions he gives his characters are great. I feel like he draws the line at how much sex (you know what I mean *cough* Witchblade *cough* ;) he puts into each image. Nemesis (a character you will meet and like) is just as attractive as Wonder Woman/Diana, so at least Dodson's fair for both reader genders.
Picoult makes the characters (I won't list them here and spoil it for you) experience real emotions, from teen angst, to anger, to fear and all other manner of more complex emotions. There's a little bit of feminism and sexism in how Wonder Woman is perceived and how she responds both as herself and as Diana.
I think its a great start to something beautiful...make that Wonderful.
Sorry, couldn't resist. ;) Buy it used and enjoy.
Lynda Carter must be spinning with joy This is one of the best comic collections I have seen in a good while. The artwork is fantastic, and the story is more that decent. This covers the return of Wonder Woman after her one year disappearance following the events of Infinite Crisis. It includes Donna Troy (who is unhappily filling in as Wonder Woman), Wonder Girl and Nemesis. This explains how Batman helps WW start out a new identity working as Diana Prince of a new Metahuman relations government organization. The story moved at a smooth and fast pace, and worked in appearances by most of the major players of the DC Universe. It is one of the best revamps of a characters 'new origins' that I have ever seen. Not to be a spoiler, but the manner that WW gains a larger seperation between her Wonder Woman persona and her Diana Prince persona is one of the most original and innovative ideas DC has come up with in years. Definitely a 5 star collection. I hope they keep up the great stories. Especially as I have been less that thrilled with how DC has handled more recent Superman collections.
Epic fail. Allan Heinberg exploded onto the comics scene with his brilliant "Young Avengers" series for Marvel, one of my favourite recent comics projects...and then it slowed to a crawl, before vanishing for years with no sign of return; nevertheless, DC tapped him to handle the relaunch of "Wonder Woman" following "Infinite Crisis". I was hopeful, initially, given the high quality of his "Young Avengers", but the result was less than satisfactory.
At the end of "Infinite Crisis", Diana of Themyscira's status quo was not in an inspiring place. Geoff Johns (a friend of Heinberg's, a factor which doubtless influenced the reboot negatively), the author, believed very strongly that the version of Wonder Woman created by George Perez in 1987 was seriously flawed by her lack of a secret identity and because her purpose was to teach Amazon philosophy to the rest of the world, rather than to be shown how wrong her whole culture was an adopt American culture (said Amazon culture is blatantly misconstrued in many ways as well). Not a particularly inspiring place for a reboot to start, but Heinberg takes this concept and runs with it. Moreover, as Heinberg himself has said, his primary interest in Wonder Woman comes from the camp 70s Lynda Carter TV show, not from any of the comics produced with the character in the last 20 years, and so he sets out to remake George Perez's wonderful reboot with a massive nostalgia injection (dispiritingly, this is DC Comics' answer to a lot of things these days). In short succession, we get:
- Secret Agent Diana Prince as a secret identity, complete with campy spin transformation. - A heavily reimagined Nemesis as a sexist, arrogant love interest (if you want to bring back pre-Crisis Steve Trevor, which I would strongly discourage, just bring back Steve Trevor). - Wonder Woman and "Diana Prince" actually being different bodies, along with it the idea that Wonder Woman literally doesn't bleed. - The idea that up until this point, Wonder Woman has thought of herself as not being anything more than a golem brought to life, which is completely wrong.
Finally, and, for fans of the character as she existed from 1987 to 2006, most gallingly:
- Diana's 'answer' the question 'Who is Wonder Woman?' concludes that she was originally sent by gods to preach to mortals, "but she learned to be human instead", and protected mortals from gods; this is, quite frankly, a monstrous abortion hackjob on George Perez's story, where the representative of an enlightened culture was sent by the benevolent Pantheon to prevent the rogue War God Ares from destroying the world. By the end of the story, Diana has embraced the idea that she has nothing to offer the world other than punching people, and that her whole culture is wrongheaded; how wonderful. Of course, looking back, the worst ("Amazons Attack") was yet to come.
Quite apart from the broader issues with Heinberg's relaunch approach, the story is not fitting the character's stature. She had a whole year to take a vacation and work out her issues, but, based on Heinberg's story, that whole year accomplished absolutely nothing; for a character known for intelligence and decisiveness, this is nothing less than an insult. Also insulting is her general portrayal here, as well as those of supporting cast members like Donna Troy, as generally hapless and stupid. The big finale sees the entire DC Universe arrive to lend a hand, since Diana can't defeat her own villains by herself, apparently.
The villains issue is, by the way, both the strongest and the weakest aspect of this arc; Heinberg has actually dug up a bunch of old Wonder Woman rogues (her rogues gallery is notoriously weak for a character of her professed importance) who hadn't been seen in twenty years or more, and, for the most part, they actually seem interesting. Reintroduced at a solid pace, with focus and attention, one could see most of them being put to good use; but Heinberg's only doing five issues (thank God, given how long it took for him to write even that), so he just throws them all in at once with captions saying who they are, with the result being that they all get lost in the shuffle and make absolutely no impression.
For a positive, the art by Terry and Rachel Dodson is wonderful stuff, generally; it's a shame they didn't get a better story to illustrate.
Anything Goes Trivia
Trevor
Megaton Man
