Quote Originally Posted by Korath View Post
By that logic, Azzarello didn't retcon Diana's original origin, he simply "enhanced" it (his words, not mine), since Diana truly believed that she was born from clay prior to his run. But that's not how people felt about it, it still isn't how people feel about it. And yet, Greg Rucka's abomination of a second run get praised to the high heavens, while Azzarello's get trashed because he had the gal (eh) to depict a segregationist society in a bad light. It really sicken me. I prefer vastly his Amazons, has flawed as they may be, to Rucka's hollow and weak characters.
Sorry, but no - he did a complete retcon.

Diana didn't just 'believe' she was made of clay. The goddesses directly told her she was. There were plotlines which involved the clay (she was devolved to clay, there was a Clayface plotline involving her nature, and one or two similar storylines)

As already stated, other writers, such as Simone, made it clear that Amazons are flawed. Azzarello made them murderous monsters who seduce men then chuck them overboard. He took a noble origin about maternal love for a child and turned it into 'the hero you love is the by-blow of an adulterous affair.' Hippolyta always had her faults, primarily based in how she would go to any and all lengths to protect Diana, including crossing ethical lines, but in this new origin, Diana isn't even the point.

But the big issue is this - how is it that Atlantis and Gorilla City and Wakanda, all isolationist cultures, can thrive in science and magic and create great and wonderful things, but when it's an island of women, they remain barbarians stuck in the bronze age? Why is it only Themyscira, of all the various hidden cultures, doesn't progress at all, but those run by males thrive?

You can write Atlanteans, Wakandans, Gorillas and Amazons with flaws, and many writers have. But to make the entire concept of their enlightened society impossible and the culture of 75+ years of comics null and void? That's how you create two dimensional hollow and weak characters.

Not only that, but by Diana being the bastard child of Zeus who fled the island because she was different, he *drastically* altered the entire *point* of Wonder Woman in my eyes. Why Diana was so different and so special among all of the other heroes is that her backstory wasn't one of tragedy but of sacrifice. She gave up a wonderful existence to try and help others, which is a key element of the character; she fought for the right to leave 'paradise' behind so that she could try to stop the spread of evil in the world.

Now she just wanted to get the hell away from an island of women who treated her badly because she was 'clay,' and Steve Trevor was her 'ticket out.'