Grail

[AmiMizuno]

What do you guys think about her? Should she still be a Wonder Woman villain or should she be swiped out? It felt like they were trying to make her the next archyenemy

[Korath]

Keep her. She has a lot of potential for great stories, contrasting Diana has her dark reflection. Plus, it's not as if having more power-house level enemies can't do good to Diana's standing. Writers just need to remember how deadly Grail was unil she ended with her father in her hands.

[MajorHoy]

What do you guys think about her? Her origins and her reason for being villains?

from "Grail as a villian" thread = https://community.cbr.com/showthread...l-as-a-villian

[Mel Dyer]

Grail's motivations, wanting a cosmic lobotomy for all sentient life in the universe, make her a natural enemy to any Amazon. That unique motivation continues to be absent from recent characterizations of her. Can she hear fragments or resonant pulses of the thoughts of sentient beings? Does it sound like a buzz in her head? Assuming she is aware of sentient life, on a metaphysical level, her desire to silence that is uniquely chilling. Where's that in a story?

I just tweeted something like that to G. Willow Wilson.

[AmiMizuno]

Part Amazon/ Part New gods. But does she have to be New gods? I don't know the New gods generally have always been messed in with Superman or just all of the JL. I mean since the fact no sci elements have been introduce in Diana it's good but also the fact you kind of have her just hear. How did Darksied even get on the Island?

[king81992]

Considering her connection to the New Gods, I always thought that Grail would work better as a Cyborg villain. I can see the parallels she has with Diana, but Grail's connection with the Amazons feels so forced.

[kjn]

Grail to me seems like a rather poorly constructed character. First is that her construction presupposes a lot of moving pre-historic parts, from very disparate corners of the DCU. Second is that she suffers from partially the same problem as Donna Troy, in that she is tied to the "old" New 52 Wonder Woman, and didn't follow along with Rucka's reboot of Wonder Woman.

If DC had been smart, they'd have let the character stay on the shelf until she could be properly fitted into Wonder Woman's mythos, but they had Robinson put her on Themyscira, and now Wilson is using those pieces she had available to make her story. But after that I hope Grail is put aside for Diana's more mundane villains, for a good long time until she can be given a backstory that fits.

[Ascended]

I think there's tons and tons of potential there. Grail is probably the best new foe Diana has had since.....Dr. Psycho maybe? And I love that she connects Diana to the New Gods; that's a tie we don't see explored often enough. Old gods v new.......Diana can only benefit from having some interactions with another pantheon, especially one as different from the Greeks as the Fourth World.

But Kjn is right as well; Grail's origin and the continuity she came from poses a problem. She needs to be streamlined into something that can be inserted into virtually any version of Diana's mythology, otherwise she's always going to feel weird and forced.

But conceptually I love the idea and I think she'd be a perfect villain for Diana. There's potential there, and even if Robinson didn't do her any favors, future writers could. It certainly wouldn't take a ton of imagination (or even skill) to find a spot for Grail in the rogues gallery. Just a little time and consideration.

[Mel Dyer]

She literally wants to turn all intelligent life in the universe into soulless, unthinking automatons, ..AND she's half-Amazon. Who cares, if she's Darkseid's daughter?

If she was Ares's or First Born's daughter, would it make that much of a difference?

[king81992]

She literally wants to turn all intelligent life in the universe into soulless, unthinking automatons, ..AND she's half-Amazon. Who cares, if she's Darkseid's daughter?

If she was Ares's or First Born's daughter, would it make that much of a difference?

She would probably for better with the established WW lore and have a different endgame.

[MajorHoy]

I think there's tons and tons of potential there. Grail is probably the best new foe Diana has had since.....Dr. Psycho maybe? And I love that she connects Diana to the New Gods; that's a tie we don't see explored often enough. Old gods v new.......Diana can only benefit from having some interactions with another pantheon, especially one as different from the Greeks as the Fourth World.

Were Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang the last ones to do something with that during their New 52 run, or did Geoff Johns spend any time developing that tie with Grail in his New 52 Justice League stories?

[WonderScott]

I like her, despite her origin being a little too on-the-nose as a reflection of Diana.

I like that she has a claim to Amazon heritage and Apokoliptan royalty, but we haven't seen the latter really played up with other Apokoliptans or her siblings... which could be interesting.

I think there's potential there to be realized, but I kind of feel that about a lot of the New Gods and that DC doesn't spend enough time or effort into making them something unique in their universe. Her follow up in Wonder Woman after Darkseid War was weak. I just don't buy that someone who so wanted to destroy her father so quickly became a devotee of raising Babyseid. That didn't ring true to me for the character and I didn't find it interesting - she quickly became just another Apokoliptan lackey instead of standing apart from them.

The most fun I've had with them (the New Gods) lately is in the the YJ animated series.

[Mel Dyer]

It's so rare to find a supervillain, with a built-in motivation, so perfectly suited to enmity, with Wonder Woman. Besides, Ares, Grail is the perfect natural enemy for Diana. It is so infuriating to see that motivation, Grail's primary purpose for existence, ignored ..and wasted.

[Ascended]

Were Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang the last ones to do something with that during their New 52 run, or did Geoff Johns spend any time developing that tie with Grail in his New 52 Justice League stories?

Robinson did something with Grail and Darkseid in Rebirth, I think. I have the issues, but that semester was crazy and I fell behind on almost all my comics, including Wonder Woman. Haven't sat down to read them yet, so I have no idea how it played out.

[Korath]

Robinson did something with Grail and Darkseid in Rebirth, I think. I have the issues, but that semester was crazy and I fell behind on almost all my comics, including Wonder Woman. Haven't sat down to read them yet, so I have no idea how it played out.

Badly. Very badly.

However, I feel Grail can be the perfect mirror image of Diana if only writers highlighted that the former stand for twisted "love" while the latter support real love. Grail did love her mother but her dark impulses led her to kill her nonetheless. And has Mel Dyer said, she share Darkseid's goal of getting her hands on the Anti-Life Equation (and did succeed!).

But here's the thing. Instead of just wanting to extinguish freewill for the quick of it, she should want to do that because she believes that loving is controlling the object of your affection, and she wants to be loved. If everyone's her puppet, then everyone loves her and she loves everyone. Diana, by comparison, knows that loved happens when two people surrender to each other, and thus are made equal (at least, that's how I envision love and how I feel Wonder Woman does). That's a very fundamental difference, one which allows both feisty fights and discussions with Grail.