Why wouldn't people that live thousands of years want to continue to learn?
As for their "isolationist, gender biased," society - I see it as more of a sanctuary. Do you think shelters for battered women are a bad thing?
Monarchies are not inherently evil, nor are democracies inherently good. It's much more about the leaders themselves than the form of government. So, your North Korea example is quite flawed because there is no eveidence that Hippolyta is anything like the Kim family.
Like others here have said better than I, I don't like some of the driving decisions of Azzarello's WW run mainly because I don't think they are a good fit for the characters and themes of WW (as I see them). For instance, Azzarello's depiction of the Amazons is fine elsewhere, but it's not what I want for Diana's mother and upbringing.
The quality of the writing itself (and the art) is quite good.
How do you make Wonder Woman the biological child of Zeus and not make her stronger than Superman?
So here's the issue - Azzarello showed the Amazons as being a dark, regressed society of murderers.
But then he showed the Manazons as a peaceful society of mastersmith/weapons makers.
So we can't have a progressive, all female society of immortals, but we can have a utopian society of brothers of the forge working happily for Hephaestus.
I was at work before but now I'm off and can elaborate.
Nobody, absolutely nobody was clamoring for the Gorilla Knights as Wonder Woman's supporting cast. They didn't really fit in, took up too much space and were completely unnecessary.
Diana's voice was so formal she sounded stiff and often pretentious. It didn't mix well with the attempts at zany humor that I didn't find funny.
Some plots were confusing and didn't make much sense. To this day I don't understand Alkyone's motivation for kidnapping the queen she had sworn to protect. I get that she saw Diana as "the dragon" who came to disrupt Paradise and destroy the Amazons but why would threatening Hippolyta and killing her daughter make things any better on Themyscira?
I hated how Diana lied to Tom Tressor for months and pretended to love him only so she could get pregnant with his child. It was completely out of character.
Speaking of OCC, I can't picture Hippolyta meeting Diana's boyfriend for the first time and making him an honorary Amazon just to have "babies, babies, babies!" populate the island. She's never come across as a future grandmother going out of her way to pressure her daughter into having children.
Nor would Artemis burst into tears and beg for Diana's forgiveness. She's a stoic tough cookie that wouldn't so easily renege on her resentment because she was recently rescued by her rival.
The stories swung wildly from genre to genre like things were being thrown at a wall to see what sticks. The pacing was all wrong.
There's lots more I could say, but this isn't a bash Gail Simone thread and she really is one of my favorite comic book writers. There were too many problems to fix, she was interfered with and for me her usual proclivities didn't coincide well with the franchise, but all that wasn't all her fault.
Because DC needs to maintain Superman as the top dog superhero in their line up (despite having a several heroes that puts Superman's powers to shame). I'm also of the belief that there is a small but vocal sub-section of comic nerds that would flip and cry "SJW FEMINSIM RUINS SUPERMAN!!!!" if Diana is portrayed as more competent or powerful then him, and I only have to look at the one thread from a while back where Diana moved a rock that the league had trouble with or whatever to prove that point. Really though, she doesn't need to be more powerful or even 100% equal to him for me to be happy with her power level, but she needs to be really dang close, I mean like at least 95%.
Zaldrīzes Buzdari Iksos Daor
With Azzarello, the character of the book he wrote was such that I doubt it even ought to count as a Wonder Woman book. It simply did not strike me as a good faith effort to come to grips with her history or lore, and in so far as anything like that appeared in it, his attitude was entirely condescending and destructive. That said, the atrocious self indulgence of his long form 'storytelling' surely merits some kind of negative superlative. Even Finch's run, what little I read of it, seemed to move at a reasonable pace by comparison. Her biggest problem was that she was handed Azzarello's dog's breakfast and having read it concluded reasonably that she was supposed to be writing a horror title and that the nominal lead character was basically empty and devoid of characterization.
Apart from that: Mark Waid. Kingdom Come is Diana's Dark Knight Returns: an Elseworld that should have been left as an Elseworld, and that has turned into a bad influence on the way later writers have seen and portrayed the character. Waid's Diana is an embittered failure who turns to violence. The sword and the shield start there, I think. The biggest problem with DC is that the appeal of their characters is that it would be awesome to be Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman; but the stories the company seems to want to tell all revolve around how it sucks to be Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman. When DC goes wrong, this is the most basic flaw.
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison
It wouldn't. Alkyone's hatred of Diana was irrational to begin with and the story makes that quite clear. It's implied that she's just jealous that Diana wasn't her daughter and is using the safety and betterment of Themyscira as a smokescreen to disguise her true motivations.
Artemis isn't stoic nor one-dimensional. She also let go of her resentment towards Diana a long time ago.
Nor would Artemis burst into tears and beg for Diana's forgiveness. She's a stoic tough cookie that wouldn't so easily renege on her resentment because she was recently rescued by her rival.