Wonder Woman Odyssey

[Billy1977]

What did you love or hate about Wonder Woman Odyssey?

[billee0918]

Well,I loooooved the costume. Thought the story itself was just ok.

[OBrianTallent]

I dont know that there was anything I "loved" about the story. The costume grew on me, especially after she lost the jacket and it's one I always thought would be better served on Donna (or even Cassie.) The story itself, was ok. I would need to go back and re-read it to get a better answer than that. It didn't leave anything in my memory beyond that. I do remember being impressed with Phil Hester taking over the writing and Don Kramer's art is always welcome.

[Stanlos]

I like the way JMS structured the story. He wanted to do his own thing and so he made an Elseworlds within an elseworld calling back to divine tricks from old myths. That was neat

[Avi]

It was one of the first Wonder Woman stories I read. I haven't read it since but I enjoyed it, especially the use of the fates. It really does feel like an Elseworld at times. I don't have strong feelings about the costume. It's nice and fit the story but that's about it.

[Nyssane]

LOVED: those gorgeous Alex Garner variant covers.

HATED: literally everything else.

[Gaius]

Not really sure what there's much to talk about.

It's kind of funny I guess how much attention it got at the time for giving WW pants only for this big reboot to rendered meaningless when New 52 came only a few months later.

[WonderScott]

It wasn’t my cup of tea, as they say. The change kinda felt like another attempt to write around who and what Wonder Woman is in new drag, instead of focusing on everything great (or could be great) that Wonder Woman already is.

[Guy_McNichts]

I can take or leave the costume. It looks better without the jacket, but frankly, I found it kind of plain looking.

But Odyssey's story......is a complete trainwreck. It's an overlong, overwritten, meandering mess that manages to squander two or three decent premises and, frankly, insult Wonder Woman to her core. It's JMS deciding Diana, as she normally is and meant to be, is damaged and inferior and must be replaced with his personal fan-fic version of the character.

When it was first announced, it seemed like it was going to be an alternate timeline positing what the world would be like if Diana never became Wonder Woman. Which is a decent idea for a story. We've never seen that done with her, and there are lots of interesting possibilities.
But that' not the story JMS wanted to tell. He wanted to effectively retcon Diana's origin and backstory and make it canon. A fun side-effect of this is it therefore suggests that if she never became Wonder Woman, absolutely nothing would change. The world would keep on going exactly as it has.

See, usually when one does the It's a Wonderful Life thing--where we see what the world would be like if the hero never was--the world is in ruin or a macabre dystopia. But not with Wonder Woman. In The Odyssey, she's erased from history, and no one noticed.
Off to a great start.

The Odyssey is the story of Wonder Woman facing the goddess Nemesis, failing miserably, dying, and getting turned in Nemesis's avatar. Then the gods, acting as a pretty blatant deus ex machina, create what is essentially an alternate timeline doppelganger to take Diana's place. A barely competent Diana--Nu-Diana, let's call her--who frankly gets everyone around her killed. Seriously, multiple times through this story, she blunders into a trap, nearly gets herself killed, and has to be saved from someone sacrificing themself for her.
Her Amazon bodyguards? They die saving her. Artemis, Cheetah and Giganta after she convinces them to turn good? They die saving her. I'm pretty sure Dr. Psycho dies immediately after he helps her.

IIRC, Nu-Diana saves exactly one life this entire damn story. Literally everyone else she interacts with dies...and usually because she's a jackass.

Then, of course, is the big reveal at the end. I saw it coming because when Nu-Diana learns that the original Wonder Woman died fighting Nemesis, it reeks of that Star Wars "Darth Vader murdered Anakin Skywalker" trick. I remember reading that scene and thinking, "Oh, no...the real Diana is the villain, isn't she?"

Sure enough, the classic Wonder Woman that we know and love is revealed to be the avatar of Nemesis. And we discover the reason she was so easily defeated and corrupted is because...

....wait for it.....

...because she was out of touch with humanity and willing to kill if necessary.
That's right, we got a two-in-the-hole here. The grim specters of Max Lord and the Infinite Crisis fallout hover over this climax like a poisonous cloud. The real Wonder Woman was weak of spirit and easily corrupted by Nemesis because real heroes never kill. Ever. And Nu-Diana learns a valuable lesson about how killing is always wrong.
Also, Nu-Diana is better because she wasn't raised on Themyscira, therefore she's more in touch with the little people. And because she watched her mother and all the Amazons get slaughtered, she understands hardship and it makes her stronger...unlike the real Diana.

Let's recap: Nu-Diana is better and more fit to be Wonder Woman because she's 1) the last of her kind, 2) raised in humble surroundings, 3) has tragedy in her life, 4) knows that killing is always wrong.
In other words, JMS believes Wonder Woman would be better if she was more like Superman with a dash of Batman to boot.

That's just extraordinary. I literally started cursing at the comic in my hand as I read it.

Also, and this might be a small thing, but it stuck out to me:
At the end of the story, Nu-Diana and corrupted Diana come together in a bright light. In theory, this is Nu-Diana and classic Diana recombining to become proper Wonder Woman again.
Question: if you were creating this scene as a writer/artist, how would you convey it visually? A splash page of Wonder Woman in her classic costume, signifying that, yes, she's back and better than ever? A mix of Nu-Diana's costume with the classic, demonstrating that this is a synthesis of the two Dianas into a new, stronger hero? Or do you just have Nu-Diana in the same costume she'd been wearing the whole time, showing that she is Wonder Woman now and the old one is gone forever--nothing more than downloaded memory in Nu-Diana's head?

Guess which one they went with.

Even putting aside the appalling messages and sub-text, the actual story is just poorly told. It's padded like hell. This did not need to be twelve issues long, much less extended to fourteen. The art is inconsistent--at least one issue had three different artists on it.

There is a lot of "tell, don't show" on display because when Diana isn't blundering into traps, she's getting fed long-winded speeches about how important she is and why the world needs her. But we rarely see it proven. As said, she gets virtually everyone she meets killed. Her entire life getting changed has zero impact on the rest of the world, and in fact, they hand-wave that by saying the gods cast a magic spell that get history intact despite everything that happened to her.

This was a bad, bad story. It tries to demonstrate how important Wonder Woman is, and instead makes her seem inconsequential and useless. This is a story that tries to deconstruct and reconstruct Wonder Woman, but only takes a steaming piss all over her mythos. An apotheosis of writers' wrong-headed efforts to "fix" Wonder Woman without understanding anything about her, and as a result, insults everything about her.

[wonder39]

I can take or leave the costume. It looks better without the jacket, but frankly, I found it kind of plain looking.

But Odyssey's story......is a complete trainwreck. It's an overlong, overwritten, meandering mess that manages to squander two or three decent premises and, frankly, insult Wonder Woman to her core. It's JMS deciding Diana, as she normally is and meant to be, is damaged and inferior and must be replaced with his personal fan-fic version of the character.

When it was first announced, it seemed like it was going to be an alternate timeline positing what the world would be like if Diana never became Wonder Woman. Which is a decent idea for a story. We've never seen that done with her, and there are lots of interesting possibilities.
But that' not the story JMS wanted to tell. He wanted to effectively retcon Diana's origin and backstory and make it canon. A fun side-effect of this is it therefore suggests that if she never became Wonder Woman, absolutely nothing would change. The world would keep on going exactly as it has.

See, usually when one does the It's a Wonderful Life thing--where we see what the world would be like if the hero never was--the world is in ruin or a macabre dystopia. But not with Wonder Woman. In The Odyssey, she's erased from history, and no one noticed.
Off to a great start.

The Odyssey is the story of Wonder Woman facing the goddess Nemesis, failing miserably, dying, and getting turned in Nemesis's avatar. Then the gods, acting as a pretty blatant deus ex machina, create what is essentially an alternate timeline doppelganger to take Diana's place. A barely competent Diana--Nu-Diana, let's call her--who frankly gets everyone around her killed. Seriously, multiple times through this story, she blunders into a trap, nearly gets herself killed, and has to be saved from someone sacrificing themself for her.
Her Amazon bodyguards? They die saving her. Artemis, Cheetah and Giganta after she convinces them to turn good? They die saving her. I'm pretty sure Dr. Psycho dies immediately after he helps her.

IIRC, Nu-Diana saves exactly one life this entire damn story. Literally everyone else she interacts with dies...and usually because she's a jackass.

Then, of course, is the big reveal at the end. I saw it coming because when Nu-Diana learns that the original Wonder Woman died fighting Nemesis, it reeks of that Star Wars "Darth Vader murdered Anakin Skywalker" trick. I remember reading that scene and thinking, "Oh, no...the real Diana is the villain, isn't she?"

Sure enough, the classic Wonder Woman that we know and love is revealed to be the avatar of Nemesis. And we discover the reason she was so easily defeated and corrupted is because...

....wait for it.....

...because she was out of touch with humanity and willing to kill if necessary.
That's right, we got a two-in-the-hole here. The grim specters of Max Lord and the Infinite Crisis fallout hover over this climax like a poisonous cloud. The real Wonder Woman was weak of spirit and easily corrupted by Nemesis because real heroes never kill. Ever. And Nu-Diana learns a valuable lesson about how killing is always wrong.
Also, Nu-Diana is better because she wasn't raised on Themyscira, therefore she's more in touch with the little people. And because she watched her mother and all the Amazons get slaughtered, she understands hardship and it makes her stronger...unlike the real Diana.

Let's recap: Nu-Diana is better and more fit to be Wonder Woman because she's 1) the last of her kind, 2) raised in humble surroundings, 3) has tragedy in her life, 4) knows that killing is always wrong.
In other words, JMS believes Wonder Woman would be better if she was more like Superman with a dash of Batman to boot.

That's just extraordinary. I literally started cursing at the comic in my hand as I read it.

Also, and this might be a small thing, but it stuck out to me:
At the end of the story, Nu-Diana and corrupted Diana come together in a bright light. In theory, this is Nu-Diana and classic Diana recombining to become proper Wonder Woman again.
Question: if you were creating this scene as a writer/artist, how would you convey it visually? A splash page of Wonder Woman in her classic costume, signifying that, yes, she's back and better than ever? A mix of Nu-Diana's costume with the classic, demonstrating that this is a synthesis of the two Dianas into a new, stronger hero? Or do you just have Nu-Diana in the same costume she'd been wearing the whole time, showing that she is Wonder Woman now and the old one is gone forever--nothing more than downloaded memory in Nu-Diana's head?

Guess which one they went with.

Even putting aside the appalling messages and sub-text, the actual story is just poorly told. It's padded like hell. This did not need to be twelve issues long, much less extended to fourteen. The art is inconsistent--at least one issue had three different artists on it.

There is a lot of "tell, don't show" on display because when Diana isn't blundering into traps, she's getting fed long-winded speeches about how important she is and why the world needs her. But we rarely see it proven. As said, she gets virtually everyone she meets killed. Her entire life getting changed has zero impact on the rest of the world, and in fact, they hand-wave that by saying the gods cast a magic spell that get history intact despite everything that happened to her.

This was a bad, bad story. It tries to demonstrate how important Wonder Woman is, and instead makes her seem inconsequential and useless. This is a story that tries to deconstruct and reconstruct Wonder Woman, but only takes a steaming piss all over her mythos. An apotheosis of writers' wrong-headed efforts to "fix" Wonder Woman without understanding anything about her, and as a result, insults everything about her.

Pretty much all of this.

I knew it was going to be awful when they described her new look. The "w's" on her fists because she liked to mark her enemies when she punched them?!?

But even worse was that those w's were on her bracelets. And that's not what makes contact when you punch someone, so they couldn't even figure out basic anatomy or physics...lol

The only good? It seemed like they were returning the original powers of the lasso ( control) vs just truth.
Literally that was the only, single, solitary good thing on the run

[Koriand'r]

Well I loved it!

Someone said in another thread that Donna Troy is a more urban and contemporary version of Wonder Woman, but that description is exactly what readers got from the Odyssey. Diana did things she wouldn't normally do, like fighting an army and deflecting their bullets right back at them. Or threatening a pawn shop owner by casually destroying his property and implying she might do the same to him, needless to say she got her way.

The tone was different too, it was a horror story with lots of blood and violence. Hippolyta, the Amazons, Philippus and others who escaped the initial slaughter on Themyscira were systematically cut down in the style of "And Then There Were None" as if Michael Myers or Jason Vorhees were the villains. And speaking of villains I'd really like to see the Dark Man, Cernunnos and the Morrigan again. Nemesis has reappeared already.

To this day the Odyssey has the BEST Dr. Psycho story and Wonder Woman's greatest first flight sequence that's been chased in multiple media ever since.

It was just so much fun seeing the Wonder Woman mythos presented from a different point of view, yet eventually with all the ideologies and respect for the character that we long for.

[Fuzzy Mittens]

My favorite element of that run was easily and without a shadow of a doubt, Galenthias the Amazon sorceress/Priestess of Hecate who traded her human form for magical power, becoming a cat. That is easily the most unique Amazon concept ive ever seen and I demand we get the cat Amazon back!

[Sebastianne]

if you read it as an elseworld, it's actually very entertaining. but for a series in continuity I remember that it was a crap. but yes, in its own world it is very effective.

[OBrianTallent]

I would expect the story was padded out to last to the end of the series due to the planned reboot.

JMS dropped the story just a few issues in (but left his blue print for Hester to follow.) I forget, what was his reasoning for bailing? Was it ever stated?

[HotBoy]

I didn't love or hate it. I thought it was a decent excursion that felt somewhat like a CW Wonder Woman show for the Beverly Hills 90210 crowd. Wasn't it, in fact, Straczynski's TV pitch?