Wonder Woman Earth One Vol.1-3 Discussion

[HsssH]

Funny you mention Bruce when that has been an underlying theme for last few years in bat books.

As for second part, maybe editors should stop asking for revamps and then wriyers wouldn't do... revamps.

[Agent Z]

Funny you mention Bruce when that has been an underlying theme for last few years in bat books.

As for second part, maybe editors should stop asking for revamps and then wriyers wouldn't do... revamps.

Bruce is still rich.

[SiegePerilous02]

Perez's handling of the issue is far from perfect but he at least tried to give humanity to the Amazons. And while it doesn't really excuse it, his run came out in the 1980s. Morrison wrote this 2016 to 2021 and yet it somehow feels even more outdated.

To me, this book is further proof the Golden Age is best left in the past with the exception of very, very few concepts.

No disagreement on Historia.

It's not any such proof at all about the Golden Age concepts needing to be left behind. Even some fans of the actual Golden Age comics criticize Earth One, so what does that tell you? And negative opinions of the GA comics always tend to be reductive. There was more to Marston 's comics than his kinks, and some of the best issues from the run were written by a woman who didn't go as wild with that component.

Perez was written in the 80s, but is still held up as the definitive WW content and always gets pre-printed. That's not a reputation Earth One has (rightfully so). Perezs successes vastly outweigh it, but it also makes the "wtf" stuff more noticeable, because they are pretty big plot points in a more serious comic.

Perez's handling of the Heracles stuff is lousy but I do think his handling of the Amazons' trauma in general is really interesting and nuanced. Obviously a full run is a lot more time to explore that than 3 volumes, but Morrison failed to give the Amazons humanity in the way that Perez did. Perez's Amazons' hurt was built into their culture, and they were deeply skeptical of men and feared their intrusion, but they built a new life for themselves on the island and weren't consumed by their hatred of the outside world (which I think is Morrison's big misstep, and really isn't a great way of approaching trauma).

I think people forget that Perez's Amazons did make the choice to isolate themselves - they'd been ostracized because of their peace efforts in ancient Greece, so they sequestered themselves in their city before Heracles came along, won them over, and betrayed their trust. It's part of why the goddesses were disappointed in them.

But even if you don't count that, just look at Kelly Sue's Amazons - they'd just been freed from slavery and committed their lives to liberating other women and they still weren't consumed by their hatred of men in the way that Morrison's Amazons were. It's a much more realistic, empathetic way of looking at trauma and marginalization. I know we're all in agreement on Historia, but it's an important comparison that really doesn't flatter Earth One. For all its interesting concepts, EO is not at all a feminist work.



I used to feel this way, but after reading more about Marston and digging into the GA comics more, I kinda feel like it's throwing away the baby with the bathwater. There's a lot of interesting stuff with Marston (including some ideas that Perez re-interpreted), and books like Earth One unfortunately play a big role in making people think he was singularly focused on kink. The bondage stuff was obviously a fetish, but it did have legitimate roots in 1st wave feminist iconography and it was just one part of a whole interesting picture. And maybe we can leave Marston's whole "love sex training" and female supremacist concepts in the past, but I do love the idea of the Amazons being very sexually open.

Plus, on a pure surface level, those Golden Age comics were delightfully, wildly imaginative in a way that modern stories aren't allowed to be and I wish more writers drew from Marston's characterization for Diana - fun and cheeky and kinda weird but still very wise, compassionate, and super smart.

Perez's Amazons were superior in that they were much more fleshed out characters with humanity. But it almost makes it more if a "betrayal" when we get to the Heracles stuff, or Diana appropriating the girdle from the Bana (after the arc condemns Barbara Minerva for the same stuff).

Historia blows all of it out of the water, though we still have to admit Perez walked so DeConnick and Jimenez could run I guess

[Fuzzy Mittens]

My big complaint with Morrisons Wonder Woman Earth One is that for a book that as he described in one of his interviews "I wrote All Star Superman as a tribute to my father. I wrote Wonder Woman Earth One as a tribute to my mother"
It says some questionable things about what sort of tribute he was trying to give here.

Like, he was trying to insist that his Wonder Woman Earth One was meant to be a celebration of the character in the same way that All Star was for Superman. That is...Not the impression I get from this in any sense of the word.

Just to describe All Star Superman for a moment for the sake of comparison, it was a series of interconnected short stories, each of which focused on different characters and aspects of Supermans universe such as Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Lex Luthor, and Bizarro. It served to celebrate what made the series amazing and was borrowing heavily from across the continuties from Jimmy Olsens silver age antics to Lex Luthors post crisis business persona. It featured a number of Supermans classic enemies and even had a story showing just what makes Superman Superman. Celebrating his supporting cast as well as his mythos.

I enjoyed and loved the golden age stuff and recognized its flaws and its values. Earth One...Did not capture any of that.
The Golden age was fun loving and about a Wonder Woman who ENJOYED being Wonder Woman. It was about Amazons who attained enriched enlightenment and were forbidden by the gods to interfere with the world save through their chosen champion. Sure they had some kink stuff that juveniles like to draw attention to, but at least it was treated with positivity.
The Amazons were impressed by Diana and encouraged her efforts. They would do what they could to aid her.

Earth One....
We are given Amazons whose entire thing is mind controlled false happiness who Morrison gives 'orgasm guns' to which is wholly of his own invention. Where the Amazons were fun loving in the golden age, Earth One establishes them as wooden and 'stuck in a rut' despite using the incredible technological developments that showed them to be an enlightened people, they just go through the same routines and rote over and over because 'being immortal is boring'.

Earth One establish the Amazons as bigots who despised and feared the outside world and felt it SHOULD be destroyed. Caring not for its destruction and simply view themselves as better than a world that deserves to fall. It focuses on the kinks but portrays it with dark shading and shadows. Like it is something to be disgusted with and leered upon.
He revolved chunks of his book around the Amazons being body shaming misandrists when that was not a thing for them even in the golden age.

Where the golden age was about wanting to make the world a better place, Wonder Woman grapples with whether she should just conquer the world and install a fascist regime and rewire everyone through mind control.....And in the end uses a show of forces to establish that she could wipe out everyone on Earth unless they cooperate with her.

Morrison makes a whole deal about the positivity his run has in Wonder Woman and the Amazons never once throwing a punch at their enemies, but id argue what he does is even worse?
The Amazons had the Venus Girdles which would prevent villains from harming others while being rehabilitated which Marston would be hammy about sure, but Joye Hummel toned that down to "Dammit. I really want to kill you right now but im compelled not to harm you."

He brings in Doctor Psycho but instead of an evil psychic hes a professional pick up artist for the government. He uses Maxwell Lord and tells us he is Ares.
Where is the WONDER? Where is the SENSATIONAL?

We get an Etta who isn't named Etta because he finds the name an issue who talks the talk, but does not walk the walk. Where is the woman who would freely pile drive nazi soldiers and grab someone by the back of the head to pound them black and blue? The shortstack slugger who don't hesitate to jump right into the thick of things?

For a story thats meant to celebrate Wonder Woman, what we got was a Diana in a mundane world where the Amazons had advanced technology rivaling anything prior comics established, but none of the ethics and moralities that the comic kept insisting about since the Marston days of self restraint and control. That was the whole point established for Aphrodite being their patron goddess after all. Love for everyone.


Finally, while the third book in the trilogy starts pulling in newer elements such as Donna and Artemis, it just feels like to little to late. It certainly wasn't a celebration of Wonder Woman as a whole. And id honestly interpret Earth One as a critique against the Golden age of the character than anything else.

It wrapped up better than it started so I can't say I hated it, I am just baffled by a book which Morrison described as being a celebration of the character which he wrote in opposition to the 'sword swinging axe murderer' interpretation that was prevalent of the times it was written.

[Agent Z]

For reasons I’ll go into later, I wasn’t a fan of some more recent Red Sonja/Xena interpretation of Wonder Woman where she’s played as the pagan warrior woman from a throwback culture of snarly women. Armed with a sword and shield AND super-powers!

I will just point out that this complaint is greatly overstated.

Between 2011 and 2016 (the year the first volume came out), there were three places where Wonder Woman was acting like this:

* Geoff Johns' Justice League run.

* The first New 52 Justice League movie which was based on the above.

* The Injustice games (and even then, the first game had a more traditional Wonder Woman to contrast the evil one).

This mischaracterization of Diana, while frustrating, was nowhere near as widespread as many believed it was. It's like how people are obsessed with the few evil takes on Superman and ignore the far greater amount of heroic versions. In other words, Morrison countered a bad take on Diana with one that was bad in different ways and came with arguably worse implications.

I do find it amusingly ironic they didn't like the second Wonder Woman movie since that one has more in common with Earth One.

[Mantis-Ray]

I always found the ending kinda funny interesting, cause the Amazons conquering the world creating a utopia of world peace.

Cause it kinda falls into the idea of treating women as a monolith, as in all women everywhere get along and are automatically on the same side regardless of country, culture, and their own individual personality. Which gets funny considering the rather grimey portrayal of the Amazons, they did bodyshame Etta so its not like they are shown to be that respectful to other women in-universe.

Its a pretty weird ending all around.

[Gaius]

I will just point out that this complaint is greatly overstated.

Between 2011 and 2016 (the year the first volume came out), there were three places where Wonder Woman was acting like this:

* Geoff Johns' Justice League run.

* The first New 52 Justice League movie which was based on the above.

* The Injustice games (and even then, the first game had a more traditional Wonder Woman to contrast the evil one).

This mischaracterization of Diana, while frustrating, was nowhere near as widespread as many believed it was. It's like how people are obsessed with the few evil takes on Superman and ignore the far greater amount of heroic versions. In other words, Morrison countered a bad take on Diana with one that was bad in different ways and came with arguably worse implications.

I do find it amusingly ironic they didn't like the second Wonder Woman movie since that one has more in common with Earth One.

There's an Azzarello/Finch hole in the list your missing.

And this is ignoring that while maybe yeah, there were other stories and anthologies where WW didn't act like this but the ones listed were far and away the most pushed WW things by DC at the time.

Like yeah, in term of quantity there are less "evil Superman" stories than heroic Superman stories but those heroic Superman stories didn't come within a mile of stuff like Injustice' popularity.

[SiegePerilous02]

It's pretty obvious that there were/are certain factions in DC that would rather push the warrior aspect of Wonder Woman as the key to making her work and be successful. And to put her in contrast to Batman and Superman, a dynamic that doesn't do any of the three any favors.

We also have films, where the original plan was to have Diana pose for a photo with decapitated heads, or when she kills human villains that shouldn't pose a threat to her (including blowing up part of a building to kill *one* guy), and the film Amazons don't have much to offer beyond being warriors. Who DeConnick correctly pointed out aren't very good at their jobs. Morrison and Jenkins finding ways to whiff on the alternatives doesn't change the fact that the Warrior Woman stuff is both present and pretty dumb.

[Agent Z]

There's an Azzarello/Finch hole in the list your missing.

And this is ignoring that while maybe yeah, there were other stories and anthologies where WW didn't act like this but the ones listed were far and away the most pushed WW things by DC at the time.

Like yeah, in term of quantity there are less "evil Superman" stories than heroic Superman stories but those heroic Superman stories didn't come within a mile of stuff like Injustice' popularity.

For all my many, many issues with the Azzarello run, his writing of Diana wasn't one of them. Finch was in a class of weirdness all by itself.

[HsssH]

I will just point out that this complaint is greatly overstated.

Between 2011 and 2016 (the year the first volume came out), there were three places where Wonder Woman was acting like this:

* Geoff Johns' Justice League run.

* The first New 52 Justice League movie which was based on the above.

* The Injustice games (and even then, the first game had a more traditional Wonder Woman to contrast the evil one).

This mischaracterization of Diana, while frustrating, was nowhere near as widespread as many believed it was. It's like how people are obsessed with the few evil takes on Superman and ignore the far greater amount of heroic versions. In other words, Morrison countered a bad take on Diana with one that was bad in different ways and came with arguably worse implications.

I do find it amusingly ironic they didn't like the second Wonder Woman movie since that one has more in common with Earth One.

Azzarello's run was rather isolated, while JL set the tone for the entire line.

[Agent Z]

Azzarello's run was rather isolated, while JL set the tone for the entire line.

The comic with the character's name on it should be taken as standard for how they are portrayed, not a team book which tends to flatten individual characters' personalities. No one held Batman, Superman and Green Lantern's characterizations in that book against them.

[out of control]

I read Wonder Woman Earth One, vol. 1 and 2 long time ago. I haven't read vol. 3 yet though. As far as i remember Wonder Woman in it was a sadomasochist dominatrix. I was chuckling each time she said Submit to loving autority or something... Eta Candy and her crew were carrying on themselves mouth gags all the time and stuff... lol just in case they need to tame a man any moment. lol And Only evil woman characater in the second volume was Uber Fraulin and she was brain washed by men with advenced technology. That didn't sit well with me. Women are human beings as well, they are capabale of evil or anything as much as men.

[Hypo]

10/1 Wonder Woman Earth One Annotations

[SiegePerilous02]

Morrisons notes continue to be more interesting than the book itself. It's still not up to the standard of the rest of their work or the best of Wonder Woman, but I'm still fine with owning the deluxe edition.

And they said Cheetah and Blue Snowman would show up in the years between volume 3s main events and the epilogue had there ever been more volumes, I would still rush out out to go buy those the day of release even though they would still be a mess.

[Vordan]

Cackled at Moz tongue in cheek, taking the blame for Maxwell Lord being cemented as part of Wonder Woman’s Rogues