If you could retcon/erase one story

[Dr. Poison]

Yeah, I knew I was right to include this caveat.

The 3 years Azzarello was on the book, the overall plot was chasing Zeke and defeating the First Born. It's not like there were different toned stories like in King's current run or different villains every few issues like in Perez or Cloonrad's runs so it's difficult for me not to think of Azzarello's run as not 1 big long story. I guess if you insist on me carving out an issue or two from it, I'd say the one where Diana crunches Orion's junk and threatens to castrate him.

[Gaius]

The 3 years Azzarello was on the book, the overall plot was chasing Zeke and defeating the First Born. It's not like there were different toned stories like in King's current run or different villains every few issues like in Perez or Cloonrad's runs so it's difficult for me not to think of Azzarello's run as not 1 big long story. I guess if you insist on me carving out an issue or two from it, I'd say the one where Diana crunches Orion's junk and threatens to castrate him.

Yeah, every long runner run has overarching plots. I specified to pick a particular story/issue because I know CBR and would just get a bunch of "lol, [insert writer here]'s run" zero effort posts.

[Alpha]

No he didn't. The Amazons didn't go back to being isolated and angry at man's world with outdated tools and technology.

Themyscira had already ended its millennia long isolation during the Perez run.

Seems like you are contradicting yourself there buddy. Did Rucka go back to the Paradise Island Status Quo of Perez, or did he not?


And regarding their technology, the amazons in the Greg Rucka run from the 2000s only had laser pistols and laser spears, no other technology. Barely any difference compared to the Perez Run

[Alpha]

Given the original intention of the run was to end with the Amazons to beat the U.S. in a war that lasts like 10 minutes, no I would say Agent Z is correct. Rucka was not resetting the Amazons back to Perez in terms of being in the Bronze Age.

US vs. Themysciran tensions was an ongoing storyline in his first run that he wanted to explore. You don't have to like it but you don't have to lie about it.

What does the political tension require the amazons losing their floating islands full of advanced technology, and going back to bronze age except with laser pistols and laser spears?

[Alpha]

Jimenez's floating Themyscira was beautiful, but it must be remembered that at the time some Wonder Woman fans found it too fanciful or childish, and they dubbed it "My Little Pony Island". When Hera kicked it into the sea the Amazons all lived, but what was lost were all the visitors from Man's World and space that had set up shop there. Jimenez's idea to turn Themyscira into a hub of knowledge for the universe was wonderful and progressive, but it went too far. Rucka needlessly got rid of the whimsey, but he also jettisoned the outsiders that destroyed the concept of an island solely of women. By the time Rucka left the book the Amazons were more advanced than they'd ever been Post-Crisis. They had mass amounts of futuristic technology including laser cannons and the Purple Death Ray.

It was Azzarello that took them back to the Bronze Age.

All those things are weapons. Laser guns, laser spears, and whatever that contraption is in the right corner

In the Jimenez run, Paradise Island was a place full of wonder

[Alpha]

Yeah, naw. Good for the people who thought this specific level of advancement was the exact level. It was dumb and pathetic in my mind. Went from being looked on with awe by the galaxy as an incredible people to
'oh noes~ These people who live in rock houses and fight with bows and swords are a threat to the world~ Sensationalism~'

Exactly

Ruckas run being hit by an editorially mandated status quo shift that instantly undoes everything he was building up was a hilariously poetic end result for his own intentions.
Opens his run with a catastarophic event destroying everything the Amazons had built.
Ends his run with a catastrophic event destroying everything the Amazons had built.

That said id still say it was a pretty harmless run since the Maxwell Lord crap aside, it was pretty self contained and pretty much nothing from that run survived to come after.

I think it was harmful because Jimenez was actively changing the conception of what the amazons are, he was breaking through the cage that Perez put them in, and Rucka shelved that in the trash, and we never saw it again.

We were finally getting somewhere, and Rucka stopped it, and we never got it back.

A lot like what's happening with the X-men and Krakoa right now.

Everything that Rucka wanted to write could've still happened if Paradise Island was what Jimenez developed it into

[Koriand'r]

All those things are weapons. Laser guns, laser spears, and whatever that contraption is in the right corner

In the Jimenez run, Paradise Island was a place full of wonder

It was place full of people that weren't Amazons. There was a time when Superman had to hover because no man could step foot on Paradise Island...those were good times.

[Koriand'r]

Also during Rucka's run the Amazons had teleportation thanks to the White Room at the Embassy and their own version of FaceTime. The Perez run had them communicating with messenger pigeons navigating through chaos.

[HsssH]

Filler filler

I probably would drill it down to The Lies then.

[AlexLyo]

For me the very obvious answer to this is the reveal of Diana being Zeus' daughter, but I feel that's shared by many and a very old discussion by now. Plenty of folks have spoken on these boards about how damaging this was to the overall mythos of the character, especially given how lasting the impact has been.

With that in mind, and forgive me for breaking your rules here Gaius, but there's a bunch of other stories or plot points I'd erase / that I felt were either unhelpful to the character, the cast or the direction of the book.

The most recent death of Hippolyta
Back when Hippolyta was killed Post-Crisis, Jimenez managed to take something that I believe had been editorially mandated, during a Superman event that wasn't all that good, and turn it into something gut-wrenchingly tragic. He built up the narrative of conflict between Diana and Hippolyta beforehand, gave Hippolyta a truly heroic send-off, and one of the most memorable death panel sequences in superhero comics. It was brutal, it was heavy, it was almost angering in the way the death of a much-loved character should be. And then he gave us some sense of resolution when Hippolyta later appeared to Diana in spirit towards the end of the run. It was hard to lose her, but it felt significant.

Contrast that with the most recent death of Hippolyta, which was played as a murder mystery for the sake of boosting what should have been a great crossover event, but ended up being poorly plotted, paced and characterised. The story took Hippolyta off the board seemingly because there was a lack of imagination about what to do with her. I think it speaks poorly of the writing team that they couldn't characterise Hippolyta distinctly enough to give her a role outside of being either the queen (which there was clearly a desire for Nubia to be), or an alt-Wonder Woman, and so killed her off. And by having her "ascend to Godhood", it further cemented a trend of overexposure of the Olympian Gods as unimpressive cast-members and paper-thin villains, but didn't actually add anything to Hippolyta as a character. It also managed to damage Artemis as a character by having her caught up in some confusing manipulation plot, AND Cassie who suddenly became an amateur detective?

The consequences of Hippolyta dying haven't felt significant, the moment itself was lost in a sea of poor pacing, and now we just...don't have her anymore.

Hippolyta betrays Antiope because she loves Herakles
This was a huge mistaken retcon during The Contest that was not needed at all. In principle the idea of Hippolyta rigging the contest to sacrifice Artemis in Diana's place was already a stretch of the character. But after the Themyscirans having just been through a war with their sister-tribe, only to then spend years surviving a hell dimension, and THEN for Hippolyta to have a vision of Diana's death, I can at least imagine the state of mind of the character that would lead her to it. But somehow WML felt the need to retroactively write a deceitful element into Hippolyta's character in the past by having her actually betray her own sister and see her chained because of her love for Herakles. I'm just glad that this particular element never really stuck or get referenced again - in effect erasing itself. But I think the whole Contest arc would read so much better without that one story.

Donna Troy being a weapon created by the Amazons
Its not news to anyone here that Donna's origin has been pointlessly complicated over the years. Depending on where you come into comics or the character, many readers will have their definitive origin for the character, which doesn't help writers streamlining because quite a few of the origins for Donna are genuinely compelling in their own right. Unfortunately, one of them being "created as a weapon by the Amazons" was not something we needed as an option, because it so fundamentally misunderstands the character. While Donna has often been a tragic figure over the years, an aggressive killer she hasn't been. I'd go as far as to say that Diana has far more often been portrayed as an "aggressive" character than Donna has, who has always been somewhere between sugary peppy sister figure, and a sort of "den-mother" character. Again, we're lucky that this origin hasn't stuck, but I think what has is the image of Donna as a more aggressive figure, something I don't think was there so much prior to this origin.

Some other candidates for erasure just for discussion's sake:

• Artemis being a US army brat (terrible retcon)
• The death of Trevor Barnes (wasted character)
• Diana having a twin brother (pointless and thematically problematic)
• Diana being partially consumed/eaten by Clayface (yes, this happened)
• Diana crying because of her lack of popularity in comparison to other heroes (and so did this)
• Diana and Steve's split after Rucka's Rebirth run (failure of imagination)

[Gaius]

For me the very obvious answer to this is the reveal of Diana being Zeus' daughter, but I feel that's shared by many and a very old discussion by now. Plenty of folks have spoken on these boards about how damaging this was to the overall mythos of the character, especially given how lasting the impact has been.

With that in mind, and forgive me for breaking your rules here Gaius, but there's a bunch of other stories or plot points I'd erase / that I felt were either unhelpful to the character, the cast or the direction of the book.

eh, it's fine. I was just hoping to avoid the lazy "the entire run I don't like'' posts.

Killing Hippolyta in ToA is actually something I considered and I agree with pretty much everything you say. I didn't like it when it first happened and I don't really think there's been story since it happened that made it worth it. And unfortunately, I don't see much of a motivation from DC at the moment to bring her back or undo it, so it's something that'll probably be sticking around.

Like some other stuff from Cloonan/Conrad's run it also had the poor timing of coming at the same time with how Hippolyta was being done in Historia.

[Alpha]

I actually enjoyed Olympus Rising and Artemis Wanted, and both of them came from the lame death Hippolyta had in TOA

i don't think it was great decision, but I did enjoy these stories

[DisneyBoy]

Hippolyta betrays Antiope because she loves Herakles

I was really shocked when I read that in WW #0. It seemed so trashy and needless (the art didn't help).

[marhawkman]

I'd say not kill Max Lord. That era became a lot less fun when WW killed him. like seriously, how is that the ONLY thing the JL can do to counter a telepath???? It's not just making WW look bad, but the ENTIRE JL!!!!!

[bardkeep]

Hippolyta's recent death was completely pointless and infuriating, made worse by the fact that it happened literally one issue after the first time they were actually able to show her and Philippus as lovers. It felt like they'd done it to set up something big and then it went nowhere...sort of the story of the entire Cloonan/Conrad era tbh. But I wouldn't put it here, just because I don't think it'll have a huge lasting impact. I suspect either DC will have another reboot or a future writer will bring her back to life.

To answer the original prompt: It's tempting to say whatever issue in Azzarello's run established the Zeus origin and issue #7 with the rape pirate Amazons reveal. But honestly I think the Max Lord stuff is really what set the course for everything that's gone wrong with the character.

I'd also cut the two really iffy story bits in Perez's run - the Heracles redemption arc (or at least the Heracles/Hippolyta kiss) and the Bana-Mighdall arc. They're huge stains on such an incredible run.