Superman/Wonder Woman Futures End (Spoilers)

[Sacred Knight]

Batman get stuff done without Superman's help

Not optimally. Did you even read the issue? That was the entire theme, that Batman needed Superman and Superman wasn't there. And what's his state now? He's crippled.

Bruce is worse off in the Futures End world without Superman around than Wonder Woman is, so this argument doesn't hold even an ounce of water.

[Typhoeus]

What works is his revamping of the Gods. That is creative and original. Not WW as a God of War. He's just swapped Diana for Athena without really getting Diana to have to walk the real path of a God of War.

It's funny how you said that! I was thinking pretty much the same thing about Azzarelo's rendition of Diana. I'm on the fence when it comes to Azzarelo's run; I really like some concepts (his rendition of the Gods especially War/Ares) but I'm really put off by other aspects ('Amazon sex pirates' for instance). I was a little torn about the concept of Diana being 'God of War', not because I think Diana should only be associated with symbols of peace but simply because it makes her redundant with Athena. In the Greek myth, war has two faces: one aspect is Chaos, bloodlust, savagery,... symbolized by Ares and another is Order, strategy, wisdom, discipline ...symbolized by Athena.
Azzarelo said that Diana's mission was to change the meaning of War, change it from inside but the way I understand it, it turns Diana into an ersatz of Athena. I don't want another Athena. BTW, I suspect this is one of the reason why she's been absent of Azzarelo's story for the last three years, in the previous iterations Athena was a crucial character of Wonder Woman's story.
I think it was a little 'lazy' to make Diana yet another Goddess of war; she could have been a Goddess of Truth, Justice,...Something more original.
I don't hate the concept but I'm not really thrilled either.

[Xarek]

It's funny how you said that! I was thinking pretty much the same thing about Azzarelo's rendition of Diana. I'm on the fence when it comes to Azzarelo's run; I really like some concepts (his rendition of the Gods especially War/Ares) but I'm really put off by other aspects ('Amazon sex pirates' for instance). I was a little torn about the concept of Diana being 'God of War', not because I think Diana should only be associated with symbols of peace but simply because it makes her redundant with Athena. In the Greek myth, war has two faces: one aspect is Chaos, bloodlust, savagery,... symbolized by Ares and another is Order, strategy, wisdom, discipline ...symbolized by Athena.
Azzarelo said that Diana's mission was to change the meaning of War, change it from inside but the way I understand it, it turns Diana into an ersatz of Athena. I don't want another Athena. BTW, I suspect this is one of the reason why she's been absent of Azzarelo's story for the last three years, in the previous iterations Athena was a crucial character of Wonder Woman's story.
I think it was a little 'lazy' to make Diana yet another Goddess of war; she could have been a Goddess of Truth, Justice,...Something more original.
I don't hate the concept but I'm not really thrilled either.

Agreed. The idea of Goddess of Justice (Astraea). That would have been very cool and in character. Furthermore Diana (Wonder Woman) has more traits/symbols in common with Diana (Artemis for the Romans), just with specks of Athena thrown in. But Azzarello decided to go full tilt with the Xena Warrior Princes/Red Sonja route. That's why I find the first part of his run far superior to the rest. More balanced.
It doesn't help that his WW gets kicked around, bound, shot, cut, and impaled only to be saved by someone other than herself. But I digress...

[BlackFeath]

It's funny how you said that! I was thinking pretty much the same thing about Azzarelo's rendition of Diana. I'm on the fence when it comes to Azzarelo's run; I really like some concepts (his rendition of the Gods especially War/Ares) but I'm really put off by other aspects ('Amazon sex pirates' for instance). I was a little torn about the concept of Diana being 'God of War', not because I think Diana should only be associated with symbols of peace but simply because it makes her redundant with Athena. In the Greek myth, war has two faces: one aspect is Chaos, bloodlust, savagery,... symbolized by Ares and another is Order, strategy, wisdom, discipline ...symbolized by Athena.
Azzarelo said that Diana's mission was to change the meaning of War, change it from inside but the way I understand it, it turns Diana into an ersatz of Athena. I don't want another Athena. BTW, I suspect this is one of the reason why she's been absent of Azzarelo's story for the last three years, in the previous iterations Athena was a crucial character of Wonder Woman's story.
I think it was a little 'lazy' to make Diana yet another Goddess of war; she could have been a Goddess of Truth, Justice,...Something more original.
I don't hate the concept but I'm not really thrilled either.

I, for one, think this was an interesting idea, instead. It is a conflictual idea. When Ares trained Diana, he wanted her to fully take his place, to take over those aspects of war he represented.
Just by staying with him, though, Diana began to change him. He started to care for her:



When he asked her to kill the Minotaur and she refused, he realized how Diana wouldn't have ever become like him, that she had chosen a path different from his, that a path different from his really existed, and that without knowing it he had already made that choice once, when, after Diana yielded, he had decided not to kill her.



In that moment for the first time he had ended a 'war' without the death of his enemy. And he left because he was hurted by that, because he didn't think another way existed before that moment, because he didn't think that war could be different. He was resigned in his role, and even if he was tired of it he didn't know there was another choice, even if he too aspired to rest, to peace, like we see when he dreams of one day passing his role to Diana:
http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/...n-zone-008.jpg

and also from Hera's words at the end, when she wishes him to find in death what he couldn't obtain in life: peace.

He thought that the meaning of war was to end conflict and that to do that he had to kill the enemy not to give him the chance to return and try to kill him. Diana instead decided not to kill the Minotaur and in doing so she had gained his respect and even after ten years he still remembers her and probably will become her ally.

Actually, thinking about the differences between Perez's and Azzarello's Ares I have recently come to this conclusion: I think that while Perez's Ares stopped his plan about the nuclear war when he realized that it would have lead only to the death of everything, war included, Azzarello's Ares, before meeting Diana and thinking she could take his role, would have continued with that plan because to end war was what he really wanted to do, and he seemed to see death as the only solution.

In the years between that 0 issue and when we saw him again Ares had changed a lot, but he looked sick, because he was trying but he couldn't really change completely. We saw him still in war zones, covered in blood. When he died and left his role to her he did so not thinking she would become like him, but that she would do better, much better than him. He knew she could change the meaning of war. He wanted her to. But he knew it wouldn't have been easy, he knew it would have been a burden.



So Diana became god of war in Ares's place, but she never became like he was, and she didn’t start to impersonate Athena's role either. She didn't become 'Order, strategy, wisdom, discipline'. She became a god of war who wanted to change war and even put an end to war. It doesn't seem to me Athena's role, nor Ares, it's a role of her own.

A role she doesn't like but she must shoulder, and that of course creates conflicts inside her. Goddess of Peace or of Truth wouldn't have created any conflicts like god of war does, so they wouldn't have been as interesting to me. For one, these two issues wouldn't have existed if she wasn't god of war but she was goddess of peace from the beginning.

I would like her to manage to change the meaning of war from within instead of what we have seen here...and there's still hope we will because these are future ends issues that probably won't happen. This offers so many opportunities for interesting storylines and to explore Diana's personality and to see how she always struggles to be better. I liked the WW FE issue because of that. Because we saw what she struggles with.

Azzarello has made her god of war, but has never made her symbolize 'Chaos, bloodlust, savagery'. We can almost say she is struggling to end those aspects of war. We could see it just the moment after she became god of war, when she spared the First Born. Would the god of 'slaughter' do it? Or would the god of war be interested in changing the amazons instead of making them continue with their habits? Would he struggle to obtain peace between the amazons and sons? I don't think so. Azzarello has never depicted her in that way.

If something she seems more the god of war in the classical sense in Justice League, and that started wayyyy before Azzarello made her really god of war, since it happened in WW 23, while already in Justice League 9, 10, ecc... she was already depicted like that.

What Azzarello has done is shifting the fight Diana has always had against war from outside against Ares to inside herself. She is still fighting war, only now she has to do that from within. That for me was a really interesting thing to do. More so because Diana even while struggling for peace has always been a warrior too. Now she has an internal battle to fight.

It wouldn't have worked with Athena. She was never her enemy, and she doesn't represent the worst aspect of war like Ares did.

Moreover, by internalizing the fight against War Azzarello has even made it more realistic for me. To end war is not as easy as defeating an external enemy, because you can be sure that another one will raise. It is a change that the society as a whole has to make from within. War will end when everyone will understand that it is something that has to end, when everyone will see the other not as an enemy but as an ally and a friend, when everyone will stop to use it for his/her ends. That is a much more difficult thing to achieve than defeating an enemy.

You can't give him all the faults for the fact war exists. War doesn't exist because there's an enemy, but because you see him as an enemy, and probably he has become your enemy for the same reason, because he has seen you as his enemy. You want to end a war? You have to be the first to put down your weapons or else no one will. You have to trust your enemy to do the same. A great risk.

In this sense does this remind someone? xD Someone that gives her trust even to Strife? xD

I find interesting how turning enemies into allies has always been Wonder Woman's way, and she has done it a lot in Azzarello's run too. She has the right means to end war. I think this role is just perfect for her, but of course it is not an easy one. And it is not really new. It has always been her role, hasn't it? Her mission has always been to give the example in this sense. And you can give a better example for something if you are involved too into it instead of it being an external thing, because you can understand it better.

Becoming the goddess of Peace would be the culmination of everything, a state she can manage to reach only when she will have finally succeeded into doing these changes...not something she can do just yet. Anyway, I want to think that in SMWW FE she managed to do that only because she realized it. Because she realized that continuing to see Nemesis as her enemy, the war wouldn't ever have ended.

[brettc1]

Superman saving her from Tartarus was not as painful as it might have been.

Yes to the mistake of Wonder Woman being God of War. Pity it took her five years to work it out.

The thing that makes me happiest in this issue?

Looking forward to why things are going to be "strained" between them in about a year.

[Sacred Knight]

Doubt we'll ever find out. Alternate timeline and all that. Going forward things certainly won't be progressing with this issue as a valuable reference, at least.

[brettc1]

Doubt we'll ever find out. Alternate timeline and all that. Going forward things certainly won't be progressing with this issue as a valuable reference, at least.

Drama trumps causality.

T minus 364 days and counting.

[Sacred Knight]

Oh I know it. I'd be dreaming if I didn't think relationship drama will definitely crop up. All I'm saying is that it'll be based on nothing from this issue, as this was just a filler one-shot of an alternate timeline. Hell not much from these issues look to even carry over to Futures End proper as the storyline doesn't even really fit. And the writer who wrote this is leaving DC entirely. And even if it were a viable frame of reference...one year could very well mean 5 or ten when it comes to comic book time, lol. I'm just saying its not a good idea to grab onto anything here in specific as a realistic gauge as to what we'll see when Tomasi takes over the book.

[Silvanus]

Hell not much from these issues look to even carry over to Futures End proper as the storyline doesn't even really fit.

You're probably right, although that Future's End cover with Wonder Woman in War garb makes me wonder.

And Four-Years-Ago-Superman did say he was thinking of having a word with Hermit Superman before going home. That talk, if it happens. could help motivate Hermit Superman to return to the fray, which could have a big impact on Future End proper.

Of course, then we'd need an explanation for why the apocalypse underway in Superman/Wonder Woman doesn't seem to be happening in the main story. For example, maybe Nemesis was getting in the heads of Wonder Woman and all her associates--even the newly arrived Superman--to make them perceive that the war had gone further than it had. That could have been her way of making them try to lose hope.

[Sacred Knight]

Thing is I'm just as confident that's not going to happen either. I have little reason to think that the FE proper creative team has any intention of using a plot element introduced by a writer who has nothing to do with the weekly. Especially when that element messes with the uniqueness of the time-travel element of the story, anyway. Terry from 35YL using secret Bruce Wayne-tech trying to change things. Brother Eye-Joker from 35YL using stolen Bruce Wayne-tech trying to keep him from changing things. ...And Superman from 4 years ago here by some type of magic for entirely different reasons. One of those things does not fit, and its because its not an Azz, Jurgens, Giffen, or Lemire idea hence its not gonna be used.

Kal-El going to have someone in his ear trying to get him to come back, but its already been set up that the person whose got that job is John Constantine.

[Silvanus]

Thing is I'm just as confident that's not going to happen either. I have little reason to think that the weekly creative team has any intention of using a time-traveling Superman. It messes up the uniqueness of the time-travel element, anyway. Its clearly based off Terminator. Two travelers. One trying to change something, the other trying to stop that guy from changing things. Superman's going to have someone in his ear trying to get him to come back, but its already been set up that the person whose got that job is John Constantine.

I admit that the odds are in favor of your being right. But I'm not sure. While "two time travellers" might be neat, the creative team could possibly have deviated from the Terminator model if they decided "Time Travel Run Amok" is more interesting. There's probably at least a third time traveller, as the Booster Gold: Future's End book has been talked up as important to the main story. And while you're right that Constantine is trying to persuade Superman, he might need help; and who better to get help from than the past version of the very man he's trying to persuade. Who knows? We could find out that the Amazons were able to bring Superman from the past only with Constantine's help, and he helped (even though he would have known that the Amazons' perceptiosn of the war's severity had been mess with) because he had a a job for Superman.

The discrepancy over the state of the world in Soule's "Futures End" books and the main story is big and obvious enough to make me suspect that they might plan to address it. And since we already know that Nemesis was messing with Wonder Woman's perceptions and memories at least while she was in Tartarus, another level of deception, affecting her and those around her while she's not in Tartarus, doesn't seem to be out of the question.

[hellacre]

I, for one, think this was an interesting idea, instead. It is a conflictual idea. When Ares trained Diana, he wanted her to fully take his place, to take over those aspects of war he represented.
Just by staying with him, though, Diana began to change him. He started to care for her:



When he asked her to kill the Minotaur and she refused, he realized how Diana wouldn't have ever become like him, that she had chosen a path different from his, that a path different from his really existed, and that without knowing it he had already made that choice once, when, after Diana yielded, he had decided not to kill her.



In that moment for the first time he had ended a 'war' without the death of his enemy. And he left because he was hurted by that, because he didn't think another way existed before that moment, because he didn't think that war could be different. He was resigned in his role, and even if he was tired of it he didn't know there was another choice, even if he too aspired to rest, to peace, like we see when he dreams of one day passing his role to Diana:
http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/...n-zone-008.jpg

and also from Hera's words at the end, when she wishes him to find in death what he couldn't obtain in life: peace.

He thought that the meaning of war was to end conflict and that to do that he had to kill the enemy not to give him the chance to return and try to kill him. Diana instead decided not to kill the Minotaur and in doing so she had gained his respect and even after ten years he still remembers her and probably will become her ally.

Actually, thinking about the differences between Perez's and Azzarello's Ares I have recently come to this conclusion: I think that while Perez's Ares stopped his plan about the nuclear war when he realized that it would have lead only to the death of everything, war included, Azzarello's Ares, before meeting Diana and thinking she could take his role, would have continued with that plan because to end war was what he really wanted to do, and he seemed to see death as the only solution.

In the years between that 0 issue and when we saw him again Ares had changed a lot, but he looked sick, because he was trying but he couldn't really change completely. We saw him still in war zones, covered in blood. When he died and left his role to her he did so not thinking she would become like him, but that she would do better, much better than him. He knew she could change the meaning of war. He wanted her to. But he knew it wouldn't have been easy, he knew it would have been a burden.



So Diana became god of war in Ares's place, but she never became like he was, and she didn’t start to impersonate Athena's role either. She didn't become 'Order, strategy, wisdom, discipline'. She became a god of war who wanted to change war and even put an end to war. It doesn't seem to me Athena's role, nor Ares, it's a role of her own.

A role she doesn't like but she must shoulder, and that of course creates conflicts inside her. Goddess of Peace or of Truth wouldn't have created any conflicts like god of war does, so they wouldn't have been as interesting to me. For one, these two issues wouldn't have existed if she wasn't god of war but she was goddess of peace from the beginning.

I would like her to manage to change the meaning of war from within instead of what we have seen here...and there's still hope we will because these are future ends issues that probably won't happen. This offers so many opportunities for interesting storylines and to explore Diana's personality and to see how she always struggles to be better. I liked the WW FE issue because of that. Because we saw what she struggles with.

Azzarello has made her god of war, but has never made her symbolize 'Chaos, bloodlust, savagery'. We can almost say she is struggling to end those aspects of war. We could see it just the moment after she became god of war, when she spared the First Born. Would the god of 'slaughter' do it? Or would the god of war be interested in changing the amazons instead of making them continue with their habits? Would he struggle to obtain peace between the amazons and sons? I don't think so. Azzarello has never depicted her in that way.

If something she seems more the god of war in the classical sense in Justice League, and that started wayyyy before Azzarello made her really god of war, since it happened in WW 23, while already in Justice League 9, 10, ecc... she was already depicted like that.

What Azzarello has done is shifting the fight Diana has always had against war from outside against Ares to inside herself. She is still fighting war, only now she has to do that from within. That for me was a really interesting thing to do. More so because Diana even while struggling for peace has always been a warrior too. Now she has an internal battle to fight.

It wouldn't have worked with Athena. She was never her enemy, and she doesn't represent the worst aspect of war like Ares did.

Moreover, by internalizing the fight against War Azzarello has even made it more realistic for me. To end war is not as easy as defeating an external enemy, because you can be sure that another one will raise. It is a change that the society as a whole has to make from within. War will end when everyone will understand that it is something that has to end, when everyone will see the other not as an enemy but as an ally and a friend, when everyone will stop to use it for his/her ends. That is a much more difficult thing to achieve than defeating an enemy.

You can't give him all the faults for the fact war exists. War doesn't exist because there's an enemy, but because you see him as an enemy, and probably he has become your enemy for the same reason, because he has seen you as his enemy. You want to end a war? You have to be the first to put down your weapons or else no one will. You have to trust your enemy to do the same. A great risk.

In this sense does this remind someone? xD Someone that gives her trust even to Strife? xD

I find interesting how turning enemies into allies has always been Wonder Woman's way, and she has done it a lot in Azzarello's run too. She has the right means to end war. I think this role is just perfect for her, but of course it is not an easy one. And it is not really new. It has always been her role, hasn't it? Her mission has always been to give the example in this sense. And you can give a better example for something if you are involved too into it instead of it being an external thing, because you can understand it better.

Becoming the goddess of Peace would be the culmination of everything, a state she can manage to reach only when she will have finally succeeded into doing these changes...not something she can do just yet. Anyway, I want to think that in SMWW FE she managed to do that only because she realized it. Because she realized that continuing to see Nemesis as her enemy, the war wouldn't ever have ended.

That's all very good and well explained in this story but as I said Diana being God of War works in a limited closed off universe. I have to see it in work in the DCU and from what I see, she's failed at it judging by what's happening in every other corner of the DCU. And Diana for my part always knew in her lore that war does not change but people can. Azzarello wants to make her walk the path of war to understand peace is what some are saying. Seriously, the woman is a warrior. A warrior with empathy built in her. I really don't love the idea Ares trained her and subverted the female patrons in her life and that this idea she needed to be God of War to understand peace. The moment she took the mantle because she did it to stop First Born shows just by her actions ....she understands that already. So I would argue the action of being God of War does not bring any more knowledge about War or changing it for Diana. She was never a warrior that loved the art of war and the kill and the glory that had to learn to value how to manage conflict. Do some other heroes really need to walk and wallow in war to know and cherish peace? I think not. That took away something valuable from the Amazons by bringing in Ares as her mentor. As I said before she probably fights on because she believed it her duty. She took the mantle and Diana is a woman who would see something through. But in doing so she loses Wonder Woman. I hope the God of War mantle is given up eventually. I really do not want to read WW for the next 20 years as a God of War. Diana with the feathers and horns as a visual to me is a contradiction of what Marston wanted for her. Are we to have her wearing that for the whole of canon? Why bother having Wonder Woman as a symbol then? It was a nice one shot to see what constant war could do to her but I am not a fan of her being War indefinitely and would have hoped she'd have passed the mantle before the run ends but seems Azzarello is leaving his run with her as that. It sounds cool I guess. WW is God of War. But seems to me it feels like when did her being just WW not be good enough? I don't know I still maintain she did not need to be God of War (other than to move around Olympus) to fight war and handle conflict but I accept she did it for the greater good. And that is very Diana. And for me...I would prefer we have Diana, Wonder Woman back sooner than later.

[BlackFeath]

That's all very good and well explained in this story but as I said Diana being God of War works in a limited closed off universe. I have to see it in work in the DCU and from what I see, she's failed at it judging by what's happening in every other corner of the DCU. And Diana for my part always knew in her lore that war does not change but people can. Azzarello wants to make her walk the path of war to understand peace is what some are saying. Seriously, the woman is a warrior. A warrior with empathy built in her. I really don't love the idea Ares trained her and subverted the female patrons in her life and that this idea she needed to be God of War to understand peace. The moment she took the mantle because she did it to stop First Born shows just by her actions ....she understands that already. So I would argue the action of being God of War does not bring any more knowledge about War or changing it for Diana. She was never a warrior that loved the art of war and the kill and the glory that had to learn to value how to manage conflict. Do some other heroes really need to walk and wallow in war to know and cherish peace? I think not. That took away something valuable from the Amazons by bringing in Ares as her mentor. As I said before she probably fights on because she believed it her duty. She took the mantle and Diana is a woman who would see something through. But in doing so she loses Wonder Woman. I hope the God of War mantle is given up eventually. I really do not want to read WW for the next 20 years as a God of War. Diana with the feathers and horns as a visual to me is a contradiction of what Marston wanted for her. Are we to have her wearing that for the whole of canon? Why bother having Wonder Woman as a symbol then? It was a nice one shot to see what constant war could do to her but I am not a fan of her being War indefinitely and would have hoped she'd have passed the mantle before the run ends but seems Azzarello is leaving his run with her as that. It sounds cool I guess. WW is God of War. But seems to me it feels like when did her being just WW not be good enough? I don't know I still maintain she did not need to be God of War (other than to move around Olympus) to fight war and handle conflict but I accept she did it for the greater good. And that is very Diana. And for me...I would prefer we have Diana, Wonder Woman back sooner than later.

But she is still Wonder Woman. Even in the illusion, she stopped being Wonder Woman only at the end, before that, when she risked everything to save those soldiers who even asked her why the god of war was there, and she said not to call her god of war, she was still Wonder Woman. In Azz's run too, she still is Wonder Woman. Even Ares just before dying calls her Wonder Woman.

Really...I think her role now is just the same as in the previous runs. It has always been that to change the world and to bring peace, and that's what she has to try now.

Maybe Azzarello hasn't showed it in a big way because he is still continuing to tell his story, and maybe had he done that it would have been better, but he has already done that in a more subtly way, for me, just by making her turning her enemies into allies, something she has done a lot in his run, but that she has done also in previous ones, and something she started to do since she was a child with Ares and the minotaur, before taking on that mantle.

When I think of her as god of war I don't imagine her with the feathers and the horns, ecc... I don't like that either. (Actually the moment in which in WW FE she appeared like that it was the moment after she had stopped trusting anyone. Wonder Woman without trust? That couldn’t be. In that moment she had lost herself. That's not what I would like to see. That would mean she has failed to do her task).
Her role as god of war is for me that to make everyone realize what she already knows about war. So, she has basically just to continue her mission as Wonder Woman.

I look at the page of her training, with Ares and Hippolyta both being proud of Diana and thinking how she will be a good god of war and a good queen, and I think that, just as it happens to every child, in the end she became her own woman, surely different from what they thought and for me better than they thought she could become =)

She assumed those roles, but instead of adapting to them, she is changing them as she thinks it is right.

And I think that Ares understood she would have done that. He didn't give her his mantle because so she would have been able to understand war by being war. He wanted her to have his mantle because he had understood that she was the one who could have been able to do what he couldn't, and that's changing war, because she had already the means to, he had seen what she was capable of, and he knew that she was different from him.

Personally I prefer seeing her change the role of god of war instead of giving up the mantle, just like she decided to change the Amazons instead of abandoning them.

[brettc1]

Oh I know it. I'd be dreaming if I didn't think relationship drama will definitely crop up. All I'm saying is that it'll be based on nothing from this issue, as this was just a filler one-shot of an alternate timeline. Hell not much from these issues look to even carry over to Futures End proper as the storyline doesn't even really fit. And the writer who wrote this is leaving DC entirely. And even if it were a viable frame of reference...one year could very well mean 5 or ten when it comes to comic book time, lol. I'm just saying its not a good idea to grab onto anything here in specific as a realistic gauge as to what we'll see when Tomasi takes over the book.

The thing that must also be remembered is that this story is being editorially driven, and the very fact that this get mentioned is less like Chekov's gun than Chekov's rocket launcher. The reason being that we DON'T know exactly what happened.

Had Diana just come and said "A,B, and then C occurred" I would say it was a one off. But this kind of foreshadowing, where we are teased with some of the details but left largely in the dark to wonder, is almost always the prelude to something down the track.

[Silvanus]

And Diana for my part always knew in her lore that war does not change but people can. Azzarello wants to make her walk the path of war to understand peace is what some are saying.

If some are saying that, I'm not one of them. That, in fact, sounds like Soule's premises in SM/WW FE, but not Azz's premise. I don't think Azz shows becoming War to be a primarily educational process for Diana. I certainly don't think that Ares meant (at least consciously) to teach her how to understand peace. Far from it; he tried to teach her to be merciless.

Instead of being mainly a "learning experience," I think that in Azz's story, at a symbolic level, Diana becoming War is a way of dramatizing something that the character already knew and that has always been part of Wonder Woman's ethos: the idea that sometimes if you want peace--especially a just and lasting peace--you have to be willing to fight for it. It's a debatable idea--certainly, strict pacifists would have to disagree, unless "fight" is taken very metaphorically--but it's a certainly a respectable idea. And it's an idea that Marston had Wonder Woman endorse explicitly (especially in a conversation with Dr. Psycho's wife, in the issue in which Dr. Psycho first appeared). In Azz's run, t's not that Diana "learns" this by becoming War; it's that she lives this idea and represents this idea by becoming War. Because she loves peace and life so much, to bring them about she's even willing to make the sacrifice of becoming War (which is symbolic, at a "god" level, of the human situation in which a solider who's willing to become a warrior to protect the peace for his or her country). (And she has to do it initially for a very specific reason: to stop the First Born from becoming War, and then to lead the Olympians and Amazons against him.)

I hope the God of War mantle is given up eventually.

I don't necessarily disagree with that, though I'd rather she her evolve into a new role (like god of peace) than regress. And i would want that evolution to play out less as a "learning process" for her than as the transformation of her inherited role (her "throne") by her personality and actions .

Are we to have her wearing that for the whole of canon?

Well, no. We don't even have her wearing it all the time now.

And for me...I would prefer we have Diana, Wonder Woman back sooner than later.

As she pointed out to the First Born last month, her name, now and always, is Diana, and everything else is just a title or description. She's always had other titles and descriptions: Wonder Woman, Wonder Girl (in Kanigher's back story), Amazon princess, army nurse, intelligence officer, Justice Society secretary, Justice League member, goddess of truth, fast food server, etc. "God of war" is just another. For me, the test of most of these roles is not whether they will be featured for all time and in all corners fo the DCU where Diana appears; most of them won't be, and that's as it should be. The test is whether they help to generate some good stories.