NEW Circe In S/WW #16: A Pre-Crisis Super-villain Returned To Macabre Greatness!

[Mel Dyer]

For some years now, I have been wanting to see Circe returned to the more enigmatic and creepier countenance that made her such an enduring super-villain in the 1970s. I have speculated that doing so would give this character a new life and depth that she never had, post-Perez. Having read S/WW #16, I can say that I have been proven (once again) to be right.

Peter Tomasi has brought Circe, BACK ..with a vengeance! The new Circe, as she appears in S/WW #16, has all of the things that her post-Perez version lacked, for so many years.

1) A mysterious weakness, limiting her monstrous power and ambitions, ..giving her much needed structure!

2) A coherent back-story and motivation! YES!!! Circe hasn't had a coherent back-story and motivation, since the 1940s!

3) A characteristic base-of-power - her creepy Greek island, Aiaia - from which to launch her attacks on the world. This island, while obviously being a cracked mirror-perversion of Paradise Island, also offers her, what Apokolips has given Darkseid - a THRONE! Villains, like this, need a throne! This gives WW one more exotic and bizarre locale to slip away to and one more evil empire to topple, returning to the Golden Age, pulp-inspired roots as perennial adventuress!

4) A characteristic and coherent THREAT!!! Comparable to Darkseid's famous Parademons and Atomia's robots, Circe's army of Ani-Men offer a clear and present danger, justifying Wonder Woman's enmity with her, and she's never really had this articulated so clearly, as in S/WW #16. More than a narrative elbow-in-the-ribs to remind us what happens to anybody, who messes with Circe, the Ani-Men are omnipresent examples of what she can unleash upon the world, if Wonder Woman fails to stop her. An evil queen needs an army!

5) A truly horrifically inhuman and ghoulish appearance, characteristic of something that should worry Wonder Woman! With her china-white face and long, blood-red braid and Gothic-inspired, leather corsets, ..the new Circe is a chilling perversion of the little girl's porcelain doll - cosmic menace, masked in pale, antiquated charm and [FINALLY!] the perfect nemesis for Marston's power-fantasy for girls, ..Wonder Woman.

Tomasi has taken the Circe, who debuted in MEN OF WAR #3 and tweaked her into something worthy of enmity with Wonder Woman - as vicious, as Simonson's Loki ..and as potentially apocalyptic, as Kirby's Darkseid. No longer a purple-haired, giggling Wonder-Woman's Joker, the new Circe is a respectable comic super-villain, who - and I can't believe I'm writing this - I actually look forward to seeing more of, in the pages of the WW comic.

A GREAT addition to Wonder Woman's rogues gallery!