Wonder Woman #40 Spoilers

[Dr. Poison]

All I can say is.........WOW! Lots of revelations and developments in this issue. If you thought the arc was moving slow before this, it just got a major jump start. It's revealed that the bug-people were dormant within the earth until Diana threw the First Born into the pit. The heat from his rage and fury is what woke the bug people from their ages-long slumber. The bug-queen says, it's because of the actions of the God of War that all of the innocent humans killed in the recent disasters have been killed. Later in the issue, Donna Troy leads an army of Amazons in a sneak-attack on their male brothers and appears to slaughter each and every one of them. There really is no redeeming the New 52 Amazons, is there? I hope that after Diana finds out about this, she calls in the Justice League to bring her people to justice finally. They've committed enough murder over the centuries and now it's time to give up on any chance of political change and just lock them up.

[evangelionofasgard]

It is Done.
It is Over.
It is Finished.
Let them Burn in the Depths of Hades.

Something I would like to see happen. Have one last surviving male amazon conjure up a Solomon grundy style Unstoppable Sea Captain Zombie composed of the spirits of his brothers and the sailors they murdered. Who Then Stalks The Island Michael Myers Style Killing off All the Amazons who participated in the raids or the killing of there brothers.
Diana tries to stop him until she finds out only the guilty and murderers are being killed.

[Rosa Snarks]

This is where Achilles should come back and lay the smack down on Donna. This is going too far ..

[Dr. Poison]

It is Done.
It is Over.
It is Finished.
Let them Burn in the Depths of Hades.

Something I would like to see happen. Have one last surviving male amazon conjure up a Solomon grundy style Unstoppable Sea Captain Zombie composed of the spirits of his brothers and the sailors they murdered. Who Then Stalks The Island Michael Myers Style Killing off All the Amazons who participated in the raids or the killing of there brothers.
Diana tries to stop him until she finds out only the guilty and murderers are being killed.

That would certainly serve them right IMO. Seriously - there's no going back for these sexist, murderous witches.

[Spair]

Turning to the page I was actually shocked. Why was I shocked? I don't know seeing how I already knew these Amazons were murderers. But still...When Donna yelled Amazon Attack! I still can believe they went through with it. Merciless straight up killers.

[spark627]

This issue was horrible, I hate this arc and this team... it needs to stop. I'm so upset that DC allowed this to happen to WW.

[Badou]

Poor Donna. Sucks she was dragged into all this. Staying in limbo might have been better.

[Silvanus]

All I can say is.........WOW!

Whereas almost all I can say is....UGH! Things have certainly changed in the last few months, if I'm saying "ugh" and you're saying "wow." But I guess it's your turn to be pleased.

The reason I say "almost," though, is that at least the characterization of Diana seems to be improving in this issue. As she says, she seems more focused and grounded, even if she does attribute that to Hippolyta, whose words of wisdom from last month (Diana was taught to channel fear into rage, yet it's an Amazon's job to manage conflict) don't seem any wiser or less contradictory in retrospect.

Lots of revelations and developments in this issue. If you thought the arc was moving slow before this, it just got a major jump start. It's revealed that the bug-people were dormant within the earth until Diana threw the First Born into the pit. The heat from his rage and fury is what woke the bug people from their ages-long slumber.

Which seems a little problematic, doesn't it? His rage and fury had been buried under the earth for 7000 years, as he slowly dug his way out. And yet he didn't stir these creatures during all that time, or even when he finally erupted out of the earth, but only when he was sent back?

The bug-queen says, it's because of the actions of the God of War that all of the innocent humans killed in the recent disasters have been killed.

And her reasoning there seems petty messy. Diana is responsible because she let a menace to the universe fall back into the pit that had kept him from doing harm for 7000 years?

Later in the issue, Donna Troy leads an army of Amazons in a sneak-attack on their male brothers and appears to slaughter each and every one of them. There really is no redeeming the New 52 Amazons, is there?

I found this scene repulsive, but whether there's any redeeming them depends in part on the two words that I underlined in your statement: "an" and "appears." If it's "an" army of Amazons and not the whole army, then we don't know how many of the Amazons support this action. It could be all but Dessa and ghost-Hipolyta, or it could be a slender majority, or a substantial minority, or just a few. And for all we know, Dessa and a large army of Amazons could be just about to appear on the scene, challenge their militant sisters (the new Bana?), and save the surviving men-if it only "appeared" that they were all slaughtered. And, of course, there's a strong hint that Strife in involved, so the Amazons who attacked may not have been in control of themselves. So I think we're at a tipping point now: next issue, the Finches can show us that a substantial number of Amazons, when freed from Stife's influence, are ready to follow Diana on the road to reform--or the Finches can decide that almost all of the Amazons were and are irredeemable. And in the later case, the Finches run itself may also be irredeemable, from my perspective.

One bad sign is the rallying cry of Donna's Amazons: "Amazons, attack!" Did the Finches think that "Amazons attack" would be nostalgic, rather than a bad memory, for long-time readers of the book? Also, it seems weird that Diana leaves the island even though she apparently realizes that Strife may be interfering with the Amazons' ability to freely and reasonably make decisions. Couldn't she have let the rest of the Justice League handle the bug infestation? I understand her belief that the Amazons ultimately have to be responsible for choosing their own path--but, after all, she is one of the Amazons, and she is their rightful queen. And surely, if she suspects that an interloper like Strife is pushing her sisters in the wrong direction, Diana as queen should be there as a counterweight to pull them in the right direction.

[Agent Z]

And her reasoning there seems petty messy. Diana is responsible because she let a menace to the universe fall back into the pit that had kept him from doing harm for 7000 years?[/B]

This is what happens when retcons aren't really thought through.

I found this scene repulsive, but whether there's any redeeming them depends in part on the two words that I underlined in your statement: "an" and "the." If it's "an" army of Amazons and not the whole army, then we don't know how many of the Amazons support this action. It could be all but Dessa and ghost-Hipolyta, or it could be a slender majority, or a substantial minority, or just a few. And for all we know, Dessa and a large army of Amazons could be just about to appear on the scene, challenge their militant sisters (the new Bana?), and save the surviving men-if it only "appeared" that they were all slaughtered. And, of course, there's a strong hint that Strife in involved, so the Amazons who attacked may not have been in control of themselves. So I think we're at a tipping point now: next issue, the Finches can show us that a substantial number of Amazons, when freed from Stife's influence, are ready to follow Diana on the road to reform--or the Finches can decide that almost all of the Amazons were and are irredeemable. And in the later case, the Finches run itself may also be irredeemable, from my perspective.

That's a lot of ifs and given how the Amazons have been written in the New 52 I have no faith that anything you said will come to pass. It's clear that DC only sees the Amazons as sources of misery for Diana and any men she associates with.

[The Undertaker]

Sounds awful all around. I will stick til the annual, but I've already decided to drop the book after that, especially after the new costume reveal. The only hope I have left is about the backup story drawn by Goran Sudzuka.

[Silvanus]

This is what happens when retcons aren't really thought through.

If the retcon you mean is the Finches' idea that these bug monsters were sleeping in the earth all along until the First Born was reburied, then I may agree with you. As far as I can see at this point, they don't seem to have thought through why the First Born didn't wake these monsters until now. If that's the case, then the problem is with the Finches' use of the First Born, not with the introduction and burial of the First Born in the previous run.

That's a lot of ifs and given how the Amazons have been written in the New 52 I have no faith that anything you said will come to pass.

Me neither, really, given the writing in this book so far. But there are, at this point, a lot of ifs either way: The Amazons will have been shown to be thoroughly bad IF Donna's army is acting freely (not, in effect, mind-controlled by Strife) and IF this army is representative of the Amazons as a whole group. I'm not confident at all that the Finches will turn this around, but I'm not willing to assume that they won't at least try. It's not a matter of "faith"--I really don't have any faith in the Finches--but of knowing that we don't know.

[spark627]

Sounds awful all around. I will stick til the annual, but I've already decided to drop the book after that, especially after the new costume reveal. The only hope I have left is about the backup story drawn by Goran Sudzuka.

I've been reading Wonder Woman for over a decade and this is the first time I have considered dropping it. I stuck it out through Amazons Attack... and this is worse.

[Vanguard-01]

I haven't read it yet, but unless people on this thread are flat-out lying and/or deliberately leaving out some important, mitigating factor, then I don't think I need to.

This sounds like absolute crap. I'll reserve judgment until I read it for myself, but right now, I am not optimistic.

The Amazons slaughtering their own sons? "Amazons Attack?" In the past, I have blamed Azz for making the Amazons this repulsive, and thus making it easy for this kind of bad writing. That stops now. Yeah, Azz did the Amazons no favors at all in his run. But no one made the Finches take the Amazons this farther down from where they should be.

I will give the Finches the Annual to convince me that things are not as they seem. The Amazons may be mind controlled, or somehow influenced by Strife. Donna may be salvageable strictly because she is still basically a child who is being manipulated. But unlike Azz's run, I have no reason at all to believe that the Finches have some great plot twists coming up that will make my anger right now seem somehow worth it. I don't care if they think they're playing the long game. It's a game I have no desire to play. They can either show me that they're going somewhere with this with their next issue, or they can lose themselves another reader.

[SteveGus]

This issue was horrible, I hate this arc and this team... it needs to stop. I'm so upset that DC allowed this to happen to WW.

Sounds to me like we're just reaping the seeds that Azzarello sowed. All of these developments flow quite logically from the elements he added and the elements he took away.

Time to wipe the slate clean and reboot the character as an authentic version, make Paradise Island a paradise again, and the Amazons a credible source of Diana's value system.

[spark627]

Sounds to me like we're just reaping the seeds that Azzarello sowed. All of these developments flow quite logically from the elements he added and the elements he took away.

Time to wipe the slate clean and reboot the character as an authentic version, make Paradise Island a paradise again, and the Amazons a credible source of Diana's value system.

I really don't see how this flows logically from the previous run. The run ended with Hippolyte alive, now she is dead again. The Amazons worked with the male Amazons, now they hate them and out for blood. Diana was handling her role as God of War, now she hugs teddy bears and cries about the pressure. Nothing feels like it flows, it feels jarring and worst of all, horribly written and drawn.