Wonder Woman: Contagion Talkback

[DisneyBoy]

If this is already a thread, I couldn't find it.


I just read through the last collection of Gail Simone's work on Wonder Woman. Really enjoyed Nicola Scott's artwork and I think Gail did a good job of wrapping up her run in what I imagine was not a lot of time. (Where did all those threads from back in the day go, as her run first hit stands?)

I have nothing but questions about Astarte. In The Circle, I figured Gail was going for a new perspective on Diana's birth, with her being born under the blood moon (Hunter's Moon?) and the four Amazons wanting her dead. I really enjoyed that addition to the Perez origin as it didn't really change much but added some depth to things.

In this last trade, however, Astarte claims to be Hippolyta's sister, and we see her over Hippolyta's crib telling the Alien Amazon Women to take her instead. Only...Hippolyta was never a baby (as Diana later points out). So...was Astarte given false memories of how she was first taken in by the Space Amazons? I'm at a loss to understand her origins.

If it was meant to be clear that she wasn't at all Diana's actual Aunt Antiope, but rather some deluded woman...it wasn't. The narration refers to her and her daughter constantly as Diana's Aunt and Cousin. We all know what became of Antiope thanks to what Circe told Diana early in the Perez run. And all the continuity that stemmed from that - including the Banas and several Civil Wars on Themyscira - would be undone by this kind of retcon.

So...am I missing something obvious about this character, or did Gail not get to finish what she had intended for her? Or was this a full-on retcon, meaning Gail's run is basically anything but a soft reboot...?

Your thoughts are welcome!

[Doctor Bifrost]

Here's my thought, although it will probably not answer your questions: one of the things that disappointed me about The New 52 was that there were many ongoing storylines, unresolved issues, and mysteries - such as the one you mention - and one of the reasons I was interested in reading stories set in the DCU was to see them resolved over time. I like it when that's done in a clever, elegant manner, and that's what I was hoping for. And the Brightest Day miniseries was basically just a bunch of set-ups for future storylines (such as Hawkman's quest for his wife - not that I was crazy about that idea, but it was a mystery to be resolved).

And then, in what seemed to be a very sudden fashion - boom! - The New 52. Familiar-looking characters with familiar names, but a new fictional setting that did not follow in a causal fashion from the previous one. And that basically meant that none of the storylines I had invested some readerly interest in were ever going to be continued. They belonged to a universe that had been summarily killed off.

As a consequence, I find it harder to invest the same kind of interest in the current DCU, knowing how comfortable they are pulling the rug out from under the feet of intrigued readers at any moment. Fool me once, shame on you, and all that. So I'm not the kind of fan I was once before. (Not that DC was ever really great at follow-through; but this was, to me, a new level of no-follow-through.)

As for Gail Simone's storyline, she's a fantastic writer and there were a lot of things I really loved about the Circle; overall I quite enjoyed it. But it had details that seemed out of phase with what I knew about Wonder Woman. For example, the idea that the Amazons would take their criminals/villains/traitors (whatever you want to call them) and stick them into deep, rough pits beneath the earth seemed out of character to me. Previously the Amazons were famous for attempting to rehabilitate their enemies - be their Nazi baronesses, split-personality supervilainesses, or immortal Greek witches. The Amazons had a whole island dedicated to it - Rehabilitation Island, or Reformation Island. There was also that fact that, during the several decades that the Circle were stuck down there, Paradise Island had been utterly destroyed more than once, including in a then fairly recent story. Which you think would have killed them.

So when she introduced Astarte, I thought, "Wait, is this seeming impossibility a deliberate signal to attentive readers that the story we're hearing isn't true, and we should look for foreshowing and clues that might help us understand the paradox" [this is the "continuity fan" approach], "or is Ms. Simone simply going to retcon Hippolyta's origin without any warning, and we should just take this new version as given, without further consideration?" And since I could not figure out which it was - DC's commitment to continuity, even within a given series, being somewhat variable - it was hard for me to know just how to approach the story.

And then before we could find out, The New 52 just washed it all away, so I guess we shouldn't have asked.

(John Byrne also did odd things to Hippolyta's origin, like having Ares simply announce "well, I'm Hippolyta's father," and having all the other gather just sort of nod their heads and say, sure, that makes sense, although in the context of the DCU at the time it did not.)

So my answer: I have no idea what Gail Simone was doing with that bit. And I was watching to find out. But I guess now we never will, unless she decides to tell us outside of the comics themselves.

But that's just me.

[DisneyBoy]

Wow - you just said everything I wanted to say but much better. Thank you for that wonderful post!

I also found myself scratching my head when four Amazons were introduced as being imprisoned around the island without ever suffering the consequences of the many upheavals of Themyscira. But again, I knew this was a soft reboot so I overlooked it.

This Astarte business was when I really got confused, especially since it comes right at the end of Gail's run. For the record, though, Diana does say that the villain will be sent to Reformation Island, so it seems like they will rehabilitate her. I just have no idea how they would go about doing it and what they would learn about her in the process.

It was especially weird considering that Hippolyta had just shown up in town to fight off Astarte's ships. Couldn't Diana have said something to her mother about this woman claiming to be her sister? I realize Gail did not have enough pages to include a scene like that - she wraps up the issue in all of two pages and spends much of that time resolving the gorilla subplot at light speed - but if there was a question about this Space Amazon's true identity, Diana could have cleared it up with a quick "Hey Ma - ever seen this woman before?"

[Outside_85]

Think it was a crowbar job on some level, possibly due to editorial interference, as Gail has mentioned was present.

The Circle surviving the 3-4 relocations of Themyscira and the Amazons make no sense and goes unexplained, as does how Diana remained completely unaware of their existences in spite of having been queen at one point.

Same is true of Astarte, and how it fit anywhere unless she was taken away only 20 some years ago.

But I wonder if this it was somekind of mini-retcon that Gail pulled off thanks to the changes of Infinite Crisis, where Diana was reinstated as a Justice League founder over Black Canary. That could work in the way that IC somehow removed both destruction and relocation of Paradise Island and the one in Gail's run is simply the one thats always been.

As for Astarte, I think that there has been somekind of agreement within DC that the Perez origins of the Amazons has been changed and Hippolyta was not one of the original Amazons; she had a mother who was queen and she eventually inherited the mantle. And going back to Byrne, it might be that they actually wanted to make Ares Hippolyta's father as per the mythological Hippolyta, but never got around to actually establish him as such.

[Darius]

Think it was a crowbar job on some level, possibly due to editorial interference, as Gail has mentioned was present.

The Circle surviving the 3-4 relocations of Themyscira and the Amazons make no sense and goes unexplained, as does how Diana remained completely unaware of their existences in spite of having been queen at one point.

Same is true of Astarte, and how it fit anywhere unless she was taken away only 20 some years ago.

But I wonder if this it was somekind of mini-retcon that Gail pulled off thanks to the changes of Infinite Crisis, where Diana was reinstated as a Justice League founder over Black Canary. That could work in the way that IC somehow removed both destruction and relocation of Paradise Island and the one in Gail's run is simply the one thats always been.

As for Astarte, I think that there has been somekind of agreement within DC that the Perez origins of the Amazons has been changed and Hippolyta was not one of the original Amazons; she had a mother who was queen and she eventually inherited the mantle. And going back to Byrne, it might be that they actually wanted to make Ares Hippolyta's father as per the mythological Hippolyta, but never got around to actually establish him as such.

and it's stuff like this that makes DC think "hey maybe we should just hit reset" ... N52 wiped all of these retcons and crowbar/shoehorned story lines out the door, not that this fixed all of the problems, but I can see why they chose to do it! After a while you have to make some hard stops and try again because the continuity is so jacked up there is no way to write new stuff without rejecting old plot lines.

[Outside_85]

and it's stuff like this that makes DC think "hey maybe we should just hit reset" ... N52 wiped all of these retcons and crowbar/shoehorned story lines out the door, not that this fixed all of the problems, but I can see why they chose to do it! After a while you have to make some hard stops and try again because the continuity is so jacked up there is no way to write new stuff without rejecting old plot lines.

I'm kinda in the camp where I think many of these things could have happened as depicted (mostly) if things that been ironed out properly. Like if the Circle was not imprisoned on Paradise Island at all, maybe they had been slain for their attempted misdeeds (high treason after all) and Ares or Hades simply released them. Or in the case of Astarte, the aliens had appeared and wanted Hippolyta (grown up and marked by them as desirable for w/e reason, battle skills perhaps?) but settled for Astarte (perhaps a captain of Hippolyta's palace guards) to avoid the Amazons fighting back.

[Doctor Bifrost]

and it's stuff like this that makes DC think "hey maybe we should just hit reset" ... N52 wiped all of these retcons and crowbar/shoehorned story lines out the door, not that this fixed all of the problems, but I can see why they chose to do it! After a while you have to make some hard stops and try again because the continuity is so jacked up there is no way to write new stuff without rejecting old plot lines.

and it's stuff like this that makes DC think "hey maybe we should just hit reset" ... N52 wiped all of these retcons and crowbar/shoehorned story lines out the door, not that this fixed all of the problems, but I can see why they chose to do it! After a while you have to make some hard stops and try again because the continuity is so jacked up there is no way to write new stuff without rejecting old plot lines.

Unfortunately, this seems to be related to an attitude of "well, we can always retcon it later," which seems to make it less likely that (some) writers will bother to think through the implications of what they're writing in the first place. When you write as part of a serial medium, you're not just writing "the issue the reader will have in his/her hands" - you're adding something to an ongoing chronicle.

Or, at least, this is the way some people (me included) have looked at it at some times. As in: in a serial medium (many comics, TV shows, movie franchises), there are both immediate stories and story/characterization arcs that stretch of multiple individual stories. This is done deliberately - because it's interesting from a narrative point of view (you can tell kinds of long-range tales that can't fit in s single story, even if the single story is stretched over multiple issues), and because it's a business strategy to keep readers coming back, even when certain individual stories aren't so compelling. (As in: yeah, you didn't like the 3-part story that ran in Batman over the last three months, but that doesn't make you quit the comic, because you still want to know how Batman's relationship with Damian will develop.)

So you're not just writing Wonder Woman vs. Dark Angel: H'ood Win? You're also writing The Story of Hippolyta in the current DCU, which can stretch over decades. But if you want to do this - for the art, and for the money - it requires a certain level of consistency.

Personally, I wish editors were more encouraged to say: hey, writer, you've got a great story there. But some of the details don't match what we already know. (Paradise Island was destroyed several times, y'know.) Let's see if we can get them to mesh. (Very, very often, the answer is: it turns out we can! That inconsistency wasn't really necessary to the story at all. Hurrah! Now, when it is, you have a different set of decisions to make. Even as a Continuity Fan, I realize that can't be the only priority, and there are times to make changes - rarely, thoughtfully, and with consideration for the ripple effects.)

And I wish more writers would say it to themselves.

But, as I've mentioned before, being a Continuity Fan these days is like being a fan of a rock band that broke up 30 years ago. DC's official position is "story over continuity" (which also means, short-term stories over longer story arcs, rather than having them peacefully coexist), so they're not being written with me, and people like me, in mind. And that is certainly their right, no question - they get to aim at whatever audience they like. But sometimes I like to point out, just for reference's sake, what's lost (in long-term story possibilities, world-building, and possible audience) when this decision is made.

But that's just me.