Finch/Azzarello Comparisons and Contrasts

[Tayswift]

I like how in marvel one writer keep the previous run alive. Marvel uses the hickaman setup for avengers. bendis use the kieron "tony is adopted", Hickman use Fraction FF to establish Doom face.

if she just kept the male amazons alive, it would be a improvement. other writer could use it better. now if a writer want to use them, he/she will have to bring them back to life. just bleh.

[Silvanus]

Aside from the hamster wheel for the less "sane" of us, I, too, am left wondering "what's the point?" It's looking much more like a pile-on complaint thread than any real discussion of comparison and contrasts. Even if you can ultimately prove that Azzarello is the superior writer - so what? What does that accomplish?

I wasn't really being all that ambitious. Honestly? The "point" was to let me finish the off-topic conversation that Dr. Poison and I started on the sales thread.

But maybe we could think of this less as a thread than as a quarantine zone. If this thread had existed last week, you and I wouldn't have had to use the issue 46 thread to talk about Azzarello and whether or not Diana's words to First Born were comparable to her pep talk to Donna. Whether it's a good idea or not, some of us to seem to keep coming back to these comparisons, and if we're going to keep doing that, maybe we should do it on a thread where they won't get in the way of other conversations. Or not--to tell the truth, this thread is already drawing more conversation than I expected it to, and if there's no point to it, we could always just stop posting to it.

So yeah, pretty much a hamster wheel.

If Azzarello has an actual explanation for who was interfering with Hera's initial attempt to revive Hippolyta, and if he isn't going to have that explanation in the book, then shouldn't that info be conveyed to the next writer?

I thought that once we got a close up of Zeke right before Hippolyta got reanimated, it was obvious enough that Zeke had been preventing her reanimation until she was needed to defend the island. I figured that he subconsciously remembered Zeus' feelings for Hippolyta, and by keeping her in stone form, he was trying to protect her from the coming war with the FB. I'm sure it would have been nice to have that confirmed, or otherwise explained, in the Azz run; but I never criticized Finch for not clearing this up (whether or not "this info [was conveyed] to the new writer--and I don't think we know that it wasn't, by the way.)

It's true that the change from Hippolyta's animated status at the end of Azz's run back to an immobile statue in Finch's run was a little jarring, but I never particuarly blamed Finch for that, and it has nothing to do with the vast majority of criticism s of Finch's run that I've seen.

For the male Amazons, you suggest just shuffling them back to Heph's house for abandoned boys - but, don't you think there would still be criticism from you and others that Finch wasn't doing anything with what Azzarello had set-up?

I can only speak for myself, but while shuffling them back to Heph's house wasn't what I hoped for, I honestly don't think I would have criticized her for it. I disagreed with people who complained that she was sidelining characters like Zola and Hermes in her first issues; while I was interested in seeing more of those characters, I thought it was fine that Finch chose to put them aside for the moment to focus on other characters.

[Awonder]

I wasn't really being all that ambitious. Honestly? The "point" was to let me finish the off-topic conversation that Dr. Poison and I started on the sales thread.

But maybe we could think of this less as a thread than as a quarantine zone. If this thread had existed last week, you and I wouldn't have had to use the issue 46 thread to talk about Azzarello and whether or not Diana's words to First Born were comparable to her pep talk to Donna. Whether it's a good idea or not, some of us to seem to keep coming back to these comparisons, and if we're going to keep doing that, maybe we should do it on a thread where they won't get in the way of other conversations. Or not--to tell the truth, this thread is already drawing more conversation than I expected it to, and if there's no point to it, we could always just stop posting to it.

So yeah, pretty mucha hamster wheel.

"Quarantine zone"? Lol- love it! :-)

But I still wonder how effective it can be. For example, Zeke reviving Donna in #46, for better or worse, kind of begs to be compared to Azzarello-Zeke, no?

I'm all for comparison and contrast, just questioning my own sanity on the hampster wheel part of it.

Eta- It also seems a bit unfair to compare Azzarello to Finch, since Azzarello had 3 years to 1 for Finch (so far). The moment we like between Diana and Orion? Diana and Siracca? Not in the first year.

[Outside_85]

I don't blame Azzarello for Finch's performance. I more so look at this situation this way: Azzarello left a bag of feces in his wake that DC handed to Finch and said "Here, turn this into gold!"

Yes you are.

How exactly was Azzarello's story "well thought out" when he couldn't even bother to resolve many of the plot lines he started up(i.e. reanimated Hippolyta, Diana's GoW abilities, and male Amazons going to Themyscira)? Sure, there are times when writers leave a book and there are certain things for the next writer to follow up on but in this case, there was little more than a fuse lit with these sub-plots which made them come across as pure shock-value and nothing more. Why did Hippolyta go from a statue to reanimated clay instead of flesh? What abilities, perks, and responsibilities came with the God of War title? Were the female Amazons truly grateful for the male Amazons help and willing to welcome them to Themyscira or did the male Amazons just serve as cannon fodder against the First Born in the females' eyes. All of these things were either left very vague or not explained at all and Finch was left to resolve the plot-lines in one way or another. Granted, she may not have chosen the path you would have but Azzarello should have resolved much more of his plots before he left the book(not that I wanted him on it for another 3 years but still....).

Azzarello left those plot points dangling so that future writers could one day come back to them and expand on them. Finch did just that with one of those plot points and slaughtered the lot of them, this may not have been what Azzarello imagined or wanted to happen, but he left them there for someone to do something with them... if someone else had followed immediately behind him, we might have seen them integrate admirably with the Amazons and perhaps later down the line we'd see the first Wonder Boy/Man spring from their ranks.
Same is true of the GoW mantle, let left it like that because he wanted to show it didn't change anything in who Diana was. If a later writer felt they needed to expand on the mechanics of the mantle, that would be their job. And instead of punching Peace in the mouth and bleeding out of her eyes, maybe Diana would have ventured out and met other deities from other realms that wanted to see the new kid on the block.

[Gaelforce]

"Quarantine zone"? Lol- love it! :-)

But I still wonder how effective it can be. For example, Zeke reviving Donna in #46, for better or worse, kind of begs to be compared to Azzarello-Zeke, no?

I'm all for comparison and contrast, just questioning my own sanity on the hampster wheel part of it.

Eta- It also seems a bit unfair to compare Azzarello to Finch, since Azzarello had 3 years to 1 for Finch (so far). The moment we like between Diana and Orion? Diana and Siracca? Not in the first year.

Here's the big difference between Azz-Zeke and Finch-Zeke, imo; with Azzarello, Zeke was reacting to his environment. He was carried like the infant he was and his magic would 'flare up' in reaction to things/people he had some relation to in his previous life. He didn't have any thought-out agency - he didn't go somewhere of his own volition to further the plot he had put in place because, as an infant, he wasn't capable of such things. There was no sign of conscious thought in Azz-Zeke but rather quite the opposite; Zeus set things in motion with Athena before 'dying' to be 'reborn' as an infant.

Finch, on the other hand, shows Zeke as an ongoing, active agent in Zeus's scheme. This wasn't an instinctive baby response to someone he cared about (Hippolyta) but a planned out action of a crawling infant who actively teleported himself to a location so that he could actively further the plans that were put in motion by Zeus.

Never once in Azzarello's run did I ever get the impression that infant Zeke had any memory of Zeus or was doing anything more than reacting instinctively. If Zeke remembers everything that Zeus knew, then the entire 'rebirth' is completely pointless as he is fully self-aware of his past plans and is actively continuing them.

[Gaelforce]

<puts on the moderator hat>

Folks, let's try not to cross the lines here. I know it's tricky as everyone has opinions about writers and artists, but you need to stick to describing the writing, not the writer or his/her motives.

And mods do miss things from time to time - it's not to you to point it out or, worse, to debate/discuss a moderation of your post in public while pointing out one that was missed. If you think a post is out of line, please don't reply and definitely don't call the moderators on it. Use the 'report' feature at the bottom left corner of each post.

Thanks

[SteveGus]

Azzarello set things up with Diana as an undefined god of war, and with the Amazon society poised to deal with the complicated issues of integrating the men who were both blood relatives and combat allies into their society.

Instead of going forward, imo, Finch took it backwards. At the end of Azzarello's Diana had a clear handle on just who she was. It seemed to me to be the major point of the entire over-arcing storyline.

The first thing Finch did was throw this out the window and give us a Diana who was incapable of reconciling the various aspects of her life despite having just spent three years doing just that. She was insecure, angry, and confused about how to be a Queen, a superhero, a god and a girlfriend (all while confessing this to Aquaman while hugging a teddy bear).

Rather than deal with the fascinating concept of integration on Themyscira, Finch referred to the male Amazons as a 'loose end' and just had them all slaughtered.

I see all of that as flowing naturally from Azzarello's run, and the ways the Azzarello character was not, is not, and will never be Wonder Woman despite the title.

"God of War", Ares or Mars, is a villain role in the Wonder Woman universe. It's apparently a title valuable enough to kill or die for. About the only perk of the role we know about is that you get weird pets.

Wonder Woman's Amazons are supposed to be her army and an enlightened society of philosopher queens who live in an earthly paradise. Azzarello degraded their world, ruined their advanced culture, and turned them evil. Finch confirms that they are evil, by having them kill off the male Amazons, and create Donna Troy as an abomination. These are bad ideas that don't belong in a Wonder Woman book, but I don't see Finch as bearing all the blame for that.

I was hoping that Finch would bring some appreciation for the character's history back and try to undo some of the damage and turn the title into something worthy of the Wonder Woman name. If she had, I'd be reading it; I'm not. If she's failed, it's mostly because of not recognizing what the problem is.

Finch, to her credit, can pace a monthly serial title better than Azzarello did, and has moved two arcs from start to finish in the year she's had. That in itself is progress of a sort. But I'm increasingly of the opinion that the "Wonder Woman" character in current DC is entirely unworthy of the title, and that nothing short of another reboot can fix the character. Everything that Wonder Woman is in that's worth reading was written before 2011.

[Silvanus]

Here's the big difference between Azz-Zeke and Finch-Zeke, imo; with Azzarello, Zeke was reacting to his environment. He was carried like the infant he was and his magic would 'flare up' in reaction to things/people he had some relation to in his previous life. He didn't have any thought-out agency - he didn't go somewhere of his own volition to further the plot he had put in place because, as an infant, he wasn't capable of such things. There was no sign of conscious thought in Azz-Zeke but rather quite the opposite; Zeus set things in motion with Athena before 'dying' to be 'reborn' as an infant.

Finch, on the other hand, shows Zeke as an ongoing, active agent in Zeus's scheme. This wasn't an instinctive baby response to someone he cared about (Hippolyta) but a planned out action of a crawling infant who actively teleported himself to a location so that he could actively further the plans that were put in motion by Zeus.

Never once in Azzarello's run did I ever get the impression that infant Zeke had any memory of Zeus or was doing anything more than reacting instinctively. If Zeke remembers everything that Zeus knew, then the entire 'rebirth' is completely pointless as he is fully self-aware of his past plans and is actively continuing them.

Well said, and I mostly agree. I got the impression that Azz's Zeke might have had traces of memory--enough to feel attached to Hera and want to protect Hippolyta--but nothing like full memory or agency, and I agree that he was reacting basically by instinct.

[Gaelforce]

I see all of that as flowing naturally from Azzarello's run, and the ways the Azzarello character was not, is not, and will never be Wonder Woman despite the title.

"God of War", Ares or Mars, is a villain role in the Wonder Woman universe. It's apparently a title valuable enough to kill or die for. About the only perk of the role we know about is that you get weird pets.

Wonder Woman's Amazons are supposed to be her army and an enlightened society of philosopher queens who live in an earthly paradise. Azzarello degraded their world, ruined their advanced culture, and turned them evil. Finch confirms that they are evil, by having them kill off the male Amazons, and create Donna Troy as an abomination. These are bad ideas that don't belong in a Wonder Woman book, but I don't see Finch as bearing all the blame for that.

I was hoping that Finch would bring some appreciation for the character's history back and try to undo some of the damage and turn the title into something worthy of the Wonder Woman name. If she had, I'd be reading it; I'm not. If she's failed, it's mostly because of not recognizing what the problem is.

Finch, to her credit, can pace a monthly serial title better than Azzarello did, and has moved two arcs from start to finish in the year she's had. That in itself is progress of a sort. But I'm increasingly of the opinion that the "Wonder Woman" character in current DC is entirely unworthy of the title, and that nothing short of another reboot can fix the character. Everything that Wonder Woman is in that's worth reading was written before 2011.

Sorry, but I find Finch's pacing to be terrible. Slow paced and dragging stories followed by sudden and unsatisfying wrap-ups that feel rushed at the end just aren't working for me.

[Silvanus]

Eta- It also seems a bit unfair to compare Azzarello to Finch, since Azzarello had 3 years to 1 for Finch (so far). The moment we like between Diana and Orion? Diana and Siracca? Not in the first year.

OK--I'll wait a couple of months before pointing out that nothing in the Finch run so far holds a candle to the Diana/Siracca moment from issue 14. Maybe that will no longer be true by then. But I'm not holding my breath.

[numberthirty]

Eta- It also seems a bit unfair to compare Azzarello to Finch, since Azzarello had 3 years to 1 for Finch (so far). The moment we like between Diana and Orion? Diana and Siracca? Not in the first year.

It's easy to make this "Apples To Apples".

By the end of WW #12...

- Diana gains the ability to fly.
- The rule of Mount Olympus changes hands in spectacular fashion.
- Diana loses the bracelets, and almost beats a god to death.
- Hera is cast out of Mount Olympus, and becomes somewhat human.
- Zola has her baby, and Hermes kidnaps it.

For starters.

[Awonder]

OK--I'll wait a couple of months before pointing out that nothing in the Finch run so far holds a candle to the Diana/Siracca moment from issue 14. Maybe that will no longer be true by then. But I'm not holding my breath.

Even if/when you get your moment of "see, I told you Finch's WW wasn't as good," so what? What will that accomplish?

Is every moment in Azzarello's run as good as the Diana-Siracca, Diana-Orion, etc moments? If not, just because every moment may not measure up to the best moments, does that mean there is no good in the rest of the run?

[Tony]

I prefer Finch to Azzerello. His writing was too decompressed and I actually think she cleaned up a lot of things I didn't like about the his run in very short order. I left with the costume switch but the writing was fine and the art was a big improvement. I'd give Azz 2 out of 4 stars and Finch 3 out of 4 stars.

[Awonder]

I thought that once we got a close up of Zeke right before Hippolyta got reanimated, it was obvious enough that Zeke had been preventing her reanimation until she was needed to defend the island. I figured that he subconsciously remembered Zeus' feelings for Hippolyta, and by keeping her in stone form, he was trying to protect her from the coming war with the FB. I'm sure it would have been nice to have that confirmed, or otherwise explained, in the Azz run; but I never criticized Finch for not clearing this up (whether or not "this info [was conveyed] to the new writer--and I don't think we know that it wasn't, by the way.)

It's true that the change from Hippolyta's animated status at the end of Azz's run back to an immobile statue in Finch's run was a little jarring, but I never particuarly blamed Finch for that, and it has nothing to do with the vast majority of criticism s of Finch's run that I've seen.

Here's the big difference between Azz-Zeke and Finch-Zeke, imo; with Azzarello, Zeke was reacting to his environment. He was carried like the infant he was and his magic would 'flare up' in reaction to things/people he had some relation to in his previous life. He didn't have any thought-out agency - he didn't go somewhere of his own volition to further the plot he had put in place because, as an infant, he wasn't capable of such things. There was no sign of conscious thought in Azz-Zeke but rather quite the opposite; Zeus set things in motion with Athena before 'dying' to be 'reborn' as an infant.

Finch, on the other hand, shows Zeke as an ongoing, active agent in Zeus's scheme. This wasn't an instinctive baby response to someone he cared about (Hippolyta) but a planned out action of a crawling infant who actively teleported himself to a location so that he could actively further the plans that were put in motion by Zeus.

Never once in Azzarello's run did I ever get the impression that infant Zeke had any memory of Zeus or was doing anything more than reacting instinctively. If Zeke remembers everything that Zeus knew, then the entire 'rebirth' is completely pointless as he is fully self-aware of his past plans and is actively continuing them.

Well said, and I mostly agree. I got the impression that Azz's Zeke might have had traces of memory--enough to feel attached to Hera and want to protect Hippolyta--but nothing like full memory or agency, and I agree that he was reacting basically by instinct.

First, as I mentioned in the other thread, I understand that we all draw the line differently when it comes to how much is too much. I'm not arguing that Finch wrote Zeke better, just that she wrote him based on what Azzarello gave us. She didn't make it up out of the blue that he could restore 'dead' people; she (arguably?) took it further, and that further, it seems, is too much for you. That's a valid position.

As for your explanations? Well, can you prove it? In other words, is it clear in the book? I don't think it is. Zeke can't simply be "reacting" by choosing to block Hera's attempt to restore Hippolyta - it would require enough intelligent thought to understand the concept of a future threat as well as enough "trace" memory to know who the statue was and the agency to choose what to do about it. That isn't the type of "instinct" a baby has - how would a baby even know if a statue is friend or foe? Lucky guess?

Azzarello left those plot points dangling so that future writers could one day come back to them and expand on them. Finch did just that with one of those plot points and slaughtered the lot of them, this may not have been what Azzarello imagined or wanted to happen, but he left them there for someone to do something with them... if someone else had followed immediately behind him, we might have seen them integrate admirably with the Amazons and perhaps later down the line we'd see the first Wonder Boy/Man spring from their ranks.
Same is true of the GoW mantle, let left it like that because he wanted to show it didn't change anything in who Diana was. If a later writer felt they needed to expand on the mechanics of the mantle, that would be their job. And instead of punching Peace in the mouth and bleeding out of her eyes, maybe Diana would have ventured out and met other deities from other realms that wanted to see the new kid on the block.

Ah, the "if" game - can I play, too? IF someone other than Azzarello had been writing, perhaps s/he wouldn't have done such a poor job with the Amazons and ... etc.

It's hard for me to be impressed that the mantle of GoW didn't change Diana when we don't really know much about what the GoW mantel does. Without knowing it's effect, how can we say resisting it's effect is impressive? I mean, if it has no real effect, resisting nothing isn't impressive, right? Even lil ol' me can resist nothing.

Sorry, but I find Finch's pacing to be terrible. Slow paced and dragging stories followed by sudden and unsatisfying wrap-ups that feel rushed at the end just aren't working for me.

Azzarello is an experienced and skilled writer, but even his writing could be "slow paced and dragging," and the baby boy's butt immediately saves the day was a very "unsatisfying wrap-up" of a three year run. It doesn't even make a lot of sense that one doesn't need to defeat the reigning king, just sit in the chair when he isn't looking? In my experience, lots of comic writers struggle with a solid and truly satisfying finish.

It's easy to make this "Apples To Apples".

By the end of WW #12...

- Diana gains the ability to fly.
- The rule of Mount Olympus changes hands in spectacular fashion.
- Diana loses the bracelets, and almost beats a god to death.
- Hera is cast out of Mount Olympus, and becomes somewhat human.
- Zola has her baby, and Hermes kidnaps it.

For starters.

And? Am I supposed to be impressed by that list? It's not bad, but, obviously, much was left unfinished at the end of year one, right? Personally, I don't think Azzarello really hit his stride until year two. And, it's not like we can't make a list for Finch, too:

- brought back Donna Troy in noteworthy fashion.
- Diana battles to remain queen.
- Diana works with the JL to stop a secret alien attack on villages across the globe.
- Diana battles to survive a divine attack on her as GoW.
- Donna becomes Fate.
- and, my personal favorite, it's revealed that Hippolyta sought out a home for the Amazon boys.

Now, again, I'm not arguing that Finch's WW is as good or better than Azzarello's. My main point throughout is basically that Azzarello's writing has it's debatable drawbacks, and Finch's isn't without merit.

[numberthirty]

It doesn't even make a lot of sense that one doesn't need to defeat the reigning king, just sit in the chair when he isn't looking? In my experience, lots of comic writers struggle with a solid and truly satisfying finish.

Sitting on the throne wasn't the finish.