Wonder Woman Vol 5 #9 Discussion

[SiegePerilous02]

You could be right, I don't deny that, but this whole situation with B.M. smells dangerously like another "Good Queen Cersei" nonsense. Just like in the Game of Thrones TV series (V season) we the viewers were expected to be compact against Queen Mother Cersei because a few of her lines were written as if she was the nastiest b***h around (while a more careful and unbiased analysis of her actions would have revealed that she was the only competent politician in King's Landing), in the present Wonder Woman issues is never, ever depicted while being explicitly malicious. Everything can be ascribed to the curse of being a wife of Urzkartaga. She may have run to Urzkartaga but it's quite clear that she's long past the time when she decided that her status as the wife of a plant-demon didn't suit her at all and how did WW contribute in any way to that fundamental change of heart? Or did she simply realise that she was the victim in that relationship?

Let alone that the timing is quite suspect: 99% of the times, in a well-written story of redemption, we're showed first the arc's protagonist at his or her worst and then we discover little by little the character traits that show us he/she isn't completely lost. In the current arc, if what you say is true, we'd be presented with all the unpleasant things done by Barbara when they won't really matter anymore.

It's still not that different from how Perez wrote her. Even if she was much more malicious there, she was still trapped with Urzkartaga in a co-dependent abusive "relationship." She was a power hungry ******* who jumped at the chance to gain immortality and glory without reading the fine print, and was cursing her existence and her husband by the time Diana first met her. She spent a large chunk of the first Bana-Mighdall arc lying in bed drinking her pain away. She decided that being Urzkartaga's wife wasn't all it was cracked up to be long before that point. Perez's Minerva was a creep, but she ultimately just wanted to learn things and not be in pain, all the while eating people because that's what the curse was driving her to do. It wasn't what she thought she was signing up for.

The story is still unfinished, and so far has been built upon two stories echoing each other in the present and in the past. Presenting Cheetah!Barbara in the present before going back and showing us what she was like pre-transformation to further inform the present is a perfectly valid way to tell this story. Especially as everything in between could still be addressed. And Barbara's rehabilitation in the present has no guarantee of sticking. I forsee tragedy ahead.

In a country that has been undergoing a deep identity crisis for the last sixty years, shocked by the harsh contrast between the past glories and the present (and, likely, future) desolation, a British Lord who expects his daughter to keep her mind fixed exclusively on the future like a modern-time, blue-blooded Nietzsche transcends the concept of "white fly" and goes straight to the realm of "living oxymoron".

It's not education of the past her father had an issue with, it's living in a fantasy world when he feels she should be at the age where she grows up, put that stuff away and deal with cold hard facts. Again, I'm ignorant of the ways of the country, but I don't think such a mentality is so unbelievable. Especially as Etta (who has met him apparently) says he's just an *******, and Barbara doesn't rush to disagree with her.

Also, my judgment may be biased because of twenty-odd years of exposure to Italian comics and their glorious history of sidekicks-cum-supporting characters, but if that Etta, who isn't worthy of shining the shoes of Dylan Dog's Groucho, or Adam Wild's Count Narciso, or Magic Wind's Poe the journalist, or Martin Mystére's Java the Neanderthal, or Zagor's Chico, was the best that the DCU could offer in the Forties, MacCarthyism wasn't the only reason behind the end of the Golden Age of comic books.

Post-Crisis Etta was boring as all get out. Golden Age Etta was a cringe worthy caricature, but there was a lot of fun stuff there. She was a woman who kicked ass and wasn't ashamed of her body. Perez's Etta may have been a competent military officer (great!), but lacked the spark that made Golden Age Etta so fun. And she was meek and self conscious at times. Morrison and Deliz updated her effectively and anybody should want to read about a fun, plus sized woman who doesn't take crap from anybody. She's more than welcome in the DCU and it's population of heroic swimsuit models.

Well, limiting my scope exclusively to issue #4, here's the complete list of occurrences where Amazons are depicted with the languid eyes I complained about:

Half of the darn issue is languid eyes and I should believe that Rucka is Wonder Woman's saviour because he made Amazons smile again? Please...

Languid or smiling: which is it? Considering the situation, their facial expressions make sense. And in some of those panels, their eyes aren't even in close up anyway. Io is looking down at the guns, and the other Amazons eyes aren't even visible...

When I think about what would happen if my group of friends and I decided to feel extreme sensations by injecting mescaline in our genitalia my thoughts go to this other page:

Seems like an extremely random way to criticize a (pretty clear IMO) page layout.

Good, then give me a whistle when those post-Crisis elements will be here in spirit too, rather than in vague, hollow appearance.

You must have missed them, because we have appearances by Philippus, Barbara Minerva and Matthew Michaelis, and themes of positive sisterhood and empowerment. Diana growing up in a loving environment and wanting to prove herself as an Amazon and not get special treatment because she's the princess. Answering the call to a higher mission from her patrons for the good of the world, sacrificing her place among her sisters to enter a world she's never seen. It was all in the Perez run, and it's all here too. It leans more towards his run than Marston's stuff. Barbara making one snide comment isn't throwing a total diss at Perez. The man himself may even find the scene funny.

[Powertool]

It's still not that different from how Perez wrote her. Even if she was much more malicious there, she was still trapped with Urzkartaga in a co-dependent abusive "relationship." She was a power hungry ******* who jumped at the chance to gain immortality and glory without reading the fine print, and was cursing her existence and her husband by the time Diana first met her. She spent a large chunk of the first Bana-Mighdall arc lying in bed drinking her pain away. She decided that being Urzkartaga's wife wasn't all it was cracked up to be long before that point. Perez's Minerva was a creep, but she ultimately just wanted to learn things and not be in pain, all the while eating people because that's what the curse was driving her to do. It wasn't what she thought she was signing up for.

The story is still unfinished, and so far has been built upon two stories echoing each other in the present and in the past. Presenting Cheetah!Barbara in the present before going back and showing us what she was like pre-transformation to further inform the present is a perfectly valid way to tell this story. Especially as everything in between could still be addressed. And Barbara's rehabilitation in the present has no guarantee of sticking. I forsee tragedy ahead.

The only tragedy I see is that after Wonder Woman v3 #35 I've still to read an issue of the regular series I can genuinely appreciate. But you could be right, I don't deny that. Unfortunately, if all's well that starts well, I'm afraid the writer has a lot of disappointments in store for me. And if tragedy is actually going to strike before the end, I'll need waaaay more than what has been presented so far to care about Miss Minerva's fate. And as far as I'm concerned, that's already quite a big failure on Rucka's part.

It's not education of the past her father had an issue with, it's living in a fantasy world when he feels she should be at the age where she grows up, put that stuff away and deal with cold hard facts. Again, I'm ignorant of the ways of the country, but I don't think such a mentality is so unbelievable. Especially as Etta (who has met him apparently) says he's just an *******, and Barbara doesn't rush to disagree with her.

Then why didn't he just say that? Why did Rucka have to turn a situation that would genuinely worry a parent, like a daughter whose behaviour is not showing any signs of being developing towards a more adult stage, into a chance to depict a man dismissing Barbara's dreams as futile illusion?

After all, that's the same thing that happens in the panels she shares with the least qualified archeologist to have ever been head of a mission in that field. Even I know that the myth of Amazons cutting one of their breasts is a crude interpolation, while a much more likely explanation is the existence of ancient rituals where pre-pubescent girls had one of their nipples cauterised as a ritual so that one of their mammaries wouldn't have developed later on (let alone that he apparently ignores the linguistic theory that the "alpha" at the beginning of the word "Amazon" had an intensifying effect, meaning that the word actually meant "women with large breasts").

Why does each of the two interactions between B.M. and people with a Y chromosome have to end with the latter put down the former, her aspirations and her beliefs? Please, I'd like an explanation for that.

Post-Crisis Etta was boring as all get out. Golden Age Etta was a cringe worthy caricature, but there was a lot of fun stuff there. She was a woman who kicked ass and wasn't ashamed of her body. Perez's Etta may have been a competent military officer (great!), but lacked the spark that made Golden Age Etta so fun. And she was meek and self conscious at times. Morrison and Deliz updated her effectively and anybody should want to read about a fun, plus sized woman who doesn't take crap from anybody. She's more than welcome in the DCU and it's population of heroic swimsuit models.

Pfft... I sure remember Morrison's Etta. Especially the part where, completely out of the blue, in a scene where the stakes were supposed to be high and no distractions were allowed, she felt she was "compelled" by the lasso to reveal that she had the hots for another woman at uni and I was oh-so-glad that I was reading on a digital copy, since for the first time in my life I felt the need to throw a book against a wall.

And about the original Golden Age version, I'll gladly keep my Chico from the pages of Zagor. Rotund, merry (when appropriate, though he's not bad even while angry) and most importantly actually fun.

Languid or smiling: which is it? Considering the situation, their facial expressions make sense. And in some of those panels, their eyes aren't even in close up anyway. Io is looking down at the guns, and the other Amazons eyes aren't even visible...

No, they're all the same sad and sometimes almost lifeless eyes and seeing so many of them in a single issue bothered me immensely, otherwise I wouldn't have even taken the effort to list of every occurrence. Sometimes they were so unfit to the situation that I had to go back to Pérez's Wonder Woman #1 to remember what it meant to express emotion, because this

Attachment 41643

is the portrait of a young woman who, despite the immense burden of the mission that awaits her in Man's World, does her best to show showcase to her sisters (and possibly to herself) the amount of self-confidence she accumulated over the years thanks to her training and the emotional support coming from her comrades in arms and life, while this

Attachment 41644

is the image of someone who's only barely aware of what's happening around her and has probably some garbled thoughts going through her mind that could be translated as "that last drink tasted funny... culd it be that someone slipped something in it?".

Absolutely distressing.

Seems like an extremely random way to criticize a (pretty clear IMO) page layout.

Absolutely not. That page is chaos and I say that as an admirer of Nicola Scott's work. Those horse archers (e.g.) are clearly seeing something pretty unpleasant standing on their way -- or they just really, really hate targets.

You must have missed them, because we have appearances by Philippus, Barbara Minerva and Matthew Michaelis, and themes of positive sisterhood and empowerment. Diana growing up in a loving environment and wanting to prove herself as an Amazon and not get special treatment because she's the princess. Answering the call to a higher mission from her patrons for the good of the world, sacrificing her place among her sisters to enter a world she's never seen. It was all in the Perez run, and it's all here too. It leans more towards his run than Marston's stuff. Barbara making one snide comment isn't throwing a total diss at Perez. The man himself may even find the scene funny.

And everything feels wildly off to me. Some elements may look the same (and even then, I would have quite a few reserves about that statement but I'm cutting them short fro brevity's sake) but don't make me experience the same feelings about them. It's like eating an ice-cream first and then being handed another one that looks similar but where the scoops have been replaced with polystyrene replicas. I can't keep myself from feeling like someone is taking the pi$$ out of me. And I know that I didn't find that scene even remotely funny.

[MarquisAsh]

Well I guess we know this is the fake Hippolyta

[Hawk80]

well i guess we know this is the fake hippolyta

Ddddoooooooodooooooo!!!!!!!!

[brettc1]

From the SM/WW Apprecition thread

Especially nice to see Diana putting to rest those ridiculous theories about only loving Clark because he had powers. I can't believe so many Wonder Woman fans were so willing to accept that Diana could be so shallow and dishonest.

I didn't. I accepted that as a human being she could be confused and misguided, and am only posting because it was mentioned how some fans saw things.

After all the confusion, true love wins out