"We're the same thing, you and I. We're both lies that eventually became the truth." Lara Notsil, Star Wars: X-Wing: Solo Command, Aaron Allston
"All that is not eternal is eternally out of date." C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves
"There's room in our line of work for hope, too." Stephanie Brown
Stephanie Brown Wiki, My Batman Universe Reviews, Stephanie Brown Discord
If ten years of recording The Young and the Restless for my mother have taught me anything, it's that characters in serial dramas are always happily in love...until they're not
“The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views...which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.” - the 4th Doctor
Well, this was... and with that I mean this whole arc was... was...
Figures, words have failed me once again. Oh, well, I'll let Mr. Sergio Aragones express my honest feelings on Year One:
Sergio_Aragones.jpg
Ah, Sergio, sometimes I just don't know what I would do without you!
This thread has seen an imho shocking amount of posts dedicated to the frequency of Steve Trevor's shirtless scenes in recent Wonder Woman's stories. And while I don't deny that other people may find that an issue worthy of being discussed[*], every time my mind goes to this run's Steve Trevor (not very often, actually) I'm baffled by quite different moments starring him. Like the whole of issue #13, where a character that has been shown from his very first panel as devoid of any fault whatsoever spends the entirety of the comic narrating in a dull, melodramatic way how his love for Diana constantly spurs him to be "a better man", whatever that means. Or the fact that in this most recent issue he spends who knows how many hours flying from one end of the world, presumably at supersonic speed, to the other in the arms of Diana without any kind of protecting gear and is still alive by the end of these trips.
But Powertool -- you'll say -- what about suspension of disbelief? To which I'll answer that suspension of disbelief is something authors must earn before it can be invoked. And with an origin story where I can't stop thinking that the events therein depicted are so incongruous that it's easier to think that these are the lies that were boasted about in the concurrent, present-day storyline's story-arc name, rather than the ones from Azzarello's run, I don't see many steps being taken in the right direction. At the very least Rucka could have started with giving the terrible God of War a masterplan that actually made a lick of sense. Because turning the whole planet in a battlefield of nuclear devastation is one thing I could see a power-mad God of War do, releasing gas in large urban centres, chosen without rhyme or reason, to turn some tens of thousands of people (at most) into a murdering mob is what the Joker (or the author writing him) does when he's low on inspiration for his next crime.
[*] For example, how come that Steve's shirt was the only major casualty of an explosion that was powerful enough not just to unhinge an office door but also to bust open concrete walls? Nevertheless, not a single wound on anybody in that room! For being a God, this Ares sure sucks at dramatic entrances. I've seen scenes of cartoon explosions in Looney Tunes with ten times the amount of solemnity.