Goodness me, I can’t remember the last time I read an issue of Wonder Woman, but Friend of the Blog Murray recommended this one. We’re knee deep in Tom King’s Matriarch storyline, which seems to be a continuation of the Sovereign business, but this is an interlude issue looking back at Diana’s origin.
The set-up is that back-from-the-dead Steve Trevor is travelling back from the Underworld with daughter Lizzie, his magical daughter with Diana whose sterling personality helped drive me off this book. She’s pretty quiet this issue though. Why’s that again? Oh yeah.
Wonder Woman is dead! Then again, so was Steve, and as that first panel says, this is set 20 years in the future of the DC Universe, so it’s basically an imaginary story.
Speaking of stories, Steve feels the too-quiet teenager needs an inspirational tale. His begins when Princess Diana was about Trinity’s age, living a quiet life on Paradise Island.
Queen Hippolyte says Diana must stay on Themiscyra and embrace her destiny as her successor, but she understands her daughter’s desire to help the world beyond the horizon. She takes Diana to her quarters, where a chest contains garb she’s never seen.
Trinity has questions.
And back in the past, Steve enters the picture, his plane’s screaming engines landing him on Paradise Island with a crash. The injured pilot is taken to be healed by the Purple Ray, and wakes to find a woman looking after him.
What’s missing from this picture?
Yep, Diana. In this telling it’s not the Amazon Princess who tends to Steve as he recovers. Neither is it Diana who rescues him from the crash site – she barely knows he’s alive.
A burden, she says?
This is the first of two parts giving us the latest version of Diana’s origin, and it’s deleting Love from the recipe. And so far as Hippolyte is concerned, compassion for Man’s World. Diana, we see in the laundrette – sorry, Magic Sphere – scene, does want to help people in the wider world, but she’s not allowed to immediately find Steve attractive and develop feelings for him.
Regular writer King is absent, Stephanie Williams gets full credit, but she is working with editor Brittany Holzherr, and surely King okayed the whole thing; do they feel Diana falling for a man at first sight is weak, unworthy somehow? That worked both ways, Steve saw his angel and one of comics’ great romances was born.
And what the heck is going on with the rewrite of Hippolyte’s time with the JSA? A shadowy figure working with the Justice Society only when ‘our purposes aligned’? On what did they disagree? And for a ‘shadow’ she certainly seemed front and centre at the Fifties witch hunt hearing? I dislike hugely the bitter, suspicious, broken Hippolyte we have here.
I don’t mind Steve being healed by the Purple Ray, but do we need this?
‘Slightly better than before…’? In the Bronze Age mortal orphan Donna Troy was raised up to Amazon level by the Purple Ray, but that’s not standard. Does All-American beefcake Steve Trevor really need a touch of the Steve Rogers?
And while it makes some kind of sense that armourer Io invented the machine, why is she working it? Surely there’s at least one medic around to take charge? And an Amazon doctor – as in the Golden Age – would likely be less gruff. I mean, ‘you breathe because Queen Hippolyte permits it’?
Steve’s comment to Trinity about the Fates implies there have been, or in their minds, should be, Wonder Woman after Wonder Woman after Wonder Woman… please no, if DC is declaring Hippolyte’s tenure secret, why instantly bring back the notion Wonder Woman is a legacy role?
The actual script by Williams isn’t bad for the story she’s telling – but the story! Love is at the core of Diana’s mission, and here it’s erased.
As for the art, Clayton Henry’s storytelling compositions are as good as ever, with, for example, Hippolyte positioned for haughtiness, and the eerieness of Steve and Trinity’s journey evident. Everyone is on model and he’s great at emotions – anger, pensiveness, confusion… just don’t look for anything resembling happiness, this Paradise feels like Purgatory.
Pedro Estouco’s colours fit the mood of the story; the beach scene after the crash is the most upbeat moment visually, the skies and sea are lovely. It’s a shame he doesn’t differentiate much between the in-panel flashbacks and the main action, though.
Letterer Clayton Cowles gives us a nice yellow-out-of-green for Steve’s narration, perhaps to match his hair and uniform. Whatever the case, I like it.
The cover art by Jeff Spokes is well done, but again, that’s a very sad-looking Diana. I adore the ‘Wonder War’ (sounds like an Oasis song) title lettering, it’s like something from the Golden Age of sci-fi mags.
Will I be back for the conclusion of the re-origin? I may look at it on DC Infinite Online, but I won’t be queuing at the digital comics shop.
Nevertheless, thank you for the recommendation, Murray – I just might have loved this!
Too Dangerous For a Girl 2 
Thank you for reading this so I don’t have to. King could write Carol Danver-Magik-Real Power Girl (my three favorite characters) team up maxi and I wouldn’t touch it. What you describe has the King Stink even if written by someone else.
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well of course not! No one wants to see their favorite characters bastardized!
-Matthew Lloyd
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I can see why you didn’t like it. And there are certainly parts I didn’t enjoy (Hippolyte’s general dour attitude definitely was a bummer). I hadn’t considered how the concept of love was totally removed from Diana’s origin with the retelling. For sure that seems like a misstep.
what I enjoyed was the explanation for the golden age Wonder Woman (although it appears we’re interpreting that part of the take differently). I saw it more as a clever way to include a Wonder Woman in the JSA, while also explaining away why she’s not really remembered in the history books.
i also like the Steve/Trinity relationship. I’m not sure if you’ve read Trinity’s mini series (or the back up stories that led to it), but King presents the character there in a tone that is a departure for him (in that it’s light hearted and humorous). But he adds in a warmth and yearning which softens the characters rough edges. That aspect of the relationship is largely missing in this story, but since I’ve read those earlier stories, they colour my reading of this particular issue.
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I am not an ardent King supporter. Some of his things I like, some I don’t. I am glad that a lot of his stories are Black Label, thus happening somewhere else in the Multiverse and aren’t part of the Prime continuity (Human Target and Strange Adventures – I’m looking at you).
I was tepid about him taking over Wonder Woman. I was sure I wasn’t going to like it. In fact, I remember ravaging his first issue in talking to others. But I rarely drop a book because of one issue, so I read a few more. And a few more. Until I realized that I was really enjoying it. I like that he met the supporting cast and villains where they were, not trying to remake them to fit his story. I feel like he has a deep respect for the character of Diana, and doesn’t do anything with her lightly. And he has been additive to the mythos rather than reductive: Especially with the introduction of Trinity. (And his Detective Chimp channeling Columbo is fantastic.)
Plus the art. Damn can Sampere draw. Tight storytelling, too. He knows how to make pages flow and how to make sure splash pages are special and not just because. It also keeps getting better and better each issue.
As for this particular issue, I really like Stephanie Williams & Clayton Henry. I’ve talked to Williams a couple of times at cons and she is a true fan (check out her Strange and Unusual All-Stars of the DC Multiverse if you don’t believe me). I’ve really enjoyed her fill-in issues on Wonder Woman. She understands the characters as well – and has made sure there isn’t a jarring tonal shift from the issues King writes to hers.
Meanwhile, Clayton is in that magical camp of Legion artists who go on to do incredible things. This issue is just another example of his excellent skills.
So yeah, this series is a regular read for me. I’m sorry it didn’t draw you in, but I understand.
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I did make it up to issue 19 and the end of the Sovereign storyline. It is that usually annoying mix of King being a decent writer technically but clearly having a worldview that I actively don’t agree with (a bit like Geoff Johns a lot of the time), and so I enjoyed bits but also found other bits exasperating. I keep thinking about checking in again because it’s rare these days for comics to be written with the right sort of Alan Moore inspirations (although King also mixes in the grim and gritty with the way Moore handled ongoing storylines) and Wonder Woman of all characters deserves a deeper consideration by a writer, though one of my issues has been that in the issues I read, apart from an odd Batman like attempt to do things by herself, he didn’t really get that far into Diana’s character. The whole tone has been slightly militant throughout so not surprised the origin does some of the same. I suppose the idea is that Wonder Woman changes Paradise Island, rather than her being the product of it, but that’s off!
Stu
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Anj here.
I have avoided King (and King-inspired stories) since Woman of Tomorrow.
Nothing you have written makes me think I am missing out.
What a mess. What a destruction (not deconstruction) of the audience. And I think had Diana kill herself last issue?
Yeesh …
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“Wonder Woman is dead!”
What, again?!?
Seriously, though… I would have thought this issue would have been right up my alley. I really liked Stephanie Williams’ writing on the two Nubia miniseries, I’m a huge fan of Clayton Henry’s artwork, and Wonder Woman is one of my favorite characters. But this just sounds like such a joyless slog. I’m going to have to pass on this one.
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