By Mel Dyer
This cover really makes me miss the imaginative world-build that artist Cliff Chiang's and 100 Bullets writer Brian Azzarello's run brought to the Wonder Woman comic. It was a landmark run, and on the skyline of the comic's greatest creative periods, it stands out, ..with decidedly quirky distinction.
Looking back on the comic's 80th anniversary, it was memorable. Can't say that about all of them!
The Chazzarello run on Wonder Woman - better known, as DC Comics' New 52 - changed the context of Wonder Woman's superheroic mission, in that it left her reasons for coming to the world of men, ..a mystery, which Brian never truly solved for us. In its place, he and Cliff gave Diana a quirky, imaginative and iconic world, from which to launch her stories and, occasionally, explore her myth-inspired background.
I even miss the nifty raptor companion, Zephyrus the Wonder Eagle, that the New 52 gave to teenage Wonder Woman, ..because Superman's got Krypto, and Batman's got Ace the Bathound; so...why not? Why not Zephyr the Wonder Eagle, a twin sister ..or mother! Male or female, there should totally be a Wonder-bird or pet of some sort, and now...
Gone. That ain't right. Name a dog, after her. Something.
Want to KNOW WONDER WOMAN, the way I know Wonder Woman? You've got to get ALL THE WAY down to the... STAR-SPANGLED PANTIES!
The best thing he did for the comic AND for the Amazons is get them out of the comic, long enough for us to miss them, again. I am tired of dreading the Amazons and the myth-inspired elements, because some writer's beating us over the head with them. I miss, very much, the pre-Crisis days, when Diana would slip away to Paradise Island for counsel with her mother ..or something useful from Paula's laboratory!
She can't do that, if the Amazons and that island are ALWAYS there. See how that...?
In their place, we got the London flat, the Townhouse, the Army, a family of weird, grotesque Greek gods - we got a world. It was a world that, with development, could be as iconic as Gotham, Metropolis or any other great fictional comic book city. Brian Azzarello said, in interview, that this bizarre, apocalyptically powerful family he was creating for Wonder Woman would become her 'Metropolis' or something like that, ..and I think he accomplished that.
I think the WW comic needed that.
The DC Universe's iconic cities typically visually or thematically embody something iconic about the superheroes, who live in them. For Superman, Metropolis mirrors his optimism about the future and humanity's potential to be great - that's what Big Blue's comic is and has always been about. For Batman, Gotham is a scenic, meta-poetic expression of Bruce Wayne's struggle to wrest hope and justice from the darkness of the human condition. I don't think Wonder Woman getting a similar backdrop, and she's never truly had one, would be such a terrible thing.
Chazzarello gave her that, for a minute.
Something, besides Paradise Island, needs to center Diana's on-going narrative, so that every new creative team isn't building her world, from scratch and flour. Going forward, maybe, an artistically quirky, colorful London, littered with gargantuan, neo-classical monuments to war, wealth and power - the Amazon's nightmarish view of Man's World - and rendered in the classically inimitable Chiang style, ..could help that narrative-centering, along. It doesn't mean that all of Wonder Woman's stories have to unfold in one place, but, an iconic center stage solidly sets the narrative tone, ..from which to launch her best stories.
As Brian explained it, in interviews, his Diana's weirdazz, cosmic-Olympian family was her Gotham or Metropolis...her iconic city. With the right editorial guidance, the his successor could have plugged beloved, original characters, back into the supporting cast, without wrecking the funky weirdness of his vision. Conceptually, it was so well-built, you could pop out his comically imperious Hera for equally comically imperious Queen Desira, ..and cowgirl-everywoman Zola for original cowgirl Etta, ..without missing a beat. At its best, this was fertile ground for future scribes to build upon...
Maybe, even to create a second Golden Age of storytelling, in Wonder Woman!
This NEW cover is magic, in how it invites you to see the sadly unrealized possibilities ..of the now infamous, sometimes vulgar, agonizingly slow, Felliniesque, pace-murdering, Whovian-inspired New '52.
Did I mention it was really, really slow?
It's a shame Brian Azzarello's storytelling was so-oo agonizingly slow, and his extremes - minimal action, naked Amazon sex-pirates, trial-by-combat hook-up for Zeus and Wonder-mother Hippolyta, demigod-Diana-as-rejected-mutant-among-Amazons backstory - were so insensitive to Wonder-traditionalist fans, ..that most of us never gave it a chance. The Chazzarello period (too torturously slow and short on content, to be properly called an era) was, hands-down, the most iconic, since George Perez's run, ..and incontestably the most imaginative, since the Marston Golden Age.
This comic is called 'Wonder Woman'. It's about a wonder woman, who happens to be an Amazon, and NOT an Amazon, who happens to be Wonder Woman, and Brian Azzarello restored that fundamental dynamic. While I don't like the sex pirate thing, I think Azzarello made the Amazons special, again...
By getting them out of our way. [Sigh.]
Yep...a little misty, over here, checking out the cover for the upcoming 100-page Super Spectacular. Never thought I would miss this run, more than any, since Dr. Marston's. I do. Looking forward to the 80th anno issue of Wonder Woman!
[Second Edition]
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