COMBINING THE BIGBADITUDE OF THANOS WITH CHEETAH'S FEROCITY, IS JANUS WONDER WOMAN'S GREATEST SUPERVILLAIN?
By Edgar Miraculous Dyer
In Janus, the Roman god of Time itself, Wonder Woman finds the ultimate, never-ending battle for freedom, as no one - not even DC Comics superheroes - may resist the dominion of time. Not since Gail Simone's universally appealing Queen of Fables, has a Wonder-comic villain been in a better position to threaten the entire DC Universe, in all its genres. Bringing magic and science together, as Wonder Woman herself does, ..Janus-creators Michael W. Conrad and Becky Cloonan have finally given the leading lady the sort of classic, all-seasons archenemy, she's been missing since World War II!
She is so much more, than Wonder Woman's 'Batman Who Laughs'. I chuckle every time I see that in print, ..and I challenge any DC Comics fan or creator to read Wonder Woman: Afterworlds all over again, if that's all they got out of it.
Janus is metaphysically transgender, illustrating recurring LGBTQA themes, which have been in Wonder Woman comics, since the Golden Age Forties. Her transgender nature is integral to understanding Janus's motivation AND relevant to her critically acclaimed debut story, ..a credit to Conrad and Cloonan. She or "they", as Wonder Woman refers to the mad Roman god, is DC Comics FIRST major, transgender supervillain! In a feminist struggle with her divine male half, Western patriarchy's controlling, passive oppressive dark side, cemented in history and the past, ..Janus's female aspect personifies our recurring impulse in the West, ..to discard the bloat, balding status quo - to waste what we've built, best and worst of it, for any shiny, new goblet of apocalyptic revolution...
The future! Grab a seat. This is only going to get better.
A transgender and trans-genre villain, Janus's time-mangling, multiverse-shredding power and clear motivation easily makes her a big bad for sci-fi and heroic fantasy stories alike, in the pages of the Wonder Woman comic ..and beyond them! Historically, Wonder Woman's magic-oriented, myth-heavy villains, like Hecate, don't crossover well into stories, pitting them against sci-fi born heroes, like Green Lantern, ..discouraging the writers of those other superheroes from using them in big, multi-title comic book stories, like Crisis On Infinite Earths. With her clear, relevant motivation, ..easy to understand, cross-genre threat and bizarre, iconic appearance, ..Janus invites writers and fans to come play in the Wonderverse for a while, imagining the cosmic destruction assured, ..if the Titans, Justice Society, Suicide Squad and the entire JUSTICE LEAGUE combined can't stop her...
And what if they can't?
Janus is totally that powerful. She's the worst in the Wonderverse.
As such, in the hands of a clever writer, Janus easily crosses over into Green Lantern, Superman, Suicide Squad and Justice League comics, while magic-oriented supervillains Ares and Circe, ..not so much. From one story to the next, will she attack the world, with futuristic robots and weapons, ala STAR WARS? Dinosaurs...as in JURASSIC PARK? Will she assail Metropolis, Gotham, Paradise Island and New Genesis with elemental disasters or cosmic cataclysms, ..ALL at once?!
That is a phenomenal toybox of easy-to-understand story elements, universally thrilling in any genre, for any future writers lucky enough to get their hands on her!
Don't take my word for it - look at a popular supervillain, like the Joker! Outside of the Bat-comics, in a Superman, Green Lantern or Justice League story, the Joker doesn't work, very well. Narratively speaking, much of what makes him such a great Batman supervillain and the most iconic archenemy in comics ..fades or warps in translation, in stories outside of the Bat-comic. Comparatively, Janus combines the BEST of what makes Joker, Darkseid, Circe, Cheetah and Brainiac work. As Janus warps the fabric of Time and reality, ripping worlds apart in her quest for cosmic domination, we imagine Wonder Woman, daughter of mythical freedom-fighters, rallying the heroes of the entire DC Comics Universe against a villain and in a story that fits each one, ..like a glove.
Grab a seat! This is going to be GREAT, ..and it's only the beginning.
On artistic or visual impact alone, Janus struck me on first sight.
She's Regan in THE EXORCIST, the Wicked Witch in THE WIZARD OF OZ, the Emperor in the STAR WARS films and the Lipstick-faced Demon from James Wan's INSIDIOUS films, ..recalling the most iconic sci-fi fantasy antagonists of the 20th and 21st century. Her demonic/reptilian features, green skin, forked tongue and yellow eyes make her creepy, ..without the heavy literature-identification of MEDUSA or other myth-inspired antagonists. I can also imagine they will make her a hit with boys and young men, having been one myself, as much as her Wicked Witch elements will resonate with young women and girls.
Kudos to artists, Travis Moore, Pat Brosseau and Tamara Bonvillain!
Combining the grotesque largess of Darkseid and Ares, the menace of Circe and ferocity of the Cheetahs, Janus's power and motivation threatens Wonder Woman's signature mission to protect freedom and love! In many ways, Janus and Wonder Woman are matched - maybe, better than with any supervillain, since her World War II archfoe, the Baroness Von Gunther. Like Wonder Woman, herself, ..she is inspired by classical mythology, while being very much a creature of genre science fiction - a cosmic power, rivalling Marvel's Thanos ..or even Dark Phoenix. Not since Gail Simone's universally appealing Queen of Fables, has a Wonder-comic supervillain been better thematically matched to the world's most famous comic book superheroine.
In that sense, Janus also solves the Wonder Woman comic's seventy-five years long archenemy problem. By expanding our understanding of freedom in the cosmic sense - of Diana’s role in defending it - her villainy stretches beyond the context of geopolitics and World War II! Janus's obsession with warping reality, disfiguring destiny and conquering the future, eliminating everything born of free will, introduces the Amazing Amazon to countless NEW, apocalyptic reasons...
For waking up, choking in a cold sweat!
Read Wonder Woman: Afterworlds in trade paperback, a fancy hardcover edition or however you can get your hands on it! It's one of the consistently finest stories ever written for this comic, ..and the persistently urgent threat of Janus is the gravitational center of the work - the tonal, super-massive black hole holding it all together. She's a MONSTER. It's a GREAT story! I said, at the beginning of this scribbling, that Janus
The future. Grab a seat. That wasn't hyperbole.
No one's more excited about Michael W. Conrad and Becky Cloonan adding the legendary prince of dragonslayers, ..the Siegfried (a costumed Asgardian), to the regular cast, ..but I would trade him for FIVE more supervillains like Janus, ..faster than you can rip your shirt off! As a diehard fan of forty years, I can truthfully say JANUS is checking all the necessary boxes to finally bring the Wonder Woman comic a classic archenemy, worthy of the grand DC Comics tradition - Luthor, Joker, Grodd, Sinestro, Darkseid - and a new century of great stories.
Look alive, Kangaliers!
Edgar Miraculous (Mel) Dyer, without his fine, coyote-hatin' Goldiweiller, Kirby (now moved on to that big, coyote-hatin' hate group in the Sky) continues a somewhat bleaker, dogless existence in the Capitol Hill area of Washington, DC. He has been an active member of the Latino Culture Council of the Capitol Area (El Consejo de Cultura Latina – La Zona del Capitolio), the Kiwanis Club of Capitol Hill and on the Board of Directors for the YMCA Capital View.
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