Diana of the Morrigan

[q99]

The latest storyline in Wonder Woman is all about how the Morrigan, War Goddesses once three in number but now two, are trying to reshape Diana to replace their third.

In Wonder Woman #611, we get a vision of what Diana will be like if they succeed.










*Edit* If you're getting a 'bandwidth exceeded' message, here's an alternate source:
page 1
page 2
page 3
page 4
page 5





Btw, does anyone recognize if the 'casualties of war' in the panel she speaks to superman are people we're supposed to know?


5 pages from WW 611

(Yes, two of these pages were posted before, but I wanted to post the full scene)

Comments

[starwolf_oakley]

Hmm. Blaming Superman for the bad crap that happened on "his watch." Well, it isn't unheard of, but I think most people in Metropolis know "Well, he can't be EVERYWHERE at once."

[bluefall]

Actually she's got a fair point, from her perspective. Clark is THE defender of the Status Quo, it's his whole thing as a character from about the Silver Age out, and especially now. He's completely reactive, his entire career as a superhero is about preventing things from getting worse. Stop the asteroid, stop the bank robber, stop the rampaging robot, whatever. Superman's world is one that's the same today as it was yesterday, because only madmen want to change the world.

Diana's a proactive hero, though. Her whole mission is to change the world, because her whole character concept is that the Status Quo is completely fucking bankrupt and needs to change. If Wonder Woman's world looks the same today as it did yesterday, that's a complete failure on her part, because the world yesterday was a place full of everything from glass ceilings to ethnic cleansing, and only madmen would look at the inequality of the human condition and not want it changed.

So, her looking at him and saying "you've got all this power and the only thing you ever did with it was prevent things from changing," it's actually a pretty good encapsulation of how they differ as characters.

[q99]

It makes perfect sense if you're an evil goddess of justice untempered by mercy and leading an army of the dead too.

[starwolf_oakley]

It also makes perfect sense if you're possessed by a Yellow Fear Entity. A lot of times, Hal-as-Parallax and Hal-as-Spectre kept saying "I wanted to make things better and none of you understood that."

[aaron_bourque]

Her whole mission is to change the world,

This Wonder Woman?

I didn't even realize she had a mission.

Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; pre-this Diana, sure, maybe. She'd be a little nicer about making that point, though.

[bluefall]

Well, that's where the "turned into an evil god of vengeance" bit comes in.

I think Hester's Diana has a mission. And Hester's run has basically been characterized by "bits of the real Diana poking through" and the general sense that the endpoint of this journey is her recovering that true self.

Obviously DCnU will put a kink in that, but that's a few months away yet, so this story still has time to play out the "getting back to what she is" theme before what she is gets ripped away once again.

[mrstatham]

Actually, it's like, one month away, after this. We've got one more issue before September, I believe, so poor Hester's run gets the problem of a - Looking like a fill-in for a guy who can't be bothered, and b - seeming like a whole lot of wheel-spinning for this relaunch.

[q99]

Long-run, it'll probably be an "interesting Elseworld between Gail's run that wrapped up the real thing, and the reboot".

[mrstatham]

Which is equally insulting to Hester, I believe. That this isn't judged as the 'real thing' when it's clearly supposed to be and has a likely end-goal of 'old Diana with new look/costume' is already a notch against what's been some pretty decent writing, really. I'd argue Hester could contend with Gail for best WW writer of the past series, and Gail didn't exactly do much during her time on the title, IMO. She introduced a new wrinkle to Diana's origin that, as the intro to the volume said, I was surprised hadn't been done before, and introduced a big new villain who turned out to fall flat near immediately.

[q99]

She told some darn good stories, which is I think what really matters (and I rather liked the Genocide one, personally).

And I don't mean Elseworlds as a slight, I think I can count on one hand the Elseworld stories that can stand on it's level and yea, Hester is *definitely* one of the two two Wondy writers of this run alongside Gail, it's just that it does occupy alternate continuity space due to events, even if the original plan was to tie it back in.

[darkknightjrk]

"I didn't even realize she had a mission."

They said it in the first full issue--find out who was able to change the timeline and fix things so that her people were never attacked. Admittedly, that's a bit more of a short-sighted goal than peace and harmony, but that's her current mission--and I believe Aphrodite in one of JMS' issues mentioned her future is in leading the Amazons.

[aaron_bourque]

. . . that less a mission, more a goal.

Like, Batman's mission is to eradicate crime. Batman's goal is to find the Riddler and stop him!

Superman's mission is to inspire humanity to be better and better. His goal is to find the asteroid and divert its course.

Spider-man's mission is to assuage his guilt at Uncle Ben's murder by fighting crime, his goal is to pay the rent and his Aunt May's medical bills and hopefully keep his civilian life from falling apart.

A superhero's mission shouldn't be that short-sighted.

Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; Jaime Reyes' mission is to become a dentist and support his family financially. His goal is to stop the Reach, oh wait he did that.

[darkknightjrk]

Like I said, it is a short-term mission--but, like I said, that moment where Diana's speaking to Aphrodite seemed to imply that at some point Diana would be leading the Amazons.

[q99]

Keep in mind she's a war-slash-*death* god here, so she's a bit biased :)

In general, I'm with you, helping where he can doesn't make him responsible for things he doesn't stop.