Wonder Woman #07 rotting spoilers

[sherkahn]

I have to credit BleedingCool.com for this.


I've touched on the Batman spoilers today, but they start off with the revelations about Diana and her people. It's a new low for DCnU.
It's a doozy and may not sit well with most of you. Heck, the new S_D protocols may even be triggered.

Fair warning, SPOILERS AHOY.



Shouldn't we have a tag for "everything you thought you knew was wrong."?

From the article:

"Paradise Island, has always been portrayed as a preserve of women, with new generations emerging… in an non-specific fashion. Formed from clay, or girls lost at sea transported to the island. The new Wonder Woman does away with any such niceties. The women of Paradise Island now set off on the seas looking for other ships, for seamen… or rather, semen. They have sex with the sailors, and then kill them. The sex may have been consensual, but what happened after certainly issn’t. Later, those that have conceived children give birth, the female children staying, the male children… becoming hellish slaves of the infernal weaponry workshop."


"It’s a nightmarish vision made real by Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang, the harshness of the stories of the Gods now made flesh in a much less palatable way. And given light to the thought that somewhere, working at a lithe, forging a mighty sword, unaware of his lineage, is Wonder Woman’s brother…
"

I guess Donna is going to have a say about this other brother, and I am not too fond of this darker, seedy Paradise Island. It honestly sounds like a brothel/labor camp of the gods than an ideal community led by women, made of women, for the women.

Comments

[lonewolf23k]

And William Moulton Marston spins in his grave...

[venatosapiens]

That's very in keeping with the noir/horror aesthetic, and I wouldn't necessarily object to it if this were in a different universe with a different character. But this is Wonder Woman we're talking about here, right? This is supposed to be one of the great civilizations of the DC Universe. And this book is supposed to be one of the flagship books. I don't get it.

[majingojira]

Given that this series has dived into the darkness of the original Greek myths and will have no nicing up of anything, I honestly don't have a problem with this turn of events. It's in tone with itself at least, and provides some catharsis for the events at least.

That it ties slightly to my own fanish crossover head canon is an added bonus.

But I can see where it would rub people the wrong way, though.

[tauruschick12]

Annnnnd my decision to headcanon this entire series as a dark alternative AU (such as Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth) is now official in my head.

[shadowpsykie]

I don't necissarily hate this... i mean it's sorta in keeping with the traditional greek myths, and Brian has said from the begining that he is exploring the mythological aspect of Woner Woman. I don't necissarily like it, as it is some what problematic... that said... while this did cause me to pause mid story, it doesn't, at least to me, take away from the fact that Wonder Woman is by far, next to BoP and TT, one of my favorite series' at thispoint.

[deepspaceartist]

You know, I've never been big on the whole "Community that's been isolated for thousands of years but is supposed to be a perfect paradise" thing. It always seemed to me that millenia of isolation would make any community inept at dealing with others, especially when you throw immortality into the mix. Immortality in fiction tends to lend itself towards creating arrogant assholes rather than benevolent sages.

That being said, this change strikes me as going way to far to the 'asshole' side of the sage/asshole spectrum.

[valtyr]

So this guy took Wonder Woman, a heroine whose important figures were her mother and her sisters, and decided what she needed was first a father, and then a brother, and also a whole hidden society of dudes in the Amazons. Amazing.

[icon_uk]

It may be closer to the myths, but I don't like Wonder Woman for the myths, I like it for the superheroics BASED on the myths. That Wonder Woman was unique as she was the first and ONLY child on Themyscira, because the Amazons were immortal and didn't procreate.

I much prefers Perez's approach of adapting the myth to the comic ethos, not this of the comic to the mythos.

[q99]

Why is he making WW's backstory more sexist, and why is this a sudden revelation to Diana if it's normal for them?

[okkult3000]

I like it. Honestly, how can they present Amazons as perfect utopians in the 21st century? It's a society that excises an entire group of people in order to achieve perfection. That's monstrous. They have to be villains, or at least misguided.

[greenmask]

I'm sure there's a lot of story and atmosphere potential there, but gosh does it make me feel tired. Is nowhere pleasant any more?

[drexer]

Dropped!

[terabient]

Oh look. A female-dominated society being depicted as man-hating rapists and murderers.

HOW ORIGINAL AND FASCINATING.

[whitesycamore]

You know, I may have found this gruesome plotline horrible but interesting if it weren't subverting everything Wonder Woman has ever stood for and conflating feminism with murderous female supremacy.

Good Lord.

[majingojira]

Even though I don't mind the story that much, there is something that bothers me that hasn't been mentioned yet (aside from other things that bother me).

You'd think the Amazons, if they only do this once every 30 years, would have a really REALLY good screening process for this. The way it stands now it's "Hey, there's a ship! Let's take it!"

[rdfox]

And people wonder why I didn't give DCnU a chance. To sum it up:

[thespis]

WHAT WHAT WHAT THE HELL.

What new generations? Have I missed something? The whole significance of Diana's birth was that she was the first child to be born on Themyscira ever. The darker edge to the Amazons' longevity and their idyllic homeland is their state of total exile: while they live in (for the most part) peace and prosperity, their society is stagnant. There are no children, no new generations of Amazons - until Diana.

As a general story concept, the idea of a female race of man-hating murderous rapists offends me. As a Wonder Woman story, it's downright horrifying and goes against everything the character represents.

Goddammit, Azzarello.

[fungo_squiggly]

Okay, so my first thought was, "Ew."

But I have to admit, my second thought was "DEATH BY SNOO-SNOO!"

[jlbarnett]

This is bad and they should feel bad.

[sailorlibra]

Dropping Wonder Woman now.

[jlbarnett]

You know what: This is not the real Amazons of Paradise Island. THese are a tribe of the Bana. The real Amazons are isolated to this day. Hippolyta is just a name that frequantly features in their naming rituals because even if Antiope was pissed her sister didn't want revenge and was willing to beg for penance from the gods she still missed her.

Hippolyta's daughter being Diana, is either a massive coincidence or the gods being assholes by suggesting the name

[aeka]

You know, when I first heard about "[turning] the largest population of queer women in their universe into rapists & child slavers" on Corrina Lawson's Twitter, I was seriously hoping the Amazons fitting the bill would not be the case. I click here, and worries confirmed.

Blimey. I didn't think things could get any worse with DC deciding to kill the entire Amazon population on Earth-2, and yet, here we are. Who exactly is the "new reader" DC is trying to target, again? Part of me doesn't want to know, but I have to admit, I am starting to worry now what kinds of minds are running the place. >:(

[big_daddy_d]

I remember when I was doing some research on Amazons, it was mentioned that there are times when the women would go out and find a man to umm mate with with the purpose of having a child. No strings. No commitment. If the child is a girl, she is already on her path to becoming an Amazon. If the child is male, he is simply released into the custody of his father. I'm not bothered by that, but what bothers me is DC's handling of it. Once again DC is going for the dark stuff it seems...at this rate DC will stand for Dark Comics.

P.S. - This is reminding me of the proposed ideal of Ultimate Wonder Woman where it mentions that there is a horrible secret concerning men who use to live on Paradise Island and now don't.

[jlbarnett]

I went to DC comics site to comment, only to find the place now lacks forums and is set up with twitter and facebook crap

[q99]

Someone at another place made an interesting comment:

After this backstory, even if it works for this story and Brian Azzarello's run....


... we're going to need another reboot/retcon.