Scans_Daily

Here we go with part two of my Nu'bia rundown, dealing with her infinitely superior post-Crisis incarnation. Free of tokenism, overt sexism, and laughably bad writing, and with an added apostrophe in her spelling to ever-so-slightly dissociate herself from being named for a piece of Egyptian geography (which seems odd to me, since Nubia is a reasonably common real-world name, but presumably Doselle Young knows what he's doing better than I), she was reinvented and reestablished as a character with an actual distinct hook and reason to exist, and a pretty cool one at that.

Time for another author switch! We've left WML behind with the 100-issue spectacular and the death of Artemis, and now Diana's out of the stupid black straptastic bra and out of Boston, and into the hands of John Byrne.

Byrne's run is... hard to pin down. The man wrote with an agenda; there were things he wanted to fix and things he wanted to change and that's what he did. And a lot of those things were good. He repaired most of the damage WML did toward the end of his run, both to Diana and, to some degree, to Polly. He built an actual Wonder Family out of Donna and Cassie and Artemis. He made a point of making Diana unique and ridiculously first-tier badass, firmly establishing how high she belonged in the DCU power hierarchy.



( Diana really attracts a lot of writers who do their own art, doesn't she? )

Next time: Diana teams up with Zauriel, has a romance with a guy who, miracle of miracles, is actually worth her time, and saves all of creation. And the art is wicked cool.

Alright, both by request and because I myself feel something at a loss with it gone, here commences the repost of my When Wondy was Awesome series from our LJ incarnation.

We'll begin, as is proper, at the beginning - the origin of the character as she is now. The concept of Wonder Woman, of course, is one of the oldest in Big Two comics, as she was first created by Marston back in 1941. However, once the Golden Age ended and the character passed into other hands, she became something of an albatross to the company - they were under contract to keep publishing her, but they didn't really know what to do with her, and her title quickly devolved into a miserable sexist mess from which it never entirely recovered.

Thus, with Crisis on Infinite Earths, Editorial completely erased Wonder Woman from past continuity, deciding she would enter the DCU for the first time in the late 80s - allowing them to start over and try to really do her justice. After a long (and terrifying to read about for fear of what might have been) process, they finally found a team that they thought could both create a new and viable character, and preserve the essence of the one who came before; thus Diana passed into the hands of Greg Potter and the now-definitive George Perez.



( And hot damn was that a good call. )

Next time: The nonsensical American flag bathing suit is made to make some small sliver of sense, we learn what kind of person inspires an amazon and why we should care about Steve Trevor, and Diana kills a hecatoncheries, as we tackle the second, less prominent but no less awesome half of Wonder Woman's origin.