Rucka rides again some more.

[colonel_green]

Four scans from Blackest Night: Wonder Woman #2.


So now Diana has herself a black ring, and fights Mera.  Mera gets in a few good hits, but Diana's about to gut her:



Diana flies off and tries to remove the black ring to kill herself, but can't.  Instead, she goes on a rampage around Themyscira, killing Cassie, BL-Donna, and Hippolyta, and then makes out with Batman.  This increasingly odd turn of events is revealed to be:




That double-spread was damn hard to work with, because my scanner's not quite large enough, so I had to figure out how to stitch images together using ArcSoft Photostudio.

Nice scene, and I love seeing Aphrodite's Drew Johnson design again (the 'Diana Prince' thing is still annoying, but I suppose if that's how it's going to happen in the main title continuity should be observed).

 Tags:  char: wonder woman/diana of themyscira, char: mera, creator: greg rucka, creator: nicola scott, event: blackest night

Comments

[ashleyera.livejournal.com]

Wasn't really sure where the best spot to reply to this was, so apologies since it's really long! It's clear I think about this more than is probably healthy.

I completely understand your squickiness over the scene. I've been trying to reconcile it all myself. I viewed the kiss not so much as advocating sexual love as the stronger of loves (and therefore the one to break Diana from Black Lantern control), but rather as a testament to the perseverance of love even in death.

Diana fights with (illusions of) her sisters and mother, people who to her are alive and who she feels compelled to kill. As others have stated, Diana's love for these people is of course just as strong as (if not stronger than) her love in romantic contexts. But her engagement with them right now is as a Black Lantern, who are about ending life. Yes, most are back-from-the-dead folks, which gives the BL existence its own sense of perpetuity, but the BLs themselves are stuck in view of termination. Wonder Woman is about "Flesh" right now - about destroying it.

But Batman (and isn't he another illusion essentially?) is, as Diana realizes, already dead. That throws her for a loop because if she is wreaking death and destruction, what is a dead man doing opposing her? Her love for Batman - which I think isn't sexual or romantic so much as a deep respect and friendship - is especially heightened right now. As another user pointed out his appearance was a crucial part of what caused Diana (and the others) to be BL'd. Her grief over his death, the idea that plausible or not-so-plausible romance notwithstanding she simply misses her friend, is going to be a powerful force. It makes sense that love is what causes Diana to fall prey to the Black Lanterns and is what shakes her from their grasp. The Diana that's protesting and praying and fighting against herself in every scan recognizes that Batman is, as she says, already dead, and I think that's the crucial moment, not so much the kiss. That it is Batman who breaks her from her zombie state is a signal that what Diana stands for, what she fights out of, that is, "love of all creation", is bigger than death. As Diana and Aphrodite say in the second-to-last scan, "Love must survive. It must do more."

This is not to say anything against Nicola's pencils - I adore her artwork and for all I know this was an element of editorial direction - but I wonder if the stance of that kiss contributes to our frustration and interpretation of the subtext. If the positioning had been less sexual, i.e. no leg-intertwining, I would not have been less quick to interpret the "LOVE" at work as sexual. I think then that the kiss is just a physical emphatic assurance of what Diana has always believed - not that Bruce is her one true love or that it's sexual love that's required to free her, but that love in general is stronger, is bigger than death.