Wonder Woman 207: Diplomacy with Diana

[espanolbot]

Spoilers: From the 'Eyes of the Gorgon' trade

The Amazons are going to the White House to attempt to repair relations with the US after a Hera-related disaster caused the (then floating) Themyscira to crash into the ocean, killing all the non-Amazon scientist, artists and philophers who were visiting as they didn't have the Amazons' magical protection,

>


Meanwhile, Medusa is invading the White House in the backdoor in an attempt to kill the President to spite Athena and the Amazons.

Back to Diana and Co. where they are discussing the formation of the Amazon Republic and Diana gets a reintroduction to Dr Cale,





Boo, the Wakanda comparision was uncalled for!


It's the TARDIS!

Nah, it's just Medusa killing secret service agents on the way to killing President Thorne. Diana fights her off, but the political situation, if anything, gets worse.

Leading to the US navy standing by when Themyscira is attacked by OMACS, and the demonstration of the Purple Death Ray "proves" to them that their hostile blockading of Paradise Island was in their mind justified...

Which in turned lead to Amazons Attack. Eek.

title: wonder woman
char: wonder woman/diana of themyscira
char: veronica cale
char: steve trevor
creator: greg rucka

Comments

[halialkers]

Of course from one POV, an island of immortals with super-weapons would be a major sticking point in an realistic geopolitical scenario. Amazons Attack if done right would have been quite the plausibly dark story. Instead the actual story was Gender-Fail at the maximum.

Though of course I have to wonder that if Carcharodon megalodon survived extinction, wouldn't they still be hunting whales elsewhere?

[espanolbot]

I presumed that they were magical sharks, so they just hang out there because they like the climate or something.

[halialkers]

So what do they eat?

[espanolbot]

Krakens, which are released regularly.

[halialkers]

Yeahbuhwhat? O.o

[espanolbot]

Sorry, Clash of the Titans reference.

[halialkers]

I should note as well that if Themyscira were 90 miles off of the coast of North Carolina, that the miracle is there was nothing like this *until* Amazons Attack. The USA is the kind of society that outright steals land to safeguard its "security". A USA influenced by the Cold War? If anything this is too optimistic.....

[espanolbot]

To be fair up until this point Paradise Island had heavy divine protection, so people in the world outside didn't even know that it existed until eight years prior to this story and even then no one could really get to it because it went invisible and stuff.

It's only AFTER they allowed outside people into Themyscira did the political attitude suddenly changed, as they went from a mysterious and quaint island of hot, possibly gay women who with "play with swords and shields" to an isolationist group of religious fundementalists with supertechnologies that the US can only dream about.

[halialkers]

That's the Gods grabbing the Idiot Ball with both hands. An invisible island that close to the USA? The conspiracy theorists would be going absolutely nuts. And religious fundamentalists of that sort.......>.< yeah. That's definitely inviting a war as soon as whatever US Administration desired it would be able to get its shit together.

[espanolbot]

But the Amazons were there first. Haven't they been on the island for some 3000 or so years?

[halialkers]

This is the United States of America. Since when does that matter?

I mean, if we're talking about say, the Zuni or the Hopi they've been where they live for at minimum over 1,000 years and possibly a lot longer than that. So what would stop the USA from what *would* be a very valid geopolitical threat, particularly in a world where a large concentration of metahumans can invite the likes of Darkseid roaming around?

[espanolbot]

Ah, but this was pre-Countdown/Final Crisis, Darkseid could just show up on his lonesome via Boomtube. Plus Ares and co. could just manifest whenever they liked.

[jlbarnett]

you're both looking at the US through an unneceassrily dark glass and overlooking the dramtically different nature of the DC universe's reality(recall Uncle Sam the literal spirit of America who is as pure a superhero as any. ).

[aegof]

On the other hand Sam Lane tried to commit genocide not long ago.

[bariman]

The island wasn't anywhere near the USA originally. Zeus started to go all voyeur on Artemis (the redhead in the scans) with a magical mirror-pool thing. When Hera found out, she stomped on the pool in anger, and magical feedback teleported the island to US waters--or rather, several hundered feet above US waters. It crashed and a lot of people on the island(s) died. The Navy was dispatched to "aid" them, but it was really more of a "oh crap are they invading" response.

[aegof]

I dunno. I'd be wary of attacking any place Diana of Themyscira called home. And if that name's not terrifying enough, remember that she's close friends with some of the most powerful people in the galaxy.

[halialkers]

A guy that gets killed by shiny glowing green rocks, a stronger guy deathly afraid of fire and the fastest guy in the world. The only one who's conceivably a problem for a sufficiently evil-minded superpower is the Flash. What's Superman gonna do if he gets shot with a magazine of Kryptonite bullets?

[aegof]

If it was that easy to take down Superman, he'd be pretty dead.

You're missing a few names, btw. Like Green Lantern and Green Lantern and she could probably talk a third into the fight if she wanted, and probably at least one more Flash, and Batman could disable a chunk of the military in his sleep, and Wonder Girl'll be there with like half the under-30 superhero community and--

and most of them don't matter overmuch because two or three "walking tactical nuke" characters would be all that's needed. Sure, some have hilarious weaknessess, but it won't matter when they're picking up your battleships and dropping them off in Tennessee.

[auggie18]

Someone already mentioned the Green Lantern threat, but don't forget Wonder Woman's magical friends. The woman who can make anything happen by saying it backwards, the boy who can turn into someone on Superman's level without the green rock weakness, the Pooka with the army of space tigers. (I feel like she and Tawny are friends, but I'm not certain on that one.)

[shadowpsykie]

"It's the TARDIS!"

That would be HILARIOUS!
Doctor: Oops... sorry wrong... Diana?
Diana: Doctor?
Doctor: I'm surprised you recognized me, most people don't after my regenerations, then again y ou always saw through me.
Diana: One of the advantages to being an ageless Amazon, and champion of truth.
Doctor: Yes I could never get anything by you
Diana: only when i let you doctor... and when I did, it was for MY benifite as much as yours....
*both laught together*

*everyone else looks around awkwardly*

[philippos42]

This will have happened at some point.

[endis_ni]

And then they go and battle evil together!

Someone needs to draw this, if only for the sake of my little niece. If she saw Wonder Woman AND the Doctor fighting monsters together, she'd never have a nightmare again!

[stig]

1) Standard written form of TARDIS warping is "Vworp, Vworp". Don't let this happen again.

2) Never encountered Phillipus before. According to the Ancient Greco-Roman precedent, don't all girl's names end with a vowel and some boys names with a vowel, some with a vowel + an s? She should be called Phillipa or possibly Phillip.

[espanolbot]

Yes, I am aware of the Vworp, but in this instance I thought that there was enough leeway for the joke.

[cygna_hime]

2) It's weird all around, since "Phillipus" -- or rather, "Philip" -- *is* a Greek man's name, properly transliterated "Philippos". OTOH, if you limit yourself to attested Greek female names, you're going to run out long before you've named even the important Amazons -- the Greeks had this *thing* about not mentioning women's names except in literature, and you can't really run around naming your Amazons Clytemnestra or Medea without confusing the heck out of readers.

[espanolbot]

Hm, they had have an Amazon blacksmith who called to have a crush on Diana called Io towards the end of the Rucka run.

This is relevant to my interests

[philippos42]

Philippis with an iota might be feminine. Or Philippe. But Greek inflects, so the endings really should change with case anyway.

I just figure that this is after all a bunch of women who left Anatolia long before Attic Greek as we know it was standardized. They probably use a different alphabet, their pronunciations could have evolved enormously, & they can end up transliterating it in a way that makes sense to them.

Re: This is relevant to my interests

[bluefall]

I had a list of named Amazons from various sources once, not just Hippolyte-who's-also-Antiope but also the warriors who were at Troy and various &tc - Kelaeno and Laomache and the like. I distinctly remember that there was, in fact, a Philippis among them (listed as a kill to Heracles' credit, in fact, IIRC), because I remember thinking that Perez had probably stumbled across that same resource and misremembered or tweaked it without realizing the significance of the ending. Though as I think on it now, Perez did know his myth pretty well, who knows, he might have done it on purpose.

[thebigapricot]

Artemis just owns that evening gown. I love this scene.

[jlbarnett]

to be honest, I don't agree with the sort of blackmail sort of thing there, but there is something of a point here.

It sounds like Themiscrya doesn't provide anything to the world except a nice vacation spot. Why should any country actually have an official relationship with them?

[bluefall]

Their shores were more open during Phil's run -- they had a relatively public library (and even 30% of a Themysciran library has gotta be quite the world resource), possibly some hospice/refugee type setup, and their big offer was supposedly "neutral ground," with the implication that they'd provide negotiation space and diplomatic assistance to any two governing bodies at all who wanted to work out their differences. This was of course a free service, the amazons were very good at it and bettering the world by it and asked nothing in return; it was all very superhero-y and Paradise Indeed and whatnot.

When (realist-cynic) Rucka picked up the title, however, he portrayed a Themyscira starting to strain under the demand of that generosity, and a lot of his political plotline takes up the task of exploring the realist-cynic fallout of (idealist-mythic) Phil's narrative choices. So that's what's happening here: Themysicra is already contemplating the drain on their resources that charity to Patriarch's World requires, and then they get kicked out of the sky, lotta civilians die... They've got serious problems, and no time to deal with the US' opportunistic "o hai what's that, you've lost your position of strength? oic, help us help you" bullshit. They'd be nicer (and have been in the past) if they weren't feeling like the frog in that frog-and-scorpion parable.