Wonder Woman: Dead Earth #3

[history79]

Writing and Art by Daniel Warren Johnson

16 pages of 48

Comments

[thanekos]

Doing a DC universe story where a character who is not Superman is angry at the world around them?

Need a character to act as a defender of that world's inherent right to exist, without having any nuanced thoughts on that world's culpability in your story's situation, so that they can be a punching bag for your angry hero?

Think of TDKR, and consider Superman.

(This is Wonder Woman's story, of course, and Johnson's art helps a lot in selling his writing - but still.)

[silverhammerman]

The art is gorgeous, the story less so. It feels like very familiar territory for Daniel Warren Johnson, who writes a lot of these bombastic, violent stories that ultimately end up being about accepting yourself or forgiving yourself or something along those lines. Extremity and Murder Falcon do the same thing, and while I think Johnson is a great artist I don't connect with his writing as much.

It's not all bad, I think there's something to textually confronting the fact that despite Wonder Woman's original premise and philosophy being about peace she still ends up being portrayed as a violent warrior in a way that's as ridiculous as the famously hypocritical Peacemaker. I can't decide whether it helps or hinders that reading that it's all draped in Johnson's ultraviolent heavy metal aesthetic, and

I don't hate this, but my gut reaction isn't really charitable. Maybe I'll check this out when it comes out in trade though. Also, it doesn't seem to be in the pipeline, but since they've given us post-apocalyptic Batman and post-apocalyptic Wonder Woman, I really feel like Black Label should cap things off with post-apocalyptic Superman.

[informationgeek]

Oh god no. Last time we had post-apocalyptic Superman, it was the Elseworlds comics of Distant Fires and Superman at Earth's End.

They suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked, especially the latter.

[informationgeek]

.....................well, I guess we were due for a dark and edgy Wonder Woman comic where she went crazy and killed tons of people. Can't let Batman and Superman have all the gory "fun".


Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh

[gnarll]

Been a long time since I've seen that function of WWs bracers in print. But I haven't been keeping up.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

What did they do? I don't see her wearing them...

[sadoeuphemist]

I think that's what they're referring to, her not wearing them. In the original comics the bracers also served as like emotional regulators and she'd go into an Amazonian berserker frenzy if they were removed

[lego_joker]

I suppose every young hotshot has to get this stuff out of their system somehow. If DC hadn't agreed to publish it, Johnson would probably have been running this story under some indie publisher with thinly off-brand pastiches and at least 150% the grimdark.

[deh_tommy]

Hold up, did Wonder Woman just do that Azzarello-Chiang Super Saiyan thing? And am I crazy or does Dee look a bit like Zola from the same run?

[donnblake]

Well that's certainly a novel use for a dead Superman.

[sadoeuphemist]

I have no idea what the implications of that Cheetah surgery panel are supposed to be. They just kept ... harvesting more cheetahs out of her body?? Or they were trying to surgically attach more cheetah parts to her???

[thanekos]

They replaced her right hand with a cheetah's head (that works like a hand) and gave her teeth running up the right side of her head.

[sadoeuphemist]

Ah, of course, the old cheetah head-hand transplant bit, don't know why I didn't think of that.

[matrix_dragon]

Ah, so it wasn't the idiots dropping nuclear bombs everywhere that burned the world, it was Diana's murderous rage at their stupidity causing her to go super sayian. I'm... not sure how I feel about this, but it's not exactly positive-

"I promise I'll try to use you to make things right."

OH SWEET JESUS NO.

[servant_iskandar]

Agreed.
It's been done to death before and it's also been done better several times, both in traditional comics and manga.

In the latter genre, Go Nagai's practically built part of his career on the assumption that there must be a big, bloody, apocalyptic screw-up before the hero (usually, just a kinder asshat in a world of utter asshats, including the general populace) can shine, if they can shine at all. It's what made me a lot more critical of the cyclical rehashes of his works: you can make a thing like Devilman "right" only a few times before your purported nihilism turns out to be a marketing device.

On the positive side, you have examples like Yasushiro Nightow's Vash in Trigun and his trauma about what happened in July (it also happens that Nightow's tale is one of actual *hope* and uplifting).

We might also draw comparisons to Miura's works, but there the "screw up" is the villain's doing and things are pretty personal (not to mention the world isn't a nice place to begin with).

Here? It... looks really cheap, and while people can be stupid and things escalate quickly when fear or anger drive you, quite forced.

Also, I'm in the club of Stop attempting to dismember, desecrate or maim alternative versions of Superman. Leave the poor Big Blue be; he's one of the few last positive symbols we've got, and as someone who grew up with the idea that there could *be* (that we could be, if we tried) someone so kind, so willing to help... it does kinda hurt to see this sort of senseless disrespect.

[superfangirl1]

Why would superman have kryptonite easily accessible in his fortress of Solitude?



Interesting that the author isusing global warming as the catalyst for the end of the world. And the reason that the Amazon want to war with United States and other countries.

[super_fly]

I wouldn't say it was easily accessible, it was *inside* the fortress, probably not expecting anyone to just be able bust in and grab it

And better to have it where you can keep an eye on it than have it all out in the wild