Misc.

Meanwhile, in Las Vegas…: This week’s Las Vegas Weekly comics review column features two new miniseries offering up new spins on ancient myths, The Infinite Horizon and Hybrid Bastards.




Marvel vs. DC, Round 946: Quick question—What’s a common one-word term used to refer to the artist who provides pencil-only art for a comic book, to later be inked by an inker?

Okay, yes, that’s right.

Now, how do you spell it?

DC spells penciller with two l’s in their credit boxes, whereas Marvel spells penciler with one l. My spellcheck always underlines them both in red to let me know they’re spelled wrong (it also underlined “spellcheck” just now). I always assumed that it was because it was comic book jargon and not widely enough used to pop up in a spellcheck program.

But why do Marvel and DC differ on the spelling?

I’ve been finding myself writing it out as “pencil artist” so as to avoid finding a definitive answer. I haven’t pulled out my long boxes and done and exhaustive search or anything, but, just casually looking at my usual Wednesday stacks of super-comics, and now, just double-checking the past week’s, it seems Marvel and DC are purposely spelling the word differently.

Has anyone else noticed this? Does anyone know how long this has been going on? Or why this is going on?

If anyone has any further information on this matter, do let me know. It’s stuff like this that keeps me up at night.

And on the subject of spelling, is the term “the direct market” a proper noun or not? Should I capitalize the d and the m or no?

And how come so few comics bloggers capitalize the I in “internet” when referring to “the Internet?” That is a proper noun, unless it’s being used as an adjective, right?




As a comic book writer, she makes a fine prose novelist: I finally got around to reading Jodi Picoult’s entire five-issue Wonder Woman run, recently collected in a pretty thin $19.99 hardcover. (I had previously only read Picoult’s first, very disappointing issue before I decided to just wait until I could read it for free from the library, as “nothing at all” seems to be the amount of money the story would be worth).

It doesn’t get any better after that first issue, however, and it’s actually pretty surprising how bad it all is. I really can’t fathom how this all came about; did DC really think a name writer with the kind of book store/library cred as Jodi Picoult would be best applied to tap-dancing between the continuity points established by Allan Heinberg and the Amazons Attack! crossover?

It’s a really nicely designed trade, and has an introduction from Picoult herself, which Tom Spurgeon noted “feels like a defense attorney's opening statement.”

The art throughout is mostly pretty solid, although there are some badly choreographed scenes that look like they had dialogue rearranged or something the night before deadline (Note the panel on the right). But it’s a really uncomfortable amalgam of plot points culled from continuity (Max Lord’s murder, Hippolyta’s death, Circe’s history, what’s up with the Amazons post-Infinite Crisis, Amazons Attack!, who the hell is Everyman, etc.) and characterization made up wholesale by Picoult.

Her Wonder Woman as fish-out-of-water comedy, flirting with Nemesis-as-TV’s-Steve-Trevor might have made for a great original graphic novel or Elseworlds or All-Star type story, but for a relevant DCU event bridging crossovers? Come on.

Rereading her intro after the story arc itself, this part grabbed my attention:



I decided to undertake the challenge for a few reasons—because it was something I’d never done before; because I’d always been a fan of Wonder Woman (who hasn’t?); because I’d admired other writers who’d seamlessly moved between fiction and comic books (Brad Meltzer foremost); and because I would be only the second woman to write the comic book in its long history.



The fact that she chose Meltzer as an example of someone who had “moved seamlessly moved between fiction and comic books” instead of, say, Greg Rucka, is pretty telling. (Perhaps just as telling? She uses the word “fiction” instead of “prose;” “comic book” is a medium, “fiction” designates whether a work is true or not. Meltzer’s prose novels and comic book work are all works of fiction, just as Picoult’s prose novels and Wonder Woman work are fiction).

Like Meltzer, Picoult over-narrates her comic books a bit too much, although it’s worth noting she sticks with one narrator per issue, making her five comics a bit more clear and easy to read than some of Meltzer’s twenty-some comics.

She also seems to view writing serial comics as a sort of relay race, in which a writer need not resolve their own story, but simply stop at some point and hand the characters and the subplots they’ve introduced on to the next writer.

Meltzer’s done this with everything he’s written. “Archer’s Quest” had a pretty dramatic turn in the relationship between Oliver Queen and Connor Hawke that was introduced but left unexplored. Identity Crisis was really nothing but turns in characters and plots, few if any of which were ever resolved, and which DC writers have been working at making sense of ever since. Similarly, his four-story JLoA run was full of changes and sub-plots he had no intention of resolving; he was simply seeding the book for future writers.

Picoult’s run takes that concept to a more dramatic level, as she doesn’t even resolve the main conflict in an equivocal, open-ended way. The graphic novel ends with one character holding a knife to our heroine’s throat. Her love interest is poisoned and dying. There’s a nuclear missile pointed at the island home of the Amazons. The U.S. military and JLA are still warring with the Amazons in Washington D.C.

And that’s the end of the book.

When I’d read Spurgeon’s review a while back, he noted that it ends with “a ridiculous cliffhanger ending that asks readers to buy yet another book after dropping 20 bucks on this one,” I assumed he was simply referring to the book leaving some subplots unresolved. But no, it doesn’t resolve anything at all, and it doesn’t merely end with a “to be continued” in the last panel, but the last page is actually a full-page ad reading, “Find out what happens next in Wonder Woman: Amazons Attack.”

What a thoroughly despressing book. This had the promise of one which could help evangelize the medium, bringing new readers to comic books, and now I fear all it will accomplish is making sure any who do pick this up as their first graphic novel to simply swear them off for life.





And speaking of Spurgeon and crappy Wonder Woman stories… Spurgeon recently interviewed Catwoman writer Will Pfeifer, the man responsible for Amazons Attack!.

It’s a pretty interesting and wide-ranging interview, one which reminded me how much I liked the 1999, Jill Thompson-illustrated Vertigo mini Finals, which was apparently Pfeifer’s comics debut.

He seems pretty honest about the nature of Amazons Attack! and t he frustrations of writing books like it:



I've worked on a few crossovers before, but this is the most closely I've been involved. It was almost a year ago exactly that I went to the DC offices for a weekend. We sort of plotted out the whole six-issue series, and we talked about all the tie-ins and this and that. When you're working on a big crossover like this, a lot of the plotting is just connecting the dots in a way. This is going to happen here, we'll deal with this here, and then over in Teen Titans this will happen, and then we'll deal with this, and then we'll deal with that. Readers may not like it, and in some ways it can be a pain to write, but that's what a lot of modern comic books are. The big ones that sell and the big ones that people seem to like are the ones that have crossovers crossovers crossovers. When you're writing it, the object is to hit those plot points. As a writer you try to work in those human emotions and twists and surprises and fun and action along the way. But you have to hit point A, B, C, and D because in another book, somebody's going to be hitting it.



It’s pretty funny watching him and Spurgeon sort of make sense of it all:



I think at its most basic, people have an idea about whatever superhero or character they love and have their ideal version of that character somewhere in their head. When you go against that version, some people are going to react very strongly. Amazons Attack! is right there in the title. They kill that guy and his kid on the very first page. People were really upset about that. But it was supposed to be shocking. It was supposed to be upsetting. It wasn't supposed to be a triumphant moment for the Amazons. People who have been reading Wonder Woman for however long they've been reading Wonder Woman —and some of them have been reading for a long time —they didn't like the fact that the Amazons were attacking and were evil. They also didn't like the fact that in Amazons Attack! that there wasn't enough Wonder Woman, and that Wonder Woman wasn't driving the plot along. The reason for that is that there's another book called Wonder Woman [Spurgeon laughs] where all that was happening.



While I don’t think anyone really wants to read superhero comics about people slaughtering innocent children on the first page, I doubt that (or the lack of Wonder Woman in the story) are the reason people reacted so negatively. I think it was more the fact that the story wasn’t any good, and didn’t make any goddam sense, not only within the context of the DCU and its history, but within the pages of the series itself.

Was that Pfeiffer’s fault, or the person who asked him to hit A, B, C and D? Because, B didn’t go with A and C, and D kinda cancels out A, and you can’t have B and C in the same story at the same time and expect it to make sense.

Regardless, this is one of those instances where it’s hard to feel too sorry for a comic book writer who wrote some shitty comics and then said it wasn’t entirely his fault (like JMS recently did with One More Day). Nobody makes you write these comics, and accepting the embarrassment that comes from writing bad ones—whoever’s bad ideas are ultimately fueling them—is part of the process. The writer’s name appears on the cover of the book, just like it does on the paycheck.




The cardinal is the state bird, the Pekar is the state curmudgeon: My fellow Ohioans, have you seen this political cartoon collaboration by Harvey Pekar and Nick Bertozzi yet? No? Then go read it. I love the use of the shape of the state as a lay-out, and I’ll be damned if Bertozzi doesn’t draw the scariest Pekar I’ve ever seen (I really like that Pekar is a lot like Batman; every artist finds a slightly different facet of the character). I would totally buy a set of postcards based on the “Greetings From Ohio” part, with the weird close-ups of a glaring Pekar in each letter…





This has very, very little to do with comics: Chris Ware designed the logo and poster for writer/director Tamara Jenkins’ latest movie, The Savages .

It doesn’t have anything to do with comics beyond the fact that Ware designed these, however. (The aesthetic of the film, and its melancholic sense of humor, sort of aligns with that seen in Ware’s work, though). It opened in Columbus on Christmas; if you’re so inclined, you can read my review of it here.

The other movie that opened in Columbus this week that’s well worth a trip to the theater? Juno, in which J. Jonah Jameson’s teenage daughter Kitty Pryde gets pregnant, and decides to have the baby and give it up to Elektra for adoption. That’s reviewed here.




Fanboys For Pele: I love comic books. And I love the music of Tori Amos. So the announcement of a an Image Comics-published anthology of short comics stories based on or inspired by her work should be something I’m really pumped about.

And while I can’t wait to read it, I’m not going to get my hopes too high at this point. Image’s Put the Book Back on the Shelf, which did the same with the songs of Belle and Sebastian, another favorite, was a pretty mixed bag—some stories were great, some were interesting, some were godawful. Since Amos’ work seems to be much less narrative than Belle and Sebastian’s, I’m really curious to see how it will translate to adaptation—it should definitely give creators a bit more leeway.

Thinking back, I can recall relatively little about the Belle and Sebastian anthology, with only the very best stories and the very worst sticking in my head. I do recall it being a really fun reading experience though, as I broke out all the Belle and Sebastian CDs and read the stories while listening to the songs. I look forward to doing the same with the Tori Amos anthology.

As with any anthology, the contributors will make or break it more than the concept. News of who’s involved is still trickling out, but at the very least, it will include work from Hope Larson, Colleen Doran, Lea Hernandez, Chris Arrant and Star St. Germain, and Columbus’ own Tom Williams.

One of the first places I saw the project announced was at The Beat, and man, there are times when I have no idea what Heidi MacDonald is talking about:


Amos is one of early adapters in the comics/media crossover trend, due to her friendship with Neil Gaiman (the two were introduced by Hoseley) resulting in many lyrical and comical mentions of one another over the years.


What exactly is “the comics/media crossover trend?” Comics is a medium. Is she referring to Amos’ music as “media” and comics as “comics?” And regardless, I don’t understand the implication that Amos is “one of the early adapters.” Amos has never written or drawn any comics, and these are the first comics stories based on her music. She read comics and was friends with Neil Gaiman, who is rumored to have based Delerium’s final look and personality on Amos, but does that make one an “earl adapter?”

Sometimes I get a real “Biff! Bam! Pow! Holy Watchmen Batman, Comics aren’t just for kids anymore!” vibe from The Beat, which is odd, given that it’s a comics-specific blog, you know?




And speaking of Tori Amos and comics… I’ve been enjoying the hell out of Nathan Rabin’s “My Year of Flops” series at The Onion AV Club. It’s exactly what I think criticism should be—so well-written and entertaining to read, it doesn’t matter if you’ve seen or plan to see the film being discussed, because the review itself has great value in and of itself. Anyway, Rabin gets around to one of the worst comic book adaptations of all time, Howard the Duck.

And he points out that Tori Amos was up for the part of Beverly.

Which means this could have been Tori Amos:



Or, worse yet, this:



Rabin also spends some verbiage belittling Y Kant Tori Read, Amos' pre-solo career rock band that really wasn’t so bad. I kind of liked that album! In fact, I liked more songs on it than on Scarlet’s Walk. And I’m not ashamed to admit it.

Well, I’m a little ashamed, but not so ashamed that I won’t admit it anyway.





Dear Dan DiDio.... Last week’s “DC Nation” column saw Dan DiDio in teasing mode, presenting an annotated Christmas list from various DC characters.

Let’s parse it at exhausting length, shall we?

Superman— A new place to call home.

Lately it seems like Superman goes through Fortresses of Solitude like water, but since Geoff Johns and Kurt Busiek so recently gave him his latest (basically the one from Johns’ sometimes co-writer Richard Donner’s Superman movies), I’m going to guess he’s keeping those digs for a while.

And I doubt he’ll be moving out of Metropolis any time soon, as Busiek’s done a lot of work building the city up, with new geography and city services and such like.

So, I’m going to guess this refers to some sort of New Krypton, as the two Superman writers seem very interested in new Kryptonian history.

Superman Prime— A time to call my own.

I don’t care. Sorry.

Batman— More time.

I’m assuming this is just a joke about how busy Batman is, and if it’s a tease of some kind, it’s pretty vague. I mean, at any point in his fictional career Batman could have asked Santa and/or Paul Levitz for the exact same thing.

Robin— A memorial for Stephanie Brown

This is the one that has clearly set the most tongues a-wagging, or at least fingers a-typing. The request is of course scratched out, with the words “Can’t Do!” atop of it. For someone who claims not to pay too much attention to the messageboards and blogosphere, DiDio sure knows how to tweak the online fans, doesn’t he? Assuming he’s not just being a dick, this seems to be another strong indicator that Spoiler’s on her way back to life.

Does that mean the godawful costume the girl going by the name “Violet” in upcoming Robin solicits is a resurrect Spoiler? Ugh. If that’s what she’s going to be wearing, maybe she should stay dead.

Come on Mr. DiDio, didn’t you see Project Rooftop’s redesign Stephanie Brown thing a few months back? Particularly Dean Trippe’s wonderful design?

Anyway, I’m more interested in the fate of Spoiler as an observer than a fan at this point. I never much cared for her outside the pages of Batgirl. The fact that she died at all, or that Batman never gave her a monument never really upset me, certainly not as much as I was upset by the fact that she died in a terrible story that didn’t make a lick of sense, and that she died from being tortured within an inch of her life and then from having Bruce Wayne’s lifelong friend and pacifist Doctor Leslie Thompkins deny her care to teach Bruce a lesson.

God…

I like the idea of Robin asking for a memorial for his dead ex-girlfriend for Christmas from Dan DiDio, though. If Tim Drake wants a memorial to Stephanie, then it’s easy to imagine some pretty uncomfortable conversations around the table at Wayne Manor, with Tim being all like, “Sooooo, have you given any more thought to erecting that memorial to Stephanie yet?” and Bruce being, “Oh look, it’s the Bat-signal! Gotta go! We’ll talk later!”

Batgirl— My very own mini-series

This one made me laugh. Assuming they’re talking about the current Batgirl, Cassandra Cain, she had her own monthly ongoing series which was selling adequately (not great, but not any worse than much of DC’s DCU line) but it was cancelled to…I forget the exact phrasing, but it was along the lines of streamlining the Bat-books (Apparently by just two titles; Batgirl and Gotham Knights).

So a new miniseries featuring a character who, just a few short years ago, was strong enough to carry her own title, seems like an odd move. After all, DC spent the last few years chasing away her relatively few fans and sabotaging the character as much as possible*, and now they’re looking to capitalize on the severely diminished returns for 4-6 months?

Red Tornado— A new body and a family to call my own

As Patrick pointed out in the comments section the week I reviewed JLoA #15 (the issue in which Red Tornado’s body was destroyed), his body is supposedly indestructible.

And that’s not, like, some obscure trivia from mentioned in a single issue of the pre-Crisis volume of Justice League of America or anything, but it was, like, the whole point of Brad Meltzer’s first arc on this very series, “The Tornado’s Path.” The new, smart Solomon Grundy wanted to put his brain into Red Tornado’s immortal android body precisely because it couldn’t be destroyed, and thus Grundy would never have to die and return to life again.

I find it almost as amusing as it is irritating that not only did Dwayne McDuffie, the JLoA writer who followed Meltzer, not really read Meltzer’s stuff too closely, but neither, apparently, did DiDio.

Not sure what to make of the “a family to call my own” comment. Does that mean in addition to Red Tornado’s wife and daughter, who also appeared throughout “The Tornado’s Path?” That story was just last year. It was the best-selling thing DC published. Surely DiDio read it, right?

Green Arrow— My son back

Black Canary— My husband’s son back

Man, this list of teases is terrible for my blood pressure!

Here’s hoping that having the stars of Green Arrow/Black Canary ask for Green Arrow’s son Green Arrow back means that Connor Hawke isn’t really dead, and/or that these items tease a story about bringing him back and are not, in fact, intimating that the next few months of Green Arrow/Black Canary will be devoted to mourning his death.

Whether he’s dead-dead or just temporarily dead, in either case it shows writer Judd Winick’s lack of imagination. When Connor Hawke was shockingly killed at the end of the last issue, he either seemed to die but will be back soon (like Oliver Queen in the Green Arrow/Black Canary Wedding Special of a few months ago), or he actually died, like all those characters in Judd Winick’s Titans East Special #1 from a few weeks back.

Darkseid— The Fifth World

Don’t care to the point in which this is part of Countdown, but may start caring if this is an element of Final Crisis, as the writer of the latter, Grant Morrison, mentioned the coming of the Fifth World back during the climax of his JLA run.

The Rogues— Revenge!! (A sentiment shared by all the villains in SALVATION RUN)

Revenge? For what? Instead of giving them the death penalty or putting them in jail for life for the murder of Bart Allen (in addition to any and/all other crimes they might have committed), The Rogues were handed their favorite clothes, their very powerful weapons, and then sent to a planet free of superheroes to do whatever the hell they want until one of the many super-brilliant mad scientists there figures a way to spring them all. I really fail to see the drama—or logic—in Salvation Run.

Mongul— A ring collection

The last issue of Green Lantern Corps ended with Mongul getting a Sinestro Corps ring, and I imagine he’ll therefore be fighting some ring-slinging Green Lanterns soon.

DiDio’s end of the year interview with Matt Brady at Newsarama was illustrated by a piece of art depicting Mongul with three different colored rings.

The rings in the image all have the Green Lantern symbol, rather than the various pictograms the new rings are supposed to bear. Because of that, it reminded me of the Mark Waid masterminded epic The Silver Age from a few years back, in which Lex Luthor and his villainous allies created their own special power-rings, which looked and worked like Green Lantern rings, but were different colors.

I’m really surprised that event hasn’t been collected into trade yet, given how many great/popular writers and artists were involved, and that so much of recent DC history has been driven by the characters it featured (The Silver Age League including Green Arrow and Black Canary, Elongated Man, The Secret Society of Supervillains and so on, plus a one-off iteration of the Seven Soldiers of Victory).

(An aside: I’m apparently not the only one who noticed the similarity between Geoff Johns’ rainbow corps and Waid’s Silver Age story, or the fact that the later is overdue for trade collection. I am, however, the slower to post about it one).

Geo-Force— Rock samples from another planet

Don’t really care at all, but I wonder if this will have anything to do with GF’s mysterious power problems Meltzer introduced but never resolved in JLoA.

The Question— A visit from an old friend

The real Question coming back to life? Nah, probably just Batwoman appearing in one of the issues of the Crime Bible series…

Speaking of which, I don’t see Batwoman requesting her series starting any time soon. Or Manhunter requesting her series resuming any time soon, either.

Booster Gold— The Blue and Gold back in action

Seconded!

Looks like that’s what we’ll be getting in the next few issues of Booster Gold, March’s issue of JLU and March’s issue of Blue Beetle.

I get the feeling Ted Kord won’t actually be coming back for real at the end of this upcoming Booster Gold story, but, as I’ve said before, I hope he does because it’s only a matter of time before someone brings him back to life, so better to have it happen through the agency of a time-travelling Booster Gold than via something silly like, I don’t know, magic herbs, as in colleague Ice’s recent silly resurrection.

Lord Satanus— Control of Hell

Neron— Control of Hell

DiDio’s notation has arrows pointing to their requests, with the words “Uh-oh, this could be a problem.”

Sounds like this refers to Keith Giffen’s upcoming limited series about a war for control of hell, which he discussed with fellow Columbusite and Newsaramite Vaneta Rogers during an interview posted the other day.

Giffen’s an experienced storyteller, but man, I’d kinda hate to have an assignment like this. After all, stories of power struggles in DC’s Hell have been previously told by the likes of Garth Ennis, Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman.






*Batgirl appearances since the end of her own series, but before this month’s Outsiders #2?Robin: Boy Wanted written by Adam Beechen, who left the title shortly afterwards; “Titans East” by Geoff Johns and Beechen, the conclusion of which (by Beechen alone) is in the running for the worst DC story ever published (I think it’s a tie with JLoA #10, the conclusion of “The Lighting Saga”), a few pages of World War III by Keith Champagne and/or John Ostrander and/or whoever gave those poor bastards a set of plot points and said, “Here, make a script of some kind out of this, would ya?”, and the issue of Supergirl in which this happens:

Thursday is links day

Meanwhile in Las Vegas… This week’s LVW comics review is of Wonton Soup, which I boldly called the best space-trucker cooking opera of the year. Boy will my face be red if another, even better comes out on one of the last two Wednesdays of the year! You can read/skim the first 39 pages of it here, and I should point out that the book gets better and better the deeper you get into it.




Hey man, nice shot: December is a busy time of year for a lot of folks, as they do all their Christmas shopping, make travel plans, prep their houses for visitors and so forth. It’s quite busy for me too, but for an entirely different reason—this is the point of the year when “best of” lists get assembled, and critics find themselves playing catch-up.

By the time December rolls around, I find myself buried in film screenings as studios begin to campaign hard for awards consideration and slots on best-of lists.

And, inevitably, as many comics and graphic novels as I read every week, I realize I’ve missed quite a few big releases, and spend much of the month tracking down everything I’ve heard something good about or just haven’t gotten around to, so that when I sit down to tell you what I thought the best books of the year are, I can feel pretty well-informed on the subject.

One book I just finished was Anthony Lape and Dan Goldman’s Shooting War, a dramedy about a blogger who covers the Iraq War during the McCain administration. Brian Doherty of The New York Post just wrote a very good review of it, with a pretty damn good headline (has no one ever turned the phrase “blog of war” before? Really? Because it’s a good one).

Doherty gave the book a bit of a kicking:



It might be formally appropriate that a graphic novel set in a chaotic, horrific near future should sport this book's off-putting computerized art style. It's a bricolage of digitally altered photos, cut-and-paste cartooning, and beards that look like the random up-and-down ballpoint pen scratches one would use to deface a magazine photo.

But formally appropriate or not, a reader versed in classic comic book cartooning will be apt to find it distractingly ugly. The style often gets in the way of the simple storytelling virtues that cartooning is best for. It's sometimes difficult to tell from panel to panel exactly what's going on. The graphic novel's look, created as the book flap says with “a combination of photography, vector illustration, and digital painting" is very now - the sort of “now" that will almost certainly look dated and oh-so-2007 soon enough.

In the book's afterword, the authors identify this as a “work of political satire" that strives to “get you thinking about some big questions concerning the media, the war in Iraq and American foreign policy." That was all-too-obvious in this heavy-handed, though successfully gripping, work. They add that, “We also hope it makes you chuckle." Unless, say, the suitcase-nuking of Bangalore is a knee-slapper, they misunderstand their own work's tone.



I can’t say I disagree with him entirely either. As I finished it, I was actually pretty relieved I wasn’t planning on giving it a formal review for LVW, but just satisfying my own curiosity about it at this point. The look of the book is just as Doherty described it. At times it did seem ugly and distracting to me, at other times it seemed pretty appropriate given the subject matter, and I thought it even had a sort of strange beauty, perhaps more beautiful than it might have looked were it all drawn out. But these times changed back and forth from page to page.

Ultimately I think it’s a fine style for a single graphic novel like this, when a reader is only spending an hour or two with it, but if this were serialized into single issues, or if I tried reading it as it was originally serialized on the web, I would have given up a long time ago, I think, as it’s not the sort of art I would seek out once I’d walked away form it.

I’m not quite sure what to think of the writing end of things, either. It’s structurally sound, and the dramatic arc works well enough. The lead character is one I kind of like, but really rather despise. The speculative political science work that went into the where will the world be in 2011 question was pretty interesting, but somewhat undermined by the more straightforward action adventure comic villain, the charismatic leader of a made-up terrorist group that actually compares himself to a Bond villain at one point.

I think this is a book I’d have to return to again in the future to truly form an opinion on, but, on my first reading, my reaction was extremely mixed, often simultaneously liking and disliking different aspects of the story.

One thing that I really enjoyed was Dan Rather, who cameos in one scene, only to become main character Jimmy Burns’ sidekick by the climax. Lappe nails Rather’s dialogue, or rather a convincing parody of his TV personality’s dialogue, and Goldman does a nice drawing of the old man. I cracked up in almost every scene featuring Rather as heroic newsman, particularly the bit about the frequency.

I give Lappe and Goldman a lot of credit for trying to spin a bigger story with Shooting War, addressing the media’s role in the world and in the war. Me, I would have just focused on the adventures of Dan Rather in the near-future Middle East, and, as entertaining as that may be, it’s probably not of much value to anyone all on its own.

Have any of you read Shooting War yet? Any prognosis to share? I’d definitely recommend it, even though I’ve not quite made up my mind as to how good a graphic novel it actually is.




Confidential to Joe Madureira and Greg Land:







Can a decision to collect a comic book series a particular way be considered evil? : I’ve been bewildered by many of the decisions DC has made in terms of what they choose to collect and release in trade, what they choose not to, and how they package some of their trades, but this is probably the most mystifying item I’ve seen show up on a Diamond shipping list from the company in a long, long time:

WONDER WOMAN AMAZONS ATTACK HC $24.99

Yes, the universally reviled series that didn’t make any goddam sense, the series that helped make Jodi Picoult’s run even worse, the series which caused sales of tie-in issues like Teen Titans and Wonder Woman to drop, is released in a collected edition for any unfortunate souls who want to subject themselves to it. I can see them in Barnes and Noble now, flipping through it, drinking in Pete Woods’ fantastic art, seeing all the heroes in it, and thinking, “Well, this looks good,” and then heading towards the cash register.

Yes, it looks good, but that’s only because the art is so good. But it is not a good book. It’s a terrible one! Terrible, I tell you! (Well, the first three issues…I didn’t read the last half). And at the end, you don’t get any kind of resolution (I did flip-through #4-#6), you just get a big, fat cliffhanger, and to find out what the hell happens next, you have to read Countdown!

I suppose DC thought they could make a few bucks off these poor folks and that it was therefore worth collecting this story in trade (a sad, sad fact when you consider all of the better Wonder Woman stories not available in trade, however).

But a hardcover?

Nobody wants a hardcover of this. No one who reads it will ever want to reread it. And charging $25 bucks for the sturdier cover just strikes me as…perverse. It’s a six-issue series, each sold for $2.99, so anyone fool enough to buy this thing is paying $7 more than they would have if they got it while it was originally coming out.

Surely you can still find all six of these issues in your local comic shop or on the ebay for cover price or lower…hell, you’re welcome to my Amazons Attack #1-#3 for the cost of shipping…




Here it comes: Have you seen the trailer for Speed Racer yet? I have. About, oh, 25 times now or so. I was skeptical of this project since it was first announced, having been a fan of the admittedly quite terrible cartoon and having lost pretty much all faith in the Wachowski Brothers about four minutes into Matrix Revolutions (Yeah, Reloaded wasn’t all that either, but the action scenes in it were a thing of beauty).

But I’ve gotta admit, this looks pretty great from the few minute snippet of the trailer—the costume design, the automobile design, the use of speedlines in live action, the jumping Mach 5 sound effect, the corny-ass dialogue like “It’s way more important than that, it’s like a religion” and “Maybe not, but it’s the only thing I know how to do and I gotta do something.” Awesome. A quick check at IMDB reveals that Snake Oiler and Inspector Detector are characters in the movie, too. Awesome I say, awesome!

Anyway, check out the scene where Speed discovers Spritle and Chim Chim in the trunk reading comic books by flashlight—they’re totally reading an issue of Geoff Darrows fantastic and hardly ever printed ongoing series Shaolin Cowboy, from the Wachowski’s own vanity publisher Burlyman.




And speaking of trailers…: I see no giant bipedal talking sword-wielding mice in this trailer, which worries me excessively. Still, I hope Prince Caspian makes a billion dollars, if only to ensure more Narnia movies, as the next two are my favorite of the seven books.




Poor Will Smith: The real tragedy of the dystopian future presented in I Am Legend?:Will Smith’s character, the last man alive in New York City after a plague has decimated humanity, must see a poster in Times Square advertising some sort of upcoming Batman/Superman movie (it features the S-shield from Superman Returns atop a bat-symbol shape) every day, knowing full well that even though the movie was made, it will never be played in theaters for him. The poor, poor bastard. Oh, and I guess he’s all alone fighting for his life too. Anyway, here’s a review of I Am Legend if you’re interested.



"He's a superintelligent small pox virus. And he wants justice": I should have posted this scan from Green Lantern #25 in yesterday's off-the-cuff review, when discussing the scale of the war. As you can see, not only were human-sized combatants duking it out, or planet-sized ones like Mogo and Warworld, but also microscopic rivals.

Here, check this out if you haven't already, and then I've got a serious question:


Is that the absolute coolest thing Geoff Johns has ever written? I know I make fun of Johns alot here, particularly for his affinity for gore (yes, there is a panel of a character being ripped in half in this same issue), the number of times he has heroes resort to torture, his uninihibted man-love for Hal Jordan, and his bad habit of going too grim and gritty too often, but I do think he's a pretty solid comics writer, and is probably DC's best writer by default (Busiek, Morrison and Waid are no slouches either, of course, but they just can't keep up with Johns, who writes about 15 books a month now, I believe).

And make no mistake, a heroic small pox virus that wants justice? That is pretty much the definition of awesome. (Well, not in my computer's dictionary, which I just checked to verify, but I bet if I went and got a dicitonary off the shelf, it would be in there). Thinking of all of the most awesome beats in other of the roughly two million stories by Geoff Johns I've read in the past, all of the closest competitors—Booster Gold and Skeets' journey to cowboy times, much of 52—came in books in which Johns worked with one to three co-writers on. But this book is all him, meaning this beat is all him.

So here's my question: Is this the most awesome thing Johns has ever written, or not? And if not, what is?




Yeah, what she said: Carla makes a very fine point here, in this post about Marvel’s “One More Day” story, which I’m sure everyone’s more than sick of hearing about at this point (And there’s still one issue to go, meaning over a month’s worth of commentary yet to come!)

She stopped reading at the same point I did, the second part, but returned faster than I would have because, as she says “This is important.”

Indeed, it is. Not change-your-life important, or impact-the-world-outside-the-Marvel-Universe-at-all important, but important within that fictional shared setting, and important to the way readers will be interacting with it for the next few weeks, months, years and, potentially, from now on.

This “One More Day” storyline, if they really do go through with it and they don’t change it back immediately, is going to end up being the most important Spider-Man story ever told, if only because it’s going to be the only one in which Spider-Man comics get rebooted. It’s going to be a big, bright, red line through Spider-Man’s (fictional history), not unlike the original Crisis on Infinite Earths was a big, bright red line through DC Comics’ (fictional history) becoming, like the birth of Christ, the point that divides that history into two different era. The death of Captain Stacy, or of Gwen Stacy, Kraven’s Last hunt, the Osborne/Golin saga, the black suit/Venom business, none of those will end up being as important as OMD, simply because none of them managed to shift the entire playing field the way OMD will.

In a few years time, people could be discussing Spider-Man using the terms Pre-OMD and Post-OMD, as they used to with Crisis (Again, if they really have Spidey and/or MJ trade their marriage for a reboot, and if they stick to it).

It’s a seriously ballsy move by editor-in-chief, penciller and, if JMS is to be believed, plotter Joe Quesada, whatever you think of it.

And I can’t help but wonder how many people are reading this story not because they like the writing or art, or are invested in the story, but simply because they know how potentially important it is. Are they, like Carla, reading it simply because it’s going to be the starting point for the pretty exciting sounding future of Spider-Man comics? (Three times a month! Dan Slott writing Spidey regularly!). I fear Marvel will interpret the gonzo sales of the event as tacit approval for the story itself, giving them grounds to dismiss all criticism as the opinions of a few hundred cranks with Internet access and too much free time on their hands (Now, I’m not saying I’m not a crank with too much free time on my hands, just that that doesn’t make me wrong about whether a comic book story is stupid or not).

Do check out Carla’s review of the third chapter, as she has a beautiful image of a fan’s despair at the book, and check out this week’s Lying in the Gutters if you haven’t already, as Rich Johnston recounts previous pitches for how to undo the marriages of Superman and Spider-Man without resorting to divorce or killing off a supporting character. As awesome as I think the Morrison/Waid/Millar/Peyer Super-books would have been (and hey, where is Peyer these days?), I’m glad DC let the Superman/Lois marriage stand. I could do without this Chris Kent character, though…

Weekly Haul: June 27th

Amazons Attack! #3 (DC Comics) It takes an awful lot of suspension of disbelief to read some comic books, particularly DCU ones. This one, for example, has Superman in a supporting role, and centers around Wonder Woman and the Amazons, so even before you start reading, you’re accepting flying strongmen from space with laser eyes, the literal existence of everything in Greek myth, a woman made out of clay, and so on. The problem with Amazons Attack!, which has now officially passed the halfway point and might want to think about starting telling a story soon, is that it just asks for way, way too much in the suspension of disbelief area. There’s straining credulity, and then there’s breaking it, and the series has long since broken it, and is now jumping up and down on the shards of it.

For, in addition to all those amazing people with amazing superpowers that make up its cast, the plot is one that doesn’t quite make sense given its players. Never mind the fact that former Justice Leaguer, former JSA member, all-around nice lady Hippolyta is slaughtering innocents for no reason all of a sudden (presumably, Will Pfeiffer’s going to get around to explaining that eventually), or that her noble, heroic lieutenants are thinking that maybe they oughta do something to stop her instead of having stopped her before the first of the few thousand deaths were caused by their nonsensical invasion.

Let’s just think about the pitch for this series, okay? The Amazons, less than 2,000 strong, invaded Washington D.C. with only swords, spears, arrows and some monsters. It is now days later and, according to the cable news scrawl, the death toll is in the thousands.

Now, I’m no military expert, but I think it’s safe to say that even with our military strained to the breaking point in Iraq and Afghanistan (and, I don’t know, maybe Qurac in the DCU too), there are probably still enough soldiers and guns to take down a few thousand women whose military technology stopped developing before the Trojan War (These Amazons, oddly, don’t seem to have any super-science, which Batman even points out by saying they don’t even work with microchips. Hey World’s Greatest Detective, pick up a back issue sometime, huh? Purple Healing Ray? Invisible jet?).

But let’s imagine that the U.S. military, for the sake of argument, is completely incompetent, and have lost their guns or something. How is it that the Justice League is allowing this to go on for days, with thousands killed? Because Superman could seriously handle this all by himself. What’s that? Kansas is on fire? Well, let’s see, he moves at the speed of light, so putting Kansas out oughta take…what, five minutes, if he’s extra-thorough? Honestly, I have a hard time thinking of a less-intimidating threat that the Justice League has faced since they reorganized prior to the White Martian invasion. And so far, the combined efforts of the League, the JSA and a handful of other heroes hasn’t been able to defeat the Amazons…for days. My god. How can I take this series at all seriously?

Now I suppose it’s possible that I’m missing something, as I dropped the unreadable Wonder Woman and Teen Titans, both of which tie-in to this storyline, but somehow I doubt either explains why Superman, J’onn J’onnz, Power Girl, Supergirl, Mary Marvel, Jay Garrick, Wonder Woman or one of the five Green Lanterns operating from Earth hasn’t just swooped in at super-speed, scooped up Hippolyta and ended the war yet.

There’s something Countdown-ian in this book’s attempts to tie in characters and story threads from all over the DCU, but manage to get everything wrong. Like why all the heroes who know Hippolyta haven’t thought that “Hey, this really isn’t like Polly, is it?” Or that Oracle called Batman, the first time the two have spoken since the decided to stop working together in another story that made even less sense. Or the president’s response to round up women nationwide suspected of being in cahoots with the Amazons instead of, you know, just sending a few thousand guys with guns to fight back against the handful of women with bronze age weapondry. Or hell, this





What's wrong with this picture? Well, aside from the fact that almost a dozen of DC's superheroes, including some of their most powerful, seem to be having an awful lot of trouble defeating one three-headed dragon (and it's not even a fire-breathing dragon). I actually find the fact that these all-powerful characters are getting their asses kicked by a single monster kind of amusing. I mean, just look at Black Lightning there. What was exactly going through his head, huh? Forget my super-powerful lightning power! I'm taking this thing on...bare-handed!

No, what's wrong with this picture is the Captain Marvel in it. Who the fuck is that supposed to be? We know it's not the real Captain Marvel (Billy Batson), since he's turned into "Marvel", changed clothes and grew his hair out. And we know it's not Freddy Freeman, who's apparently being groomed to be Captain Marvel II, because Trials of Shazam! is still going. And we know that this story is set during Trials because both Amazons Attack! and Trials of Shazam are referenced in Countdown as occurring at the same time.

It's just a stupid art mistake, Woods could have just drawn Martian Manhunter or Robin or Odd Man or Plastic Man there instead, but it's exhibit L that the universal traffic copping at DC is at an all-time low, which is troubling considering that traffic between DCU titles is at an all-time high. I mean, is there nobody at DC whose job is simply to read all the scripts and look at all the pages and make sure everything is consistent? If not, maybe Countdown and having several other simultaneous crossover stories (Amazons Attack!, Sinestro Corps) all being published at the same time really isn't such a hot idea.

There is one thing I really liked about this issue though. It didn’t make sense either, but it was such an insane non sequitur of a moment that it was hilariously entertaining. Page 14, panel one. Batman is looking down at the prone and unconscious form of Nemesis, and says to him, “Of course, you’ve got bigger problems right now. An Amazon attack, a deadly bee weapon…Bees. My god.”





Yeah, um, what?! “A deadly bee weapon?” SERIOUSLY?!





Black Ghost Apple Factory (Top Shelf Productions) Thanks a lot, Jeremy Tinder. Now I’m never gonna want to eat another apple as long as I live.





Black Panther #28 (Marvel Comics) Wow, it’s a perfect storm of over-exposed Marvel characters you’re sure to be sick of seeing in a few more months! Reginald Hudlin manages to work both the Marvel Zombies and Skrulls into a single issue. If only he could have had Iron Man fly in and try to register the zombies and shoot the Hulk zombie into space. Ah well, maybe there’s the next chapter of this story. As for this story, the new FF have teleported onto the Skrull homeworld just as the Galactus-powered Marvel Zombies are dropping in to feed on it, as was seen at the end of Marvel Zombies (So, I guess they actually jumped over from the 616 into the Zombiverse, which is itself parallel to the Ultimate Universe, and I always thought that Joe Quesada said if they ever crossed the Ultimate Universe and the Marvel Universe, it would end the world…or defeat Gozer. Maybe it doesn’t apply if they use the Zombiverse for insulation though?). There’s really not much to this issue at all, other than the various groups exchanging blows and dialogue, but there’s nothing wrong with it either. I guess, in that respect, this is the very definition of mediocre superhero comics.





Fantastic Four #547 (Marvel) As you can see from the cover, this is the pulse-pounding, action-packed, mind-blowing issue in which Johnny Storm and his sister Susan stand around in a cloud of smoke. No actually, despite what the cover says, things do actually happen in this issue. Quite a lot of things. Many of them rather interesting and exciting and/or funny. Reed takes a vacation from his vacation to visit Earth and Hank Pym to crack a mysterious object he found in space, the Frightful Four attack Susan, Johnny tries to hit on T’Challa’s bodyguards, and Ben has a very interesting conversation with Storm, which lends the issue it’s title, “Never Ask Her If She’s Wearing Colored Contact Lenses.” Dwayne McDuffie continues to write the Fantastic Six as a sci-fi action sitcom, which is pretty much exactly what it should be, and his artistic collaborators Paul Pelletier and Rick Magyar just get stronger and stronger each issue. It’s really too bad that their work is buried between what is by far the least imaginative, interesting and good-looking cover on the shelves. Seriously, this thing is tied with Greg Land’s Legion of Monsters cover for most aesthetically abominable thing I saw on the racks today.





Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps Special #1 (DC) In a way, this comic book is really just your standard good Geoff Johns comic book. I know some people have very strong feelings about Johns, be they positive or negative, but I’ve never been able to just stuff all of his work into one category or the other. I think he’s done some fantastic superhero comics (most of which seem to be in JSA/JSoA, although dude also was one-fourth of the 52 team), a few that I’d go so far as to call brilliant, and he’s also done some shitty, shitty comics (most of them seem to have been in his Teen Titans run, for some reason). I’ve yet to read something of his that wasn’t just a superhero comic written for DC or Marvel, and so, as solid as he might be, I don’t think he’s done anything wholly original yet to distinguish himself as a great writer (In that respect, he’s clearly not in the same league as Grant Morrison or Neil Gaiman, or even Garth Ennis or Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Millar). I hope he does take the time to do something not dependent on DCU characters and plotlines some day, but even if he never does, there are certainly worse things to be than one of the best superhero comics writers writing at least one monthly.

Anyway, on the Johns scale, this is definitely on the high end, and, paired with Ethan Van Sciver, this book really fulfills all the promise of the Green Lantern: Rebirth mini the two created (picking up on several plotlines from it), as well as the early issues of the current run of Green Lantern which, unfortunately, really got derailed by the “One Year Later” jump. All that the pair did in Rebirth to reinvent the Green Lantern mythos is back here, underlined and further explored in ways that no one, not even Johns himself in Green Lantern really did before.

With all the various spin-offs and chaos involving the four Earthling Corps members since Rebirth—GLC, Infinite Crisis, Ion, the JLA/JLoA line-up flux—I’d really forgotten what a great job Johns did of finding and defining unique character traits in the four, and playing them off one another. Under Johns, the idea of the Green Lantern franchise as a team book is enormously appealing. Not only does every fan win when their favorite Lantern is both a Lantern and in the spotlight, but all four of the characters work best in team situations, playing off one another, so why not play off each other? (This is the first decent Kyle Rayner story I’ve read since Rebirth and, before that? Joe Kelly’s first few JLA issues, maybe?).

Speaking of Kyle, something happens to him here that isn’t really that fresh an idea (it kinda sorta happened once or twice before), and is also something that the tea leaves of future solicits kind of hinted at, but it’s executed very well, and I’m cool with it as long as, like his Ion status, it’s temporary. As the first half of the book proves, Kyle belongs in the Corps, sitting around a table talking to his fellow Lanterns.

In addition to the strong character work, Johns really weaves DCU continuity confidently and with clarity; there are plot threads that stretch back to the ‘80s and ‘90s contained herein, but rather than out of left field, they’re integrated into the story naturally, almost as if they were first being mentioned here. Short of the last page reveal—perhaps the biggest exclamation point ending in Johns’ career of last-page reveals—this could pretty much be your first Green Lantern comic and it would all make plenty of sense. (As for that last page reveal? Bigger than anything in all of Infinite Crisis, that’s for sure…instead of just a crazy Superboy, you’ve got the heaviest heavies in DCU history all lined up there).

I think I was even more impressed with Johns this week in part because I’d just suffered through “The Lightning Saga” last week, which Johns is at least half responsible for. With the godawfulness of Brad Meltzer’s Johns-approved fan fiction still in my head, it was refreshing to see how much better Johns is. He uses several of the same techniques as Meltzer, including multiple narrators within the same issue, occasional panel-packed grids broken into more horizontal than vertical tiers, multiple threads of verbal information and pulling plot information from the past to buttress the present story, but Johns does it all right; here they’re tools used in telling a story, not simply tools a novice is using to play with some toys in front of an audience. The Meltzer/Johns comparison was practically begged by the inclusion of the JLoA early in the book, when we see them trying to help Hal round up the Reverse Flash for questioning. God, was it refreshing to hear “Lantern,” “Green Lantern” and “Lighting” instead of Hal and Jeff. I suppose it’s also worth nothing that between this and their appearance in “Wanted: Hal Jordan,” Johns has written more JLoA adventures with Meltzer’s line-up than Meltzer has in his first ten issues on the series.

Hell, Johns even explained the way the DCU multiverse works now better than it’s been explained absolutely anywhere else before, although the explanation does raise a few questions outside of this particular book (What’s this business about the Source Wall simply being a barrier between this universe and the next? Seems a little…prosaic, doesn’t it? Is this the first mention of this, or was that the Source Wall as envisioned by Jack Kirby? And how come there are so many Monitors and only one…ah, I can’t bring myself to say it.)

Van Sciver likewise picks up where he left off with Rebirth, bringing a downright insane level of detail to the characters and finding interesting ways to put otherworldly grandeur into their every movement. The scene with the Reverse Flash, for example, with the skeletal afterimages trailing him, the strange aliens of the GLC, the baroque creature design that went into the Sinestro Corps, the wrinkles on every character’s face…this is just plain beautiful work, with almost every design, every line clearly thought out.

Note the “almost” up there. There is one single panel, where, one single part of one single panel where EVS screws up, which I was actually glad to see. Lets me know the dude’s at least human.







You see that picture of Black Canary? It straight up sucks! Ha ha! Nice job Van Sciver! Don't quit your day job! Your comic book is only 99.7% beautifully illustrated!

And Johns does write at least one line of totally perplexing dialogue (not counting the Sinestro oath, the last few lines of which I'm putting down to Sinestro just being a bad poet, rather than bad writing on Johns' part). Okay, so Guy Gardner flies into the big crazy red sun room where they're keeping Superboy-Prime imprisoned, and Guy has this to say to prisoner:







I don't get it. Really. I have no idea what that sentence is supposed to mean.

And as long as I've got Sinestro Corps in a scanner, I should probably point this out. It's not a mistake or a mystifying tidbit, it's just something I personally found interesting. You know that awesome two-page spread on pages 26 and 27, where we see the Sinestro Corps assembled in a canyon beneath a giant yellow power battery, listening to Sinestro's speech? The one with all those super cool, super scary looking aliens? I spent a long time lingering on that page, and returned later to really study some of the scary customers EVS filled it with. But what really caught my eye was that one guy.

You see the one I mean? In the lower righthand corner? The pretty ordinary looking guy with a beard and male pattern baldness? You see that the guys around bald, bearded guy include some crazy scary toothy claw guys, what looks to be some sort of zombie bat creature, something with a melty face right behind him, a gelatinous creature with human bones floating within it, a velociraptor and, my personal favorite, a big, blue monster man with a hunchback, his hump full of living babies!.

And among all these scary-ass monsters, there's just this guy:






Can you imagine what must be running through his head?









Marvel Adventures Avengers #14 (Marvel) Okay, so the plot is a rip-off…er, homage. At least it’s an homage to something so oft-homaged, and it gets a really fun Marvel twist. When a poor farming village finds itself terrorized by a small army of bandits, they look to seven strangers to protect them, promising payment in crops. The seven they find? The Avengers, naturally. There’s some great fun as the team tries to train their new recruits in fighting and strategy—I especially enjoyed Hulk’s lesson in smashing—and Parker really makes these characters work effortlessly together. Remember the hue and cry that went up in fandom when it was first announced that Wolverine would be joining the Avengers? Well, Parker makes it work here in a way that Brian Michael Bendis never did (in part because his team never seemed to all be in the same room at the same time), and the relationship he’s built up between Wolverine and Captain America seems true to both characters’ 616 iterations, and the character comedy who so often works into the lighthearted, old school action.






She-Hulk # 19 (Marvel) Yeah, you're probably gonna want to buy this one. It's the issue where Mallory Book tries to defend The Leader in court. But it's also the issue that contains this







and this







And, perhaps most importantly, it continues to address the question of whether or not Chuck Austen's X-Men stories were so bad they should not be regarded in continuity, whether Marvel published them as such or not, a question that is raised when Book gets Jen Walters on the witness stand:








X-Factor #20 (Marvel) The army of one thing is cool, as is pencil artist Khoi Pham’s version of Rahne all werewolfed out, but this issue, like this storyline, left me pretty cold. Having not really understood House of M and having not read any of the follow-ups that this story deals with, I don’t really get what’s up with Quicksilver and the Inhumans crystals and what’s going on with the mutant powers he’s handing out and taking away again. Or whatever. Also, this issue reminded me that Marrow, Fatale and Abyss all exist, and that’s something I could definitely have done without.

Wonder Woman Wednesdays: A Complete History of the Amazon Peoples

(Above: Or you could just read this, which features extensive back-up features written and illustrated by Phil Jimenez which condenses all of Wonder Woman's post-Crisis history into a few nice looking pages. Most of the character images near the end of the post are Jimenez's.)

Yesterday Newsarama.com ran a version of my Complete History of the Amazon Peoples (post-Crisis on Infinite Earths, post-Infinite Crisis/52). But in the off-chance that it just wasn’t wordy and/or nerdy enough for you, I’ve decide to present a previous, longer, more detailed version here, complete with some additional thoughts that just occurred to me in the last day or so, for the most masochistic among you. (Plus, it’s Wonder Woman Wednesday here at EDILW, so Amazon history seems especially apropos). Enjoy!

A Complete History of the Amazon Peoples

The history of the Amazons began over 30,000 years ago, but don’t worry, I’ll be sticking to the highlights only here. Not much happened those first 27,000 years of interest anyway.

The Amazons’ story begins with a pregnant woman killed by her mate. Gaea, goddess of the Earth, took pity on the slain woman, and placed the victim’s soul in a well, known as the Well of Souls. Because it was a well in which souls were kept, you see. Over the millennia, Gaea would place the souls of all women unjustly killed by men into the well.

In 1200 B.C., the Olympian goddesses Artemis, Athena, Aphrodite, Demeter and Hestia pooled their powers to create the Amazons, their very own, all-female race of human beings, each reincarnated from one of the souls from Gaea’s well.

Three thousand women strong, the Amazons founded the city-state Themyscria in Asia Minor, and looked to sister-queens Hippolyta and Antiope for leadership. The Olympian war god Ares sent Heracles and an army of men to Themyscria, where he proceeded to seduce Hippolyta, and, in short order, ransack the city and enslave it’s populace.

The defeat split the Amazons into two factions. Antiope lead the Amazons bent on vengeance into Greece after Heracles, while Hippolyta and her followers fled across the Atlantic, rebuilding Themyscira on an island in the Bermuda Triangle that was concealed by storm clouds. (It was a pretty nice place, and would later gain the nickname “Paradise Island”).

There, hidden form the rest of the outside world, Hippolyta’s Amazons were granted immortality by the goddesses and were charged with the sacred task of guarding “Doom’s Doorway,” which lead to Pandora’s Box, buried beneath the island. The Amazons took to wearing bracelets, symbols of their defeat and enslavement at the hands of men, and spent centuries in seclusion, with no man setting foot on the island.

Antiope’s faction, meanwhile, settled in Egypt, founding their own city-state of Bana-Mighdall, hidden from the outside world by sandstorms. They remained mortal, and devoted themselves to the arts of war and killing, renting themselves out as assassins and mercenaries.

A few millennia later, the Amazons started getting occasional visitors, perhaps the most notable one being U.S. pilot Diana Trevor, who crash-landed there, and joining the community, eventually giving her life in a battle against monsters from the island’s box. In honor of her, her uniform and medals were turned into a coat-of-arms (And that’s why Wonder Woman’s costume looks like the U.S. flag, got it?).




World relations took a giant leap forward when Ares launched a plot to destroy the world. Hippolyta decreed a contest to choose the single greatest warrior to send to so-called “Patriarch’s World” to challenge Ares. Her own daughter Diana, magically created out of clay and gifted by the goddesses and the god Mercury with life and super-powers, entered the contest in disguise and won.

She became known as “Wonder Woman,” fighting against Ares, joining the Justice League of America, and gradually becoming not only a superhero, but also an ambassador of the Amazonian way of life and, eventually, a political diplomat representing Themyscria in the United Nations. (For more on the contest, struggle against Ares and Diana’s debut in the U.S., see trade paperbacks Wonder Woman: Gods and Mortals and Wonder Woman: Challenge of the Gods by George Perez and various; and keep in mind Infinite Crisis knocked large swathes of these stories, out of continuity, and we’re not supposed to mentally rewrite them while rereading so that they’re set about a decade earlier than they are in the actual books. Or something).

Gradually the shores of Themyscira were opened up to the outside world, and Hippolyta and other Amazons journeyed into the United States, and the goddess Circe started causing no end of trouble, initiating a “War of the Gods,” reuniting the Antiope’s descendants with the Themysciran Amazons (which leads to a civil war), and sending the whole island into another dimension for a time—ten years for those in the dimension, about one year time for those not in that dimension).

She wasn’t the only evil divinity to cause problems on Paradise Island. Apokoliptian dictator and self-proclaimed dark god Darkseid invaded Themyscira with his armies, killing over a thousand Amazons (To witness the conflict firsthand, check out Wonder Woman: Second Genesis by John Byrne).

Not long after, the Amazons went to war again, this time in another civil war between the Bana-Midghdall faction and those who have lived on the island for centuries. The conflict was settled only when Hippolyta and Diana decided to end the monarchy, renouncing their queenship and princessship (um, is that even a word?) for a more demoractic form of government. Hippolyta’s longtime friend and confidant Phillipus becomes the island’s leader, under the title of Chancellor (This round of Amazonian strife can be read about in Wonder Woman: Paradise Lost and Wonder Woman: Paradise Found by Phil Jimenez and various others).

But wait, there’s more war yet to come! The Amazons joined force with the unlikely alliance of President Lex Luthor’s United States, Superman and heroes of earth, and Darkseid’s Apokolips in a battle against Imperiex in a sort of war of the worlds (That’s Our Worlds at War to us readers here on Earth-Prime; recently re-collected from two fat trades into one giant, fat Complete Edition). Many of them lost their lives, including Hippolyta.

Afterwards, Themyscria was once again transformed, this time into a sort of university devoted to cultural exchange and learning, open to men, women and intelligent creatures from all of existence. The architecture remained Greco-Roman, but had a bit of a sci-fi twist, accentuated by the fact that the island included an archipelago of smaller islands which floated in the air. Now rather than a single Wonder Woman attempting to spread peace and Amazon ideals throughout the world, the world could come to Themyscira, and the Amazons could promote peace through open engagement, their most open engagement since they’d left Europe millennia before.

This didn’t last long either. The floating islands were destroyed in a fight between Hera and Zeus, and the Amazons again began to draw inward, just as the U.S.A. was parking battleships nearby and contemplating invasion. They were beat to it by the armies of OMAC cyborgs, lead by the hidden, artificially intelligent Brother Eye, which sent them to Themyscira to destroy Wonder Woman, revenge for her killing of Brother Eye’s boss, Maxwell Lord who (Superboy punch!) it turns out was actually an evil scumbag bent on the eradication of metahumans and world domination by his own Checkmate organization all along, and not the slick but noble leader who legitimized the Justice League as a world power with official status years ago (These stories are collected in trade, but I can’t in good conscience recommend anything past the point in which Diana regains her eyesight because, come on? OMACs? Max is a villain? Pfft).

While the Amazons fought back against the OMACs with machine guns, swords and their own ultimate weapon, the Purple Death Ray, Wonder Woman brought an end to hostilities when she realized there were innocent people trapped inside the OMACs. She left the island, while Themyscria (and everyone on it) disappeared for over a year, a year in which Wonder Woman herself would be little seen.




Some Amazon heroines of note include:



HIPPOLYTA: Queen of the Amazons, mother of Diana and, in a time travel paradox the likes of which could only occur in the DCU, she became both her daughter’s successor and predecessor in the role of Wonder Woman. When Diana temporarily died and ascended to Olympus to become the Goddess of Truth, a death Hippolyta sought to avoid by stripping Diana of the title of Wonder Woman, Hippolyta donned a star-spangled skirt and golden eagle bustier to become the second Wonder Woman, serving a brief stint with the Justice League. She also traveled back in time to the year 1942, retroactively becoming the first heroine to go by the name Wonder Woman, when she helped the Justice Society of America in their battles against the Axis Powers. Known as “Polly” to her friends like Wildcat, Jay Garrick and Alan Scott, she fought battles against Stalker in the ‘40s (The Justice Society Returns! by David S. Goyer, James Robinson, Geoff Johns and about 40 other writers and artists), and fifth-dimensional invaders in the present (JLA: Justice For All by Grant Morrison, Mark Waid, et al).

When the JSA reformed at Sand Hawkins’ urging, Polly became a reserve member, helping out in their first battle against the dark lord Mordru (JSA: Justice Be Done). She died while leading the Amazons into the battle during the Imperiex War. She was next spotted in Jodi Picoult’s unreadable Wonder Woman and Amazons Attack, apparently brought back to life by Circe, totally insane and once again the queen of the Amazons.



ARTEMIS: A member of the mortal, Bana-Mighdall Amazons descended from Antiope, Artemis participated in wars against Hippolyta’s Amazons before her people settled their own part of Themyscria. When Hippolyta conceived of a second contest to see if Diana was still fit to be Wonder Woman (part of her plan to avoid Diana’s death in battle, which was prophesied to her), Artemis claimed the prize, and she journeyed to America to serve as the new Wonder Woman (Yes, this was about the time Kyle Rayner became Green Lantern, Connor Hawke became Green Arrow, John-Paul Valley became Batman and four dudes became Superman, why do you ask?), while Diana changed into a weird biker shorts, bra and jacket combo to lead her faction of the then-splintered Justice League, going as just plain old “Diana.”

Artemis, who lacked Diana’s super-powers and possessed a hot head and thirst for violence that no previous Wonder Woman was saddled with, died in a battle against the White Magician (Much of this era’s important stories are collected in Wonder Woman: The Contest by William Messner-Loebs and Mike Deodato). She was later rescued from Hades and returned to life. Since then she served as her people’s representative in Amazon government and as Themyscira’s Minister of Defense. She disappeared with Themyscira during the last crisis with a capital C, and has recently been seen in Amazons Attack, exchanging glances with Phillipus behind Hippolyte’s back and presumably, holding her finger to her ear and making the coo-coo sign whenever her queen wasn’t looking).



DONNA TROY: You know what, I don’t have any idea. And I don’t think anyone else does either, which has become a plot point in Countdown. Donna Troy’s existence was originally forced because Wonder Girl was appearing in Teen Titans along with sidekicks like Robin and Aqualad (Showcase Presents: Teen Titans Vol. 1, although Wonder Girl wasn’t actually Wonder Woman’s sidekick; rather, she was like the pre-Crisis Superboy, the star of Wonder Woman stories from when she was a girl. Oops. It’s a mistake DC has been fixing and re-fixing pretty much ever since, the last attempt being the Infinite Crisis lead-in DC Presents: The Return of Donna Troy (although, again, Countdown implies that wasn’t the last we’ve heard of Donna’s origins, perhaps for reasons discussed below)

At any rate, I think she’s still a magical twin of Diana, created to be her playmate, but captured by Dark Angel (recently seen in Supergirl) and forced to live a series of alternate lives, each full of tragedy. She was rescued by the Titans of Myth, who gave her powers and training before returning her to Earth, where she founded the Teen Titans as Wonder Girl, changed her codename and costume repeatedly (From Wonder Girl to Troia to Darkstar back to Troia to Wonder Woman for about a week and then back to Troia again), married, had a child, divorced, lost her son and ex-husband in a car crash, rejoined the Titans, was murdered by a Superman Robot, came back to life in deep space thinking herself one of the Titans of myth, lead a group of heroes to fight Alexander Luthor’s giant fingers in the middle of the universe, hung out in her swanky new space-faring base New Cronus talking to the late Harbinger’s continuity ball, took the name Wonder Woman for a few weeks around the time Black Adam was killing civilians by the millions, and she was last seen in the company of Jason Todd in Washington D.C. (New Teen Titans: Who Is Donna Troy?, Teen Titans/Outsiders: The Death and Return of Donna Troy and Infinite Crisis contain most of the pertinent parts of that complicated history, or at least readable recaps).

The interesting thing about poor Donna's origin is that, aside from needing to think up an origin to explain her existence in the first place, all of her complications as a character stemmed from Crisis on Infinite Earths, which reset Wonder Woman's timeline, so that she didn't appear until several years after the new "heroic age" had begun (that is, several years after Superman and Batman started their careers, and the Justice League was about to move into it's JLI incarnation). All the magical twin, abducted by Titans business was in reaction to the fact that Wonder Girl predated Wonder Woman (to solve all that, DC could have just rebooted Donna and the Titans alongside Wonder Woman back in the aftermath of COIE. One of the many rejiggerings of Infinite Crisis was that Wonder Woman was now a founder of the Justice League again, which meant she arrived in Man's World around the time Superman and Batman were debuting now. I didn't think much of it at the time, being so confused as to why DC was bumping all of their post-Crisis Wonder Woman/JLA stories out of continuity to replace them with all their older, worse stuff (I don't care how much anyone likes the Satellite Era, you can't honestly tell me the stories were better written than those of the JLI or Watchtower Eras). But if Wonder Woman was active during the first year or so of DC's second "heroic age," then that means she does indeed predate Donna Troy's Wonder Girl again, and we don't need any of that Titans of Myth/Dark Angel stuff anymore. DC can just revert back to their original origin for her. But...they haven't, have they? Or, if they have, nobody's mentioned it or did a story for it. In fact, the last Donna Troy origin story was the miniseries preceding Infinite Crisis, the awkwardly titled DC Presents: The Return of Donna Troy, but Phil Jiminez, Jose Garcia-Lopez and George freaking Perez, released just months before the continuity within it was going to maybe be altered, knocking it out of canon. Why on earth would you hire those three titanic talents to craft an excellent series (um, by Donna Troy standars, anyway), and then knock it out of canon immediately afteward? If it is out of canon. Like I said, there's been no indication that Donna's reverted to her pre-Crisis(On Infinite Earths) origin know that Wonder Woman's arrival was shunted backwards down the DC timeline, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to have Donna become Wonder Girl and not be inspired by Diana now that Diana was around as Wonder Woman at the same time she became Wonder Girl does it?



FURY: Helena Kosmatos’s father was killed during the Italian invasion of Greece during World War II, and seeking vengeance, she became possessed of the power of the mythological furies. Taking the name Fury, she donned a suit of golden mail to fight against fascism and the Nazis as part of the Young All-Stars, the probationary, youth faction of the war-time All-Star Squadron. Helena had super strength and the ability to fly thanks to the spirit of the Fury Tisiphone. The downside? The spirit would occasionally transform her, turning Helena into a winged, hooved monster. That big gray, bat-winged monster you see in Amazon battle scenes now and then? That’s Helena. While not an Amazon by birth, she's been living on the island for quite a while now. (None of these stories are available in trade because there is no God; that’s the only explanation for why All-Star Squadron is not available in trade that I can think of).





WONDER GIRL: Cassandra Sandsmark, daughter of Gateway City-based archaeologist Helena Sandsmark, assumed the role of Wonder Girl after swiping the Sandals of Hermes and Gauntlet of Atlas to help Diana take on a clone of Doomsday (Wonder Woman: Lifelines). Upon meeting Zeus in person, she asked for powers of her own, a request the god complied with, giving her superstrength and the ability to fly. After years of wondering who her real father was, it was eventually revealed why Zeus was so generous with the powers—he’s her father.

A former leader of the now-defunct group Young Justice, Cassie is currently a member of the Teen Titans. Though technically an American citizen and a demigod (an Olympian-American?), Wonder Girl was trained by Artemis and given the blessing to use the “Wonder” name by both Diana and Donna, making her something of an honorary Amazon.