Wonder Woman #0
Writer: Brian Azzarello
Artist: Cliff Chiang
DC Comics
The last time I plugged this title on Entropic Worlds was with issue #11, where I delved into a more detailed discussion than usual, praising Azzarello for restoring integrity and depth to one of DC’s most important characters and elevating her to a status, both creatively and contextually, on par with any hero in comics, male or female. When I give a comic that kind of praise I usually won’t come back to it in my reviews for at least a little while in order to avoid redundancy, but when issues like Wonder Woman #0 come along I can’t help but make an exception. I expected Azzarello to turn out a compelling zero issue, I also expected it to be somewhat unique, as he is wont to do. I wasn’t expecting an episode from Diana’s youth told completely through golden age techniques, tropes and aesthetics. In fact, I am a little surprised that he was even allowed to get away with it. Borrowing bygone aesthetics to evoke the past in comics is not new, but given DC’s current dedication to present a decidedly modern universe (even actually referring to the New 52 #1s as first appearances in the Who’s Who in the New 52 feature in each issue) Its shocking that they were ok with Azzarello’s choice to present this story as if it was actually a story from a fictitious golden age comic. This is a good sign to me, it shows that the editors at DC truly trust what Azzarello is doing with the character, and hopefully his run will last for a long time to come.
The content of the story is relatively straightforward. It explores a year or so of Diana’s life during which she was apprenticed, behind the back of the Amazons, to Ares, the Greek god of war. So what, then, is the gimmick, what is the purpose for the unconventional style? The truth is that it can’t be boiled down to one purpose, not nostalgia, not irony, not humor. Azzarello uses this format in a variety of ways throughout the comic, transitioning fluidly and effortlessly from mode to mode. At the beginning, the issue appears to be rooted in satire; Azzarello makes this blatantly clear with the outlandish title he gives to the fake comic: “All Girl Adventure Tales for Men #41.” The story opens on a similar note of humor as Wonder Woman fights off an angry Harpy which, though vicious, is much more juvenile in tone than the darker gods and monsters that have shown up in the series. However, as this issue progresses it becomes clear that we are no longer in the realm of satire. This isn’t merely a tonal shift, the character actually changes, managing to reclaim a semblance of control over her own identity by the end. The process of overcoming this ludicrous title actually works as a commentary on Wonder Woman’s journey as an individual character within Azzarello’s storyline, but also on the journey of Wonder Woman as a character in the iconic sense over the course of her publication.
Azzarello makes use of more than the tonal qualities of the golden age, he also uses storytelling techniques from the era throughout the story. Techniques such as captions with an omniscient narration, thought bubbles, and alliterative language have largely fallen out of popular use, yet Azzarello uses them to great effect, even to the point that reader may begin to wonder why they have fallen out of use to begin with. Omniscient narrators in comics often feel clunky and redundant , but here Azzarello reminds us that when used relatively economically they can create effective transitions and fill in quick exposition about setting or characters, but more importantly, that they can evoke a sense of distance and privilege that allows us voyeuristic access into a private moment in a way that first person narrations or narration free stories don’t. Thought bubbles can provide a sense of immediacy lost in first person captions, they can also interact with the visual qualities of a story well. Unfortunately they usually fail to achieve those ends, but Azzarello handles them cleverly during a few crucial dramatic moments. The alliteration is Perhaps the most indulgent device employed here, used mostly for humor and authenticity, still, who can resist a line like “the plucky princess plunges into the icy water, leaving the horrible harpy hapless”?
Within this narrative Azzarello employs many more conventional, but still impactful, structural and visual motifs. Images of eyes and reflections appear throughout the comic, serving to support the themes of identity and belonging that have been present throughout the series and are explored quite explicitly in issue #0. The zero issues have promised to be full of revelations about their characters ,yet that has really not been the case, at least as far as I can tell, but in this issue there are some significant bits of information concerning Diana’s relationship with War, and the rest of the gods by extension, which may prove to be meaningful in the future of the storyline.
The only thing disappointing about this issue is that the cover had to follow the uniform design of the zero issue campaign. Though Cliff Chiang’s illustrations of Wonder Woman are always breathtaking and the one on this cover is nothing to scoff at, I imagine how fantastic his cover for All Girl Adventure Tales for Men #41 would have been and I lament the fact that it doesn’t exist. Though I am not usually one to promote the creation of variant covers, this would be the occasion for it if ever there was one.
ENTROPIC WORLDS 