Check These Out! – Comics Picks of the Week: The Ladies of DC

This was a light week for my pull list, only four books – all DC titles, all ladies, and, for better or worse, all family dramas. To be fair, family dramas seem to be in right now, and not just with the women. Animal Man, Green Arrow, Aquaman, and Phantom Stranger, not to mention most of The Batman family books, all feature family oriented narratives these days. I’m quite alright with that, all of the books mentioned are among my favorites and there really isn’t anything like the complex nuances of familial bonds when it comes to heightening the emotional resonance of a storyline. Of course, like anything else, treatment matters a lot in terms of how potent, original, and meaningful the emotional fireworks manage to be. So how did Sword of Sorcery, Batgirl, Batwoman, and Wonder Woman make out this month? Read on to find out!

Sword of Sorcery #8

Writer: Christy Marx

Artist: Aaron Lopresti

DC Comics

 

Sword of Sorcery #8 claims the unfortunate dual distinction of being the only book on this list that was not part of the original launch of the New 52, and the only of these four books on its final issue. This book had quite a bit of potential from the get-go and ended up suffering, though not so much from the shortcomings of its creators as from its premature death. I’m not quite sure why this comic had to end before being really given a chance to find its audience but I do lament the fact that this cancellation, along with that of books like I, Vampire, Frankenstein, and the recently announced discontinuations of Demon Knights and Dial H, represents a movement away from a level of genre diversity and risk taking that got me excited about the New 52 almost two years ago.

This issue sees the conclusion of the showdown between house Amethyst of Gem World and the evil Eclipso. The story does manage to tie up all of the narrative strands that Marx put in place, but it does so without the level of complexity that I think the series could have exhibited. The power struggle between Lady Amaya’s mother and aunt over the bloodline of house Amethyst is resolved, as is the similar, but gender-opposite, one in house Diamond. I’m happy to have the closure, yet I can’t help but feel a little bit let down by the relative ease with which these transfers of power were facilitated, given the momentous ramifications they were meant to signify within this world. A prolonged series of twists, turns, betrayals, and role reversals would have been so much more satisfying.

But what’s done is done I suppose. On the positive side, Lady Amaya emerged as one kick-ass young hero whose transition from a reluctant teenager into a confident and powerful woman, at least, felt paced realistically enough to carry the emotional weight that it deserved to. Thanks for this are due in no small part to the emotive pencils of Aaron Lopresti, who captures Amaya’s strength in a handful of breathtaking splash pages. Together the team of  Marx and Lopresti managed to characterize a slew of relatable and inspiring women while avoiding the clichés that unfortunately still characterize many a heroic woman in comics. As an added bonus, they did so in an idiosyncratic and gloriously Labyrinth-esque style that at least this reviewer will miss.

 

Batgirl #20

Writer: Gail Simone

Artists: Daniel Sampere and Carlos Rodriguez

DC Comics

Gail Simone really started to hit her stride on this title with the Death of the Family tie in issues and, thankfully, she’s still running at that pace. This iteration of Batgirl hasn’t always been a family-focused drama, in fact, it was very much a book about Barbara proving to herself that she could make it on her own after recovering from the devastating spinal cord injury that, although somewhat revised, occurred during the Alan Moore penned Killing Joke story. That all blew up in her face when the Joker kidnapped her mother, and her psychopathic brother, James Jr., tried to kill her roommate.

Currently reacting to the fallout of those events, specifically the death of James Jr. at her hands, Babs is undergoing a pretty major crisis. She’s no longer sure she is even fit to wear her uniform. Meanwhile, a sinister new version of The Ventriloquist is unleashing havoc on Gotham and has Batgirl in her sights. The Ventriloquist is a fun character, thanks to  a simple but compelling origin story as an insecure misfit with a sociopathic streak turned reality show reject, and a drill bit wielding dummy rife with exploitation style excess.

But The Ventriloquist isn’t the only one after Batgirl, Commissioner Gordon (that’s right, her dad, though he has no idea) is out for blood to avenge the murder of his son. Yes, its simple. No, its not really original – but it works dammit, and I look forward to watching it play out.

 

Batwoman #20

Writers: J.H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman

Artist: Trevor McCarthy

DC Comics

 

And then there’s Batwoman… As far as strong female comic book characters go, she is bar-none at the top of the heap. But saying that doesn’t do her justice; she holds her own against any character in comics, regardless of gender. Furthermore, its not just her tenacity and strength (which she does have in spades) that puts her at the top, but the complexity with which Williams and Blackman write her that really puts her over the edge.

Take Batgirl as a point of comparison. She is a great character, but relatively one dimensional, as most heroes tend to be. She is defined by a compelling mix of insecurity, resourcefulness, and bravery. While the contradictions in her nature make her interesting, they don’t necessarily make her complex. In contrast, when Batwoman interacts with in her various relationships, she displays attitudes and actions all across the emotional spectrum, lending her a nuanced realism that not only provides emotional impact, but keeps her story fresh and her readers surprised.

She is relentlessly bullish and stubborn, presenting her father with a cold and unforgiving face while her love for her Fiancé, Maggie Sawyer, is seemingly endless. Her tenderness and compassion for her recently returned sister contrast with her vicious sadism when donning cape and cowl. We are never sure which side of Kate Kane will emerge in any given situation, but each is beautiful because it is a part of her fascinatingly complex character.

Her relationship with Maggie gets its fair share of attention in the media because they are a lesbian couple, but, to echo my earlier statement, it is without a doubt the best drawn relationship in any mainstream comic book. Maggie is so much more than a plot device waiting to happen, in a way, she is able to draw together the diverse and nuanced aspects of Kate Kane, she loves her when she has no one else to turn to, and she puts her in her place when no one else can (as she does in this issue).

in the narrative strand that this issue kicks off, Batwoman is blackmailed by the D.E.O into unmasking Batman. Any other character and this story would be over before it started – no one in Gotham could stand up to Batman, but I’m guessing Kate will give him a run for his money. I’m also willing to bet that with Williams and Blackman at the helm, it won’t turn out the way we’re expecting.

Wonder Woman #20

Writer: Brian Azzarello

Artists: Goran Sudzuka and Cliff Chiang

DC Comics

From an artistic standpoint, Cliff Chiang, Tony Akins, and now Goran Sudzuka, have done a breathtaking job with Wonder Woman. She has poise, strength, and beauty. This incarnation of the character is allowed to exist as an A-lister without ever being forced into typically masculine archetypes or having her femininity objectified.

Wonder Woman’s strength, in particular, is on display in this issue, which largely consists of her battle with Artemis. It’s an epic, airborne affair in which Diana proves that even the gods have another thing coming if they try to mess with her friends, and their children. But the family narrative doesn’t simply follow the mother/protector archetype that it appears to at first glance. Diana’s relationship with her clan is much more complex than that. Yes, she does play the role of mother at various points, but she is also the General, and, at times, the child.

Its the way these characters relate to one another that makes the story so compelling: the way in which Hera learns compassion, War learns humility, and Zola gains confidence. Somehow this odd group of gods and demigods manage to bring out the best in one another. Wonder Woman isn’t so much the leader who draws it out of them, but the catalyst that allows them to find one another. As Zola says to her unknowing little boy in this issue: “you have a weird family. A weird, wonderful family.”

Both major publishers have taken a lot of slack for the underrepresentation of women in their comics, recently Bleeding Cool called DC out for only featuring two pages of lady-led books in their DC essentials catalog, but I can’t deny that these four titles, especially the latter three, represent some of the best books being written across the medium. From time to time its worth talking about how good some of lady heroes are. Of course we need more, but its not for lack of a model. Read these books and hopefully it will start to catch on.

 

Check This Out! – Comics Pick of the Week: Wonder Woman #0

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.

Check This Out! – Comics Pick of the Week: Wonder Woman #11

Wonder Woman #11

Writer: Brian Azzarello

Artist: Cliff Chiang

DC Comics

 

There has a been a lot of positive buzz circulating about Brian Azzarello’s Wonder Woman re-launch, and rightfully so, it is a fresh and exciting take on the classic hero. However, the true significance this series carries with it is rarely touched on. Wonder Woman has always been a franchise character and even though her books have never regularly sold in Batman or Superman quantities, her licenseability has always kept her series alive. That being said, this is a character that has really struggled to find a stable place in the DC Universe. Is she characterized by her role as Amazon royalty? Her allegiance to humanity? Her skills as a warrior? Her status as a female hero? She has been characterized through all of these things at different times but due to constant revisions and re-imaginings, was never really allowed to obtain the depth of character that other comics mainstays have. Furthermore, each of these characterizations is somewhat outdated and, I believe, doesn’t effectively mesh with contemporary values and attitudes. I would contend that Azzarello and company have done a remarkable job at reinvigorating the character in a way that makes her relevant as both a hero and a woman, while maintaining an iconic representation of the character that easily convinces the reader that it is as timeless a portrayal of a classic American character as any.

I mean to review issue 11 of the characters self-titled series, but I am going to do so by way of comparison with the character’s portrayal in Geoff Johns’ Justice League re-launch, the other major venue for Wonder Woman in the new DCU.  Johns takes a more traditional approach to the Amazon, characterizing her through two main qualities: her innate warrior instincts and her tragically impossible relationship with Steve Trevor, the liaison between the Justice League and the U.S. Government. This characterization works within the context of the superhero team book. On one hand the character’s warrior heritage determines how she will react when faced with a violent threat and the fact that she is just a touch more ruthless than her more idealistic teammates adds some dramatic tension to the team dynamics. On the other hand, her relationship with Colonel Trevor lends emotional sympathy to the character and has been used to drive significant aspects of that story’s narrative so far. This representation also poses problems for the character’s ultimate depth and relevance. By focusing on her Amazon heritage, her motivations are called into question – can she really be an uplifting symbol of justice and righteousness if her actions are inspired by a thirst for war and the thrill of adventure? More troubling, however, is her relationship with Steve Trevor. Much of her actions are inspired by the guilt she feels for the emotional strife she has caused the colonel. This relationship runs the risk of defining her more by the emotional emptiness of one of her male counterparts than through her own agency. To be fair, Johns is no hack and these aspects of the character are explored with some degree of subtlety; for instance, we are meant to empathize with Wonder Woman’s situation and to understand that her actions toward colonel Trevor were not done out of malice and that she does care for the man, but knows that a relationship with him would be impossible. Still, this approach straddles a very unstable line and runs the risk of identifying Wonder Woman as a product of her ancestral and social circumstances rather than a master of her own destiny.

Of course an effective foil is a necessary tool when creating a deep and lasting characterization and all major superheroes come loaded with them: Batman has Alfred, Robin, Nightwing, The Joker and countless more, while Superman has Lex Luthor, Jimmy Olson, and Lois Lane, to name a few. It could be argued that it is the dearth of a similar supporting cast that has prevented Wonder Woman from similarly taking root as not just an icon in the DC Universe but as a character with a self-contained mythology and aura. Azzarello seems to think so because he has surrounded her with such an intriguing cast of characters and built such a convincing mythology around her that it is hard to believe that they are not the result of decades of character development. In Azzarello’s series Wonder Woman’s heritage and relationships do define her, but unlike her depiction in Justice League, it is the abnegation of her heritage and her unwavering love for, and commitment to, her companions that contribute to her characterization. Azzarello has done three things that I believe create substantial depth in the series and place Wonder Woman as one of, if not the most relevant books about both women and heroism currently in publication.

First, he reimagined Wonder Woman’s origin placing her as a daughter of Zeus, thereby establishing her as an outsider to the Amazon culture but also a pariah of the Olympic realm, recently under the authority of Zeus’ spiteful wife Hera. Her skills as a warrior and her attachment to her deceased mother provide meaningful connections to her heritage, but allow her to distance herself from a society whose idiosyncratic values based on war and gender supremacy fail to hold-up as a utopia against thoughtful consideration.

Second, he populated the landscape of Wonder Woman with strikingly modern representations of Greek mythology used the way they were meant to be: as personifications of the various aspects of the world as a whole, including the sun, the moon, war, strife, and hell. One thing that pagan belief systems do particularly well is create accessible representations of complex systems and by virtue of this have been implicit in the creation of some of the most enduring, subtle, and complex pieces of literature for thousands of years. The same phenomenon allows Azzarello to place the events of Wonder Woman within the context of a larger world landscape without having to use precious space for exposition. More importantly, the characterizations of these different immortals are reflected in Wonder Woman’s own responses to them, both positive and negative.

Finally, and most meaningfully, the character with whom Wonder Woman most strongly identifies and to whom she feels the greatest

Cliff Chiang’s interior art from WW #11

commitment it is not a god, a demigod, or even a man, instead it is Zola, a self-reliant and plucky girl in her twenties from a broken home in a poor rural area who has recently learned that the baby she is carrying is the most recent of Zeus’ bastard spawn. The unborn child is believed to be prophesied to claim the throne of Zeus so naturally Zola has fallen under attack from various deities who hope to use the child as the means to their own ambitious ends. Wonder Woman has taken it upon herself to protect her unborn sibling and the brave young woman carrying it. Azzarello and his collaborators have treated this relationship in a way that brings out the best in both Wonder Woman and Zola. It allows the creators to humanize Wonder Woman as a loving and nurturing figure in the midst of an unforgiving world as represented by the gods, but also as a woman who has no qualms about fighting to protect those close to her. Despite remarkably different backgrounds and upbringings, Zola and Wonder Woman are in many ways cut from the same stone. As strong women in a world shaped by masculine power struggles, their shared status as outsiders gives them a profound respect and understanding towards one another. They are able to feed off of their shared audacity and strength and both are capable of rising to selfless heroism, even when the men around them are more concerned with playing it safe.

In this issue Wonder Woman and her allies have insisted that Zola see a doctor to make sure that there are no problems with her pregnancy. True to her nature, Zola insists on seeing her small town doctor who she trusts. Wonder Woman supports this decision but Hermes and Lennox don’t. There is a beautiful piece of dialog during the scene when Zola is visiting with her doctor. Wonder Woman and her friends are waiting outside and Lennox says “but you ‘ave friends, access to better medical –“ Lennox, who is cut off mid-sentence, is presumably referring to the Justice League. Wonder Woman responds “ I do have friends, true… and right now one of them is seeing the doctor she’s chosen to right now.” Later in the issue Zola returns the favor by trying to run Apollo, the sun god, over with a pick-up truck!

Wonder Woman by David Finch from Justice League #1

This issue was illustrated by the main series artist Cliff Chiang. All of the artwork on this series has been of high quality, but I am always particularly excited when Chiang is back behind the pen. His style is so classic and emotive that it is a perfect match for this book. His presentation of Wonder Woman is particularly powerful. There are two main approaches to wonder woman – beauty, and strength. The former tends to sexualize her a la the ridiculous David Finch cover from Justice League #1, while the latter emphasizes physicality, drawing attention away from her intellect and compassion. Chiang manages to create a Wonder Woman who is both strong and beautiful, but in a less tangible sense. Her beauty comes across in her powerful gaze and her strength is made manifest in her body language and expressions. Azzarello uses her costume sparingly; she dons a trench coat for a good chunk of this issue and other issues have foregone it completely, allowing Chiang to put it to good dramatic use when it finally does make an appearance.

Despite the rich character development and world building, this series has not been without its bells

A particularly buff depiction of the Amazon princess

and whistles. Issue #11 is no exception, giving Wonder Woman the opportunity to show off her acrobatics in a showdown against Apollo that comes complete with stunning pyrotechnics in addition to the spectacular automobile antics previously mentioned. The ongoing story has been full of twists and turns; our hero has already been to hell and bested Hades himself and the story is just beginning. Issue 11 marks the beginning of the latest chapter of this saga so it is as good a jumping on point as any. Azzarello’s run, which is hopefully far from over, will surely be an instant classic for the character and the medium so get on board now!

Check This Out! – Comics Pick of the Week: Earth 2 #1

Earth 2 #1

Writer: James Robinson

Artist: Nicola Scott

DC Comics

Earth 2 has been one of the most anticipated series of the “New 52,” it was rumored before the original 52 titles were announced and finally, nine months into the initiative, here it is. It’s no wonder there was a lot of speculation about this series; It would formally introduces the multiverse, it seemed like it would tie into the massively successful (but far inferior, and I’ll get to that soon) Justice League origin story, it would reestablish the classic Justice Society characters in the new continuity, and it had James Robinson’s name attached to it. I was hopeful, but reluctant to fully embrace the hype, as I generally am when it comes to team books of such epic proportions. Creating monthly comics requires an economic style of storytelling if you are going to deliver on a sensational, visceral, and emotional level. Too often the large cast and overblown action that this type of story requires ends up selling the characters, and thus our emotional interest, a bit short.

Not the case in the first issue of Earth 2! There will be a significant spoiler coming up, otherwise the discussion of this issue is impossible, so go read it and then check back in, you won’t be disappointed. For those who have already checked out this book, or don’t mind spoilers, we will continue. The story opens with Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman in the midst of a high stakes battle between Earth 2 and Apokolips that looks familiar to readers of Justice League, but feels quite different. Some of the differences between the two are a product of the different landscape of Earth 2; we are to understand that these characters are already established in this world; they are professionals and have the full support of the public and the military. However, I attribute a lot of this different feeling to the way in which the creative team executes the whole event. The stakes feel so much higher, the emotional resonance is far more powerful and the story is engaging. The only thing that was disappointing about reading this issue was realizing how much more effective Robinson and crew were in 22 pages than Geoff Johns and Jim Lee were in six issues. With just a few panels to work from, the reader has a very complete sense of the personal histories of each hero, their relationship to one another and the world in which they live. There is an exchange between batman and Robin (in this case, his daughter Helena, who finds her way to standard continuity as Huntress in World’s Finest #1) that is incredibly moving. We learn that Wonder Woman is the last of the Amazons; her fearsome bitterness is highlighted in a few key panels and she exchanges some emotional and prophetic words with the dying god Mercury. Supergirl is Superman’s lifeline, she feels like his liaison to the rest of the world.

Robinson sells the conflict as well as he sells his characters. If this threat is not neutralized, and it’s never clear that it will be, it will mean the end of the world. The strange towers that house the parademons of Apokolips are present here as they were in Justice League but they are all over the planet and they are explained in a way that makes their threat feel so much more ominous and desperate. The villain, Steppenwolf, (who only appears in two panels!) is endowed with more agency and ambition than the Johns/Lee Darkseid ever had. In Justice League, after aimlessly fighting parademons for five issues, the heroes pulled their final victory seemingly out of nowhere when they essentially locked Darkseid on the other side of a wormhole, called a boom tube, in what really was as anticlimactic a display as it sounds.  In Earth 2 Batman plants an intelligent computer virus in one of the parademon towers, in the hope that it will reproduce and spread to the other towers, preventing them from regenerating and causing the parademons to drop from the sky. Batman singlehandedly scales a tower, fighting off parademons, while Wonder Woman and Superman battle tirelessly on the ground to buy him every second they can. The action and the emotions are both fully realized by Robinson and Scott, creating a truly dramatic sequence.

The heroes save the day, but they must make the ultimate sacrifice – and that’s when we really realize what Robinson has done. He created a world that his readers would become instantly invested in, only to face it with the greatest tragedy it’s ever seen. A 22 page macguffin that not only sets up the landscape that this series will operate within, but gives the reader an intimate connection to it.

The astute reader will notice that though I’ve talked about 22 pages of comics so far, this was an oversized issue and after this opening battle Robinson still had 8 pages to play around with. He uses them to introduce Alan Scott and Jay Garrick, the original Green Lantern and Flash respectively, the new heroes who will presumably step up to fill the gaps left by the big three. He recasts the two characters as much younger versions of the characters we have become familiar with, neither of whom have received their powers yet. I’m sure some purists will be upset, but the treatments were respectful to continuity and seem promising, but only time will tell. My favorite moment also came in this aftermath segment; it wasn’t characterization or dialog, rather it was a two page spread showcasing a sprawling landscape littered with volcanic craters, the devastation left behind in the wake of Apokolips. Another reason why the epic superhero battle often lacks in impact is that no matter how bad things get, we expect the world to return to normal afterwards. With this spread, Robinson is showing us that the battle that occupied most of this issue was not merely a plot device that allows us to have an Earth 2 without Batman, Superman, or Wonder Woman. Its aftermath will define the landscape of this series and its lingering impact will likely permeate throughout the stories and relationships, as it would in the real world.