Comics / Comic Reviews / DC Comics

Wonder Woman #3: A Review of Sorts


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By Zak Edwards
July 31, 2016 - 18:18

For those of you who don’t know, I write Twitter essays on the handle @ComicsThoughts. Much of the writing I do there is about superheroes and the violence that they cause/perpetuate/ignore/perform. My latest one is all about The Punisher, gun violence, and why he’s the perfect superhero no one wants.

This week, I’ve been thinking a lot about Wonder Woman as a follow up to that essay because Princess Diana brings a feminist perspective to superhero conflict. Personally, I never really got into Wonder Woman until the New 52, but it was Grant Morrison’s Earth One graphic novel from earlier this year that turned me into a fan. That book is awkward in many regards, but I found an interview with Morrison before it came out that made me think about comics in a different way. Here’s the excerpts that struck me:

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“[Wonder Woman creator William Marsten’s] original concept for Wonder Woman was an answer to comics that he thought were filled with images of blood-curdling masculinity… Marston’s Diana was a doctor, a healer, a scientist.”

“Halfway through the book [Wonder Woman: Earth One], we’re building up to this big fight, and then I thought, ‘No, I’m not.’ This book isn’t about fights, there’s not going to be any fights. So we threw out the rules of traditional boy’s adventure fiction.”

Morrison taps into something very key to Wonder Woman, but also about how we, especially men, consider and depict strong women in general. Male creators, working in an industry dominated by male creators who mostly cater to male readers, think about female superheroes much in the same way as male heroes. Lady heroes punch, they get in big muscly fights, they win, and they descend, Messiah-like, into the thankful embrace of their public.

This arc works perfectly for un-interrogated boy’s adventure stories. It gives readers a healthy dose of escapism, a sprinkling of power fantasy, and a satisfying the pat on the head for a job well-done. It’s what every dude would love to see and, indeed, expects whenever he does pretty much anything. Diana being a woman is justified through her bad-assery and, if Frank Cho had his way, her actual ass.

But this is hardly a universal way of experiencing such heroics. For other groups, the story would be much different. The heroics could be viewed as unproductive, even criminal, and the thanks could come in the form of cuffs or something worse.

For women, the story is often dominated by meeting forceful patriarchal violence with more forceful violence on top of the above complications. In many cases, this is what Wonder Woman becomes: a more powerful, more violent character who can match the masculine, “bru-hah-hah” violence and still be standing after the fight is over. Of course, Wonder Woman has been around for 75 years, she's bound to be many things, so she defies and confirms almost every entry on Cracked's recent list on the bizzare assumptions about strong female protagonists. Diana can represent something different, though, and this latest issue continues Marsten’s ideas about what feminist resistance and violence could look like when considered outside of meeting male-dominated violence.

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For Wonder Woman: Earth One, the climax is a spirited debate in a courtroom of Amazons. In Greg Rucka’s latest issue, it’s a literal “hugging it out.” Cheetah, angry and driven by instinct to eat “man-flesh,” goes into a blood frenzy and Wonder Woman, after beating up some cultists, wrestles Cheetah to the ground to calm her. Tradition would dictate Wonder Woman beat Cheetah into submission. Here, it’s an embrace, a rational talking down, and a commitment to fight together.

Part of what makes this latest run of Wonder Woman so incredible is it’s pivoting from the past. I mentioned in my last review that things felt familiar. Now, I’m realizing that Rucka is using the old to talk about something new and different, something that’s been missing in Wonder Woman since at least before the New 52. He’s giving us two new Dianas through Wonder Woman’s alternating plotlines. One, a princess setting out on her journey. The other, the one in this story, a warrior who knows the most important part of a battle is at the beginning, when the generals meet on the battlefield and try to change the world with words, but confident their swords will do just fine in a pinch.

Of course, a welcome alternative to all this theorizing would be more female creators writing Wonder Woman and other superheroes. The irony that this piece focuses on the work of men is not lost on me. But alas, DC has yet to send me review copies of Wonder Woman comics written by a woman.

tl;dr review: This book is beautiful, bold, and interesting. The strongest Rebirth series that I have read and a must-read for anyone who wants great Wonder Woman stories.

Actual tl;dr review: I spent 800 words talking about one page of the comic, didn’t really review anything.


Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12

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