Wonder Woman #1, Brian Azzarello (w), Cliff Chiang (a) [Print]
THE PITCH: When monsters from Greek mythology attack you in your home, you don't call the police. You call... Wonder Woman.
HOW WAS IT? There's a narrative hiccup early in Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang's take on Wonder Woman that threatens to derail the whole book. There's a a transition--or lack of one--between two scenes, starting with a moment in a barn and ending with a character looking out of a farmhouse window, and in between maybe the second and third panel of the farmhouse scene, there's a lack of story and visual information and two characters are seemingly abruptly in the same space. To a certain extent this reflect the confusion of one of the characters, a woman named Zola, presented with a random blue guy in her living room, but somehow it feels like a panel or a page is missing and it becomes a big deal when you're trying to orient yourself to unfamiliar characters, spaces, circumstances, etc..
If I'm harping on one page, it's because it hurts the flow of this first, relatively straightforward issue that finds new character Zola (like Wonder Woman, she has no need of pants) requiring the protection of the Amazon princess. Also: murderous centaurs.
Honest up front: I've never been a big fan of Wonder Woman stories, which is weird because I love tough women and Greek mythology. But since trying to get into the character around Infinite Crisis or so, the character has come in two flavors: "trying to find herself" and "not Wonder Woman." I'm hoping that Azzarello isn't heading in the latter direction here with Diana at one point correcting Zola when the latter calls her by her superheroine identity. And if I never read another "Who is Wonder Woman" story again, it'll be too soon.
The broad strokes of the story is that something is going down with the pantheon, and it might lead to the death of one or more gods. The issue has a couple of mysterious characters who go unnamed (one, obviously Apollo, god of the sun and not Apollo, Midnighter's future boyfriend), and there's a pregnancy with an obvious but cleverly laid-out punchline at the end of the book which might have terrible ramifications for the gods. And in and around this story, Azzarello has Wonder Woman in full warrior-goddess mode, blocking arrows and hacking off limbs in a more brawny, fierce take on the character than we've seen in some time.
Still, I wonder how this all reads to someone who just picked up the book for the first time. I mean, you need to have a little knowledge of mythology to follow some of this or at least a little knowledge of Wonder Woman fiction, right? It wasn't confusing for me, per se, but I could imagine someone picking up the book based on the title and the cool/violent cover and being a little lost about halfway through. It's not rocket science or Nabokov or anything like that, it's a lot of new characters and information to take in with only warnings and portents for context.
More than anything, it feels like a really interesting first half to a deluxe issue.
BEST BIT: Chiang's Wonder Woman. She's like six and a half, almost seven feet tall and looks appropriately "Amazonian." I still think DC should have stood strong on the pants, though.
The birth of the centaurs is pretty gross and cool at the same time, too.
WORST BIT: There sudden jump from the scene in the barn to the first scene in the farmhouse is really abrupt and it actually feels like a page of story is missing. The latter scene isn't effectively established so it comes out of left field.
EASTER EGGS: I see you hiding behind that tree, purple lady.
ACCESSIBLE TO NEW READERS? Maybe. Although we get Wonder Woman on page for a nice chunk of the issue, we don't really know much about her or any of the other characters in the book for that matter. I'm not sure most new readers will know all that much about Wonder Woman, so a little hint as to her backstory or something about why she's important to the plot (besides being the name on the title) would have helped.
WILL YOU BE PICKING UP ISSUE 2? I think so? The art is killer and Azzarello typically doesn't disappoint with his scripts, but this first issue was a problem.
RATING: 35/52
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