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bluefall ([info]bluefall) wrote in [info]scans_daily,
@ 2009-03-11 00:31:00

Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Entry tags:char: wonder woman/diana of themyscira, creator: william messner-loebs, publisher: dc comics, series: when wondy was awesome, series: world of wondy

When Wondy was Awesome, part 6 (To Shatter an Empire)
So, after Perez's tenure wrapped with the War of the Gods crossover event, the title was given to one William Messner-Loebs, aka WML for brevity's sake (she said, as though she were ever anything remotely approaching succinct). And WML's run on Wonder Woman was... let's just say a departure. It was wildly popular sales-wise, but I have a lot of problems with it personally. He had no real respect for anything that Perez had done; he discarded her entire supporting cast as soon as possible, did a complete, arbitrary retcon of the Amazons' history and Diana's parentage (which thankfully was ignored by subsequent writers), buried Themyscira in an inaccessible pocket dimension for three years (for most of which time the readers were led to believe it had been destroyed, and in fact the whole "it's not really gone" was probably a panicked retcon), and mangled Polly so badly when she finally did show up that the letter columns spent months convinced she was Circe in disguise. We're talking "War Crimes" levels of butchery, here, or worse, and an unfortunate foundation for all the crap that's come her way since. But let's not speak of that, as to this day it still fills me with rage.

And Diana herself? He made her a klingon.


I mock, but this is still one of my favorite panels of all time.


If there's a failure in Perez's portrayal of Diana, it's her childlike, pacifistic innocence - her drastically overstated reluctance to do violence and her excessive remorse when she fought to defend herself. The Perez Wonder Woman is too naive and pacifistic for a warrior born and a princess of amazons, young or not. Messner-Loebs, on the other hand, pushed her way too far in the other direction; his Diana is confident and unapologetically fierce in battle, charismatic, clever, and has what is usually a good sense of humor; but she's also sarcastic, snarky, and frequently almost disdainful of the people around her. Not only does she not mind inflicting pain, she flat-out enjoys it, and she's reckless and willingly causes collateral damage to innocents in the name of "victory" when she gets sufficiently pissed off.

He also did a lot of stuff that, in retrospect, I think was meant to "humanize" her, kind of like we saw with the v3 relaunch - he made her worry about money and work fast food, gave her family-related angst, stripped her out of her uniform and had her deal with civilian worries like child support and gang activity instead of gods and powerful supernatural villains (except for Ares, but that's still not quite on, given his pact with Diana to leave Earth alone). Some of this worked out pretty cool, but it still felt pretty damn weird and more than a little forced to have Diana flipping burgers, even if she *did* have a very appropriately Diana attitude about it, for the most part. And the longer he was writing her, the less like Wonder Woman she was.

But he did have his moments; for example, his first story, the Wondy in space arc, which I share with you today. Low marks for plot, but full credit for concept, and Diana makes a very sexy space pirate.

It starts when Diana gets conned by a bad guy named Asquith to go into space and rescue Natasha Teranova, a cosmonaut trapped in orbit and running out of air. I say conned, but the cosmonaut is real; she's hanging out, doing magic tricks and making audio tapes for her daughter while her six hours of air run out.



This is cute, but also exactly what I was talking about with him not really having any respect for or sense of Perez' thoughtful diplomat. Even if we didn't know she speaks Russian, it's pretty easy to guess. She came to Man's World during the Cold War, after all, and her very first act here was to stop a Russian-US nuclear exchange. The idea that of the many languages she knows, Russian might not be one, is laughable.

But see, then he follows it up with a *good* Diana moment, like this one:



Here we see a self-assured Diana who apparently has no trouble with orbital mechanics or Russian electronics. Gone, thankfully, is the Perez Diana's confusion with and distaste for technology. Also, Natasha and her missing of her daughter is adorable. Just for the record.

Anyway, here's where the "conned" part comes in:



Asquith has sabotaged the satellite, and Diana and Natasha are adrift in space. They're moving away from Earth and have no way to manage a safe landing or contact their allies. Diana manages to rig the Apokalyptian shuttle she came in to drag them through hyperspace, in the hopes that some aliens will notice them and pick them up. But the shuttle's not safe for human habitation, so she perches up on top of the space station and latches the thing down with her lasso.



They spend quite a while drifting aimlessly, entertaining themselves with magic tricks.



Hey, look! The gratuitous sexualized nudity that was so tragically absent in Perez' run!

Eventually, a ship appears. Rather a big one, in fact.



(I kind of want a sound effect here that says "nom nom nom.")

They don't really get to meet the folks on board, though. They get gassed through the vents, and despite Diana putting up a sluggish, half-conscious fight, they're handily subdued, and wake up in the mud on an alien world.





So, they're on a slave planet, and all the slaves are women, from all over (including a khund named Ectreba, who immediately picks a fight with Diana. Man, khunds. What'reyagonnado). Not knowing their captors or any salient tactical details, Diana decides to bide her time, and she and Tasha hang out for a couple months getting the lay of the land and trying not get killed or curl up and die of sheer misery.



Eventually, they start learning useful details, like that the slave collars have audio receivers in them, and there's a daxamite being held prisoner in the main compound. (Daxamites have all the powers of the American Superman. We know this because Tasha says it about seventeen times.)



They also learn the... um, ecology of their captors, though I admit I use the term loosely.



(Please note that the bad guys are called the "kreel" here, and don't let that confuse you when WML abruptly changes it to "sangtee" later in the story.)

Tasha's pretty understandably beaten down by all this slavery and woe, but Diana? Not so much.





And so the revolt begins.



They are, of course, successful, and they free the daxamite, claim themselves a space ship, and get clear of the prison planet. So, what does Diana decide to *do* with her new spaceship?

Why, topple a galactic empire, of course.





(She tattooed him with the Wonder Woman symbol across the forehead. I go back and forth every time I read this on whether that's cool enough to make up for how insanely out-of-character it is.)

I left out a few pages there, space considerations and all, but it's worth mentioning that the story this general tells demonstrates Diana to be a tactical genius, effectively crippling fleets five times the size and power of her own, with no casualties on her side, through use of clever ambushes and devious traps. Because of this, her little pirate clan proves extremely effective, and some of them, particularly a Dominator name of Sakritt, think that they're all rich and safe now and they should quit while they're ahead. Diana does not agree.



More weird characterization. She's very Diana, a noble champion, not willing to tolerate oppression, firm in her convictions regardless of how it interferes with her own personal interest, and then we hit the funeral pyre line and she's taken it just a step too far.

Being the effective leader that she is, Diana has each of her people contributing where they are most skilled; some in combat, others in R&D. The tech guys create a spiffy hologram projector and accidentally fool Diana into attacking nonexistent empire guys. They're embarrassed but Diana's not.



See, she *would* totally be unfazed, so that's good, but...



I mean really. What bizarre-ass Amazons are these? Even the Bana wouldn't do that shit.

I like that she's in lasso withdrawl, though. Take away the magic, and a rope with a loop is hardly the most useful or efficient weapon, but she keeps trying to make one anyway.

The pirates are not, of course, a unified front...





... but Diana knows what she's doing. (And can I just say how sad I was when Diana helped out the khunds in Gail's run recently and no mention of this storyline was made and Ectreba was nowhere to be found? ;_; She's just so fun.)





See what I mean? Totally knows what she's doing.

She also manages to calm down the daxamite and give her the artificial eye. The daxamite does not talk, particularly, even to give her name, so Diana decides to call her Julia. That is the most respect Messner-Loebs will ever give Julia Kapatelis and the rest of Perez' supporting cast.

Meanwhile the rumor of rebellion is spreading, as it will. (The pirates have helped it along with some ominous forty-story Diana holograms on prison planets, preaching the revolution.) Naturally, this makes the emperor and his cronies rather nervous.





This banal "battle of the sexes" shit is just so painful. WML was an especially egregious offender with that, and it's particularly glaring coming off Perez' run and all that incredibly careful, well-thought-out anthropology. Compare this nonsense to the last chapter with the Bana, it's like a whole different universe. But holographic!Wondy taunting the frantic head honchos here is still pretty cool (again, though, what's with that pose? This isn't a bathing suit calendar, sweetie, drop that arm and stand like you're in charge. I mostly really like Cullens' art, which makes the odd moment of sexualized wrongness that much worse).

Diana's holographic challenge serves its purpose, and the emperor invites her and her crew to come parley. They accept, and arrive at the emperor's palace.





Sneaky sneaky, Diana! (Just as an aside, this is not actually contradictory with her Spirit of Truth portrayal. It's just a broader form of a feint in combat - a matter of effective tactics, which minimize loss of life. This kind of quick, temporary battle bluff is very much an Odysseus sort of thing, right in line with her place as Athena's champion. Still, I don't imagine it's something she does very casually.)

Meanwhile, the person walking around with the guards looking like Wonder Woman is actually Tasha. She hid a crowbar on her person, which she uses to beat the bloody tar out of her captors. Elsewhere, Julia the Daxamite is running around at random doing massive generalized violence to anything that looks remotely military, causing a distraction suitable for Tasha to free the large pile of slaves local to the palace.

And Diana?



Diana is off to fetch her lasso, so she can blow the ending of "The Crying Game" reveal the shocking twist of the Emperor's horrible secret!





Behold, as once again Diana manages to end a catastrophic conflict with careful application of the truth.

So after the fight, things wind down, the emperor swears to try to make things work out with 100% less despotic slavery, mostly because Diana's people will spill her secret if she doesn't, and Julia turns out to speak English and know the location of Earth (convenient, no?).







Aww.

And then Diana went home and said to her friends, "So, J'onn, I hear you have better international recognition than Superman, eh? Huh. That's pretty cool, I guess. I'm known as an interstellar champion, of course, but whatever, it's not a contest, right? Oh, hey, Bruce. Topple any corrupt galactic regimes lately? No? Well, still, you stopped Killer Croc, and I hear he's a pretty dangerous guy."

Oh, and we do find out later that the coup was a successful one, even without Diana there to make sure the Emperor kept her word (something she and Tasha worried about): in Jimenez' run, as part of said author's rather strange relationship with Polly, we got this scene, where Julia (as part of the alien flotilla that came to Earth during Our Worlds at War) meets her savior's mother.



A lot of credit where it isn't really due, there, and Julia speaks better English than that, which was a major plot point in getting Diana and Tasha home. Nevertheless. Diana's a legend across half the galaxy. As a payoff eight years in the making, it's amazingly worth it.

Scans are from issues 66-71, never collected in trade.

Next time: See Diana deal with rent, taxes and deadbeat dads, and meet the other Donna in her life. It's more interesting than it sounds, I promise.



(Post a new comment)


[info]nonners
2009-03-11 12:19 am UTC (link)
Your posts are always awesome and informative! Please keep it up. :)

(Reply to this) (Thread)


[info]bluefall
2009-03-11 12:36 am UTC (link)
Heh, thanks. Glad you're enjoying them.

(Reply to this) (Parent)


[info]sistermagpie
2009-03-11 12:35 pm UTC (link)
IAWTC!

(Reply to this) (Parent)


[info]magus_69
2009-03-11 12:27 am UTC (link)
Every bit as awesome as I remember it. Only...

Did you have to use the scorpion picture?!?

GAH!

And now I'd love to see what Gail would make of the space pirates. Gail + Wondy + Space Pirates would undoubtedly = AWESOME.

(Reply to this) (Thread)


[info]bluefall
2009-03-11 12:33 am UTC (link)
Did you have to use the scorpion picture?!?

Absolutely. The one I was using before was simply not WTF enough to express the WTFness of WML's WTF.

I want Kho and Ectreba to hang out.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

(no subject) - [info]icon_uk, 2009-03-11 01:11 pm UTC

[info]kamino_neko
2009-03-11 12:52 am UTC (link)
Is it me, or does this species' biology not particularly make sense even by the rather loose standards of the universe which gives us Kryptonians and Daxamites gaining god-like powers based on the colour of the sun of the planet they're on?

(Reply to this) (Thread)


[info]bluefall
2009-03-11 10:56 am UTC (link)
Well.... The rule for something like that is generally "if it makes the story awesome, it's okay" - not quite rule of cool or rule of funny, but rule of narrative imperative, perhaps? In which case, kryptonian/daxamite absurdity is, while not, probably, objectively any more ridiculous and impossible than this "one sex then the other" nonsense, infinitely more okay, because the "battle of the sexes" crap here is not just unnecessary but actively dragging the plot down in quality.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

(no subject) - [info]kamino_neko, 2009-03-11 11:48 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]ceru, 2009-03-11 02:31 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]unknownscribler, 2009-03-11 09:02 pm UTC

[info]kamino_neko
2009-03-11 01:06 am UTC (link)
Also, various odd little issues I have with what's going on here...

Sakritt, the Dominator, with the unusual (and inconsistent) skin colour, non-standard caste mark, and personal name...

The rather...bizarre lettering choices for some of the alien women's speech. (The oddly placed glottal stops the scientist has are distracting, the stuff done to Ectreba's speech is just confusing...)

The two blue girls in 30th century Science Police uniforms...

(Reply to this) (Thread)


[info]bluefall
2009-03-11 10:56 am UTC (link)
Aw, now you're just being picky.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

(no subject) - [info]kamino_neko, 2009-03-11 11:19 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]bluefall, 2009-03-11 12:07 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]kamino_neko, 2009-03-11 12:30 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]icon_uk, 2009-03-11 01:15 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]bluefall, 2009-03-11 01:24 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]kamino_neko, 2009-03-11 01:36 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]bluefall, 2009-03-11 02:04 pm UTC

[info]icon_uk
2009-03-11 09:09 am UTC (link)
IIRC "It's a good day to die" predates Klingons by at the very least a century, as it's a Lakotah Indian warcry

(Reply to this) (Thread)


[info]bluefall
2009-03-11 10:52 am UTC (link)
Yes, but when were the Lakota space pirates, hmn?

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

(no subject) - [info]icon_uk, 2009-03-11 11:27 am UTC

[info]mysteryfan
2009-03-11 11:42 am UTC (link)
Used nicely in "Little Big Man."

(Reply to this) (Parent)


[info]janegray
2009-03-11 09:28 am UTC (link)
Wonderful, all of it.

And Diana is waring pants :D

again, though, what's with that pose? This isn't a bathing suit calendar, sweetie, drop that arm and stand like you're in charge.

I actually rather like that pose, because it looks so relaxed in spite of the fact that she just "infiltrated" the enemy's most protected chamber and is now a few feets away from the Big Bad. It's like her body language is saying "bitches, you are so not a threat to me, I'm not even bothering to stay in guard. I could take a comfortable nap here and now, that's how much I pwn you!

(Reply to this) (Thread)


[info]aaron_bourque
2009-03-11 10:27 am UTC (link)
Pretty much.

It could also be argued that Diana's casual stripping on the space station is just what she would do around women if she needed to change outfits.

However, then you take the "camera" into account, and Diana starts becoming a bit of a tease during WML's run. I wouldn't have a problem with, say, Phantom Lady or Black Canary doing shit like that, but with Diana it just seems crass.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

(no subject) - [info]icon_uk, 2009-03-11 01:16 pm UTC

[info]bluefall
2009-03-11 10:59 am UTC (link)
And Diana is waring pants :D

Inorite? I really, really, really like that costume, even with the straplessness and the crazy please-rip-my-ears-off earring. It probably wouldn't look quite right worn around Earth, just because it's so clearly not amazon, but then, the bathing suit's got the same problem, and at least this looks cool.

(Reply to this) (Parent)


[info]aaron_bourque
2009-03-11 10:33 am UTC (link)
And then Diana went home and said to her friends, "So, J'onn, I hear you have better international recognition than Superman, eh? Huh. That's pretty cool, I guess. I'm known as an interstellar champion, of course, but whatever, it's not a contest, right? Oh, hey, Bruce. Topple any corrupt galactic regimes lately? No? Well, still, you stopped Killer Croc, and I hear he's a pretty dangerous guy."

And you complain when others write Wondy out of character???

But that gets me into one of my little peeves about Post-COIEs DC universe. Superman isn't anywhere near as heroic as he once was. He's supposed to be the favorite hero on Earth. I'd love for just a simple retcon that turned Superman into the First Superhero (recognized), as he was in the Golden and Silver and Bronze Ages. We've got time travel, it wouldn't be that hard.

In fact, it should be a because of a plot by the Time Trapper, to try to eliminate Superman's influence on later centuries, but Superman manages to foil it in a way that makes him show up and BE SUPERMAN at random times during the 20th century, even before the Golden Age heroes showed up, so that Superman could be the inspiration he was originally and inspire gaggles of costumed heroes over the decades.

. . .

Wondy can come, too.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

(no subject) - [info]bluefall, 2009-03-11 11:04 am UTC
Double Take
[info]spoony_bard
2009-03-11 10:49 am UTC (link)
I need to slow down when I'm scrolling through these posts. I looked at the fourth page down where Diana's in the suit with the lasso around her and thought she was firing nipple lasers.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

(no subject) - [info]bluefall, 2009-03-11 11:05 am UTC

[info]mysteryfan
2009-03-11 11:40 am UTC (link)
Diana's looking a little Rambo-esque in some of these scans. Also, she punches Batman in this weeks Superman/Batman. It's kind of awesome.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

(no subject) - [info]bluefall, 2009-03-11 01:26 pm UTC
Testing it out
[info]spoony_bard
2009-03-11 12:01 pm UTC (link)
someone called for a NOM NOM? I kept the original components I used for the Gif, so once I get ahold of a gif creator that doesn't shoehorn the UNREGISTERED into the mix, I think we're set.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Re: Testing it out - [info]bluefall, 2009-03-11 01:27 pm UTC
Re: Testing it out - [info]unknownscribler, 2009-03-11 04:50 pm UTC
Re: Testing it out - [info]bluefall, 2009-03-11 08:17 pm UTC
Re: Testing it out - [info]spoony_bard, 2009-03-11 09:55 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]bluefall, 2009-03-11 09:58 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]spoony_bard, 2009-03-11 10:08 pm UTC

[info]unknownscribler
2009-03-11 12:06 pm UTC (link)
Any chance of posting a picture of Julia?

Also, the gear she's wearing in the final lot of scans looks really really nice and it saddens me they stuck her back in the star spangled knickers when this would have made a perfecr transition point to a new costume.

And another thing that I notice is related to WML's woeful inability to comprehend numbers -- hundreds of womenplanets</i>?? The initial set up of the Krell with the change every century makes a sort of sense if you squint and think he's trying to homage Left Hand of Darkness and mayhaps the classic Doctor Who story "The Mutants"; the assumption of the multiple century lifespan this would require is something of a science fantasy staple and there are many examples of life here on Earth that demonstrate similarly stupidly vulnerable breeding behaviour. The outlier appearance of individuals of opposing gender to the majority that's referenced later makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint as essentially a form of insurance against catastrophic failure of the primary breeding cycle.

That cycle itself is interesting. It comes around every century, but obviously has to take course over a period of at least a few years. Is the basis for who changes first based on genetic lottery or simply age? Is there a period of functional hermaphrodism or is the change much more drastic? Do you spend equal cycles male and female, or do you flip sufficiently often to die as you were born?

The inexplicable increase of the period between gender shift by an order of magnitude seems to imply not only amor econventional life span but that either the males get pregnant (which as the capacity for pregnancy is surely what biologically makes a female a female you're looking at the terms male and female as nothing but personality descriptors) or that the species spends its male phase impregnating all manner of female aliens and thus its female phase being impregnated by alien men, which starts towards the Mars Needs Women trope of aliens whose DNA utterly overwhelms that of the host partner.

Trying fannishly to make it all fit together, from that latter point of view in the paragraph above you could see the current krell attutude towards women developing -- let's assume that they develop spaceflight towars the end of a male cycle, flip over as per usual, expand peacefully enough during the female cycle and discover that they can interbreed with aliens, then flip back to being male. At this point the guys have been handed a flourishing domain along with the discovery that they no longer require female krell in order to continue the race. No krell ever has to get pregnant again because the rest of the galaxy can be their brood mares, and if that's the case, then in theory the krell need never undergo another gender flip and whatever the hell physical effects that have tp be endured because of it.

So suddenly, the rest fo the galaxy finds itself caught unawares as this peaceful feminine society wigs out and starts conquoring places. And while their scientists may have cracked how to hold off the vast majority of the krell from undergoing their regular gendershift, either they can't quite handle unchaining the procreative urge conversely maybe chaining it is the payoff for halting the change. So all these prison planets that have been set up quite likely become rape camps every, oh, seven years or so, and Diana and Natasha were just really lucky to have encountered these guys during a lull.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

(no subject) - [info]bluefall, 2009-03-11 01:38 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]unknownscribler, 2009-03-11 03:56 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]bluefall, 2009-03-11 08:05 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]unknownscribler, 2009-03-11 08:39 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]bluefall, 2009-03-11 09:57 pm UTC

[info]scottyquick
2009-03-11 03:41 pm UTC (link)
That would be a fantastic example of acceptable OOCness, the "Btw, I'm awesome" speech.

Oh! There could be a parallel universe!

(Reply to this) (Thread)

(no subject) - [info]bluefall, 2009-03-11 08:16 pm UTC

[info]bwmedia.wordpress.com
2009-03-11 10:00 pm UTC (link)
In the panel where Tasha is talking about J'onn, the shading on Diana makes it look like she's wearing something that covers her boobs, but are still flesh toned. Odd.

The only time I've ever seen a "battle of the sexes" story work is Vandred, but they really went somewhere with that series, even after we learn who the bad guys actually are. (Didn't care for that revelation--is that spoilerable by now?)

(Reply to this)


[info]scottyquick
2009-03-12 07:59 am UTC (link)
Also, Cripes, just once can we have a Russian woman who's not named Natasha and who's not a space ballerina spy?

(Reply to this)

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2011-01-14 11:20 pm UTC (link)
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2011-01-21 10:40 pm UTC (link)

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