InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "No, you move!"

colonel_green (colonel_green) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-08-26 16:06:00

Entry tags:

char: amadeus cho, char: black canary/dinah lance, char: wonder woman/diana of themyscira, creator: aaron lopresti, creator: fred van lente, creator: gail simone, creator: greg pak, creator: rodney buchemi, publisher: dc comics, publisher: marvel comics, title: incredible hercules, title: wonder woman

Mythapalooza (Part II)

Four scans apiece from Wonder Woman #35 and Incredible Hercules #133.

Diana and Dinah engage in some more cage-fighting, and then come face to face with Pele, Goddess of Violence (and Dance; I'm disappointed that wasn't brought up). She hits Diana with some kind of fire and takes her spirit to Kane's old island, leaving Diana's inert body in the arena with Black Canary.

This goes on for a bit...

Between this and the current iHerc arc, lightning powers are apparently the hot new accessory for autumn.

Speaking of which, the second issue of the month focusses on Cho's quest to find out what's going on with the Excello Soap Company and his apparently living sister Maddy (whose full name, we find out, was "Madame Curie Cho", which, as I see it, indicates that Mr. and Mrs. Cho got what they deserved; yeesh, "Marie" wasn't good enough?). He runs into an FBI agent who contacted him in his origin, and they end up surrounded by an army of giant floating brains (no, really).

He wakes up on a bus again, and then arrives back in Excello (the town), which is now bustling with people and acting like it's a Rodgers and Hammerstein production:

Not as good as the Herc/Zeus story, though a lot of that is probably them spending most of the issue expositing about stuff from Amazing Fantasty (v.2) #15 that most readers wouldn't have read (as well as things the solicit revealed already).

Great art, though. I loved Buchemi's work on #126's Herc origin, and it's great that he's doing "Assault on New Olympus" after this.

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	volksjager 2009-08-26 07:23 pm UTC (link)
	NOT liking Canary in the long coat. Look too much like that rubish get up in "birds of prey" TV show... (Reply to this) (Thread)

	jlbarnett 2009-08-27 02:03 am UTC (link)
	it's just part of her ninja/pirate undercover outfit. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	khamelea 2009-08-26 07:29 pm UTC (link)
	To his friends he's Monty but to you he's Mr Burns! (Bu-bu-bu-bu-burns!) (Reply to this) (Thread)

	proteus_lives 2009-08-26 07:36 pm UTC (link)
	That's MR. BURNS! (Reply to this) (Parent)

	(Anonymous) 2009-08-26 10:53 pm UTC (link)
	I thought the exact same thing when I read that song. High five! (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	khamelea 2009-08-27 02:31 am UTC (link)
	I can't even remember the lyrics to the original from Citizen Kane. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	xammax 2009-08-26 08:02 pm UTC (link)
	I love alot of Simones work, but she really has a habit of doing that: "This random new character is more powerful/better/faster/deadlier/blank then Batman/Superman character or aspect. Its like one of those squashes when a new villain shows up but so much easier to ignore I know it will never come up again. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	colonel_green 2009-08-26 08:04 pm UTC (link)
	Well, Pele is a god, so she should be a lot more powerful than Superman. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

xammax
2009-08-26 11:49 pm UTC (link)

Superman wrestled one of the Four Hosts of the Presence... that beats the shit out of just some god.

But my comment was more to just a trend I see that ruins little moments in books I love anyways. The book establishes this is a goddess and what she is there about. This throw away line just rubs me alittle, like in Secret Six when the villain supposedly made Arkham inmates afraid. Bane didn't flinch so I don't see Joker or Two-Face running for the hills.

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batcookies
2009-08-26 11:59 pm UTC (link)

Superman wrestled one of the Four Hosts of the Presence

Superman's power levels are more variable than any other character's. One week he's putting Almighty God in a headlock, the next he's struggling with Toyman's robots. Whatever.

And Junior was the kid of the supervillain community's Charles Manson. I don't think it's unreasonable that she'd grow up to be especially scary, even by crazy supervillain standards.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

Thor line..

steverodgers5
2009-08-29 01:54 pm UTC (link)

Yeah, Superman's power levels are all over the place, sometimes even in the same story.

Still, "She hit's harder than Kal, every touch is like a full swing from Thor's hammer.."

Heh! As a big Thor fan I couldn't help but smile at that line..

And I really enjoyed the heck out of both the story and art in this issue. Loved the little dig at the Wonderwoman figurine that folks were slighting in here not too long ago, and the ending had some real interesting Tom/Diana interaction..(That I don't want to spoil for anyone who hasn't read it yet..)

So good stuff all round..
Thanks Gail!

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	Re: Thor line.. ashtoreth 2009-08-30 01:18 am UTC (link)
	:P But is she speaking of a DC Thor or is she remembering JLA/Avengers? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

Good question..but..

steverodgers5
2009-08-30 05:09 pm UTC (link)

I'd say DC Thor.(There was that story where her and Kal ended up in Asgard for Ragnarok that took place over about a 100 years or something..) And Marvel Thor seemed to take quite a shine to Wonderwoman, so I'd hope he never clocked her with his hammer. (And by hammer I mean Mjolnir..not y'know..)

Still if you look really closely in the background of the Captain America/Batman fight in JLA/Avengers you can see Thor and Wonderwoman 'having at it' so I suppose it's possible. But I'd like to think that Marvel Thor would be gallant enough to never strike a woman unless he absolutely has to:- i.e In some life or Death situation.(Check out his 'fight' with Storm in the 2nd Contest of Champions mini series for a good example of Thor's old fashioned would be chivalry there..)

Which of course would probably get him a few bruises from Wonderwoman..(Something which I sure his pal Herc could testify to..)

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bluefall
2009-08-27 12:37 am UTC (link)

I too thought the Junior stuff was pretty weak, and made no secret of it (it was nice to see that redeemed somewhat a little later in the storyline, when Cheetah and Bolt were both completely unimpressed by her reputation), but Pele hitting harder than Clark only makes sense. And since Clark hits harder than Diana anyway and she can still take him, and Clark being insanely strong is merely a fraction of his defining traits, it's not like "who hits hardest" is some kind of all-encompassing statement of power hierarchy or threat level here - Diana's not actually even saying this will be an unusually hard fight. Just an excessively painful one. It's a statement on the level of "wow, he's even more curt than Batman" or "she's got a right hook Shiva would envy."

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	ashtoreth 2009-08-27 03:17 am UTC (link)
	I guess it depends on whether you define angels as servants of gods or equals to them. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	bruinsfan 2009-08-29 07:35 pm UTC (link)
	Generally speaking, DC has depicted Judeo-Christian angels as being vastly more powerful than polytheistic deities, who often get reduced to high end superhero/villain status. (Reply to this) (Parent)

bluefall
2009-08-26 08:21 pm UTC (link)

Man, Diana's gotten fickle. Pele's a troublemaker, too. No worse than Aphrodite, I suppose, but "champion" is a bit different than "servant" as well (and now I'm wondering about the plausibility of giving her a white hat facelift; Perez followed Marston's lead in affording that to some degree to the Patrons, but subsequent writers have written them more in original Greek character, so there's room to argue consistency either way).

In Herc news, I like any song that uses the abbreviation "poi" and means it.

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	01d55 2009-08-27 02:34 am UTC (link)
	"And a terrible promise is made" suggests that she wouldn't be getting into this if it the alternative wasn't "Continue to duke it out with a Goddess of violence who's got a legitimate grievance on you." (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

bluefall
2009-08-27 03:21 am UTC (link)

Well, I don't really see Diana killing anybody for sleeping with the wrong woman, or, like, setting a perfectly innocent person on fire just to hurt somebody who hasn't, actually, wronged Pele and is in fact doing her a tremendous favor at that very moment, no matter what the alternative is. Pele is Zeus and Hera combined in terms of mythological shenanigans - she does the seducing and the petty vengeance, all in one convenient fiery package - so there's every possibility that being her champion would lead to exactly the same sort of moral quandary Diana just faced with Zeus. (Unless, of course, Pele gets a white hat facelift like most of the Olympians did, in order to protect Diana from just that sort of problem.)

Hard to say the extent of her pledge, though, anyway - the whole "I made a terrible promise and then it was okay to leave" suggests a one-time exchange, some form of divine reparation (kill Zeus, maybe, which would make sense from Pele and could fit Diana's attitude (and could explain the upcoming "Diana in Themysciran jail" solicit)), but Diana's actual conversation with Pele seems to indicate Pele has inherited her obligation to/championship of Kane and her service is more long-term, a total offer of fealty. I guess we'll see.

Anyway, I mock, but this actually sits much better with me than the conversion to Milohai. Her obligation here is pretty concrete and indisputable, and neither party is pretending the relationship is anything other than it is. And this actually is her responsibility, instead of its direct opposite like last time. To carry the metaphor to its tortured conclusion, if she whored her faith out to Kane, service to Pele after Kane's death is choosing to raise and care for the subsequent baby. It doesn't relieve or redeem her betrayal of Athena and the other Patrons (the... cuckolded spouse, in this case? Why do these metaphors always get away from me?), in fact, it's only likely to make that relationship worse, but it's still an appropriate response, and the only right one for Diana.

damnit, I swear I know how to spell, and what's this parentheticals inside my parentheticals stuff again, man, this is just not my week for coherence at all

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	01d55 2009-08-27 09:53 am UTC (link)
	I'm not familiar with Pele's rap sheet. You know a good page for that? I'm not entirely comfortable with using "whoring" in the way that you use it in this case. Those little self-berating messages that show up below your comments are a little worrying. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

bluefall
2009-08-27 11:12 am UTC (link)

Mostly I know her from this big anthology of world myths I had when I was a kid. Wiki has a couple salient (if not super coherent) stories, though, the one about Hi'iaka and Lohi'au particularly.

Those little self-berating messages that show up below your comments are a little worrying.

Just ETA markers for my ghetto edits. I've deleted and reposted more comments due to lazy, unclear phrasing, mangled html, or blatant spelling fail in the past week or so than in the entire year prior, I think. It's getting very silly.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

bluefall
2009-08-27 11:16 am UTC (link)

I'm not entirely comfortable with using "whoring" in the way that you use it in this case.

It's the most possible accurate word, actually, IMO. We've got this patron-champion relationship between Diana and Athena (and to some extent Aphrodite, Artemis et al) which is a significant commitment and emotional bond between them - in nature, it's primarily filial, but in intensity and exclusivity, it's very comparable to a marriage, particularly as we see it in Rucka's run. There is an insane amount of love and trust there, and a very definite sense of primacy and commitment.

Further, given the nature of Diana, we can feel secure in assuming this is the ideal model for a patron-champion relationship in her culture; she's the pride of the amazons, the incarnation of what they aspire to, the one who embodies their cultural mores, so it only follows that she's an ideal amazon in this way too. This is what it's supposed to look like when a god has a champion: faith, love, loyalty, devotion above and before all others, in total reciprocation. Faith in exchange for faith, love in return for love, loyalty and devotion met by loyalty and devotion.

When Diana comes to Kane Milohai, she betrays that bond with Athena, takes that faith, love, loyalty, and devotion above and before all others and gives it to some random dude as, basically, a business transaction. Faith in exchange for a magic boat, love in return for a door to Themyscira, loyalty and devotion met by... I dunno, he seems more fondly amused by her than anything. In short: She takes an expression of love that was supposed to be exclusive and reciprocal and freely given and a deep lifelong commitment, and hands it to the first stranger who was willing to pay.

Understandable? Sure (if you can overlook the Shamazons idiocy that forms half the bedrock of her motivation). There's plenty of reason to empathize with her, to the point where even Athena herself might reasonably not condemn her for it. And that's before you consider that we're looking at cultural virtues here and not objective ones (back on the other side of the metaphor, our culture values marriage over prostitution, but even within our ranks you'll find folks who disagree with the metric for both; surely there are amazons who'd consider "free agent" a better MO than the standard champion system, and we readers being outside her culture have no reason at all to share Diana's perspective). But really... that only reinforces the comparison.

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	bluefall 2009-08-27 11:17 am UTC (link)
	See? Right there. "Possible accurate," wtf is that? Let's just pretend I said "accurate possible" like I meant to and move on. (Reply to this) (Parent)

01d55
2009-08-27 11:38 am UTC (link)

That sounds much more like infidelity than whoring. The case against Diana going to Milohai is predicated on her prior commitment to Athena: absent that prior commitment there's no harm done.

Whoring doesn't imply infidelity; there is nothing in the definition of the word that requires that at least one participant be married. Excoriating Diana for whoring suggests that making the deal she did with Milohai was, in isolation from prior commitments, somehow un-virtuous or at least undignified and by analogy that prostitution is likewise undignified.

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bluefall
2009-08-27 11:51 am UTC (link)

Excoriating Diana for whoring suggests that making the deal she did with Milohai was, in isolation from prior commitments, somehow un-virtuous

Which it is, by amazon standards. I repeat:

She takes an expression of love that was supposed to be exclusive and reciprocal and freely given and a deep lifelong commitment, and hands it to the first stranger who was willing to pay.

That doesn't sound like a completely bog-standard condemnation of commercialized sex to you? "Expression of love" and "reciprocal and freely given" are as important there as "exclusive" and "commitment." And anyway you can't actually separate cultural antipathy for commercial sex from cultural antipathy for casual (ie non-relationship) sex, it's the exact same taboo. See also: the utter interchangeability of the insults "slut" and "whore" despite technical differences in meaning.

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01d55
2009-08-27 12:49 pm UTC (link)

Well now we've got to the nub of why I'm not comfortable with this line of attack: It relies on cultural antipathy for casual and commercial sex, which is inextricably linked with cultural antipathy for women.
I don't believe that prostitution is inherently harmful or undignified and I do believe that endemic cultural and legal persecution has imposed egregious harms and indignities on the vast majority of sex workers, even to the present day.

When you criticize WW's behaviour by calling it whoring, my misogyny alarm goes off, and having my misogyny alarms set off by Wonder Woman's lesbian #1 fan is a bit of a head trip.

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bluefall
2009-08-27 04:29 pm UTC (link)

Hee, sorry. Entirely my fault; I was not nearly as careful or explicit in my comparison as such a comparison requires. It wasn't actually my intent to attack Diana for her action. Her conversion to Kane unsettles me the same way, say, Dinah killing Savant would have unsettled me, even though Helena's (morally equivalent) killing of Mandragora earned an emphatic "hell yeah" - it's a betrayal of self, and as someone who loves the character, that's like watching a super-devout Jewish friend chowing down on cheeseburgers. It's not "I have a problem with you eating cheeseburgers," it's "you're doing something that should shake you to your very core and will certainly perturb your loved ones, nothing good can come of this."

Thing is, though, Diana's whole mess with Kane, being totally fantasy-based and built around a fairly alien worldview, does not necessarily come across as being particularly problematic or a big deal - there's no automatic common language or understanding of what this should mean to her the way there is of what kosher means to a devout Jew. However, her situation does map perfectly to the concepts of sex and fidelity and prostitution in our own wider culture - which do get across how problematic and what a big deal Diana's behavior is in her context, since everybody understands them completely. If I say, "Diana pledged herself to a strange god to save her mother," nobody is going to see why that makes me worry for her or why serving Pele should be a step up in terms of her... internal moral fidelity I guess. If I say "telling an amazon that would be like telling a random American that she ditched her husband and slept with a rich guy so he'd pay for her mom's surgery," though, that's a bit clearer.

Also makes it more obvious that I'm appealing to a common language pool for comprehension's sake rather than endorsing stupid, dangerous sexist bullshit to impugn a character ("whoring" as an actual intentional insult seems to me about as connected to reality as, I dunno, "thetan" as a legitimate explanation for a headache, which obviously makes it totally toothless there since you're all mindreaders amirite?). I should probably not have skipped that whole "establish the metaphor before using it" step. -.-

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	scottyquick 2009-08-29 01:56 am UTC (link)
	Wonder Woman's lesbian #1 fan #2, actually. Sorry Blue, you'll never come close to Io. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	jlbarnett 2009-08-27 06:04 pm UTC (link)
	she also loves her mother and thanks to Athena's actions, so DIana thought at least, her mother was in terrible danger. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	xammax 2009-08-27 05:17 am UTC (link)
	This continues the trend of my reading Wonder Woman and asking: Why are you listening to them. Not only do you know better, but the guy selling hot dogs down the street does too.... find better Gods woman. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	janegray 2009-08-26 08:24 pm UTC (link)
	Glad to see Diana is showing genuine grief for Kane's death and actually taking responsibility for it. (Reply to this)

	joysweeper 2009-08-26 10:42 pm UTC (link)
	I like that style of floating brain, with the spinal chord intact and branching like that. Doesn't seem to have the caudus equina(is that right?), but hey. (Reply to this)

	mullon 2009-08-26 11:00 pm UTC (link)
	Gail Simone is trying to court Peter Dinklage I see. I don't think he'd appreciate the jester costume, though. (Reply to this)

	jlbarnett 2009-08-27 01:57 am UTC (link)
	sixth smartest? Sorry no can do. Got to many established brains int he MU for that. Seventh was barely doable. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	comicoz 2009-08-27 04:11 pm UTC (link)
	Yup, the debate about where Cho fits in never had a blank in the stack that people couldn't figure out until you got past 15 or so... (Reply to this) (Parent)

	jlbarnett 2009-08-27 02:01 am UTC (link)
	Zeus is trying to bribe Diana. Or he's got some extra lightning laying around since Cassie's lasso no longer channels it. (Reply to this) (Thread)

bluefall
2009-08-27 03:31 am UTC (link)

She only thought she killed Ares, really she killed Zeus, and in doing so, absorbed his portfolio.

It's Thor, who finally got around to properly thanking her for her efforts in Valhalla by tossing her a bit of the Mjolnir mojo.

She's been storing it in her bracers since Cassie hit her with it during that inane Johnsian fisticuffs nonsense back in TITANS.

She's been under Circe's curse so long it's starting to screw up her powerset.

Donna's been sneaking into her room at night and rubbing her bracers with golden fleece, just for kicks.

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	colonel_green 2009-08-27 03:43 am UTC (link)
	She's been under Circe's curse so long it's starting to screw up her powerset. "I CURSE YOU -- with more superpowers to use against me! I is genius!" The Zeus/Ares idea is intriguing. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	bluefall 2009-08-27 03:52 am UTC (link)
	Hey, if Diana's stupid enough to ignore it for this long, no reason Circe shouldn't be stupid enough to make it beneficial to her. Actually, it wouldn't even be out of character for Circe, she did make the Bana immortal (and the curse was supposed to be a "gift" anyway, according to Heinberg). (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	jlbarnett 2009-08-27 06:07 pm UTC (link)
	I was actually wondering if it had faded. Her costume is covered in the fight scenes but she's obviously powered. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	jupiterrhode 2009-08-27 03:54 am UTC (link)
	"Donna's been sneaking into her room at night and rubbing her bracers with golden fleece, just for kicks." This would be the best idea ever. It might even redeem the whole pariah thing. (Reply to this) (Parent)

01d55
2009-08-27 01:01 pm UTC (link)

Mo theories!

Zeus is being patronizing: He doesn't grok that Diana holds him to be a murderer, thinking instead that she's feeling something like he would if Hera stomped on one of his mortal lovers; he didn't have faith in Diana's diplomatic skill and expected the fight would only end in death; he would prefer the death of an avowed and powerful enemy to that of a delinquent servant.

Zeus remember Athena's fondness for Diana. I don't know if he ever find out that reports of her death were greatly exaggerated, which has a strong influence on how likely this is to influence him.

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	jlbarnett 2009-08-27 06:09 pm UTC (link)
	on the first one, she also demonstrated that ability in the last issue. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	jupiterrhode 2009-08-27 03:56 am UTC (link)
	You know, the last page of this issue makes up sooo much for the "Diana sucks at business thing" that I can't even tell you. Let's hope it's not a fake out. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	bluefall 2009-08-27 12:18 pm UTC (link)
	First time I've ever hoped for Diana's diplomatic skills to fail her. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	jupiterrhode 2009-08-27 06:06 pm UTC (link)
	I know, right. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	bruinsfan 2009-08-29 07:41 pm UTC (link)
	I'm not sure what to think of the story yet, but I love the art on this issue of Incredible Hercules so much that I want to marry it and have its babies. (Reply to this)