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Wonder Woman #601: All New and Way Different

By Andy Frisk
August 8, 2010 - 14:12

Paradise Island has been destroyed. Invaders from the world of men have killed, along with their queen, thousands of Amazons. Those who have survived have scattered across the globe and have suffered through what can only be described as an Amazonian diaspora. They wait and pray for their savior, the only daughter of Queen Hippolyta, to rise up and reunite the tribe and save them from their shadowy persecutors. Persecutors who operate on American soil, use American weaponry and tanks, and are on a mission to kill every last Amazon…and you thought all that changed in the pages of Wonder Woman was Diana’s clothes.

Wait though, something’s not right…as Diana is told, in reference to the history of her people that she’s just finally been fully made aware of, “The past you saw…isn’t the past that was…something happened, and we have to put it right…Something’s changed, something…” So Hippolyta’s death, Diana’s hard alt-rock look, her early life in the sewers, all the Moses and messiah subtexts, and Diana’s vicious new mindset (“I’m going to kill them. I’m going to kill all of them.”) might be for naught? I’m a bit confused…changes of this sort usually only happen after a CRISIS in the DCU of INFINITE affect, but its been a while now since the last CRISIS, and it’s a little late to be getting the Wonder Woman reboot rolling. Also, Diana is aware that something’s amiss. She is dreaming of herself in the old one piece bathing suit costume. Once things get set “right,” and Diana is back to being her old self again, maybe she’ll keep the new duds just for fun? The time stream has to be corrected at some point. I seriously doubt that Wonder Woman, as a character and relatively poor selling title, will fundamentally change the entire DC Universe. All of this seems like a really weird way to get Diana to simply change clothes.

What Wonder Woman readers are witnessing in “Past Imperfect, Present Tense” is a fundamental (and permanent?) change in the soul of Wonder Woman the character. J. Michael Straczynski has created a Wonder Woman that can only be described as coming off as a Diana from a parallel Earth. While the story is very well written (we expect nothing less from the immensely talented Straczynski), it feels like this should be the Wonder Woman story for the Earth One version of the character, of which we’ll be seeing the Superman and Batman versions of soon, where DC Comics heroes will be written about from the perspective of their coming into existence in today’s real world. Earth One is going to be DC Comics’ version of what Ultimate Comics is to Marvel Comics, or at least it seems that way according to advanced promo info at this point. This new, less skin baring Wonder Woman would be a perfect fit for that world.

By taking away Diana’s mother (like JJ Abrams took away Kirk’s father in the new Star Trek film), Straczynski fundamentally changes the whole character of Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman/Princess Diana is a potential laden character that really could have some interesting things to say and themes to explore. As I’ve stated before about Wonder Woman: she’s a Classical goddess living in a Neo-Classical world. She’s also based in America, the ultimate culmination of the best and worst aspects of Neo-Classicism in practice as a society and a government. Like Dynamite Comics’ short lived Athena series and character, there is a lot of interesting ground on her to be covered or uncovered (OK, I couldn’t resist the pun on Diana’s new duds vs. her old ones). By dropping Diana into a storyline where she’s a clandestine underground fighter trying to save her people from persecution and wiping away her heroic aspects, all in order to get her to change clothes…well, it just seem to be a potentially disastrous move that could amount to much ado about nothing once her reality gets put back the way it’s supposed to be. At her heart, an in our age at least, Wonder Woman is a metaphor for the struggle between a Neo-Classicist and Classicist way of looking at and doing things as much as she is a metaphor for gender roles an relationship conflicts. “Past Imperfect, Present Tense” makes Wonder Woman into a sort of angry Christ and not really the Wonder Woman we’ve known, even if this characterization is interesting. In some ways what’s happened to Wonder Woman is a near equivalent to the idea of turning Superman into Batman philosophically.

Wonder Woman doesn’t have to go through so drastic a change in order to get herself a new costume that is more politically correct and practical. She just needs to be drawn differently. Speaking of drawing, Wonder Woman artist Don Kramer’s art is fantastic. He is a master of all the necessary sequential art abilities. Anatomy, choreography, facial expression, proportion, background detail (which he is particularly superb at), and that ever elusive vision and talent that allows him to draw truly beautiful faces that you have a hard time taking your eyes off of. Diana’s countenance is the most beautiful facial rendering of a female hero that we’ve seen in a very long time. Kramer’s pencils would not be nearly as strikingly beautiful though without inker Michael Babinski’s heavy but appropriate ink work and Alex Sinclair’s coloring. The finished product forms one of the best looking series being drawn, inked and colored right now.

So, while Wonder Woman definitely needed some kind of revamping, as a series and a character, the changes that Straczynski has made to Wonder Woman are too extreme. At some point Wonder Woman will revert back to her original thematic and metaphoric underpinnings and keep the new outfit, which is great. She just doesn’t need to be so fundamentally revamped character wise to fit the new harsher look. Women change clothes and styles all the time, why couldn’t Diana do the same without changing her history and outlook?

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12