Wonder Woman has had quite complicated history. That problem has plagued Wonder Woman and many projects involving her. They tried to make a Wonder Woman movie and show, but both projects never went anywhere. To add to the confusion, in August 2010 Wonder Woman’s costume changed, and then her stories were changed to where the Gods of Olympus abandoned the Amazons and Diana had to fix the timeline, but she did not even remember the original timeline. Fortunately, her original costume returns and things are simplified in Wonder Woman #1.
This issue is written by Brian Azzarello with art by Cliff Chiang. Azzarello is an interesting and dark writer. He has written issues of “100 Bullets,” as well as graphic novels such as “Lex Luthor: Man of Steel” and “Joker.” What he wanted to do was bring a darker Wonder Woman and he definitely showed us that.
We do not see Wonder Woman until about 10 pages in. But before we can get to her we see some pretty brutal stuff such as horses being decapitated in order to become Centaurs. When we see Wonder Woman, she shows us the ferocity and fighting spirit that makes Diana so strong of a character. She is not afraid to fight dirty and spill blood to defend herself.
Most people remember Wonder Woman from the Justice League cartoon show, where she was portrayed as a very strong character whose recklessness seemed to be more of a weakness. However in this issue we see Diana’s recklessness as a strength rather than a weakness.
The person she is defending is a woman named Zola who according to Hermes, the messenger for the Greek gods is pregnant by Zeus. Speaking of the Greek gods, aside from Hermes and the Centaurs, the reader doesn’t see much of the Greek gods, which actually helps the story a lot more because having the Greek gods as central characters in the story would complicate things, especially with this being the first issue.
However, the villains in this story are not really explained. We see one villain who appears to be planning something for future issues as well as centaurs that Diana fights in order to protect Zola. But readers are not given much explanation for these characters.
Just like with Superman, there have been attempts to re-write Diana’s history and make her more relatable so that new readers can understand her. The most recent attempt was when J. Michael Straczynski took over the writing duties for her book from issue #600 to 614. Just like the attempts at Superman this has been met with negative reactions from fans.
But it seems that with “New 52,” DC may have found a way for new readers to get into Wonder Woman. Diana certainly proves that she is a force to be reckoned with a ferocity and strength that shows us why she is called Wonder Woman. Simplifying her history at least for this issue will definitely be easy for readers to understand.
