A (hopefully) short thread on the Azzarello/Chiang era of Wonder Woman.

I touch on some of this in my WW history series, so if you've read the Marston entries, you'll likely know some of this, but in any case, worth doing.

A lot of what Marston does in his original conception of Wonder Woman is take a myth and re-write it completely and wholly.

Myths are, in essence, ideas and assumptions of a culture and a period, carried forth and forward, warped in various ways to suit various folks.

And a lot of myths are made by...well, men. They're behind a lot of them, the assumptions and narratives of their times. The beliefs of their period.

It's important to keep in mind regarding the myth of Amazons and how it sometimes reads. The horrific things about them.

A lot of this is what feminist historian Abby Wettan Kleinbaum argues in regards to the Amazons. And it's also what Greg Rucka (who actually studied greek myth at school) argues in his Rebirth run.

That myths are written by winners, by men, almost always. And to be careful.

So what Marston does is, he re-writes the whole damn myth. He makes Amazons the most amazing, lovely, beautiful concept and myth, the thing made and meant to save all of us. To be, well, Paradise, to be this safe place that celebrates women and is truly awesome.

The Amazons are made by Aphrodite, to save man's world from Mars (Mars and not Ares because Mars was a key icon in 1910's suffrage imagery and cartoons) and his views and values of men, his patriarchy. Mars even had three generals-

CONQUEST
GREED
DECEPTION

And his Amazons are victims, tricked and abused and enslaved by Hercules, an agent of Mars. He destroys their paradise, their Amazonia, this promise of feminine power.

Then the Amazons go off to form Paradise Island, Themyscira and they're innovators, scientists, geniuses.

A lot of Marston's efforts were to take a harmful myth and replace it with a new, better one, to perform a ritual of reclamation so that women may have an awesome myth for this new age.

Azzarello then dares to ask 'What if we undid that entire thing and made them the bad thing?'

What was actually feminist, progressive, kind and brilliant, all that was worthwhile about Amazons and the WW myth is turned into...well, everything it was designed to avoid, really.

It becomes a parody of itself and Rucka minces no words in Rebirth, calling it precisely that.

And so you get rapist misandrists and pirates who kill the men they use to get pregnant (notice how Marston's removal of men is undone, too) and then sell all male babies INTO ETERNAL SLAVERY IN EXCHANGE FOR WEAPONS.

There are no words to describe how badly this misses the point

Then you have things like how Mr. Rapist #1 and the face of patriarchal problems is made the dad of WW. But that aside, too, Diana was always raised with love and acceptance.

She grew with THOUSANDS of mothers and sisters and lovers. She felt, always, at home, accepted.

Azzarello's take has her be mocked with the name 'Mud' and has her be bullied and feel isolated and horrible. Now, this can work in other hands.

But Azz's solution is...Ares, who looks like Azzrello, is the only one who 'gets' her and he becomes her mentor and close figure.

The Amazons are, under Azz, consistently made terrible, stripped away of all that makes them decent, human, lovable, wonderful and instead Diana, for years, is instead mentored on by Ares, who supposedly sees her for who she is and accepts her the way she isn't by others.

Perhaps the most telling bit about the run is the ending. Diana throws the enemy into the eternal pit of suffering, much like Zeus did, which caused this whole clusterfuck in the first place and she calls it 'love'.

'Love' is an ironic joke and Diana breaks no cycles at all.

She just does the same old dumb shit that Zeus did. She's not a subversive figure, she does not attempt to do or be better in any way.

Compare that to Rucka's end, with loving submission, where in Diana wins and beats her foes with PROPER love, it means something to Rucka.

All of which is to say, Azz's WW isn't interested in being a Wonder Woman comic as much as Azzarello's Vertigo Greek Gods drama starring a character that is The Amazon Princess.

A point of contrast that I think is insightful and worth offering. The stuff people talk about, the Amazons being flawed and people rather than 'ideals', which is very fair, was done by other writers, especially women.

Gail Simone's The Circle does just that and rather well.

And while the run itself is a mixed bag, The Circle is insightful. It's all about womanhood, motherhood and how that affects and informs this society of women and what that is and how that ideal can be.

It's written from a female perspective, as opposed to Azz's male pov.

P.S- This is a good example of how comparison/contrast can help get a better, broader sense of texts.

Marston, Rucka and Azz are all vastly different voices/creators doing very different things in different eras. That doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't compare them.

No work exists in a vacuum, it exists in conversation with its past, with all that came before, with its history.

Even if unintended, it is very much linked to all that has been and is. Authorial intent isn't what drives or defines critique, the work itself and perspective do.