Tuesday 23 July 2013

#CBR5 Book 91. "Wonder Woman: Blood" by Brian Azzarello, Cliff Chiang and Tony Akins

Page count: 160 pages
Rating: 4 stars

After DC pressed the big cosmic reset button AGAIN, quite a lot of their superhero titles no longer exist, and others have pretty much been rebooted from scratch. Generally uninterested in these "new" interpretations, I've been avoiding DC (the first new issue of Catwoman were especially atrocious, really beyond awful), but my husband picked up Azzarello's reboot of Wonder Woman and strongly recommended I give it a chance. I always liked the character, but figured that when even Gail Simone (whose Birds of Prey and Secret Six comics I loved) couldn't really get her right, it was unlikely that anyone would. I was wrong, though. Azzarello's take is fresh, and interesting, and Wonder Woman herself is as awesome as she should be.

A young woman shows up in Wonder Woman's bedroom, sent by Hermes. She needs protection against the supernatural assassins sent by Hera, as she carries one of Zeus' children. Wonder Woman refuses to let the girl be killed, and takes her to be protected among the Amazons, even though she herself has always been an outcast there. While on Themiscyra, Hera's sinister daughter Strife shows up, trying to cause, well...strife. Diana discovers the secret to her own origin, she was not sculpted in clay by her mother, as she always believed. The truth of her parentage is going to change everything for Wonder Woman and the other Amazons.

Diana, Princess of the Amazons, kicks all kinds of ass in these first 6 issues of the reboot. The art is great, well done without ever becoming gratuitous (which is sadly often the case in superhero comics about female characters). There's a several page scene in the first issue, where Wonder Woman is clearly naked in her bedroom, getting dressed after the unexpected arrival of Zeus' most recent baby mama, yet there are no pointless tits and ass shots and it's never played for titillation. There have apparently also been criticism that Diana is very violent in this, rather than an emissary for peace, as she's often been in the past. But Diana is an Amazon, and possibly the only superhero in the DC Universe who can rival Superman and Batman for awesomeness. She's a supernatural warrior, and it seems strange to me to complain about a story where she's allowed to act as the warrior woman she is. Highly recommended, I'm looking forward to reading more from this creative team.

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