Although DC’s nu-52 so far can hardly be described as epic in its sensibilities, it has at least one thing in common with Homer: it began its stories ‘in medias res’ – that is, in the middle of the action. There were no origin stories, no explanations for what had happened before each issue. Instead, we were thrust into the stories, assuming we would learn later on what was going on.
And so it is this month, 12 months after the first of the nu52 titles came out, that DC has released issue #0s for a whole range of both its surviving titles and its forthcoming titles. For the most part, these have been simple origin stories – Catwoman explains how Selina Kyle lost her memory and became a criminal, Supergirl explores why her parents sent her away from Krypton, Batgirl looks at how Barbara Gordon became Batgirl and lost her ability to walk, Batwoman looks at how Kate Kane was trained by her father and so on. Even Justice League #0 is merely about how Billy Batson gets the power of Shazam.
The thing is, we know nu52 Wonder Woman’s origin already: born on the island of the Amazons to Queen Hippolyta, her father the god Zeus – that much is clear and has already been (infamously) spelt out in issue #3. True, we’ve not really seen Steve Trevor crashing on Paradise Island, but we’ve had that reasonably well covered in Justice League #12, which only really left a couple of possible elements that needed covering: ‘the Contest’ among the Amazons to be the one to take Trevor back to the outside world and the point at which Wonder Woman decides to stay and fight for mortals against gods and monsters.
So leave it to Brian Azzarello to do something completely different. His #0 is a far more interesting affair: a story that takes an affectionate look at the Silver Age with an alleged tale from All-Girl Adventure Tales For Men #41 to explore just how Wonder Girl became Wonder Woman, and more importantly, given it’s Wonder Woman, how she learnt there’s more to being a warrior than killing.
We also learn exactly what DC thinks of Wonder Woman and what their master plan is.
So after the jump, let’s look at Wonder Woman #0, as well as Earth 2 #0, in which an alternative universe Wonder Woman appears to have no romantic interest in Superman, Action Comics #10, in which in retrospect the nu-52 Wonder Woman actually does appear to have some romantic interest in Superman, Justice League International Annual, in which the nu-52 Wonder Woman and Superman very much have a romantic interest in one another (and the superheroes of the future are not best happy about that), and Ame-Comi Girls, in which an alternative universe Wonder Woman proves that she’s the strongest superhero of them all – and is definitely not interested in Supergirl.
Incidentally, Cliff Chiang had already drawn a cover for Wonder Woman #0, before all the #0 issues were standardised on the ‘burst’ motif. Wouldn’t this have been just so much better?
Continue reading “Review: Wonder Woman #0/Earth 2 #0/Ame-Comi Girls #1-2”
