WONDERWOMAN COMICS! Amazonia, JLA:League of One and the Hiketeia.

My instructor suggested I find some reading material to help inform my work. I took this as an invitation for me to spend some money on comic books under the legitimacy of "home work". Despite this humour, they really were helpful. For along time I have been interested in Wonder Woman as a character and as a queer Icon. However, any time I attempte to pick up a single issue of her monthly comic, I kinda felt burned by bad story telling and lack-luster art. So I searched around for a bit this fall and found three graphic novels with self-contained stories I could read. Hopefully I would gain some insight on the wonder woman interpretation of the Amazon tribe.



The first being Wonder Woman Amazonia, which takes place in a parallel dimension to normal continuity. Wonder Woman was brought buy force as a child to Great Britain in the late 1800s. Their she deals with general cruel male dominance and the villain Jack the Ripper, who for some strange twist has become the King. This also ties into my earlier post about Circus Strong-Women, as that is Wonder Woman's profession in this book.


What I liked about this book for starters is that it is a self contained story. I kinda already get the concept of Wonder Woman, and they clearly explain how they are altering her story to take place in the Victorian era. Secondly, I love the art. Which is referential to classic printing press line styles. (Seen Below in an Image from the Book Women: A Pictorial Archive from Nineteenth-Century Sources)



I would love to see a black and white printing of this comic, as the coloring occasionally muddies the image quite bit. Another complaints with the story, in that some times the mysogyny of the male characters seemed a bit heavy handed. But then again I don't know what it was like back then, or how society might treat women if Jack the Ripper was the king of England. Actually I take that back, when women have n uprising it is a nice reversal, as they had been taking it through out the book.

Also for Amazon culture, this book shows them as a helpful and perhaps naive tribe. The help a shipwrecked man return home, but unfortunately expose themselves to advanced weaponry and get slaughtered. Yipes.




The second book is JLA: A league of One, with the story and painted illustrations by Christopher Moeller. An crazy amazon prophecy say that the Justice League will face a dragon and die defeating it. Wonder Woman, believing that this is true, decides she will take on the role as the sole member of the Justice League, sacrificing herself so her team-mates can live. She uses the teams trust to pull off several clever tricks, eliminating her team-mates from action. The whole concept was a very Batman style plan and execution. Neat to see Wonder Woman pull it off. Funny I couldn't see Aquaman pulling this off.



The art is pretty nice, and considering it deals alot with dragons, gnomes and fairies, I'm gonna guess the writer/painter works illustrating fantasy book covers. It really lends itself to the superhero genre well. The fantasy elements build a world more like greek mythology that Amazon could live in. Their interaction with magic is nice too.



Third: Wonder Woman: the Hiketeia. This book centers around the an ancient ritual apparently described in the illiad, which inspired me to find in audio-book format. A young woman request the Hiketia of Wonder Woman, which basically means she puts her self into humble servitude in exchange for protection. If Wonder Woman fails to protect her, she faces the Furries, demons who are gonna kill her. Oh and there is an extra sweet twist, in that the young woman is wanted for murder in Gotham City, and she's being hunted by Batman! Oh the drama.


This book describes some nice greek traditions carried on by this contemporary amazon, as well as an interesting look at Wonder Woman's work as an ambassador. It has some great art by J.G. Jones too. The downside of the book is that it is quite short. I would have like to seen the story stretch out a bit longer, but oh well.