There is a difference between making between making a society flawed\and making a society monstrous.
It is a great idea for a miniseries with characters that aren't going to be revisited or for an elseworlds, but a poor one for a running story as it destroys a potential source for supporting cast.
The Awesomest Character
Ok, if you don't even know what you are talking about, I will not discuss with you any further.
Donate money to Skullgirls, get a sweet poster.
The fact that the DC Amazons now raid boats, rape and kill the men on board, and send any sons they have to be forced labor for Hephaestus? Fairly close to the myths, but not a society to generate a hero from.
edited 21st Sep '12 6:18:43 PM by BigMadDraco
The Awesomest Character
This is not an open fact.
Diana also didn't knew about it.
If you are gonna make claims about how unrealistic this situations is, you lost before you even begun.
Not calling it unrealistic, I'm saying that it is unnecessarily turning a large potential source for supporting cast into villains.
The Awesomest Character
They ain't villains.
They were removed from the equation in chapter 3.
Seriously, stop discussing something that you don't know a lick of it.
I don't mean villains in the sense of actual antagonists, but in terms of being evil people.
The Awesomest Character
Well, they ain't that either.
Donate money to Skullgirls, get a sweet poster.
I've now read the first six issues, from those the most clear reason for making Diana the daughter of Zeus is to make her a default player in the god war without actually needing to make her a 3—dimensional character with her own motivations. It was by no means a painful read, but I felt next to no connection to any of the characters. 5/10
The Awesomest Character
Too subtle for you.
She is plenty 3-dimensional.
What, do you think that she fell all of those trees because she was in the way?
Why do you think she went back to visit her mother after her self-exile?
C'mon, you can do better than this.
She failed to interest me. Your right I should leave this thread as Azzarello has convinced me I have no reason to give a damn about Wonder Woman.
This is a title.
That's ok, more Wonder Woman for us.
You fell victim to one of the classic blunders!
My biggest issue with making Wonder Woman a daughter of Zeus is that, as a result, the entire story of a *WONDER WOMAN* comic revolves around her freaking father.
Wonder Woman's relationship with her mother, and with the Amazons who lovingly raised her, has always been a key part of her character. It made it clear that this was a woman whose story was *about* women.
Now all I see is a story about a woman whose story is primarily influenced by a man.
I think that Azzarello's Wonder Woman run would be an awesome alternate continuity limited series in the vein of All Star Superman. I think it's a terrible idea for the foundation of the next decade of Wonder Woman comics (as it theoretically will be, unless DC gets even more reboot-happy).
So yeah - good story (although I felt very little connection to most of it), great action, gorgeous art and design work. But a concept that works better as a limited series, not as the beginning of an open-ended continuity.
I should say while I didn't connect to any on the characters, I did like the character designs for most of the gods and the actions scenes were well done.
The Awesomest Character
It's a clash of the gods story, she could have been made from spit and the story would still revolve around Zeus('s disappearance) Donate money to Skullgirls, get a sweet poster.
When I look at the three characters Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, I think about their arch-enemies. Let's see, Superman's enemy is Lex Luthor, Batman's is The Joker, and Wonder Woman's is...Cheetah.
Cheetah started out as a woman with multiple personality disorder who dressed as a cheetah and fought WW in the Golden Age. Sounds silly, if you ask me. There was a different one in the Silver Age, but everyone seems to ignore that one. Then you have Barbara Minerva, who is probably the most vile out of all the Cheetahs. There was even a male Cheetah, but Minerva killed him in power struggle.
Minerva started out as a rich British archaeologist and tomb raider, and even before she became Cheetah, she was ambitious, greedy, sociopathic, and totally not a virgin! Too bad she pretty much devolved into a wild animal that attacks WW for no reason. They should have made her into an evil Lara Croft, and then that would make for those interesting fights between those two! 
The Awesomest Character
You don't mean like a gunslinger, do you?
That just wouldn't work.
The Final ECW Champion
I think Cheetah should have been tied to some figure or artifact or Phoenician(Carthage) or Kushite(Ethiopian) mythology with some crossover with a similar Greek or Roman element.
I have no idea they keep going to Europe for the Cheetah but Minerva's power source was at least in the right direction. Personally though, I see more potential in Giganta(gods fight giants right?), Cottus(his kingdom is traditionally an ally of the current setup but he could just be a bad seed), Silver Swan(Another demigod they already had) and Duke of Deception(a new god). Why Cheetah is most prominent in public consciousness I really don't know. I guess there is Devastation and Genocide too.
Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack
They should bring in Norse mythology, too! There's some folks at Comic Vine who think that Wonder Girl (Cassie Sandsmark) could be made into a representative of that. It's possible, because this version of the character seems to have nothing to do with Wonder Woman. Maybe DC Comics hasn't done this because they don't want to be accused of ripping off Marvel Comics, but DC could try a different approach!
The Awesomest Character
Azz is bringing the other myths on the table.
The cover for WW 13 and 14 is her in a arabian-style setting, with curved swords and everything.
The Final ECW Champion
I'd have gone with Crossover Cosmologies that Greece/Rome's would have been likely too or did actually make. But I guess that's just me. At least everyone seems to believe its time to retire the hot pants.
Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack
Taking Back our 40 acres
I'll just let Mr. Morrison handle this:
On Grant's Wonder Woman as a sexualised/fetishised character and how he'd handle her portrayal:
Grant: Ooh I'm sweating the minute you said fetish! [laughs] Well yeah, interestingly the thing about Wonder Woman, I don't know if people know this, you probably all know this, but I'm gonna tell you it again just to bore you, but Wonder Woman was created by William Moulton Marston, who was a pop-psychologist and a little bit more than that in the 30s and 40s, and basically he was a kind of proponent of free love and that kind of you know, 1950s post-Kinsey stuff. So him and his wife had a lover called Olive Byrne, a younger, an 18 year old, and they were both sort of professors, and Olive was the original physical model for Wonder Woman. And Elizabeth Marston and Charles [William's pen name] basically created this character, because they felt that Superman represented a kind of blood-curdling masculinity as they said, so they wanted to introduce somebody who was a bit more feminine, but now at the same time Marston also had all these amazing kinks, because he had this idea that basically the world would be better if men would just submit to women's complete instruction. And I'm sure many of you may agree! [laughs] But he took it all the way, not just submit to instruction but get collars on, and get down on all fours, and just admit that's where you belong guys!
So a lot of the Wonder Woman stories had this thread through them, this idea of bondage but it was "loving submission" Marston called it. And it was this notion that, as I said in the book, there's a story where Wonder Woman rescues the slave girls of an evil Nazi villain, and the slave girls don't know what to do, even though they've been rescued they're kind of, they like being slaves. So Wonder Woman just says "Oh, don't worry, you can be slaves on Paradise Island and one of our girls will take over but she'll be really nice to you unlike the Nazi!", and that was seen as, that was the resolution to the story! You've got a nice mistress instead of a crop-cracking Paula Von Gunther.
So Marston had all these ideas and it was very deep, there was a book by him which was hidden in the DC Comics vaults because they didn't really want anyone to see it, and a friend of mine at DC sneaked it out for me one time. And it's this thing, and honestly you can't read it, it's deranged, it's like the guys just done mescaline or something, talking about his sexual theories. And it reads like William Burroughs, it's all this stuff about the luminous women from Venus and how they'll tie something round you and you'll be sorted out! So there was that, the Wonder Woman strip had this weird libidinous kind of element and obviously on Paradise Island, it was this amazing Second Wave, separatist, feminist idea of an entire island where women had ruled for 3000 years and what they did for fun was chase one another! So the girls would dress up like stags and run through the forest and another girl would chase them and then they'd capture the girl, tie her up and put her on a table and pretend to eat her at a mock banquet. This is a typical Wonder Woman adventure! [laughs] In 1941.
But then Marston died, and that energy left the strip, it just disappeared. They were really worried about what he was doing, the bondage elements were becoming more and more overt, but the sales were good! [laughs] This was working! Unlike Superman, as you say, I started looking at trying to do a Wonder Woman that brought back some of these elements but without it being prurient or exploitative.
Superman when he began was, he could throw people out of windows, you used to see him drop kicking guys into the ocean, and obviously that would kill you. You know Batman had a gun and sometimes he would shoot people. But those things weren't intrinsic to the strips, you know, you could take out those elements, you could take out the murder element of Superman and Batman and the strips still worked. But when you took the sex out of Wonder Woman, the thing went flat. And the sales died immediately after Marston himself died and never ever recovered.
So it seemed that there was something about those libidinous elements that were actually fundamental to the concept of Wonder Woman, and trying to find a way to put those back without being William Moulton Marston and not being into what he was into, was quite a difficult thing. But yeah, I think I've found a way, but I'm not gonna tell you what I've done because hopefully the Wonder Woman series will be out next year sometime or thereabouts. But I think I've found a way to get all that back in again but it took a lot of reading. This has been the hardest project I've ever done. I had to read feminist theory all the way through, from Simone De Beauvoir to Andrea Dworkin and apply it to this character. And to try and do something that incorporated those ideas but completely took them in a different direction. So I mean beyond that I'll say, Wonder Woman needs sex definitely because you know, again as I said in the book, they kind of transformed her into a cross between the Virgin Mary and Mary Tyler Moore. This girl scout who had no sexuality at all and the character's never quite worked since then.
In the way that Superman's supposed to stand for men but at least he's allowed to have some kind of element of sexuality, Wonder Woman is expected to stand for women without any element of sexuality, and that seems wrong. I don't know if that answers the question but it shows I've been thinking about it! [laughs]
edited 1st Oct '12 2:07:28 PM by HyperAlbion
Casual talk is a debate you have to win.
The Final ECW Champion
Well most of my plot ideas centered around the fact Wonder Woman should have more original Hellenistic qualities and we should really explore the fact she's a golem. As someone pointed out, that she wouldn't be considered a golem in this setting, it kind of opens the flood gates for sex.
In Greece, All Women wanted it, all the time and Rome was all about orgies and other sick sex things(by today's standards).
Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack
I think WW's nemesis at this point is Ares. Although, it's weird that a warrior fights war. Azz seems to be trying to expand the world by incorporating more myths.
As for the "dad" arc. I don't see the problem with a single story arc revolving around her father. It's not like the character is defined by her relationship to Zeus now. It's just one arc. She's a lot different from her siblings, which probably has a lot to do with her upbringing.
I will just quote Azzarello here.
Nrama: But this approach you have, where you're making them both worthy of worship and fear — is that the same approach you're using toward the Amazons, particularly with this brutal discarding of their male children? That they're more in line with the people they run with.
Azzarello: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. From a storytelling perspective, perfection is death. You know? Where can you go? If she's in a perfect culture, if she's a perfect warrior, where are the challenges there? How do you argue against perfection? So we've got to dirty them up a bit.