Originally posted on Brit's Book Nook

Thank you to NetGalley and DC Comics for a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I was really excited to read this because Wonder Woman. Need I say more? But I was kind of disappointed. I didn’t like how it started out. All of the violence and scantily clad women. It didn’t sit well with me.

I also didn’t really like any of the characters. I found them all so annoying. There didn’t seem to be any depth to any of them. The Fat-Amy like sidekick was the worst though. Make up your own characters, don’t go copying what’s “popular.” The whole ‘love you for who you are’ thing is awesome, but there was also fat-shaming which isn’t okay. I get that it happens in real life, but if it’s not in our entertainment then maybe it wouldn’t be in our reality.

I also didn’t really enjoy the plot. It confused me sometimes with the whole jumping between timeline things. Diana was on trial for helping man kind so it jumped between her story telling and the trail itself. I also didn’t understand what was going on at times, which is frustrating, especially with pictures.

I don’t think I would recommend this.

La linea Earth one es una especie de universo Ultimate para DC, presentando a sus grandes héroes adaptados a la actualidad y rompiendo con la continuidad establecida. Como lo hacen cada poco en la serie regular con sus Crisis y Renacimientos tampoco sorprende. El comic de Wonder Woman, a diferencia del de Superman, tiene un gran dibujo y un guión bien trabajado que le da un aire fresco a la historia y está lleno de homenajes a la etapa clásica del personaje (ausentes en la épica versión de Perez y en la olvidable de Azarello).

Thematically, this book channels many of the original conceits of Marston's in his crafting of Wonder Woman. While a lot of the reviews I have read focused on the sapphic and bondage angles, or the male gaze of the art, I would like to focus on some others.

Let's start with this:

"Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don't want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman."

Certainly, the quote is grounded a little in the context of its time, but the message here is clear: Wonder Woman was supposed to be not just a female superhero for girls to look up to or identify with, but one with all of Clark's strengths in addition to her own. As Superman was a masculine ideal, Wonder Woman was intended as his feminine counterpart. She was and is as much a response to the masculine as she is something unique, even now, when superwomen are common in the funny books.

But Marston didn't stop there.

“The truest kindness to any woman is to provide her with an opportunity for self-expression in some constructive field: to work, not at home with cook-stove and scrubbing brush, but outside, independently, in the world of men and affairs.”

And so she does. Wonder Woman steps out of the role provided for her, and to her, and the role that is expected of her, and she enter's 'the world of men and affairs' where she becomes the woman she wants to be, not the woman she is expected to be. And she does this herself. She needs no one to provide it to her, she takes it. I would posit, however, that she does so in a way that is very much in character for her. It is not really angry so much as it is frustrated in its impetus. Wonder Woman has always been a moral compass, a voice of compassion and understanding that exists as a counterbalance to her upbringing as a warrior. So she does not punish her sisters for their hidebound traditions, she simply seeks to free herself of them.

A final quote from Marston seals my interpretation of the book:

“The only hope for civilization is the greater freedom, development, and equality of women in all fields of human activity.”

Morrison has produced a highly atypical superhero story here. While allegory is relatively common in the medium, he is one of its better purveyors and transcends any objections to his sex. He treats Diana with respect, with an understanding of her origins both on the page and off, and portrays a hero whose use of violence is restrained to the point of being nearly unnecessary. Never have I read such a satisfying superhero yarn with so little violence.

He embraces the ideals that underpin Wonder Woman and crafts a story that stands out as a defiant counterpoint to the hypermasculinity that girds so much of the superhero lexicon, and it does so without pandering, without being ham-fisted.

The art is gorgeous and bright and expressive.

I thoroughly enjoyed this and hope there will be another volume with this creative team.

I really wanted to like it, but it was just okay. The art was very good.

There were parts of this that I loved and parts of this that just didn't sit right with me. The art was phenomenal and I really loved all the details in each page. I mostly liked the updated idea of how Wonder Woman becomes Wonder Woman, especially the Steve Trevor part, but I thought that the story was lacking in a few places. I didn't enjoy how unnecessarily mean Hippolyta could be at times and I really did not like how women (especially the sorority girls) were portrayed in several scenes. I mostly liked this because I do enjoy Wonder Woman and the art was great but this is one of my least favorite Wonder Woman stories that I've read.

this review says everything i need to say, but way better.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1489749027

This was a bit chaotic? I didnt really like the drawings? But its interesting to see where it will go.

Povestea e naivă rău, dar e ok, e un produs pentru adolescenți; dincolo de asta, desenele sunt slab executate și de povestea foarte subțire și ilogică.

Dar e distractivă. Dialogurile au adâncimea lui „Hahaha, căpitane Planet, te-am prins în containerul cu deșeuri radioactive!”. Și e normal, e un produs cu zero adâncime. Măcar a fost o experiență amuzantă.

I thought this book was really fantastic. The artwork and design of the characters and the world are really gorgeous to look at. From a purely aesthetic standpoint, there a lot of beauty in this book. And I thought Grant Morrison's take on Wonder Woman (in some ways, taking her back to her roots) was pretty fascinating. I'm a little shocked by some of the reviews on here, which seem to be based on a very shallow, surface-level engagement with the book.

Just because a work of fiction presents problematic things to us, does not make that work of fiction in and of itself problematic, in my view. Especially when it's clearly creating comparisons and contrasts for a specific purpose.