Wednesday's Wonder Woman...Wow!

As you may have guessed, just a few days after writing this, I went ahead and bought my way up to speed with Wednesday Comics. And I'm really glad I did. I'd been following reviews and commentary of the series very closely, so I felt like I had a pretty good notion of what to expect. For the most part, my reactions the book matched up to what was being said online. Where my views differed from the majority, it was typically because I cast a less critical eye on some of the lower quality strips.

One Wednesday Comics strip, however, that I do think has been denied the proper respect and attention is Ben Caldwell's Wonder Woman. With its hyper-compressed layout (67 panels counted in Week 5's issue!) and unique, almost Disney-like rendition of the the character and cast, Wonder Woman is certainly a creative risk. As goes with the territory, there have been the customary "It's weird...I hate it!" reviews (IGN: "...as annoyingly unreadable as ever"). But the prevailing opinion has seemed to be an appreciation of the strip's originality, ultimately tempered with complaints about its choice of visual style.

These reviewers are certainly entitled to their perspectives on Wonder Woman's look (though I happen to like it). Where I take issue is with their insistence to examine the comic solely on its aesthetic elements. It's true that the bulk of Wednesday Comics' value lies in its visual aspect, but Wonder Woman is one of the anthology's few contributions to deserve a serious discussion of the content of its story. Whereas many of DC's other strips are interesting in the way that they're telling a fairly one-dimensional tale, Caldwell gives us something with a few more layers.

Each installment of Wonder Woman has a young Diana in training being transported to a different place in "Mortals' World" during a dream. While there, she must seek out one of the Seven Stars of the Amazons, ancient items of great power that Diana's people left behind when they withdrew from our realm. Judging from what we've seen so far, these Seven Stars, when put together, will make up the fabled armaments of Wonder Woman (she's already found the bracelets and tiara).

What's interesting about this premise is that the settings in which Diana finds herself are all heavily steeped in humanity's religions and mythology. So far, Diana has searched for the Stars in a Shinto temple, the lost city of Shangri-La, and during the pseudo-Catholic Dia de los Muertos. A visit to Caldwell's online annotations to the series reveals that he has taken care to meticulously research and accurately portray these traditions. In each destination, the lost Amazonian relic has taken on special significance in the local folklore. For example, in Japan a famous warrior is said to have gained his power through the use of the famous Wonder Woman bracelets.

By linking the ancient Amazon artifacts to each week's featured mythology, Caldwell suggests a common thread through all of mankind's legends. The older mythology of the Amazons is shown to have informed and influenced the tradition of the societies that rose up later. This is not to say that the story is necessarily an argument for the oneness and equality of all human belief systems. For me, it's simply a reminder that the stories embraced by a culture are rooted somewhat in an innate desire for the timeless truths that preceded it.

The villains of the series utilize myth as well, though in a twisted and perverse manner. Recognizing mythology's strength, they seek to employ it for sinister ends while simultaneously stripping it bare of its true meaning. Take Doctor Poison and her cronies in Weeks 2 and 3, who carelessly ransack the temple to find the Seven Stars, which they hope to use as weapons of war. By reclaiming the Stars for the Amazons, Diana puts the myth back in its proper place as a tool for peace and justice.

For a character writers have had such a hard time to pin down and define, Ben Caldwell's Wonder Woman gives us an amusing yet substantive take on the Amazonian princess. It certainly doesn't stand alone in Wednesday Comics as an example of good old-fashioned serialized fun, but its literary value may just trump the rest. If you've skipped over this strip due to an aversion to tiny panels and low-contrast colors, do Mr. Caldwell and yourself a favor and give it a second look.

Wednesday Wavering

Despite the fact that I wrote this just a few weeks ago...

And despite the fact that I'm without a doubt a story driven guy...

Even though the Superman strip in USA Today has been really lousy...

(Seriously, did they really just recap his origin again???)

And that Brian Azzarello, the man behind "Broken City" and "For Tomorrow," is writing Batman...

It was really hard to walk by the numerous available copies of Wednesday Comics at my local comics shop and not buy a big stack of them.

Granted, I stuck to my guns and didn't add anything extra to my pull list this week (it helped that they didn't have issue 1), but it wasn't without some serious fanboy angst. You can bet I was already planning a visit to eBay just to check out prices on the drive home. Something about seeing other people buy the actual product in the store tugged at my heartstrings. And it's impossible to ignore all the positive buzz online. I could envision myself spreading open my own copy in front of me, basking in all its superheroic colorfulness.

I wouldn't really be going back on my word by doing so. It's not like I made any predictions about the quality of Wednesday Comics. I even praised it for its originality. And I still think that it won't entice new readership. In fact, I'm even more convinced of this now that I've seen how uninspired the one strip DC is promoting in the mainstream press has been.

But there could be other fans out there like me who initially decided to save their cash but are now being drawn in by that tempting bundle of folded newsprint on the shelves. And if so, it could translate to bigger numbers for Wednesday Comics than I expected.

July sales figures to be announced shortly...

Comics' Mythologization Trend

If the late 80's were the Grim-and-Gritty Period and the 90's were the Era of the Artist Superstar, then today we are surely living in comics' Age of Mythologization. While superheroes and their parables of good vs. evil have long been a sort of mythology for contemporary society, there has existed in the past 5 or 6 years a concerted effort to introduce expansive metanarratives into the histories of many of our favorite comic characters.

Such mythologization is characterized by casting the hero as a crucial figure in a grand conflict or phenomenon that transcends the mere details of his past adventures. It often involves a spiritual or mystical element that ties into the hero's origin and powers, as well as sometimes a similar opposing force associated with the villains. This can allow for the introduction of multiple versions or variations of the hero, either as a historical lineage or a contemporary fraternity.

Though mythologizing a superhero franchise can involve introducing new elements and characters to the universe in question, often comics come with ready-made ingredients to do so. There is already a plethora of costumed identities that have been shared by multiple comics characters over the years. Adding to this is the fact that the longest standing characters have complex histories throughout which they have been reinterpreted and reimagined numerous times. In many cases, a mythology is simply a way of threading together preexisting characters and eras. The best mythologist writers can make it seem as if the entire decades-long span of a title combines to tell a single gigantic story.

The poster boy for this type of character treatment is undoubtedly Geoff Johns in his recent DC work, but he's far from the only writer to embrace the trend. And though DC with its scores of "legacy" heroes and love of parallel universes seems the most likely candidate for mythologization, Marvel has not shied away from the concept either. The following are some of the best examples of superhero mythology from the last few years:

The Flash

Already discussed in-depth here in an earlier post, Mark Waid spent the bulk of the 90's setting the groundwork for today's superhero mythologization during his run on The Flash. The world of Wally West was already filled with others who had taken up the Flash mantle or bore similar powers under a different moniker. Waid showed us that this was more than mere coincidence. The Speed Force, which gave each of these individuals their powers, stood revealed as the shaper of speedster destiny from the beginning of time, and it remains as the foundation of the Flash mythos today.

Spider-Man

When J. Michael Straczynski signed on with the Marvel bullpen to write Amazing Spider-Man, he set out to do more than tell yet another parable of power and responsibility. From the outset of his tenure on the book, JMS cast Peter Parker as the most prominent of many throughout time who had gained the powers of the spider. The radioactive bite he suffered as a teen had merely been the means by which he became linked to this force. This new take made sense, as nearly all of Spider-Man's foes over the years (Vulture, Scorpion, Dr. Octopus, etc) were associated with some kind of animal symbol. All of these revelations came from the mouth of Ezekiel, himself imbued with spider abilities, and brought Peter into confrontation with Morlun, an evil being who sought to feast upon the might of the spider totem. Straczynski's additions to the Spider-Man universe were met with mixed reactions by longterm fans, and it remains to be seen whether these elements will continue to be referenced in the future.

Green Lantern

GL is probably the first character today's fans think of when considering mythologization. This comes from the fact that the newly introduced mythology has actually taken hold as a marketing device for DC in this year's Big Event, Blackest Night. Since the Silver Age, it has been established that a Green Lantern harness the power of the will. What writer Geoff Johns has brought us in stories like Rebirth and The Sinestro Corps War is that there are other colors of light that all correspond to a certain place on the "emotional spectrum." And each color comes with its own ring-wielding corps, with emotionally-appropriate oaths, powers, and motivations.

Iron Fist

In 2006, Matt Fraction and Ed Brubaker took the Marvel mainstay (but second tier) hero Iron Fist and cast the nets of mythology outward in two dimensions. Vertically, martial arts master Danny Rand was now the latest in a long line of men to have harnessed the power of the Iron Fist and serve as champion of the mythical city of K'un L'un. Horizontally, Danny shares his status with six other cities' champions, persons of various kung fu and mystical abilities who have at times acted as both enemy and ally to the bearer of the Iron Fist. Given that Brubaker and Fraction currently seem to be enjoying the status of architects of the Marvel Universe, it's safe to assume that Iron Fist has been permanently mythologized.

Superman (and the entire DC Universe)

In one sense, it seems absurd to think that Superman could be mythologized any further than he already has been. As the standard-bearer and inspiration for basically every other superhero, you could consider Superman's mythology to be all of comics. And that is exactly the perspective Grant Morrison took when he commented on the nature of hero stories in Final Crisis. He explains the DC Multiverse, with its variations-on-a-theme battles of good vs. evil as having spun-off from a single foundational story. And we as readers catch a glimpse of the heart of that story, standing in its center is the unmistakable archetypal image of Superman. It's the type of abstract, high-concept that won't be found on the back of an action figure package, but Final Crisis is required reading for anyone interested in how deep the mythology of comics can go.

Ultimate Marvel

On one hand, the alternate world of the Ultimate Marvel label was a way to bring classic characters into a more grounded, real world setting, much like today's superhero movies. But it was also an attempt to streamline and consolidate Marvel continuity, and with this came mythologization. In the Ultimate U, the experiments that created Captain America during WWII were repeated and revised by many scientists and corporations. Such endeavors indirectly led to the creation of the Hulk, the genetically-altered spider that bit Peter Parker, and the introduction of the mutant X-gene into the population. And it all may prove to be just a testing ground for the "real" Marvel Universe, the "origin" of which is set to be told in Ed Brubaker's upcoming The Marvels Project.