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.