WONDER WOMAN: LOVE AND MURDER
August 16th 2009 22:37
Category: Graphic Novels/Comics
Based on the character created by William Moulton Marston
Publisher: DC Comics
Production Team: Jodi Picoult – writer, Drew Johnson et al – artists, Alex Sinclair et al – colourists, Rob Leigh & Travis Lanham – letters, Terry Dodson, Rachel Dodson with Alex Sinclair – cover art
Cost: US $19.99
Written by a major bestselling novelist, Jodi Picoult, and featuring one of DC Comics iconic characters this particular graphic novel comes in hardcover format and is almost in its presentation alone a work of art. But a hardcover, glossy pages and stunning artwork can sometimes disguise a truly horrible surprise – to whit Superman & Batman Vs Aliens Vs Predator, which had stunning artwork, glossy pages et al shame that the story was just a bandwagon jumping enterprise and had as much depth as a toddlers wading pool. Still I digress, with Wonder Woman: Love and Murder all the stops have been pulled out not just in the artwork but in the story itself, the very meat and bones of a work such as this. There is a fortuitous blend of all the right elements in just the right mix to produce what could be said to be a finely crafted work.
Now as a kid I can remember in the dim dark past watching the Wonder Woman television show, her alter ego was a woman in the US Air Force during the Second World War and she was often saving the bacon of the primary male protagonist who was always getting caught by Nazis and various other assorted villains. Back in those days she used to also get around in an invisible jet, this prompted much musings between my friends and myself as if she parked it somewhere whilst rescuing the guy (whose name I forget) how the heck could she find it again? It’s invisible; it by very definition can’t be seen. Oh well the things you’d talk about in the playground at lunch time or even in the class when the teacher wasn’t there. Nowadays though the current incarnation of Wonder Woman doesn’t have to worry about finding her jet, she no longer needs it, as she can herself fly much like Superman.
So just who is Wonder Woman? Well she is the princess of the Amazons, daughter of Queen Hippolyta, she of the dazzling girdle from the story of Hercules if memory serves me correctly. As an Amazon Wonder Woman, or Princess Diana as she was known, was born and raised on Themiscira, the island home of the Amazons which has also been called Paradise Island. Here in this idyllic landscape she was raised and trained to eventually become the emissary of the Amazons to the world of the Humans. In essence Amazons are a different species unto themselves, and their island home does not exist within the world as we know it, it lies within a different dimension whose entrance is watched over by various goddesses from Classical mythology, Athena, Bast, Aphrodite; you get the general gist. Thus Paradise Island could almost be regarded as a feminist heaven, where women live carefree lives undisturbed by the woes and grief of a patriarchal society.
From this blissful realm does Princess Diana go and makes her way into the patriarchal society of the ‘real’ world to become the hero Wonder Woman, fighting crime and injustice around the world and eventually becoming one of the founding members of the Justice League of America with those other two iconic characters, Superman and the Dark Knight; Batman. Currently though Wonder Woman is undergoing something of an identity crisis, she is wanted for questioning in regards to the murder of Maxwell Lord, the head of the US government agency known as Checkmate and a potent psychic who was controlling Superman and causing him to go on a destructive rampage. Although she is cleared of the murder of Lord, she adopts an alternate identity; Diana Prince an operative for the US governments Department of Metahuman Affairs (DOMA). As an agent of DOMA she is partnered with fellow agent Tom Tresser also known as Nemesis.
So this unlikely pairing are suddenly thrust into having to track down…yep you guessed it Wonder Woman, their boss Sarge Steel gives them assignment although Tresser seems rather confused with the whole idea as apparently the World Court cleared her from the charges involving the death of Maxwell Lord. Still his confusion is tame in comparison to that of his partner, she now has to try and track down and bring in…herself or the identity that she is commonly known as to the world at large. But this it seems is the least of her problems as there are darker plans afoot and an old enemy who is roaming around at large laying the groundwork for her nefarious scheme which is truly epic in scope. Circe, the infamous sorceress from the story of Odysseus, has returned to plague the world of humans and Amazons for reasons that are elucidated but not fully fleshed out. In fact the very title of this graphic novel; Love & Murder are the reasons Circe gives to her foe and the novels protagonist as her rationale for what she is doing. They are at the end of the day the only two constants in this messed up world in which we live in, rather basic and Darwinian when you look at it. Of course it isn’t specified as to what Circe loves or whom she wants to murder, these are given as the general motivation for her scheme but the specifics are concealed.
Still finding out the entirety of Circe’s plot would probably spoil the story and muck up the suspense, certainly there is more to what is going on than what it seems and it looks as if it isn’t just Wonder Woman who is in the cross hairs here, Superman, Batman, Black Canary and other JLA members are also involved if somewhat obliquely. And perhaps the US government itself, the Amazons apparently possess items of technology and destructive capability that Hawkish elements no doubt salivate over and would love to get their hands on. Wheels within wheels, layers of an onion slowly peeled away to reveal…well that’s just it things are left at a cliff-hanger and the entirety of the story is no doubt to be revealed later on down the track.
It’s interesting to see Wonder Woman trying to make a life as a normal person, even if she is an agent for a government agency, trying to fit in as an ordinary human being and pondering just how overtly complicated human society is and through that complication how much misery it causes. We are all caught up in an endless cycle of consumerism that only leads to further consumerism and in turn slowly and irrevocably erodes the necessary foundation of such consumerism – namely the planet and its resources upon which the consumer society exists. It makes me wonder if the Buddhist concept that the world we live in is illusion doesn’t have some serious weight when I look at the world around me. And then there is the concept of love itself, how something that is generally perceived as being a positive in the lives of everyone can actually be such a destructive force, how it can be turned towards creating the very misery and woe it should be healing. For Wonder Woman it is her love of her mother and her mother’s own love for her that becomes the fuel for the carnage and conflict which emerges as a result of Circe’s machinations.
Of course even though there is the dealing with ordinary life, the tribulation of filial love and carnage on a grand scale in downtown Washington DC it is not all doom, gloom and angst. There are moments of humour which act as finely crafted counterpoints to the intrigue, destruction and soul seeking. I have to say that this story and incarnation of Wonder Woman is a skilfully crafted tale that is bound to captivate the audience, certainly I have to admit that once I’d started reading I couldn’t put it down until I finished. Kudos to Jodi Picoult and the team at DC Comics for making this tale, and making it work.
Publisher: DC Comics
Production Team: Jodi Picoult – writer, Drew Johnson et al – artists, Alex Sinclair et al – colourists, Rob Leigh & Travis Lanham – letters, Terry Dodson, Rachel Dodson with Alex Sinclair – cover art
Cost: US $19.99
Written by a major bestselling novelist, Jodi Picoult, and featuring one of DC Comics iconic characters this particular graphic novel comes in hardcover format and is almost in its presentation alone a work of art. But a hardcover, glossy pages and stunning artwork can sometimes disguise a truly horrible surprise – to whit Superman & Batman Vs Aliens Vs Predator, which had stunning artwork, glossy pages et al shame that the story was just a bandwagon jumping enterprise and had as much depth as a toddlers wading pool. Still I digress, with Wonder Woman: Love and Murder all the stops have been pulled out not just in the artwork but in the story itself, the very meat and bones of a work such as this. There is a fortuitous blend of all the right elements in just the right mix to produce what could be said to be a finely crafted work.
From this blissful realm does Princess Diana go and makes her way into the patriarchal society of the ‘real’ world to become the hero Wonder Woman, fighting crime and injustice around the world and eventually becoming one of the founding members of the Justice League of America with those other two iconic characters, Superman and the Dark Knight; Batman. Currently though Wonder Woman is undergoing something of an identity crisis, she is wanted for questioning in regards to the murder of Maxwell Lord, the head of the US government agency known as Checkmate and a potent psychic who was controlling Superman and causing him to go on a destructive rampage. Although she is cleared of the murder of Lord, she adopts an alternate identity; Diana Prince an operative for the US governments Department of Metahuman Affairs (DOMA). As an agent of DOMA she is partnered with fellow agent Tom Tresser also known as Nemesis.
So this unlikely pairing are suddenly thrust into having to track down…yep you guessed it Wonder Woman, their boss Sarge Steel gives them assignment although Tresser seems rather confused with the whole idea as apparently the World Court cleared her from the charges involving the death of Maxwell Lord. Still his confusion is tame in comparison to that of his partner, she now has to try and track down and bring in…herself or the identity that she is commonly known as to the world at large. But this it seems is the least of her problems as there are darker plans afoot and an old enemy who is roaming around at large laying the groundwork for her nefarious scheme which is truly epic in scope. Circe, the infamous sorceress from the story of Odysseus, has returned to plague the world of humans and Amazons for reasons that are elucidated but not fully fleshed out. In fact the very title of this graphic novel; Love & Murder are the reasons Circe gives to her foe and the novels protagonist as her rationale for what she is doing. They are at the end of the day the only two constants in this messed up world in which we live in, rather basic and Darwinian when you look at it. Of course it isn’t specified as to what Circe loves or whom she wants to murder, these are given as the general motivation for her scheme but the specifics are concealed.
Still finding out the entirety of Circe’s plot would probably spoil the story and muck up the suspense, certainly there is more to what is going on than what it seems and it looks as if it isn’t just Wonder Woman who is in the cross hairs here, Superman, Batman, Black Canary and other JLA members are also involved if somewhat obliquely. And perhaps the US government itself, the Amazons apparently possess items of technology and destructive capability that Hawkish elements no doubt salivate over and would love to get their hands on. Wheels within wheels, layers of an onion slowly peeled away to reveal…well that’s just it things are left at a cliff-hanger and the entirety of the story is no doubt to be revealed later on down the track.
It’s interesting to see Wonder Woman trying to make a life as a normal person, even if she is an agent for a government agency, trying to fit in as an ordinary human being and pondering just how overtly complicated human society is and through that complication how much misery it causes. We are all caught up in an endless cycle of consumerism that only leads to further consumerism and in turn slowly and irrevocably erodes the necessary foundation of such consumerism – namely the planet and its resources upon which the consumer society exists. It makes me wonder if the Buddhist concept that the world we live in is illusion doesn’t have some serious weight when I look at the world around me. And then there is the concept of love itself, how something that is generally perceived as being a positive in the lives of everyone can actually be such a destructive force, how it can be turned towards creating the very misery and woe it should be healing. For Wonder Woman it is her love of her mother and her mother’s own love for her that becomes the fuel for the carnage and conflict which emerges as a result of Circe’s machinations.
Of course even though there is the dealing with ordinary life, the tribulation of filial love and carnage on a grand scale in downtown Washington DC it is not all doom, gloom and angst. There are moments of humour which act as finely crafted counterpoints to the intrigue, destruction and soul seeking. I have to say that this story and incarnation of Wonder Woman is a skilfully crafted tale that is bound to captivate the audience, certainly I have to admit that once I’d started reading I couldn’t put it down until I finished. Kudos to Jodi Picoult and the team at DC Comics for making this tale, and making it work.
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