A few weeks ago, Jermaine, he who is the almighty Lord Retail of Acme Comics, talked me into trying the new Wonder Woman series written by Tom King.
Tom King vexes me. On one hand, I admire the man's ability to challenge me, to explore different directions, to see things from new perspectives.
But sometimes I think Tom King works too hard to be challenging. Sometimes I do not want to be challenged as a reader of comic books. Sometimes I just want a story.
Make it a good story, of course. But I don't always want to work for it. Omega Men and Mister Miracle are a couple of Tom King projects that made me feel I wasn't smart enough to get what he was doing.
And do NOT get me started on the debacle that was Heroes In Crisis.
(Click here to read about what I wrote about that in 2019.)
And there was Batman!
Damn it, Tom! I trusted you, man!
So Lord Retail thinks I should read the new Wonder Woman series.
Even though Tom King wrote it? Fine! I never could argue with Lord Retail.
Although he also talked me into Heroes In Crisis. DO NOT GET ME STARTED!
<ahem!>
So...
Where was I? Oh yeah, Wonder Woman.
A mysterious Amazonian commits mass murder in a bar in Colorado. The description of the inciting incident keeps shifting in the media, from "mass murder" to "an act of terrorism". All the victims are men. The perpetrator is a woman from somewhere else. Classic "us vs. them" hysteria takes hold.
Congress passes the Amazon Safety Act, barring all Amazons from U.S. soil.
The government creates the Amazon Extradition Entity (A.X.E.), to remove those who don’t comply, by any means necessary. Including death. We get a gruesome scene where an Amazon is slain in a hail of bullets while her wife and daughter watch.
Wonder Woman herself is on the list of Amazons to be removed.
Wonder Woman is busy trying to get to the truth of the killing in Colorado. She doesn't have time to be removed.
A.X.E. tries to remove her.
Wonder Woman remains unremoved.
But A.X.E. remains undaunted.
Damn it! Amazons need to go! Willingly or in body bags makes no difference.
I think we can see the "ripped from the headlines" thing Tom King is going for here. We've seen this sort of thing play out before. Some group identified as the "other", targeted as the enemy, an absolutism in curtailing or eliminating this other.
I've seen some reviews of King's work on Wonder Woman has being a far fetched exaggeration. Is it, really?
No, there is no quasi governmental death squads rounding up or executing people but not for lack of trying.
Trump wanted the army to shoot protesters.
There are Congressman calling for people of Palestinian descent to be deported.
There are right wing pundits have called for the eradication of transgender persons.
Whatever Tom King is doing here is only an exaggeration in that it's set in a world of super powered people.
Tom King introduces a big bad, maneuvering in the shadows behind the scenes, known as the Sovereign, a mysterious entity who declares that American democracy is a facade and whatever happens, whatever gets done is because the Sovereign wills it.
A word about the artist, Daniel Sampere, who did extraordinary work on Dark Crisis on Infinite Earth and is doing magnificent work on Wonder Woman. His take on the Amazon Princess is graceful and powerful. No doubt this book looks good.
But as for the rest...
There is no denying Tom King has set the stage for a thought pr
oving take on Wonder Woman and her fellow Amazons that also holds up a mirror to current American society.
But I also thought King was on to something equally provocative with Heroes In Crisis.
DO NOT GET ME STARTED!
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Coming up later today is another comic book theme post as I share one of my favorite sites on the internet and sadly mark the passing of it's creator.
And we're back on Thursday with a political post. It's been awhile but give it a miss if you wanna and come back Friday for Your Friday Video Link which will be about... something.
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