New Readers of WW: Recommended Reading & Questions

[jmucchiello]

@ceroxide: With the nu52, nobody but DC knows the answers to your questions. There might be older issues of WW that contain the "correct" answers to your questions but until the answers appear in the current WW books, nobody knows what the correct answers are.

[Lorendiac]

I have never in my life read anything related to WW outside of the animated movie that was a lot like 300 and the Justice League cartoons but the new 52 did spark some interest so b4 I dive in:
1. Is she really from an island full of women? How do they procreate?

@ceroxide: With the nu52, nobody but DC knows the answers to your questions. There might be older issues of WW that contain the "correct" answers to your questions but until the answers appear in the current WW books, nobody knows what the correct answers are.

Jmucchiello certainly has a point, but what the heck, I'm going to take a stab at answering the first item on ceroxide's list anyway!

Ceroxide: Everything I say below this paragraph only applies to the "older" Wonder Woman continuity, both before and after a "Wonder Woman" reboot occurred in the mid-1980s. I don't know how much of the "old stuff" will carry over to the "new stuff" that's just now being published.

Anyway! In the comic books published in the decades before September 2011, Wonder Woman (Diana) definitely grew up on an island full of Amazons. (Warrior women, basically.) No men were allowed on that island for thousands of years.

How did the women procreate in the absence of male companionship? Well, most writers of "Wonder Woman" comic books seem to have taken it for granted that the answer to that question, regarding the last few thousand years of history until "modern times," is incredibly simple. "Those Amazons didn't procreate!"

Wonder Woman herself (or "Diana," as she was originally called) was a special case with no conventional "procreating" involved! One or more of the Greek goddesses saw fit to turn a clay statue of a little girl into a living, breathing girl whom Queen Hippolyta then raised as "my daughter Diana."

But regular reproduction, one generation after another, simply was not required for the survival of this all-female community.

Because, you see, the fundamental assumption has long been that the Amazons living on that one island (sometimes called "Paradise Island" and sometimes called "Themyscira") are physically immortal. Diana's mother (Queen Hippolyta) and most of the other inhabitants of the island are the same Amazons who lived in the ancient days of Greek myth, when such legendary heroes as Hercules and Theseus were running around having adventures! As a magical gift from one or more of the Greek goddesses, Hipppolyta and her fellow Amazons are "immortal" in the sense that they never get gray and wrinkled and never die of old age. (They can still be killed by violence. We have seen Amazon warriors die on various occasions.)

However! Earlier this year, when I was doing a ton of research into old stories about other obscure Amazon tribes who have appeared in DC's comic books (or in comic books from other companies whose characters later ended up being "absorbed" into DC's continuity), I ran across a reference somewhere to the idea that in more or more "Wonder Woman" comic books of the 1940s, there were stories which showed young girls growing up on Paradise Island in the mid-20th Century, as if they'd somehow been "born" within, say, the last 10 or 15 years.

That surprised me. So I started a thread on that very topic on this forum. Where did William Marston Moulton think Amazon babies came from?

You can read the whole thread if you want to, but one of the things I learned from feedback in that thread is that way, way back in the 1940s, William Marston Moulton (the writer who created Wonder Woman in the first place) was writing a newspaper comic strip about his creation, and in it he had Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, promise the Amazons that if some of them wanted children of their own so badly, then Aphrodite would make that possible!

It seems likely that Aphrodite used some sort of Heap Big Magic, similar to what had happened with "creating little Diana from a clay statue," but readers never learned the details!

(As far as I know, off the top of my head, those "Amazon children" have not been seen or heard from in anything published after the decade of the 1940s. Swept under the rug and forgotten, maybe?)

[ceroxide]

Jmucchiello certainly has a point, but what the heck, I'm going to take a stab at answering the first item on ceroxide's list anyway!

Ceroxide: Everything I say below this paragraph only applies to the "older" Wonder Woman continuity, both before and after a "Wonder Woman" reboot occurred in the mid-1980s. I don't know how much of the "old stuff" will carry over to the "new stuff" that's just now being published.

Anyway! In the comic books published in the decades before September 2011, Wonder Woman (Diana) definitely grew up on an island full of Amazons. (Warrior women, basically.) No men were allowed on that island for thousands of years.

How did the women procreate in the absence of male companionship? Well, most writers of "Wonder Woman" comic books seem to have taken it for granted that the answer to that question, regarding the last few thousand years of history until "modern times," is incredibly simple. "Those Amazons didn't procreate!"

Wonder Woman herself (or "Diana," as she was originally called) was a special case with no conventional "procreating" involved! One or more of the Greek goddesses saw fit to turn a clay statue of a little girl into a living, breathing girl whom Queen Hippolyta then raised as "my daughter Diana."

But regular reproduction, one generation after another, simply was not required for the survival of this all-female community.

Because, you see, the fundamental assumption has long been that the Amazons living on that one island (sometimes called "Paradise Island" and sometimes called "Themyscira") are physically immortal. Diana's mother (Queen Hippolyta) and most of the other inhabitants of the island are the same Amazons who lived in the ancient days of Greek myth, when such legendary heroes as Hercules and Theseus were running around having adventures! As a magical gift from one or more of the Greek goddesses, Hipppolyta and her fellow Amazons are "immortal" in the sense that they never get gray and wrinkled and never die of old age. (They can still be killed by violence. We have seen Amazon warriors die on various occasions.)

However! Earlier this year, when I was doing a ton of research into old stories about other obscure Amazon tribes who have appeared in DC's comic books (or in comic books from other companies whose characters later ended up being "absorbed" into DC's continuity), I ran across a reference somewhere to the idea that in more or more "Wonder Woman" comic books of the 1940s, there were stories which showed young girls growing up on Paradise Island in the mid-20th Century, as if they'd somehow been "born" within, say, the last 10 or 15 years.

That surprised me. So I started a thread on that very topic on this forum. Where did William Marston Moulton think Amazon babies came from?

You can read the whole thread if you want to, but one of the things I learned from feedback in that thread is that way, way back in the 1940s, William Marston Moulton (the writer who created Wonder Woman in the first place) was writing a newspaper comic strip about his creation, and in it he had Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, promise the Amazons that if some of them wanted children of their own so badly, then Aphrodite would make that possible!

It seems likely that Aphrodite used some sort of Heap Big Magic, similar to what had happened with "creating little Diana from a clay statue," but readers never learned the details!

(As far as I know, off the top of my head, those "Amazon children" have not been seen or heard from in anything published after the decade of the 1940s. Swept under the rug and forgotten, maybe?)

wow thanx that was a lot of info

so basically nu52 is a BRAND NEW origin and super seeds everything before it right?

[Lorendiac]

wow thanx that was a lot of info

so basically nu52 is a BRAND NEW origin and super seeds everything before it right?

That's my general understanding: Any "new and different details" published in the last few months -- September of 2011 and onward -- automatically "trump and replace" any contradictory material (about origin stories or anything else) which was previously published in older comic book stories about any and all of DC's costumed characters.

Some characters are getting off lightly -- almost everything they ever did before, in their own monthly titles, is still "solid" in the revised continuity.

Other characters, such as Superman, are apparently getting Rebooted from scratch -- meaning just about everything from before September 2011 is being thrown out the window!

Frankly, at this moment I'm not sure just how much of Wonder Woman's "Pre-September" continuity is still valid. I haven't been buying any issues of her new title, so I suddenly realize I don't know if lots of her stuff from the last few decades is still supposed to have happened to her, pretty much the way I remember it . . . or not!

Does anyone know if Diana is basically getting Rebooted, with all her Post-COIE stories (from around 1986 up through August 2011) getting erased?

Or is most of that stuff still supposed to count as things she still remembers doing, even if her origin story is getting rewritten on the fly?

[jmucchiello]

Or is most of that stuff still supposed to count as things she still remembers doing, even if her origin story is getting rewritten on the fly?

There have only been 2 issues and nothing in those 2 issues specifically alters events of the past. Themyscria and the overall look of the amazons do appear to be very different but that doesn't mean any specific story could not have taken place before.

As for her origin, she was a child raised by her mother. I don't think that part of her origin is being altered. The part involving her "birth" is. And I fail to see how altering affects her life as an adult.

[manymade1]

Pretty new to WW, and was wondering how far should I go into Perez's run?

[Shimarenda]

While I wouldn't say it is necessary in order to appreciate the current run, I think Perez's run is excellent and would recommend reading it. You can pick up a couple of issues on Comixology and see if it is to your taste.

[kryptondude]

i started a thread about this question before i seen this 1 so if i should not of done i apologise, is this new 52 wonder woman starting from fresh then?

I will not need to read any back storys or nothing it will all be told starting from issue 1?

[Lee-Sensei]

Did anything happen to Wonder Woman? Like... Superman died, Batman broke his back, Aquaman lost his hand, GL became a villain, and Barry was mia and presumed dead.

[CarolStrick]

The way I'm reading the book so far (and many people are telling me I'm reading it wrong), this is a brand-new WW who's been operating in the outer world for at least 5 years, because 5 years ago is when the JL story is taking place.

Of course I also came to the conclusion that the Volume 3 WW was a slightly different one than the Volume 2 version.

[Outside_85]

Did anything happen to Wonder Woman? Like... Superman died, Batman broke his back, Aquaman lost his hand, GL became a villain, and Barry was mia and presumed dead.

You mean that there was a moment in time regarded as truly exceptional for the WW mythos?

Option 1: Byrne is probably responsible for that moment when he elevated her to a bonafied deity.
Option 2: Hippolyta dying during Our Worlds at War.
Option 3: With help from Raven, sneaking a piece of her own soul into Darksied without his knowledge before it was too late.

(This Option 1 is the most likely)

[Lee-Sensei]

On Wikipedia I was reading the Knightfall article and it mentioned big changes for Superman (Dead), Aquaman (Lost his hand), Green Lantern (Villain), and Wonder Woman. So I'm wondering what changed for Wonder Woman during the 90's.

[Empress96]

Hi, I'm new. I heard good things about Greg Rucka's run and was wondering if Hiketeia was a good start, because I want to buy it for my birthday.

[Cowtools]

Hi, I'm new. I heard good things about Greg Rucka's run and was wondering if Hiketeia was a good start, because I want to buy it for my birthday.

Absolutely! It's one of the best self-contained WW stories available. It has rich, non-exploitative art, and Wonder Woman is perfectly characterized throughout. It's a little slim story-wise, but thematically it's quite deep, exploring the conflict between ancient codes of honor and modern concepts of justice (as personified by Batman).

In general, if you see the words 'Greg Rucka' and 'Wonder Woman' on a cover, it'll be worth getting (unless it also includes the words 'Blackest Night').

[Empress96]

Thank you :) I also plan on getting the first four trades of his run.