Bryan Azzarello's Big Picture, Why He's A Genius..And Why I'm Still Reading!

[carabas]

25 000 is a pretty big card game. Which is where the book was steady before Odyssey.

Steve Gus's version of Wonder Woman is not really one that has appeared in print in decades, if ever...

[Rob_Olivera]

25 000 is a pretty big card game. Which is where the book was steady before Odyssey.

Even Azzarello's version has sunk from 96000 to 41000 in 15 issues. It's holding steady but still losing (which is quite unfortunate) every month in the hundreds.

It's not ALL about the appeal shrinking. I believe that the comic book market is what is shrinking.

I hope one day we can see the monthly sales (digital) and I hope they're good. But right now, we're looking at the very real possiblity of the comics genre disappearing altogether within our very lifetime. Quite frankly, I see the possibility of your young daughter growin up in a world where comics are no longer sold when she's a little older.

This concerns me more than anything else. Interpretations of Wonder Woman may come and go with writers. But when the medium goes down the tubes Wonder Woman will be gone forever. Except maybe for back issues through Amazon.com and Ebay.

[AlfredIslas]

I think Wonder Woman has so much potential saleswise but they need to target women. Women are getting nerdier and nerdier by the second. They're going to overtake men soon when it comes to gaming (Facebook games or not) and gamer girls are taking a hell of a stand. Wonder Woman needs a female demographic if they want her sales to be at her full potential. WW can be a revolutionary title for the feminist movement, an inspiration to women around the world, and so much more. She can shake the entire comic industry but she can't do it when the title is written by someone who doesn't focus enough on WW herself.

[Outside_85]

I think Wonder Woman has so much potential saleswise but they need to target women. Women are getting nerdier and nerdier by the second. They're going to overtake men soon when it comes to gaming (Facebook games or not) and gamer girls are taking a hell of a stand.

As far as I am aware, the games industry hasn't moved anywhere in regards to gender politics. Casual games are growing however. So isn't this just a sign of gamer girls finding the appeal in games that boys do?

Wonder Woman needs a female demographic if they want her sales to be at her full potential. WW can be a revolutionary title for the feminist movement, an inspiration to women around the world, and so much more. She can shake the entire comic industry but she can't do it when the title is written by someone who doesn't focus enough on WW herself.

She already did, 70 years ago. So consider it highly unlikely she can reinvent that particular wheel.

[AlfredIslas]

As far as I am aware, the games industry hasn't moved anywhere in regards to gender politics. Casual games are growing however. So isn't this just a sign of gamer girls finding the appeal in games that boys do?



She already did, 70 years ago. So consider it highly unlikely she can reinvent that particular wheel.

The comic industry is far from addressing and fixing it's problems regarding female superheroes and the lack of female readers. America is far from addressing it's problem with the mistreatment of women. Every country in the world suffers these issues. It'll probably be thousands of years until the problem is fully addressed or it may not even happen at all. There are far too many things for Wonder Woman to address properly in a comic book regarding women's rights without her book getting ridiculously preachy. There is endless content for the Wonder Woman to address about women's rights and as the feminist movement changes, more content will be created. Wonder Woman hasn't finished reinventing the wheel.

[The Man From Room X]

This is why I simply find it unfathomable how anyone is entertained by something as crass as A Killing Joke, why Infinite Crisis was so bad, and why I think this current run is so destructive and wrongheaded. It's gore, but it isn't just gore. It's that the dull solemnity and cynicism boxes out the creative reader. There's nothing in there to daydream about. At least, I don't want to meet anybody whose daydreams are fed by A Killing Joke. And this is why I can't imagine what kind of person would find entertainment in reading A Killing Joke. Then again, I'm not a Joker fan; I used to be a Wonder Woman fan, though.

Have you considered the minor possibility that one can read different genres of entertainment and find enjoyment in all of them just the same?

Its not impossible to be entertained by and fantasize about both Preacher and Stephanie Brown's Batgirl you know.

[Stanlos]

I don't agree that this is what happened, but it can't be denied that what we had before just did not in any way at al appeal to the current comicbook audience.

I do not think the previous deal was mined much at all. For some reason, TPTB at DC simply would not allow any of the many creators interested in exploring WW's deal to do so.

[brettc1]

Even Azzarello's version has sunk from 96000 to 41000 in 15 issues. It's holding steady but still losing (which is quite unfortunate) every month in the hundreds.

It's not ALL about the appeal shrinking. I believe that the comic book market is what is shrinking.

I hope one day we can see the monthly sales (digital) and I hope they're good. But right now, we're looking at the very real possiblity of the comics genre disappearing altogether within our very lifetime. Quite frankly, I see the possibility of your young daughter growin up in a world where comics are no longer sold when she's a little older.

This concerns me more than anything else. Interpretations of Wonder Woman may come and go with writers. But when the medium goes down the tubes Wonder Woman will be gone forever. Except maybe for back issues through Amazon.com and Ebay.

Printed comics may disappear but I think superheroes will be around for a good long while.

I think though we often think of the west as the whole world when it comes to opinions. Lots of folks argue the feminist agenda is no longer important in 21st C western nations. Personallt I don't agree, but even if it was true I know there a countries where women are still severely, even violently, oppressed. It gives me some hope to think in places like that some young girl opens a battered old copy of Wonder Woman or whatever she is called in her language and thinks that things dont have to be as they are.

[Outside_85]

The comic industry is far from addressing and fixing it's problems regarding female superheroes and the lack of female readers.

The lack of female readers can be put down to how girls and women aren't normally as entertained by acts of violence the same way men are.

America is far from addressing it's problem with the mistreatment of women. Every country in the world suffers these issues.

Problems are there, but evidently they aren't big enough to make women go into the streets and protest.

It'll probably be thousands of years until the problem is fully addressed or it may not even happen at all.

Bundle of hope and optimism, aren't we?

There are far too many things for Wonder Woman to address properly in a comic book regarding women's rights without her book getting ridiculously preachy. There is endless content for the Wonder Woman to address about women's rights and as the feminist movement changes, more content will be created. Wonder Woman hasn't finished reinventing the wheel.

Since she can only be invented once, yes she is. The problem is that what Diana did that was revolutionary was to appear as a comicbook character in her own title, that was the revolutionary bit, what was inside of the book gave a great pep-talk about female empowerment, but you'd have to open the book to know.

[brettc1]

Problems are there, but evidently they aren't big enough to make women go into the streets and protest.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/01...t-in-buraydah/

Again, the United States and Australia are not the whole world.

[Outside_85]

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/01...t-in-buraydah/

Again, the United States and Australia are not the whole world.

Really, I didn't know. /end sarcasm

And I doubt they read WW in Saudi-Arabia or India for that matter.

[Mecegirl]

My problem with the original origins it is that it was every bit as sexist as the stories it was there to combat, and as far as I am concerned, you aren't making things any better that way. You especially aren't going to earn points with me if you are actually trying to promote equality.

The exclusion of a gender from any story is not in and of itself sexist, it is the repeated exclusion of a gender from story to story, combined with a lack of in story rational, that is sexist. A culture that undervalues a genders perspective, like our culture tends to do with the female perspective, normalizes such story telling. Such a bias does not exist for male characters.

There is also the fact that men wrote the vast majority of the stories that we are talking about. It is not as if a bunch of women decided that men were so uninteresting that they would rather not write about them. Though I suppose some would argue that Marston hated his own gender. But what is worse is that because the female perspective is/was so undervalued, if Marston, a man, had not created Wonder Woman the way that he did it would have taken longer for the industry to even think about the sexist nature of their comics. To this day it forces us to examine the things we take for granted and in my mind that is a good thing.

If you really want to know, I would have wanted more women on the current JL team, I'd have liked more ethnic diversity as well (Add John Steward as GL for instance). But no, the DC pinheads wanted to restore the 'iconic version' of the team and this is what we ended up with, which baffles me because when they say that I always think of Morrisons initial line up (which is also flawed).
As for the other bit; I'd love to see the mothers also appear out of the shadows with interesting contributions to shaping the heroes. For all my hatred of Lobdell and his writing, he at least seems to think the same way and made Lara the ass-kicker to the more geeky scientist Jor in the El-family.
With that said, perhaps I just don't see the corrosion Zeus' presence inflicts on Hippolyta that others do?

Normally for a story like this Wonder Woman's parentage would not matter. She has always helped those in need. However, this story is being written as if it is Diana's connection to Zeus that binds her to these events. She is not just helping to rescue Zola and her baby, she is being wedged into a battle for the throne, and because of her father she can not escape it. But the real kicker isn't simply her having a father, its her mother and her sisters being a part of the sex raids. Well, the sex raids and the fact that we are still waiting to hear the Amazon's side to that story. It is her sisters being hostile towards men in general. It is her mother knowingly participating in an affair with a married man. It is all the spotlight on Aleka and the poison she spews. It is that to date none of the goddesses, not even Artemis or Aphrodite, have positively lent Diana their strength.

I believe that people would have eventually accepted Zeus if we could be certain that her Amazon family was a positive influence on her life. As it stands Diana is the "black sheep" of the family.

(I assume you mean stories that involve the mothers actually doing something?)
Of what I remember:
During Brightest Day, the Hawkman/Hawkgirl bit was all about her mother trying to kill them
Post Terror of Trigon we had Arella doing a heck of a lot more to track down Raven than the Titans did and was eventually the reason she came to her sense again. Actually Arella does a fair bit of heroics to combat Trigon over the course of NTT.

Not much I know. But I guess there is a general problem for parents of heroes staying alive and supportive (if they aren't dead, they are evil or simply out of reach most of the time).

No, it really isn't much, but add Amethyst to the list.

[lariatofhestia]

For me , there is not a good enough balance of the WW mythos. It's all mythology and is dragging now and the burgeoning host of godly characters seem to detract more and more from Diana and my hope that Azz would have dealt with the bomb he dropped about the Amazons, well no sight of that. I want some good old fashioned superheroics. I want to feel some connection to the Amazons. I want to see a positive balance of female and male in Diana's life and not Gods controlling/manipulating/fighting her. I want to see Diana actually interact with the world/people. It's too one sided.

And in Superman we may be seeing a lot more exploration of Lara. She was awesome in Superman #0. They will be looking at Krypton itself. To show that his parentage and his home world does help in some way influence who he becomes and not only the Kents. And they don't ignore Clark's friends and work life. Superman seems well balanced in that it has sci fi and human elements. Batman as so many books. You get a bit of everything.

[AlfredIslas]

For me , there is not a good enough balance of the WW mythos. It's all mythology and is dragging now and the burgeoning host of godly characters seem to detract more and more from Diana and my hope that Azz would have dealt with the bomb he dropped about the Amazons, well no sight of that. I want some good old fashioned superheroics. I want to feel some connection to the Amazons. I want to see a positive balance of female and male in Diana's life and not Gods controlling/manipulating/fighting her. I want to see Diana actually interact with the world/people. It's too one sided.

And in Superman we may be seeing a lot more exploration of Lara. She was awesome in Superman #0. They will be looking at Krypton itself. To show that his parentage and his home world does help in some way influence who he becomes and not only the Kents. And they don't ignore Clark's friends and work life. Superman seems well balanced in that it has sci fi and human elements. Batman as so many books. You get a bit of everything.

I agree. I think Azzarello is giving us a lot of Wonder Woman goodness lately but I'm still tired of all the Gods. They've just taken over the story since the start with no rest at all. I would've enjoyed the girl's night out a lot more if Hera's children didn't just pop up. It could've been some great character development between the two enemies, but instead we get more Gods thrown at us.

[AlfredIslas]

[Edit] EEEK Double Post!