Wonder Woman #16 (spoilers)

[Rob_Olivera]

El Double Le Post

[slvn]

Well.. think about the (theoretical) point you're making here, that in Azzarello's personal mythological world there "must be an Ares(War)" or war will "spin out of control". Knowing that my Mythology isn't up to par (sorry -- it wasn't a major in college) please do correct me where I'm sure I'm wrong.. but... isn't that the whole point of being Ares? To make war and reap enjoyment, power, and pleasure from it's existence? Why would his existence prevent it from "spinning out of control"? Is he preventing war? That would be totally against his nature.

What we know is that in 0 Ares hopes that Diana can be his successor. So, he thinks he needs and may be able to have a successor. Why he he doesn't think he can just retire or die without a successor, we (at least, I) don't really know, but can speculate about.

I don't think real-world mythology would really answer this question, because what's "true" in the book is Azzarello's personal mythology, which won't necessarily correspond with any real world mythology. But, to respond more directly to your point, Ares as he describes himself in 0 doesn't see war as chaos; he sees it as conflict resolution (and he even calls himself, among other things, "the resolver of conflicts," if I remember right.) Maybe war without a presiding consciousness would become more chaotic and less honorable, in his view. Or maybe Ares sees that war has already become too chaotic and dishonorable and not enough about resolving conflicts, and he thinks that a new, less burned-out god is needed to set things right.

(Here again Sandman could possibly be an influence. Destruction, one of the seven Endless who represent different aspects of life, ran away and gave up his role years ago, and he he says destruction kept happening in his absent--if anything, just a bit less controlled.)

Or, maybe, in Azzarello's world, war without Ares wouldn't be out of control, but it would inevitably seek out a god to personify it, because part of the nature of reality in this fictional universe is that major aspects of experience are personified by gods.

[InformationGeek]

I have a question for you guys. I was wondering.... what emotion is Wonder Woman expressing on the cover for this issue? I can't tell.

[Quinnhop]

This was another fun issue. Chiang's art makes anything work.

[americanwonder]

Slvn - Your speculation regarding Ares is interesting; I particularly like the Sandman references. But, what about Kronos? He's a chair in the underworld, but his defeat doesn't seem to have sent time out of control nor do I see any real indication that Zeus took his place as the god of time (though perhaps he did, and thus is able to remove himself from time). The gods' powers, imo, are less a position and more just a part of the god. To put it another way, Ares isn't the current 'Acting Director of Warfare,' Ares IS war.

Rob - Did you just call me Superboy Prime? I have tried to punch the walls of reality, but the only reality it seems to have an effect on is the pain in my hand.

[Outside_85]

Things I noted about this issue:

*The way Wonder Woman knew how to 'retract' her swords (a'la Wolverine). I wonder how she knew to do this?

It's possible she didn't and just expected to drop them?

*I'm not sure what Dionysus could have told Zola about Ares to make her vomit. She doesn't strike me as the type to shock easily.

I am pretty sure Ares in his capacity as War has the blame for some pretty horrific events over the course of human history, if not all of them.

*It's nice to see Hera out of her usual attire. I wonder if Strife will ever appear wearing anything else other than the trademark not-torn dress.

Most likely not, the attire is sort of an extension of who she is, as in; some people will love it and some people will hate it.

Can someone point out to me why Ares would want to kill Wonder Woman NOW? Surely he's had plenty of time to realize and accept that she just not the mindless war-monger he always wanted her to be.

I doubt he wants to kill her, possibly after seeing what happened to Artemis he's come around and hoped that Diana's time in man's world and the loss of her mother and sisters will have made her more open to his way of doing things?
Added he could just appear in the bar to poke fun at his mother.

[Robotman4]

I'm really fascinated by The First Born. Possibly a reimagined Hercules? Though the red tunic and cape remind me of Kirby's Atlas. Why does Hades want him dead? And how did he come out of the ground wearing the black cape and gauntlets? Can't wait for the answers Mr. Azzarello!

[Outside_85]

I'm really fascinated by The First Born. Possibly a reimagined Hercules? Though the red tunic and cape remind me of Kirby's Atlas. Why does Hades want him dead? And how did he come out of the ground wearing the black cape and gauntlets? Can't wait for the answers Mr. Azzarello!

The site they were digging in was where Cassandra believed they would find his armor and weapons, they giants just helped excavating them.

[slvn]

Slvn - Your speculation regarding Ares is interesting; I particularly like the Sandman references. But, what about Kronos? He's a chair in the underworld, but his defeat doesn't seem to have sent time out of control..."

As I've been reminded on here before, Kronos or Cronus (former king of the gods) and Chronos (god of time) should (or at least can) be considered separate beings, though often confused. Chronos was a primordial god, while Kronos was the son of Uranus. I can even cite the grand high authority of Wikipedia, whose entry for Cronus or Kronos begins "Not to be confused with Chronos, the personification of time." So, no harm done to time by Cronus' chair status, I guess. Instead, perhaps Cronus replaced Uranus, his father whom he slew, as Heaven, and then was replaced as Heaven by Zeus, who has just been replaced by Apollo. And we've seen Demeter and Artemis say that when the throne of Heaven was vacant in the past, there was chaos. Maybe the same would be true, to some degree, if the throne of War were vacant. The oracles say that one of Zeus' kids will replace another, and the Olympians, in discussing this, don't seem to doubt that a god "throne" or role can be taken over by someone else. In fact, we just saw it happen, with Apollo taking the place of Zeus.

To put it another way, Ares isn't the current 'Acting Director of Warfare,' Ares IS war.

Well, that's true, but in the myths, Helios wasn't Acting Director of the Sun; he WAS the sun, but then he was "dead" or imprisoned in Tartarus, and Apollo was the sun. As with the Endless in Sandman, the role or essence goes on, even if embodied by someone new. We saw the same kind of thing at the end of the Odyssey run, didn't we? Nemesis wanted Diana to replace/become her by slaying her. That precedent is of course not binding on Azzarello, but he may be coincidentally doing something similar.

More to the point, the idea that Ares wanted Diana to succeed him is not my speculation; we "hear" him thinking it in #0.

Returning to Dionysus' words, though, it might be that Ares does plan to kill Diana, in the sense that he plans to fight her to the death to test her as his successor. He says in 0 that the true warrior never accepts death even though he knows that death is the price of war (or something like that). So I expect him to put up a fight and not just stretch out his neck for the chopping, even if deep down he's rooting for Wonder Woman to slay him and not the other way around.

By the way, on a somewhat related subject, don't forget (unless you've managed to avoid and want to keep avoiding) that spoiler from ComicsCon. spoilers:

On the "concept to comic" panel that the Wonder Woman team did, the pitch for #0 was shown, and it mentions that the new status quo was going to be to Wonder Woman refusing to become god of war after slaying Ares. This was supposed to happen in 13, but it may have been just postponed, not abandoned.

end of spoilers

[wagthedog]

Was the aborted Diana/Orion fight on the first page like some thought, or did we have some of the Gods take up the first few pages?

I don't get my issue till a little later today

[MelDyer]

If the blond woman in the snow is Cassie, why is she wearing a hi-tech neck brace we've never seen in the Titans comic? Besides, the woman in the snow looks older, than Cassie would be. Perhaps, she is Doctor Cyber, Eviless or even Veronica Cale.

All we know is that she's blond and modeled on a friend of Chiang's.

And I think Demeter looks RIDICULOUS. What's with the wingy shoulder-things in that dress? Why would an Earth goddess, still be wearing Eighties-styled dresses, with big, wingy shoulder-crap? And with a face, like that, why is Demeter wearing a DRESS, at all? She looks like a green BEAGLE, ..a green beagle in a sun dress! She looks like a clown!

Demeter's interpretation for a horror comic should look scary or eerily beautiful or somehow reflecting the power of the Earth, ..but, Chiang's Earth goddess just looks silly, and the Earth is not silly. That's Demeter's problem in a nutshell. Cliff Chiang has been ingenius in his modernizations of the Greek Gods, and he's entitled to one dud.

Demeter is that dud.

Here's how you do a Green Goddess...

[brettc1]

Diana stands around a lot, someone I dont care about beats up ice warriors. Gods everywhere doing not much.

But the highlight has to be Zola, who deals with her terrible despair over her lost baby by propositioning a stranger she met outside the toilet 8 seconds ago.

[sirjustin86]

Azzarello's not saying it, though; he's having Dionysus say it. To me, the story hasn't yet made clear that Dionysus would necessarily have accurate knowledge of War's intentions.

But of course Dionysus could be right. We just don't know yet. Again, if he does want to kill her now, it probably has something to do with what he just learned about her power. Maybe he thinks he thinks such power doesn't belong in the hands of someone who doesn't follow the way of the warrior. Maybe he believes she really is a threat to him and the gods, and much as he may pretend not to care, it's not his nature to take it lying down. Or maybe he's afraid she will protect the gods form the prophesied threat, and he really wants them dead.

This is also all assuming though that Dionysus is telling the truth which, given the nature of the current cast of Wonder Woman, isn't necessarily true, non?

[Auguste Dupin]

If the blond woman in the snow is Cassie, why is she wearing a hi-tech neck brace we've never seen in the Titans comic? Besides, the woman in the snow looks older, than Cassie would be. Perhaps, she is Doctor Cyber, Eviless or even Veronica Cale.

All we know is that she's blond and modeled on a friend of Chiang's.

And I think Demeter looks RIDICULOUS. What's with the wingy shoulder-things in that dress? Why would an Earth goddess, still be wearing Eighties-styled dresses, with big, wingy shoulder-crap? And with a face, like that, why is Demeter wearing a DRESS, at all? She looks like a green BEAGLE, ..a green beagle in a sun dress! She looks like a clown!

Demeter's interpretation for a horror comic should look scary or eerily beautiful or somehow reflecting the power of the Earth, ..but, Chiang's Earth goddess just looks silly, and the Earth is not silly. That's Demeter's problem in a nutshell. Cliff Chiang has been ingenius in his modernizations of the Greek Gods, and he's entitled to one dud.

Demeter is that dud.

Here's how you do a Green Goddess...

Hem....don't take it the wrong way, but I think your version of Demeter actually looks sillier.
But maybe it has to do with the fact she's standing next to some guy in beast underpants and improbable body structure (I'm pretty sure some of these muscles aren'ts supposed to look like that).

[Nyssane]

I agree. I think Demeter looks great in the comic. It would irritate me if she was just another hot chick.