Wonder Woman New 52

Having at last had a chance to read the first New 52 collected volume of Wonderwoman i was prepared for another painful take of a DC character along the lines of Worlds Finest or Captain Atom, yet i found myself surprised that Wonderwoman herself was quite recogniseable as Wonderwoman and was herself largely unchanged. At least in the six issues within this volume.

In fact were it not for the New 52 tag, this seemed like it would have fitted in as another writer retconning/ignoring the previous writers work as some Wonderwoman writers have been inclined to do even when they were meant to be working within a continuity. So while Wonderwoman herself has been left largely intact, the world around her and it's inhabitants from the gods to her fellow Amazons, have been considerably altered, when her mother appeared i almost confused her for Zealot ( platinum blonde in red armour amazon type hero formerly of the Wildstorm Universe who should now be part of DC when someone remembers ).

The Brian Azarello Wonderwoman reboot tries hard to be quite different from the 1987 George Perez reboot, and goes out of his way to make this quite clear. His greek Gods are crueler, more akin to the ancient myths in some respects with some exceptions particularly with Ares sorry... "War" as he is called, who far from a spiteful, childish butcher of the old myths, or from the dark lord who attains wisdom ( in the Perez years, although later writers kept bringing him back as a Wonderwoman badguy as though he was a Supervillain ), seems neither friend nor foe so far.

The story revolves around Wonderwoman protecting a woman pregnant by Zeus, King of the Greek Gods, from the rage of Hera, Zeus's wife and Queen. Hera also has a bone to pick with Wonderwoman who in this incarnation is also a child of Zeus, unusually Zeus didn't adopt a form to 'seduce' Hippolyta instead taking a leaf from the Red Sonja movie and dueling her until she fell for his charms ( which is really only a mild step from the myths in how Zeus 'seduces' a woman, although involving less unusual transformations ). So currently the book has a curious 'Hercules the Legendary Journeys' TV feel with casting Hera as the current big bad villain.

So i find myself having mixed feelings on one hand it has ditched a lot of things i liked, but the main character, largely thanks to very little characterisation, pleasingly still comes across to me as the old version of Diana regardless of the new outfit and world. Admittedly i'm not keen on the 'Daughter of Zeus' thing, nor of Hera who looks the part but has a psychotic personality,( but i have my own view on the greek goddess that is at odds with most interpretations of her persona anyway, so that doesn't matter ). The writers strange choice to have some of the Gods go by their names ( Zeus, Hera, Hades ) and some to go by what they are god of ( Ares is now called 'War' while Eris is now 'Strife', even by their fellow Gods) which is a little bizarre and makes me think that maybe the writer considers the readers to be stupid.

Also jarring is some of the dialogue, some of which just doesn't sound like it should, or would, be uttered particularly by Hera, or Wonderwoman. It is almost as though the writer is at times trying too hard to make the comic and characters somehow modern and relevant and not getting the characters sounding right, although i guess that is editorials fault as much as the writer. Still this has been the least irritating New 52 comic yet for me, so that is something i guess.