The Azure Cascade
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January 1st, 2030
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| Linkpost for World of Wondy. To be updated as chapters are posted. ( When Wondy was Awesome ) ( The Many Faces of Barbara Minerva ) ( Adoptive Amazon ) ( Nub'ia Then and Now ) ( Wonder Woman Villains ) ( Theoretically pending ) | ||||||||
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July 27th, 2009
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And now we're at an ending, as things accelerate to a tremendous pace, start happening too fast for different comics' timelines to properly match up, and take a turn toward the traditionally epic - you know, war, high body counts, fate of the cosmos hanging in the balance, the hero choosing between authority and principles, painful decisions and tragic loss. A lot of which Rucka had actually been doing all along, but I admit that the shared universe and the sheer weight of Infinite Crisis, awkward though that weight became elsewhere, did lend it a certain something. And hey, amazons at war in a way that's actually moving and awesome, and not the most disgusting bowel movement of a crossover since Bloodlines. This is what we call "going out with a bang." Next time: Diana charms a seven-year-old, rents a Hummer, and makes a new friend. | ||||||||
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July 25th, 2009
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| You know, you never really realize how massive Infinite Crisis is until you try to track down and isolate a particular storyline. I totally lied about there being OMACs in this chapter, it takes a lot longer to set up the Sacrifice arc than I remembered. Still got that Supes-Wondy fight though, no broken promises on that score. So here we are, on the cusp of Infinite Crisis. This is an odd time for our Wonder Woman, as her story gets crushed down, compressed, tossed about by crossovers, and generally cut short. But Rucka didn't let it break him, and in fact, while Infinite Crisis itself was a bit of a clusterfuck and did incalculable harm to the whole Wonder family, Diana's part in the lead-up was frankly a masterstroke of characterization. I can't think of a time when she's been better used in a crossover event, and I can only think of one other moment in her saga that is as singly, dramatically and powerfully defining.  Next time: OMACs, for real this time. Plus war on Themyscira, the departure of the gods, and other similar things we've seen far too many times already but which manage to work anyway because Rucka is apparently just that good. | ||||||||
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July 23rd, 2009
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| This being basically a continuation of the themes, arcs and plot threads from last chapter, I don't really have much of an introduction to throw in here. I will say that I think this the weakest of the Rucka part of this project; not that that's really any kind of condemnation, this is Rucka writing Wondy we're talking about here, but still. Part of that may be that it comes on the heels of the Best Wondy Ever, but I also think it kind of hurts thematically, for reasons I'll elaborate on as they come up. Also, there's a lot of Cassie. And the art's more than a bit wonky. But it gives very good Ferdinand, and there's intrigue and madness and big flashy fights and flying horses, so there's really no reason not to click the cut and dig in. And hey, additionally, I am happy to report that Artemis of the Bana-Mighdall does not act out-of-character even once in the following scans.  Next time: OMACs, moral quandries, and a drag-down knock-out fight with Superman. Because it's hard to go wrong with a fight with Superman. | ||||||||
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July 21st, 2009
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| Okay, well, we all know Rucka's good at politics, right? And intrigue, and covert action, and non-conventional forms of battle, like publicity wars and international diplomacy. After all, this is the Checkmate guy we're talking about here. He writes spy novels. But Diana's an action hero! She kicks ass, kills monsters and crushes tanks with her bare hands! It's not a good Wondy run if she's not doing some of that too! Well, um. She did battle with Medusa, once. You might say it was well done. I'm basically of that opinion. But the glory of this series is that you all get to judge for yourselves.  Next time: More upheaval on Olympus, and the resolution of Athena's scheming! Hecatoncheries! Naked Ferdinand! I start making comments again! | ||||||||
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May 16th, 2009
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| After Jimenez, provided you skip over Simonson's utterly unimpressive six-issue filler arc, the Wondy torch passed to Greg Rucka. Who did not write, actually, my favorite Diana of all time (even before Gail claimed the title), but who created, as a comic, IMO the best comic post-Crisis WW has ever been. That's not to say it's perfect, of course. Rucka has a weird tendency to iron flat the interesting moral wrinkles in his villains - both his own (Veronica Cale) and those he inherits (Cheetah). His Diana is a little too reserved, too... almost macho about her emotions, playing things too close to the vest (although I suppose that coming off the deaths of Polly and Donna, that's a reasonable direction to go in. Still not one that feels right to me, though). He's got the odd continuity error. The tone was kind of relentlessly tragic, and could have used an occasional infusion of fun. And whoever the chick with red hair he's writing is, she sure isn't Artemis. But despite the odd hiccup, his Diana is always powerful, confident, and clever, and he treats her with a respect for her nature and abilities that not even Perez really fully accorded her. His characters are sharp and his plots are intriguing -- this is at my journal now instead of S_D because under the new rules, I would simply have to cut too much to ever get half the depth of these stories across. And above and beyond that, the concept, the mission, the way Diana interacts with and affects her world, the thing that sets her apart from all the other crazy bruisers in spandex and makes her so much more interesting to me than most normal capes - he gets that, and did more and better to represent that than any author before or since. I mean, come on. He had her write a book. For something that sounds so simple, that's really pretty damn brilliant.  Next time: Diana versus Medousa, upheaval in Olympus, and me once again breaking your bandwidth with a metric crapton of scans. | ||||||||
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The Azure Cascade
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