Monday, June 13, 2011

The Trinity: Wonder Woman - Part 2

So here we go with Part 2 of the Wonder Woman reboot.

So thanks to the magic powers of a day off and way too much caffeine, I went on at length regarding the pre-history of Wonder Woman. Reading back, it looks like I was rubbing the Folgers directly on my gums, so I'll recap in brief who our Wonder Woman is.

Wonder Woman is magical warrior woman from a mist-shrouded island rooted in Greek myth. She was created to be an heir to the throne, to maintain the status quo of the island, and to help guide her people into the future. She is super strong, super durable, immune to disease and age, and doesn't even need to eat. She can speak/understand all languages and even talk to animals. She has magical items that include a lasso that makes people tell the truth, bracers that can deflect projectiles where ever she wants, and a belt that lets her fly. She is hundreds of years old and is schooled in tactics, strategy, combat, and all the other trappings of rulership.

And she doesn't want any of it.

Now, I don't mean that our Wonder Woman is a whiny emo character ("I didn't ask to be sculpted from clay, Mom!" SLAMSDOOR) or someone who would really even shirk her responsibilities. It's sort of like if you are invited to a dinner party you don't really want to go to, but you really should because these people are friends of your wife she hasn't seen in awhile, but even then she's not all that into it and would rather stay home and just get a movie or something. But no, because you are Good People, you go to the godamn party determined to make the best of it.

That's how Diana sees her future. She knows she has to do it for the good of her people, but considering that once she takes the job it'll pretty much be forever (downside to being an immortal queen), she'd rather put it off as long as possible. So when the mists start to fade early and unexpectedly, thus allowing an American pilot to crash land there, Diana leaps at the chance to get off the island. Her reasoning is pretty simple: she won't be able to leave once she becomes Queen and needs to get a broader worldview if she's going to be a good leader. Though is strained her relationship with her mom a bit, she gets the go ahead and hitches a ride back to the USA with Steve Trevor.

Her official mission is to represent Themyscira on the world stage, as it will uncloak completely pretty soon and it looks like the modern world would actually wake up and take notice. Steve Trevor brought with him reports of Superman and Batman, so there's also a bit of concern that the gods are walking the earth again, which might explain why the island is starting to emerge from the mists a few generations early. Given their first encounter with the modern age was a military jet crash landing on the beach, the Themyscirans are also interested in Wonder Woman kicking a bit of ass publicly so the rest of the world knows not to mess with them.

So Wonder Woman shows up in the DC Universe maybe six months to a year after Batman. Rather than being tied to a city like Metropolis or Gotham, she's a character on the move. She has to do the diplomat thing, after all. We'll let her keep Steve Trevor as her US Gov't supplied "handler" but we'll also give her a personal assistant (And I'm seriously tempted to make that assistant Barbara Gordon - we'll get more into that in Wither Batgirl? in a few days/weeks) and other associated staff.

Leading up to Issue #1, Wonder Woman spends most of her time doing the diplomatic thing, stopping to help fight injustice along the way. But more and more, she's been giving Steve the slip to head out and do her thing on her own. "Wherever I go, I only see the best or the worst of people. Either it's a city dressed up on its best behavior, or its a wasteland of war or famine. How can I learn what the modern world is like from that alone?"

Wonder Woman is a curious person and the constant vague diplomatic answers she gets to her honest questions must chafe quite a bit. Plus, by being escorted by a member of the American military, she feels like she isn't representing herself or her people very well. More like she's just being paraded around like a missile rolling through Red Square.

Plus, she's starting to Notice Things, bits of weirdnesses from the Age of Myth that seem to be slipping through to the modern day. That has to somehow be tied in to Themyscira emerging from the mists early, right? Is modern man even able to deal with that sort of thing? What happens if another Titan frees itself from its mountain prison and storms into Istanbul? And wait, wasn't that another Amazon she just saw at the edge of the crowd? What's up with that?

And that's about it for Wonder Woman. I'll get more into how the Trinity interacts with each other and details of the actual comics they each will appear in in the final installment of the Trinity reboot.

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