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chaila43 has an awesome idea to do a Post Awesome Things month to counteract the dead air summer feeling around here right now, and I think it's great. Quite a few people are doing it, and I feel super bad for not replying to them all - I've been having a really busy/stressful week, to be honest, so please accept my apologies if you're reading this and I haven't replied. But I did spent this evening hiding from any and all responsibility by capping Wonder Woman pictures of Awesome Bits of the comics I recently read.
Honestly, these aren't the, um, what I consider the quintessential moments, really, because honestly most of those aren't easily capped because they're like whole SEQUENCES that BREAK MY HEART PRECIOUS and require like, context and stuff, but um, have a random collection of DianaCaps anyway!
She is very good at punching.
And practical about one should expect when engaging in tavern brawls in witchsquid hinterlands.
Sometimes she brings gorillas as back-up.
Actually I was originally just going to show the hilarious contextless gorilla-assisted top panel, but I forgot to clip it out and the rest of the page is actually pretty cool and says a fair amount about the character too. So have that also. But mostly, gorillas.
She will headbutt you.
She will also win. But winning might kind of suck.
I wouldn't.
I would.
She knows how to dress for an occasion.
This occasion requires an extraordinary amount of violence.
This occasion requires surrendering to the Hague in full diplomatic attire.
If I were going to war, I would wear this instead of a swimsuit, too.
She likes to hug people. Occasionally it is unsolicited
Occasionally it is a cunning ruse to discuss alien cuisine.
Usually it is full of love.
Sometimes there cannot be hugs.
She is super heroic!
And trained in ambidexterous dual axe technique!
And blind-fighting!
And is fully aware of how to properly address an enemy (a necessary corollary of dressing for an occasion)!
Being a practicing polytheistic superhuman in America can raise complex philsophical issues.
However, as a recent convert to the Hawaiian sky god, Diana promotes religious freedom.
In fact, the more gods with whom she is associated, the more she can defy in a dramatic manner. She has found Zeus is particularly useful for this.
When she defies Athena, Athena usually caves. Diana is a total Daddy's girl.
Oh Superman, I knew I loved you for a reason.
I FIND THIS UTTERLY CHARMING.
But mostly, Diana knows who she is:
And what's important:
chaila43 has an awesome idea to do a Post Awesome Things month to counteract the dead air summer feeling around here right now, and I think it's great. Quite a few people are doing it, and I feel super bad for not replying to them all - I've been having a really busy/stressful week, to be honest, so please accept my apologies if you're reading this and I haven't replied. But I did spent this evening hiding from any and all responsibility by capping Wonder Woman pictures of Awesome Bits of the comics I recently read. Honestly, these aren't the, um, what I consider the quintessential moments, really, because honestly most of those aren't easily capped because they're like whole SEQUENCES that BREAK MY HEART PRECIOUS and require like, context and stuff, but um, have a random collection of DianaCaps anyway!
She is very good at punching.
And practical about one should expect when engaging in tavern brawls in witchsquid hinterlands.
Sometimes she brings gorillas as back-up.
Actually I was originally just going to show the hilarious contextless gorilla-assisted top panel, but I forgot to clip it out and the rest of the page is actually pretty cool and says a fair amount about the character too. So have that also. But mostly, gorillas.
She will headbutt you.
She will also win. But winning might kind of suck.
I wouldn't.
I would.
She knows how to dress for an occasion.
This occasion requires an extraordinary amount of violence.
This occasion requires surrendering to the Hague in full diplomatic attire.
If I were going to war, I would wear this instead of a swimsuit, too.
She likes to hug people. Occasionally it is unsolicited
Occasionally it is a cunning ruse to discuss alien cuisine.
Usually it is full of love.
Sometimes there cannot be hugs.
She is super heroic!
And trained in ambidexterous dual axe technique!
And blind-fighting!
And is fully aware of how to properly address an enemy (a necessary corollary of dressing for an occasion)!
Being a practicing polytheistic superhuman in America can raise complex philsophical issues.
However, as a recent convert to the Hawaiian sky god, Diana promotes religious freedom.
In fact, the more gods with whom she is associated, the more she can defy in a dramatic manner. She has found Zeus is particularly useful for this.
When she defies Athena, Athena usually caves. Diana is a total Daddy's girl.
Oh Superman, I knew I loved you for a reason.
I FIND THIS UTTERLY CHARMING.
But mostly, Diana knows who she is:
And what's important:
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no subject
Date: 2011-07-10 11:30 am (UTC)So, the first thing is, yes, I get that the DCU is intimidating. Most of what I know about it is second-hand osmosis information I gleaned from being friends with geeks (well, until reasonably recently that is) and even I feel kind of intimidated at times and am like, "am I supposed to know who this is? Um?"
So the best thing I can suggest doing on this front is just jumping in. I can rec you stuff that's fairly standalone, but I find the best approach to have - at least for me - is not to worry about the decades of continuity, etc., because it's just insane and also, it's constantly being rebooted either partially or completely and it's just an exercise in frustration. I wrote a bit recently about my interactions with the DCU and I mostly view it as like, a mythic cycle and a pantheon of deities about which we tell stories - usually reinventions of the same damn stories.
With that in mind, I recommend Greg Rucka's run on Wonder Woman Volume 2 195 - 226, and Gail Simone's run on Wonder Woman Volume 3 14 - 44. Both tell fairly self-contained stories that I think are enjoyable even if you know not a lot about the DCU as long as you're willing to occasionally go, "okay, that's probably a reference for fans," or, "okay, I'm not sure who this is, but I guess I'm finding out!" It's what I did and it worked out pretty well for me. Occasionally I searched a character out on wiki if I was really curious. That works quite well, though I recommend using regular wikipedia if it has an entry rather than the official DCU wiki because the regular wikipedia will be geared more towards people who don't know that much about the DCU, while the DC wiki is geared towards fans and will give you exhaustive and confusing breakdowns of every version of the character in every parallel dimension or pocket universe or aborted timeline and just...lots of stuff you don't need.
The other thing I'd say is, try to view the Simone run as a thematic and partially literal continuation of Rucka's run, but don't sweat that they do not match entirely. This is because in between the two runs there's a big time jump, a giant DCU crossover event which reshuffled the nature of reality, AND issues 1 - 13 of Wonder Woman Vol. 3 which aren't really that spectacularly great to read, but do contain some more plot. You could read those if you wanted, though it's not necessary - Simone's first story feels like a first story.
As I said, both runs work quite well in isolation, but if you try to connect the two, then you become aware of the missing pieces. My suggestion is to read one or the other (I actually read Simone, then went back and read Rucka even though it's chronologically earlier and it worked fine for me), if you like it, read the author's run you didn't read, then if you're curious, fill in the blanks in the middle! :p
And...that's probably done the opposite of allay your fears about jumping into the DCU.
If that does sound too intimidating, the ENTIRE DCU is being relaunched in September. It's not entirely a reboot as the characters aren't going back to their origin stories and certain key events from their histories are likely to be kept around, but it is a conscious effort to start again at Issue #1 and tell a story that doesn't need you to know what came before.
I don't know if Wonder Woman will be any good (because honestly, right now it isn't, but it's being given to a new person to write), but, um, it's certainly an unintimidating place to start?
Let me know if you want a list of the graphic novels the issues have been collected in or suggestions on where to get hold of them or somesuch.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-10 11:44 am (UTC)I will make a note of the volumes you mentioned and see if they are available in Germany without too much effort and at reasonable prices. There should be some comic store where I could ask...
no subject
Date: 2011-07-10 12:09 pm (UTC)Just a quick word on my potentially misleading use of the word "volume" - in comics they use increase the volume number when they start renumbering the comic, which can be for a bunch of reasons not limited to increasing sales, shifting the style, changing the lead character, internal reality shifts in the universe, etc. It gets confusing since sometimes any of the above can happen and they DON'T renumber too. But the point is, with really long-running comics like Wonder Woman, you get volumes that literally last for decades. Wonder Woman Volume 1 lasted from the 40s to the 80s. Wonder Woman Volume 2 lasted from the late-80s to the mid-2000s; they both have hundreds of issues and many graphic novels. Going to the comic store and asking for Wonder Woman Volume 2 is asking for two decades worth of comic!
So, what might help, is a list of the names of the graphic novels the single comics were collected into:
Simone's graphic novels, in order, are titled (with "Wonder Woman:" preceding them), The Circle, Ends of the Earth, Rise of the Olympian, Warkiller and Contagion. Greg Rucka's are called, Down to Earth, Bitter Rivals, Eyes of the Gorgon, Land of the Dead, Superman: Sacrifice (the OMAC Project) (Yes, that's a Superman book, but it's a crossover with Wonder Woman and includes #219 of her comic and is SUPER important for the run, like it has a PIVOTAL moment in it - though there's a really good recap at the start of the Wonder Woman comic in question, you could probably just read that) and Mission's End.
All of Simone's run (Wonder Woman Vol #3 #14 - 44) is also available for digital purchase at comixology.com.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-10 12:19 pm (UTC)Heh! Thanks for pointing this out and giving me the titles of the graphic novels, or I'd probably have made a fool out of myself at the comic bookstore. :)