The Short Tenure Of Artemis As Wonder Woman Is Encapsulated In Wonder Woman The Challenge Of Artemis

The Good: Engaging plot, Much of the artwork
The Bad: Very fractured storytelling/lack of transitions, No real character development
The Basics: The short tenure of Artemis as Wonder Woman is made more problematic by the writing which features very abrupt shifts in the story throughout Wonder Woman: The Challenge Of Artemis.


As a fan of Wonder Woman and Wonder Woman graphic novels, it always pains me when something fails to live up to my expectations. In learning about the larger arcs in Wonder Woman’s story, I was psyched about two phases: her blind phase and the period when Artemis replaced her as Wonder Woman. The blind phase actually managed to live up (for the most part) to my expectations. Unfortunately, her deposed phase, as presented in Wonder Woman: The Challenge Of Artemis, did not.

The fundamental problem with Wonder Woman: The Challenge Of Artemis is that the book feels rushed and like it is trying to fit into too many DC Universe crossover events while still struggling to be its own thing. So, most of Artemis’s story is diluted by Diana fighting Batman villains, most notably the Joker. I know from my Flash Year that the Joker’s attacks using Joker gas was a major event in the DC Universe in the mid-1990s and Wonder Woman: The Challenge Of Artemis is written to fit in with that event. As a result, much of Artemis’s tenure as Wonder Woman is spent without focusing on her character at all. In fact, Artemis has no real character development in the book.

While Artemis fends off the forces of the White Magician, most notably the Chauvanist (a hulking brute of a man whom she easily puts down), Diana starts working to clean up the local mob. Unfortunately, the woman who has inherited the Boston mob decides to employ Poison Ivy, Cheshire, and the Cheetah to stop Diana. The deposed Wonder Woman finds herself in the unenviable position of trying to keep a rival gang boss alive long enough to thwart the supernatural and mundane forces of Julianna Sazia. When she tracks Sazia down and finds her in the company of the Joker, Diana does the unthinkable: apparently blowing the Joker up with his own bomb!

That draws the attention of Artemis who moves in to pound Diana and put Sazia down once and for all, which results in Diana returning to Themyscira to confront her mother about why the second contest had to occur at all. In the process, Diana learns a key idea about Circe and she works to find the sorceress in her new, mortal form. But the White Magicians forces are not so easily stopped and he lures Artemis and Diana into a final showdown which will once again change the balance of power between the sisters!

While all of this might sound like it is intriguing and fun, the writing does not support it. One page, Diana is tracking down the White Magician and realizes his latest victim is the Cheetah, the next, she is in the hospital visiting friends. “Oh no, my temporary ally may be dead somewhere at the mercy of a great evil! Eh, I think I’ll take a breather and visit my wounded friend in the hospital.” And once there, she lets loose the whole Circe plotline which seems to pretty much come out of nowhere! Similarly, Artemis in one frame is conversing with two people and in the next she and Diana are kicking the crap out of one another and it is not that the reader is not keeping up, it is that the writer keeps dropping incongruent elements into the frames.

The artwork in Wonder Woman: The Challenge Of Artemis is good. Artemis looks pretty fabulous as Wonder Woman, even if her tenure as the heroine is incredibly underwhelming and underdeveloped. Diana and Artemis have distinctly different looks and until Diana’s namesake enters the book in a dream, all of the characters are instantly clear when reading this volume.

But, for those hoping for Artemis to learn a long, slow lesson or Diana to truly wrestle with not being Wonder Woman, Wonder Woman: The Challenge Of Artemis is a surprising letdown. Artemis is, predictably, arrogant and brutish and Diana seems to be pretty much the same as ever, save that she wears a different costume and does not have the lasso to use.

The end result is that Wonder Woman: The Challenge Of Artemis is a lot of hype for a non-event and serious fans of Wonder Woman are likely to recall this as one of the biggest missed opportunities of the franchise.

For other Wonder Woman volumes in this incarnation of the Amazon Princess, please check out my reviews of:
Gods And Mortals by George Perez
Wonder Woman: Challenge Of The Gods by George Perez
Beauty And The Beasts By George Perez
Destiny Calling By George Perez
The Contest By William Messner-Loebs
Wonder Woman: Lifelines By John Byrne
Paradise Lost By Phil Jimenez
Paradise Found By Phil Jimenez
Down To Earth By Greg Rucka
Eyes Of The Gorgon By Greg Rucka
Land Of The Dead By Greg Rucka
Mission's End By Greg Rucka
The Hiketeia

3.5/10

For other book reviews, please check out my Book Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Starting The Wonder Woman Graphic Novel Saga Well: The Contest

The Good: Great artwork, Interesting story, Decent character work
The Bad: Fractured writing, Cover gives away the ending
The Basics: The Contest provides the beginning of a series of challenges for Wonder Woman that bring her purpose and mission back into focus when her mother decides to provide an opportunity for the selection of a new Wonder Woman!


Since my Wonder Woman Year last year, there have been a few gaps in the heroine's storyline that I have been most interested in filling. As a fan of Wonder Woman graphic novels, there are stories I was very interested in and I was disappointed that I did not manage to find before the year was over. Fortunately, my local library has an awesome interlibrary loan system. They managed to get me in Wonder Woman: The Contest, which was one of the big stories I had wanted to read before now. I knew that Diana's Themysciran rival, Artemis, assumed the mantle of Wonder Woman at some point, but I did not know how it happened until now. Reading The Contest, I finally got the story of how Diana was replaced by Artemis as Wonder Woman.

Before starting The Contest, I did not realize how important the story actually was in the Wonder Woman pantheon. But it is this story that introduces Artemis and the Bana-Mighdall, not just replacing Diana. More than that, the rift between Hippolyta and her sister Antiope is explored - and justified fairly reasonably by Diana looking remarkably like her aunt. What surprised me as much was that The Contest was actually the first Wonder Woman trade paperback anthology. For sure, Wonder Woman had been in comics for the fifty years that preceded the publication of this book, but no one had bothered to anthologize the stories.

Opening with Diana returning to Themyscira, Diana is shot at and shocked before she is welcomed by her sisters. She is most surprised to learn that Circe's mystical barrier that she has breached (before this particular story began) has kept Themyscira away from Earth not for the months that she believed, but a decade. Meeting with her mother, Queen Hippolyta, Diana learns the horrible truth about how Circe removed Themyscira from the Earthly plane and set her banished sister's upon the island. After the initial assault and the bloody conflict, Circe transported Paradise Island to a demon dimension, which caused the two warring groups of Amazons to stop their conflict and fight off demons together. Thwarting the demons, Themyscira remained trapped behind Circe's barrier with Hippolyta ceding a quarter of the island to the other Amazons before Diana found them. Diana, shocked, wanders out into their territory where she meets Artemis and learns about her aunt's people.

Hippolyta, feeling Diana has lost her roots as a Themysciran, calls for a new contest to possibly award the position of Wonder Woman in Patriarch's World to another. After helping to set up for the contest, a shocked Diana wanders off with Artemis to the settlement of the other Amazons and she learns Antiope's story. Experiencing the treachery of men the way her aunt did, Diana lays in a state apparently near death.

The contest begins then with Diana periodically having flashes of her mother and aunt's story. As she comes to understand the rift between the Amazon tribes, she must alternately fight against and with Artemis and her sisters as part of the contest to crown the next Wonder Woman!

The Contest is one of the few retroactive origin stories that has managed to fit the pieces into the established narrative seamlessly. Having read the origin of Wonder Woman in George Perez's Gods And Mortals (reviewed here!), I recall Hippolyta's relationship with Herakles, but not the other men marrying other Amazons. William Messner-Loebs writes the story of Antiope and Hippolyta to seem credible, like the first pass merely focused too tightly on Hippolyta as opposed to rewriting the pre-origin of Diana as a "this is how it really happened, not like that other story!" Antiope is an interesting character and the split with her Amazons makes the story of Artemis and her Amazons make a lot of sense.

The character conflict is equally interesting. Hippolyta makes a decent point in that Diana has been preoccupied with working at a fast food restaurant and violently fighting invaders both metahuman and extraterrestrial instead of making the world safe for women everywhere. Hippolyta comes across as a bit of an absolutist, but she makes some sense. Moreover, Diana's emotional journey to understanding Antiope and the Bana-Mighdall (even if they are not called that in this book) is compelling. She loses her faith in Hippolyta and that, at the very least, sets up the storylines that follow in an interesting direction.

What doesn't work are the fractured moments. As a perfect example, Chapter Two ends with Diana in a trance, in shock, unconscious and when we see her first in Chapter Three, she is back in her Wonder Woman outfit, active and fit. Moreover, during the race when she takes on the Medusa, it is not written in a clear way to indicate that when Medusa is slain, those she has turned to stone revert to their natural form. So, there are moments that are choppy, as if William Messner-Loebs did not have enough space to actually write the books he was writing.

That said, Mike Deodato Jr.'s artwork is pretty fantastic. The Contest might look like a preteen's wet dream with the women-filled pages, but Deodato does an exceptional job of consistently representing characters. None of the panels look like they were skimped on and in addition to Diana looking like one expects her - save in the last chapter where there are moments in the new uniform where she looks like Deodato is still trying to get the character's new shorter, straight hair and proportions right. On the other hand, Deodato makes Artemis as Wonder Woman look phenomenal (from the cover and final chapter) and she is instantly a viable, forceful character from the form and presentation of the character.

Despite being somewhat choppy and having a few panels that are not as beautiful as the others, The Contest is a Wonder Woman graphic novel that is very easy to enjoy and sets off a new era in the Amazon Princess's storyline. I know, I am eager for the next chapter!

For other Wonder Woman volumes in this incarnation of the Amazon Princess, please check out my reviews of:
Gods And Mortals by George Perez
Wonder Woman: Challenge Of The Gods by George Perez
Beauty And The Beasts By George Perez
Wonder Woman: Lifelines By John Byrne
Paradise Lost By Phil Jimenez
Down To Earth By Greg Rucka
The Hiketeia

7.5/10

For other book reviews, please visit my index page on the subject by clicking here!

© 2011 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

| | |

"Look, It's A Reimagining Of Wonder Woman!" Wonder Woman: Amazonia Is Surprisingly Average!

The Good: Decent reimagining of the classic Wonder Woman story
The Bad: I'm not wild about the artwork, Story is very formulaic
The Basics: An alternate-universe storyline of Wonder Woman, Amazonia explores what London would have been like with Wonder Woman living in the wake of Jack the Ripper!


I seem to be in the minority on a lot of creative issues as to what makes for an interesting story. If I recognize all of the plot, character and acting elements of a movie, for example, I don't much care that it's dressed up nicely on a blue-spectrum planet where everything is animated, but doesn't quite look it all of the time. Similarly, creative reboots or alternate histories may make for a fun journey, but without a compelling statement or real change in theme, they replay poorly or seem like a novelty as opposed to actually making a compelling or interesting story. So, for example, alternate universe stories are neat for the glimpses into how cause and effect work, but unless one actually makes a statement with Spock in a goatee, it's just a minor twist on the known and eventually rewatching it seems more passe than novel even.

I mention this at the outset of my review of Wonder Woman: Amazonia or Amazonia: A Tale Of The Wonder Woman because forty-eight page Elseworlds comic (or graphic novella) from DC Comics seemed intriguing for about the first five pages and then it pretty much became everything uninspired I suspected it to be from the start. The concept behind "Elseworlds" was to create alternate universe origin stories for most of the major DC characters and see how the stories played out. The thing is, none of them were as creative as something like Lex Luthor being the one to find the baby Ka-El and Superman growing up to be the most incredible villain of all time. Instead, they create minor twists on how it all could have began . . . but the story ends up looking much like what it became anyway. In the case of Wonder Woman, Amazonia explores a late-19th, early-20th Century concept of Wonder Woman with the essential "What if" question being asked being "What if Steven Trevor discovered the island of the Amazons and Britain had bombarded it, bringing Diana back to man's world as his property?"

In the ghettos of London, Steven Trevor runs a theatrical revue of human oddities, the most impressive of which is a woman whose strength and speed appear to be unparalleled. When an anarchist makes an attempt on the Prince's life during one of her shows, she leaps up into the theater box, deflecting bullets, and saves his life. This gets her the attention of the king and of the women who are in attendance, chained together as they are. As Trevor curries favor with the king, Diana works to raise their two children and save an old friend from the gutter.

As the king becomes increasingly unstable, the backstory of Diana is revealed, how Trevor found her island, England bombed its citizens out of existence and when a freak accident killed the royal family following Jack the Ripper's four murders in London, an American heir was found to take the throne. That king now has his eyes on Diana and his goal is a bloodsport where Diana is his prey.

Amazonia, unfortunately, sets the pieces too close together and the early references to Jack the Ripper tied with soon after mentioning King Jack, makes the rest of the story pretty much tell itself. Watching it unfold becomes a gruesome exploration of misogyny which is not at all entertaining and is probably fairly well-known to most of the readers of Wonder Woman. The over-the-top hunting of women in Amazonia is simply a natural extension of the mentality of the psychotic Jack the Ripper and, arguably, Amazonia is more preoccupied with creating a setting that explores what would have happened with that type of power being lorded over all England than revealing anything vital or interesting about Wonder Woman.

To wit, Wonder Woman in Amazonia develops much the same as she did in any of her normal-universe settings, receiving training and working to do good in her spare time. In the case of Amazonia, Diana's doing good means letting Trevor have sexual dominance over her and using that to convince Trevor to let her friend become the governess to their children. Beyond that, the story is pretty much what one expects of Wonder Woman: she fights oppression and champions the causes of equality for all women, in this case literally breaking the chains that hold women in this alternate society in place.

The thing is, readers of Wonder Woman don't need that. We don't need to see how Wonder Woman would have taken on a society where Jack The Ripper was glorified instead of despised. We get the same fantasy from seeing how Wonder Woman deals with the actual inequities in modern society. In other words, the themes and even methodologies are the same in both the "real" world and in the Elseworlds concept. And, frankly, the journey is not that exciting.

Instead, it is troubling for two big reasons. The first is that the entire work is narrated by the paralyzed cousin of the reigning king. The narrator rambles and because the text is so top-heavy with "voice-over" (the narrator dictating to the reader what is going on or what he is thinking), the comic underuses the potential of the comic book or graphic novel medium.

Second, the artwork is terrible. I understand exactly what Phil Winslade and Patricia Mulvihill were attempting to do in Amazonia: they were trying to visually show the period piece that writer William Messner-Loebs was telling with his words. As such, each page is a series of sketches that actually look like etchings in the artwork of the vaudeville era. The colors are muted and dark and the book actually looks like a series of Goya engravings. The color palate is shifted to the dark purples and everything has an oppressive tone from the colors to the scribble-type lines that make up the shading in most of the panels. Here the concept works far better than the execution and readers are likely to miss the vivid colors of the standard Wonder Woman stories.

Even so, the dialogue is good and Messner-Loebs does a decent job of making the book seem as if it actually is a period piece with cockney dialect and a premise that is interesting, even if it is a bit predictable. Ultimately, I give it a very soft "recommend" and even as I write that I am doing so, I know it is mostly for the novelty.

For other trade paperback anthologies which feature Wonder Woman, please check out my reviews of:
Gods And Mortals
Challenge Of The Gods
Ends Of The Earth

4.5/10

For other book reviews, please check out my index page by clicking here!

© 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.


| | |