As the lead in to DC’s Rebirth initiative continues, it’s the Princess of the Amazons’ turn to have her entire history rewritten! Greg Rucka returns to write Wonder Woman in a move that should have anyone familiar with the character excited and he’s joined here by artists Matthew Clark and Liam Sharp to forge a new era for Diana. But first, they need to run back everything you thought you know about Wonder Woman.
Read on below for our full thoughts on “Wonder Woman: Rebirth” #1, but be warned: there’s probably some spoilers below.
Written by Greg Rucka
Illustrated by Matthew Clark & Liam Sharp
After suffering an unimaginable loss, Wonder Woman must rebuild her mission as Earth’s ultimate protector and champion.DON’T MISS: New York Times best-selling writer Greg Rucka returns to Wonder Woman with a tale that will forever alter the DC icon.
As seems to be the case with these Rebirth issues, this is less of a lead in to a new era of comics and more of a rewrite/apology for the comics that came before during the New 52. Which is interesting because you would think that with Greg Rucka writing Wonder Woman once again that this issue would be forging ahead to create a new and classic run in the making for the character. Instead, most of this issue is spent establishing the fact that Everything You Know Is Wrong and creates a continuity snarl the likes of which hasn’t been seen since post-“Infinity Crisis” Donna Troy.
I’m getting ahead of myself here, though. Largely because I really, really wanted to like this issue. Greg Rucka is a writer who has defined the character of Wonder Woman for me in the past and he’s joined here by two artists: Matthew Clark and Liam Sharp, who is one of the artists who will be working on the “Wonder Woman” series proper along with Nicola Scott. What’s interesting about this issue and what I think works best is the opening sequence illustrated by Matthew Clark as it’s an instance of the art telling a separate story to the narration.
While Diana’s narration establishes the feeling that something is wrong and seeds the idea that Wonder Woman’s histories are overlapping, the artwork by Matthew Clark, inker Sean Parsons and colourist Jeremy Colwell show Diana attacking gang members in a strip club to defend a young woman. It’s a strong scene and shows Wonder Woman as a defender of the innocent while the narration creates a wider scope for the story. The marriage of those two gives a pretty clear feeling of who Diana is through her actions while establishing that something larger and weirder is going on behind the scenes.
That scene is largely self-contained, though, and exists mostly to establish who Wonder Woman is while the rest of Clark, Parsons and Colwell’s pages are either of Diana standing in a hotel room looking pensively at Ares’ helmet or a montage of shots showing the conflicting and overlapping histories of Wonder Woman from before and after “Flashpoint”. This is kind of where the issue starts to have that Rebirth problem of trying to merge what came before “Flashpoint” with what came after and seems to be trying to rewrite Diana’s history in the New 52 with a new origin story that feels like an updated version of her pre-“Flashpoint” origins. The writing wears the fact that this is convoluted on its sleeve by having Diana continually remark about the fact that it makes no sense, but I have to wonder once again whether this is right approach to take in gaining new readers.
This issue feels more like an apology for “Wonder Woman”‘s time during the New 52, moreso than the “Superman: Rebirth” ever did, as it seems to be trying to run back a lot of the developments from Azzarello and Chiang’s run. This is an… interesting way of starting a new era of the character by outright calling out everything that immediately preceded this as being a lie and leading the issue up to pivotal moment where the art style shifts to Liam Sharp, who will be drawing the present day storyline in “Wonder Woman”, and colourist Laura Martin as Diana ditches her New 52 costume for a new, retro-feeling costume that harkens back to William Moulton Marston.
Continued belowThe downside to this is that Liam Sharp gets a drastically shorter page count than Clark did and while the same trick is pulled where Sharp’s artwork is showing a different story than the narration is telling, it’s much less interesting conflict that Sharp illustrates. That mostly down to the fact that Diana fights what are essentially mindless enemies for three pages before having a big final page cliffhanger, but it ends on such a strange note.
There’s something mildly frustrating about the fact that DC’s take on Rebirth is to take fan’s complaints about the New 52 and address them metatextually. Didn’t like the Zeus-as-Diana’s-dad origin? Don’t worry, that’s not the real origin! Didn’t like Diana as the God Of War? Neither did we, it was all a lie! Instead of letting what happened happen and moving on to tell new stories that hopefully capture the spirit of the character in a new light, there seems to be an effort here to “fix” those stories by having the focus of the issue be about how history is changing and the story isn’t being told right.
What’s frustrating about this is that after 20-something pages of story, “Wonder Woman: Rebirth” still feels as shackled to the New 52 as ever despite trying to, apparently, renounce it. It’s in this strange middler ground where it clearly wants to be the start of a bold, new era, but it can barely get past trying to tell the reader that everything they read in the past didn’t actually happen the way they though it did. That means that either new readers are lost trying to follow two conflicting versions of Diana’s history, established readers who didn’t like the New 52 stories are having to hear about them again and established readers who did like the New 52 are being told that this new story is actively throwing it all in the trash.
There’s no clean break here between what came before and what is going to come after meaning that this is less of a jumping on point and more like wading into the muddy pool of Wonder Woman continuity with the hopes that Greg Rucka and Liam Sharp working together can make it worth it.
Perhaps I’m being too harsh on this issue. I have tried to highlight the aspects of the issue that I think work and that’s largely the separation in how the artwork and the narration tell the story. Rucka’s narration focuses on the larger picture of the story being told and clearly trusts the artists working with him to tell the story of the moment to moment scenes entirely through the artwork. There’s no moment where the narration simply explains what’s happening in the artwork and there’s no moment where the reader can’t understand the story simply through the art alone.
It’s the mark of a veteran writer who trusts the creation of the comic to the artists without overstepping and only allowing the story to be told in the writing. Plus, the comic is gorgeous. The two art styles are very different between artists, but the separation is clear and the transition is a pivotal moment in the comic where the style change emphasises the forward momentum of the story.
All in all, I feel like the problems I have with this issue come from the Rebirth initiative itself and it’s need to outright apologise for the New 52 instead of creating a clean break and telling new and, hopefully, better stories. I have no doubt that Greg Rucka and Liam Sharp can do this based on this issue, but I can only hope they ditch the baggage of the New 52 as soon as possible. I don’t know if this issue works as jumping on point for the character or for the upcoming series, but I do know that it has some really fantastic artwork and some cool Wonder Woman fights and maybe that’s all I can ask for.
Final Verdict: 7.6 – It’s hard to know what to think about this issue as there’s some fantastic writing and artwork in here buried under a convoluted story that’s shackled to the weight of the New 52 despite trying to break away from it.
