Preamble

Hello friendos and bendos, it’s me Zee. Thank you for the responses on my last essay! Hope to continue doing these for a good while.

Issue #2: Outlaw – Part 2

 Page 1

This page sets up what the rest of the issue will be, a constant switch up between flashbacks and the present. Comparing the day Diana entered the challenges to leave Paradise Island to the current day of her battling the U.S. army.

In his narration, Sovereign calls the Amazon quest for peace and love throughout the world as ‘nettlesome proselytizing’ which is a whole bunch of big words that essentially means ‘cringe and preachy’. While the Amazon quest is just and true, to the Sovereign (and by extension, America and the patriarchy which he represents), the Amazons are simply an annoyance and anything annoying is to simply be dashed off without consideration. Very similar to how many dismiss progressive ideals simply because they view the person talking about them as preachy or nagging, without taking the time to listen to what they have to say.

Side note here: I originally found how Diana was portrayed in the flashback in this issue to be strange. She is very visibly young and that brought up the question of ‘How do the other Amazons not realize Diana is Diana? Yeah she’s wearing a mask but all of them are a thousand years old and she’s not only the only one on the island who is not, but it’s clear as day that she isn’t’.

So, I did reading, and it turns out that Diana being the only child to grow up on Themyscira was a Post-Crisis invention. In Wonder Woman #23, which is written by Marston, it turns out that other children do in fact exist on the island and grew up with Diana (though where they come from, I have no idea). With all the universal resets and retcons, and King clearly using more Golden Age and Silver Age influences for his WW, it seems that he’s simply going for this interpretation of children on Themyscira and so it’s not an inaccuracy or plot hole like I originally thought. You can always learn more it seems (though I personally don’t like retconning children on Themyscira back into being a thing).

Page 2

Steel sends Steve to get Diana to surrender. Steve tells Diana that he told Steel she obviously wouldn’t surrender but he was sent anyway. Diana instead tells Steve to go to Steel and tell him to surrender, but Steve also acknowledges that Steel won’t go down without a fight either.

Nevertheless, Steve goes through with his orders of asking Diana to surrender to which she goes, “No thank you.”

The only way this situation is going to end is with one party knocking sense into the other. Diana doesn’t want a fight but Steel does and she won’t surrender, thus she must fight. Which is a very Wonder Woman scenario, if that makes any sense.

Page 3

Parallel with the woman Diana is going against in the flashback asking her to surrender, which she also says, “No thank you,” to.

Giving up just isn’t in Diana’s nature.

Also, the woman whom Diana is against says that she should ‘beg submission’ which feels like a very intentional nod to the Marston themes of domination and submission in Amazonian culture.

Another side note here: King’s ‘No thank you’ is actually not the first attempt to give Diana a catchphrase. In the ‘Wonder Woman: Bloodlines’ film she is given the catchphrase ‘Now, that, I will not allow’ which is in many ways similar to ‘No thank you’ as it is a polite dismissal. I quite like both of these, hope one of them sticks.

Page 4

What I quite DISLIKE is this page.

Steve sincerely asks Diana to surrender because the army is insanely tough and gets frustrated at her for genuinely thinking she can go through with this and beat them.

That’s not Steve, like, at all. Steve, from his inception as a character, was built upon being Diana’s biggest pedestal. He genuinely believes she can do anything. Some bad guy shows up in those old stories and goes, “Haha I will take over the world!” and no matter what or who it is, Steve goes, “LMAO, Wonder Woman’s gonna kick your ass for sure.”

No matter how many rocky roads their relationship goes down, Steve is always gonna be Diana’s #1 fan. I genuinely do not believe he would think Diana would be unable to fight off the army.

It’s so strange to say but, in order to prop up Diana, King ends up downplaying Steve. And while I love pointing out how badass Diana is, doing so by writing Steve completely out of character was definitely not the correct play.

Page 5

Continuing on with Steve not believing in Diana, King also tries to say this ‘super deep’ phrase of, “In that placid moment before the test of arms you will always be alone.”

I think I read this page like 10 times to come to some sort of conclusion but I just cannot understand what King is saying here and it just comes off as trying to say something without having anything to say.

Page 6 – 7

The story picks back up in quality with Sampere’s art in another beautiful splash page. From Diana in her training garb as a teen facing down her enemy in the colosseum to her as an adult facing down the army.

The Sovereign’s narration here is quite good too. Diana is a paragon of peace and that should be understood first and foremost by anyone who tries to write her.

“She averred that any moment of hate could be overmatched, overcome by just the slightest display of love.”

There is, however, also commentary on the fact that she still goes out into the world to fight battles as part of this quest for peace at the end of this splash’s narration. The ever-present conundrum of Diana has always been that she is a warrior yet stands for peace.

Page 8

More Steel quipping as he reasserts himself in the story as a capable and strong after losing any semblance of respectability last issue.

Steve lighting Steel’s cigarette is used to show his superiority to Steve as he dismisses him as ‘pussy-whipped’.

Page 9

The Sovereign explains the strategy of war as both Diana and the army prepare for their showdown.

The important part of this page to analyze is Sovereign’s narration in the sixth panel: “Then get the grunts to rush in close and kill and die in what you will tell their children was a patriotic mission.”

Commentary on the brutality of war and how often soldiers are sent simply to die in the name of their country for the sake of a ‘patriotic mission’ that very well is nothing of the sort. Extra potent with King’s metatext of the army fighting Wonder Woman. How can the army be doing a patriotic mission when they are fighting a superhero who used to represent American patriotism?

Page 10 – 11

As the fights of the past and present rage on, King, through use of the Sovereign’s dialogue, touches upon Diana’s origin of being sculpted from clay. This origin was changed to her being a demi-god daughter of Zeus in the New 52 but has been slowly rolling back to her being made of clay over the years since Rebirth decided the New 52 never happened.

King here sticks to the clay origin. He mentions the Zeus origin but the way it is presented is made clear that the clay origin is the true one. The Zeus origin, as the Sovereign says, has a hint of truth somewhere in it but is ultimately a lie at its core.

This means several things. The first is, again, a clear want to stick to the original Marston themes of Diana and Themyscira. Her being born without the need of a father is pure feminist iconography that I absolutely adore. The Zeus origin takes this away in a way that just feels incredibly gross to me. Some people have stronger opinions on the Clay vs Zeus origin debate than others. My opinions on the debate are very strong. I HATE the Zeus origin. Plain and simple. To me it violates a core part of what Wonder Woman means and it was essentially created for the cheap drama of applying a twist to New 52 Diana to show that ‘she’s not your gam-gam’s Wonder Woman!’.

The second meaning of this has to do with reboots and hypertime (topics I’m sure we all love /s). This will continue to come up more in King’s run as he talks about the differing histories of Wonder Woman, her villains and supporting cast throughout the decades. Due to the events of Rebirth, Death Metal and Dark Crisis, essentially all comic events are canon, just some are just more canon than others. And King uses this explanation to be able to tell his story how he wants, pointing to it in case someone goes ‘Erm, but doesn’t A contradict B?’.

Personally this is my preferred approach to the writing of comic characters. Trying to stay consistent with content from years of reboots, some of which directly contradict the message you want to relay, only leads to failure in my opinion. The aim should be to stay consistent to the core of the character and it seems that’s what DC has been attempting to do with their characters ever since the Dawn of DC era. ‘Just tell good stories’ is the motto and I like it. But, again, just my opinion.

(P.S. if you want to learn more about just how hypertime and stuff really work in the DC universe, I recommend Greg Rucka’s run of Lois Lane: Enemy of the People.)

I’ll explain the third thing this set of pages means in a bit, as it’s not just those two points, but first:

Page 12 – 14

King redeems his Steve characterization a bit here with him referring to Steel’s barrage as not being as effective as ‘he’ (Steel) hoped rather than ‘we’.

But just a bit.

Diana SMASH! (Wonder Woman by Tom King #2)

Page 15 – 16

King talks more about Diana’s origins and reboots and retcons.

The third meaning of what he was talking about before enters the picture with some extreme metatext. Essentially, King is saying that whoever is writing Diana’s comics and stories, and what they choose to keep and retcon, says much more about the writer than Diana. Reminds me of Grant Morrison’s book ‘Supergods’ which talks about superhero comics as vessels to project a writer and culture’s feelings.

King, as much as he criticizes others with this, also criticizes himself with self-awareness. He knows he’s just as guilty of writing a Wonder Woman story about what he wants to say about the world and about Wonder Woman as much as he’s writing a story simply about Wonder Woman.

“Every tale of the great Wonder Woman provides us with more insight into the teller than into their supposed protagonist. They faithfully project their own fears onto her with the aspiration that her legend can ease their daily panic.” That’s the direct quote from the second panel.

There’s so many layers to this. On one hand, King is self-aware. On the other, self-awareness doesn’t absolve him of any bad writing he may do. On the other, other hand, every story has projection in it, it’s what makes it human, so you can’t necessarily fault King for projecting onto his stories when others do too. On the other, other, other hand you totally can.

Lots of others.

Oh, and a fourth thing too. The Sovereign, like Wonder Woman, is more myth than mortal. But while Wonder Woman is projected onto by others, he projects himself onto others. More opposites.

Page 17 – 21

More Diana being badass. No notes her aside from that I love Diana being badass.

Page 22

The final page and one I have mixed feelings on.

First, let’s get this out of the way, King here reveals that the Amazon Diana fought in the finals to determine who goes to man’s world was also the Amazon at the heart of the murder case that started the U.S.’s crackdown on Amazons: Emelie. I’m genuinely interested in this. A story about the Amazon who could have become Wonder Woman is new (correct me if I’m wrong and that storyline took place during the late Golden or Silver Age or something).

Second: King’s characterization of Steve in this issue is so confusing. In this page it feels like he knew Diana would win all along and he had no doubts but that’s not the case at all when we look at his conversation with Diana earlier in the issue. Almost feels like King realized his mistake and corrected his characterization but just didn’t change the earlier section. Very strange.

Our introduction to Emelie! (Also King semi-redeeming his Steve) (Wonder Woman by Tom King #2)

Conclusion:

I enjoy King’s run a lot, but I thought this when I first read issue #2 and I can confidently say it now that I’ve reread it with several other issues now out: This issue kinda sucks and is probably the worst issue of the run (with 14 issues out at the time of writing). His bizarre characterization of Steve and the way the pacing is structured just leads to this not being a very chapter.

See you next essay.

My Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ItsQueenZee

A glaring error that I keep running into with wonder woman irregardless of her origin. Mythology states that hyppolyta is the daughter of Ares. So irregardless of origin Diana has always been beating on her actual grandfather. None of the other gods ever mention it. Plus I think one movie might implied some things I'm going to have to go back research. It might have been hades ill have to check.

This is more out of curiosity but I was wondering if at some point Circe turned into an animal, either by her own will or a victim of her own spell.

Variant Cover Art for Wonder Woman #16 (2025)

Artist: https://www.threads.net/@davidnakayama/

Source: https://www.threads.net/@davidnakayama/post/DBwkzyMySpb

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Hi y'all! Recent convert to WW here!

I'm here with a humble request. I've read through Rucka (both), Simone and Perez and I need more.

Spam me with your favourite and best wonder woman comics that aren't in these three runs and I'll read them all.

Thanks team!

What would you think of Diana channeling Aphrodite's powers of emotional manipulation, a loving aura that influences everyone around her to want to fulfill her wishes.

I was just curious as a gay guy myself, I did try to search if someone did this before but the poll was deleted

View Poll

My wife and I were at a thrift store looking for stuff. When I met up with her in the store, she was looking for purses. None met her needs in a purse. I look down (I'm always on the hunt for dc stuff. I had just finished successfully but awkwardly, looking through a bin of naked old barbies to find a Batman or anyone dc...) and see that purse on the floor, right in front of her feet.

It met all her needs and is Wonder Woman to boot!

It was like a gift from Themyscira itself.

Some Jason Todd already seeking for them