Wonder Woman: The True Amazon


By Jill Thompson, lettered by Jason Arthur (DC)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-4901-4 (HB) 978-1-4012-7450-4 (TPB)

Iconic global role model Wonder Woman was conceived by polygraph pioneer William Moulton Marston and illustrated by Harry G. Peter in an attempt to offer girls a positive and forceful role model. She debuted as a special feature in All Star Comics #8 (December 1941), before springing into her own series and the cover-spot of new anthology title Sensation Comics a month later. An instant hit, the Amazing Amazon quickly won her own eponymous supplemental title in late Spring of that year (cover-dated Summer 1942).

Once upon a time in the traditional history, on a hidden island of immortal super-women, American aviator Steve Trevor of US Army Intelligence crashed to Earth. Near death, he was nursed back to health by young and impressionable Princess Diana.

Fearing her daughter’s growing obsession with the creature from a long-forgotten and madly violent world, Queen Hippolyte revealed the hidden history of the Amazons: how they were seduced and betrayed by men but rescued by the goddess Aphrodite on condition that they henceforward isolate themselves from the rest of the world and devote their eternal lives to becoming ideal, perfect creatures.

However, when goddesses Athena and Aphrodite subsequently instructed Hippolyte to send an Amazon back with the American to fight for global freedom and liberty, Diana overcame all other candidates in a vast sporting and combat competition and became their emissary – Wonder Woman.

On arriving in America, she purchased the identity and credentials of lovelorn Army nurse Diana Prince, elegantly allowing the Amazon to be close to Steve whilst enabling the heartsick medic to join her own fiancé in South America. Soon after, Diana also gained a position with Army Intelligence, ensuring she would always be able to watch over her beloved.

Now this modern alternate version requests that you forget most of that as Jill Thompson offers another take on the formative years of the Princess Diana in an epic retelling painted in the manner of a picture book but with the no-holds barred punch you’d expect from Earth’s premiere Warrior Woman (Diana, not Jill).

Following an ‘Introduction’ by novelist and comics creator Mariko Tamaki (Skim; Saving Montgomery Sole; This One Summer), the subtly reconfigured saga opens on idyllic Themyscira: an island paradise inhabited by immortal warrior women. As before, their fate is the result of iniquities inflicted upon them by male “heroes” such as Herakles – secretly abetted by lustful Zeus – before stern Hera intervened to allow the Amazons to escape and build a bastion of culture in isolation.

However, their triumphant leader Queen Hippolyta was discontented. She craved a child more than life itself, and one special night her sadness and yearning touched the gods, who turned a shape drawn in sand into a real baby…

The child was beloved of all the Amazons, growing in an atmosphere of adoration and constant, uncritical approval. As well as smart, fast, brave and strong, baby Diana subsequently became insufferably spoiled, incurably vain and revoltingly selfish.

How that privileged brat became the humble, driven, noble protector of the weak is a tale of love, valour, repentance and redemption to delight and shock as the young wonder warrior endures a ghastly transformational motivating incident that traumatically reshapes her life in one shocking moment…

Embracing and channelling Classical Greek motifs while offering a most believable and human childhood for the little princess, this dark fairy tale is a powerful revision of Wonder Woman’s creation myth for a world marginally more inclusive than the patronising era of WWII, and provides a far more potent and logical reason for her exile to the world of Men than simple infatuation…

Augmented by a ‘Sketchbook’ section detailing page-roughs, scene-designs, fashions; the creation of the book cover; the process From Pencils to Color and a feature on ‘Designing the Wonder Woman Statue’, this is a brilliant reassessment of the iconic Diana and one well worth seeking out in either hardback or trade format, or even nature-nurturing eBook editions.
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