In Light Of Yesterday’s GIF Pronunciation Controversy, Here’s My Favourite Wonder Woman GIF

Yesterday, Steve Wilhite, the creator of GIFs or “graphics interchange format”, announced that the term was pronounced “JIF” like the peanut butter instead of with a hard G like pretty much everyone else in the world has been pronouncing it.  The internets went bonkers about it, because there are no other issues worth discussing in the world.  For what’s it worth, I always read it with a soft G, because I think it sounds more pleasant, but ultimately I don’t really care one way or the other.

Nonetheless, this gives me a fun opportunity to share my favourite Wonder Woman GIF!  There’s lots of great ones out there, especially from the TV show.  Like the classic spin change:

But this one is my very favourite, from an episode of Super Friends I’m assuming.  It cracks me up every time:

So yeah, regardless of pronunciation, Wonder Woman hilarity is always a good time.

Women At DC Comics Watch – August 2013 Solicits

DC Comics is set to continue what looks to be a strong summer for female creators with their solicits for August 2013.  The numbers aren’t off the charts or anything, and certainly pale in comparison to the hundreds of men in DC’s solicits each month, but these are some relatively solid numbers and we continue to see some slight growth from where we were almost two years ago when we started checking in on the solicits.  Let’s see what’s up for female creators and characters in August:

• For writers on the New 52, Ann Nocenti pens Katana #7 and Catwoman #23, Gail Simone writers Batgirl #23 and The Movement #4, and Christy Marx is on Birds of Prey #23.
• For New 52 art, Nicola Scott pencils Earth 2 #15, Ricken is doing the cover for Birds of Prey #23, and Emanuela Lupacchino is drawing the cover and interior art for World’s Finest #15.
• Outside of the New 52, Karen Traviss writes Batman: Arkham Unhinged #17 and Cat Staggs does the cover for Smallville Season 11 #16.
• At Vertigo, Yuko Shimizu is on cover duty for The Unwritten #52, as always, while Gail Simone is writing and Becky Cloonan is drawing a story in American Vampire Anthology #1.
• There isn’t much new for female characters in August, though Wonder Woman is appearing for the first time in Smallville Season 11 #16.  Jeff Lemire’s new book, Trillium, launches as well, and there seems to be a lady on the cover.  And while we don’t have many details on the American Vampire Anthology yet, I think it’s fairly safe to assume that some female characters will be involved.  The main book is usually quite good that way.

Altogether, there are 10 different female creators on 11 books in August.  This is down from July’s 13 and 13, but we’re still in double digits.  I think double digits is a reasonable benchmark to expect for female creators every month.  DC’s shown that they can meet it several times recently, so that will be our new expectation.  For the first year or so of this project, we were just glad to see more than the 4 or 5 women of the first few months, but the bar has been raised.  DC CAN hit dual double digits each month, so we’ll expect them to do so.

It’s a quiet month across the board at DC, with Trinity War wrapping up and not many new books launching, so things aren’t too exciting on the female character front.  However, the September solicits should be very fascinating.  Rumour has it that DC is doing an all villains month, with 52 #1 issues featuring villains from all over the DC universe, so it’ll be interesting to see how many women are involved in that, both in terms of characters and creators.  In terms of characters, Bleeding Cool reports that the Cheetah, Lady Vic, Nightmare Nurse, and the new female Ventriloquist are likely stars for titles in September, which isn’t a bad start.  Numerically, anyway.  This Nightmare Nurse just seems like a mess.

Overall, August looks to be decent for women at DC.  A fair number of women are working on various books, plus Wonder Woman’s going to be in another comic book, which is always fun.  Things still aren’t great, but they’ve definitely been a lot worse.

Wonder Woman TV Show “Amazon” Still Alive At The CW

TV executives have been unveiling their new fall lineups this week, and absent from The CW’s schedule was Amazon, a Wonder Woman series in the vein of Smallville and Arrow.  However, The CW’s president Mark Pedowitz confirmed that the series is still in development but is being retooled.  He said that:

It is being redeveloped. We’re waiting for a script to come in. We have not seen it yet.

This new script is not being penned by the writer of the original pilot, Allan Heinberg.  Heinberg, a former writer on the Wonder Woman comic and a veteran of several TV show, has been replaced by Aron Eli Coleite, who wrote Ultimate X-Men a few years back and has worked on shows like Heroes.  That Heroes connection is a little bit ominous, but Pedowitz seems keen on the project still.  He even said:

We are preparing to pilot it off-cycle should the script be what we want it to be.

Which is an encouraging sign.  Usually pilots all shoot in the early spring and then the networks decide which shows to run in the fall, but Pedowitz is ready to shoot Amazon as soon as it meets their liking.  He said that Wonder Woman is the “trickiest DC character to get right”, which historically has proven to be the case I suppose, but the concept seems solid and easy enough to me.  I’d be curious to see the Heinberg script and what exactly they thought he didn’t get right, because Heinberg is pretty good.  But regardless, it’s good to see that the network is still behind the show and working to get it up and running as soon as they can.  Hopefully we’ll hear about some progress soon!

Wonder Woman #20 Review OR Wonder Woman Wins With Her Brain (For A Change)

I generally liked Wonder Woman #20.  If you read these reviews with any regularity, you’ll know that the series has been in a bit of a rut for me lately and I’ve been frustrated with various elements of the book.  Some of those elements still remain, and I’ll talk about them in a bit, but some improved with this issue, which was very nice to see.  Plus, they improved by means of a kick ass fight scene, which is extra fun.  But before we discuss:

SPOILER ALERT!!

There was a VERY cool fight scene that I am about to RUIN for you if you haven’t read the book yet.

This is your last chance to leave before SPOILERS!!

Carrying on, the fight scene between Wonder Woman and Artemis was great.  On a purely entertainment level, it was well choreographed and exciting.  The night sky over London is a very cool place for a fight, and Chiang broke the panels down into cool angles and perspectives to make the battle dynamic.  I particularly liked this overhead panel of Artemis throwing Wonder Woman into Trafalgar Square:

All told, it was a well-set, well-designed fight that made for some excellent comic book fun.

The fight also addressed a number of concerns I’ve had with the book lately, and with Wonder Woman in particular.  It’s been a while since Wonder Woman’s won a fight on her own; lately, she’ll get into a battle of some kind, it’ll start to go bad, and some boys will show up and sort it all out for her.  Here, Wonder Woman won on her own, hands down, without anyone else’s help.  She, a demigod, defeated a full god, and in impressive fashion.

Wonder Woman was outmatched in brawn, so she won the fight with brains.  For the vast majority of this New 52 run, Wonder Woman’s not been the brightest.  She’s been duped at almost every turn, shown a lot of poor judgment and naïveté, and just generally she’s not come off as much of a smart, capable superhero after the first few issues of the book.  Here, though, she beats Artemis with physics!  Wonder Woman’s strategy is all about momentum, using Artemis’ strength and speed against her with some clever lassoing.  That first Trafalgar Square was cool, but this one is even better, with Wonder Woman whipping Artemis down into the ground:

Wonder Woman turned a disadvantage into an advantage, and fought like a proper superhero for the first time in a long while.

A key part of this battle was restraint.  Instead of flying off the handle and going full tilt against Artemis, Wonder Woman fought carefully and calmly.  First, she kept her bracelets on.  Artemis taunted her, trying to get Wonder Woman to release her divine power and make it a real fight, but Wonder Woman knew that a) that kind of power in the middle of a city would be dangerous, and b) that this wasn’t a fight that would be won by brawn.  Second, when Artemis blew up the hotel room where Zola, Lennox, and the rest were staying and Wonder Woman didn’t know if her friends were dead or alive, she didn’t lash out.  She kept her cool, continued to fight smart, and didn’t let her emotions get the better of her.  Artemis is all angry, unchecked brawn, and Wonder Woman beat her by being the opposite.

So this was a really good issue for Wonder Woman.  She’s still one of the least interesting characters in her own book, but at least she’s behaving like a superhero now.  This smart, reined in but powerful Wonder Woman much more fits my idea of the character than what we’ve been seeing for the last year or so.  It was nice to see her start and finish something well, without anyone’s help.  I hope this continues in future issues.

However, as great as the fight was, yet again Wonder Woman only appeared in 9 of the book’s 20 pages.  It wouldn’t be so bad if this didn’t happen every month OR the rest was jam packed with cool stuff, but that just hasn’t been the case.  Structurally, I have some big problems with how the series is progressing.  It feels like half a book’s worth of story each month, spread out over 20 pages.  In particular, the five pages set on Olympus that we’re getting every issue now are driving me crazy.  They seem to exist only to rehash what we already know, and in an extremely drawn out manner.  This issue took four pages to get to where we were at the very end of the LAST issue.  Even months into this bizarre, spread too thin routine, I still find myself shocked to be disappointed in the storytelling choices of Brian Azzarello.  Of all the writers in comics, I never expected to have problems with how he structured his work.  But Wonder Woman’s become rather formulaic and slow as of late.

The inconsistency of the art is frustrating as well.  Chiang did the breakdowns for this issue, and you can see the flair he brings to the page layouts in Goran Sudzuka’s finished art.  However, Chiang only drew 5 of the pages himself, and they were the most boring ones.  Sudzuka finished the rest, and while they weren’t bad, they weren’t Chiang.  Chiang’s done only two full issues since the zero issue way back in September, and I really miss him on the book.

Finally, while Wonder Woman awesomely won the fight with Artemis, Ares did return Artemis to Apollo, so we’ll have to watch how that plays out.  If Artemis is down for the count and is a non-factor now, then it’s not a big deal, but if she shows up again, spoiling for another fight because Ares let her go, that’s another fast one that’s been pulled on Wonder Woman.

Nonetheless, this is one of the better issues of Wonder Woman in some time.  The fight was great, Wonder Woman got some of her oomph back, and now the tables are set for a big fight with the First Born next month.  Why can’t these kids just get along?  They’re family!

Queen Hippolyta And The Amazons Guest Star In Demon Knights

I haven’t been following Demon Knights closely, but my Twitter pal Randy Homier alerted me that the team visited Themyscira in the latest issue.  In Demon Knights #19, an army of vampires invaded the island, leading to a super cool night battle with the Amazons.  Here’s a shot of Hippolyta battling Fara, an Amazon-turned-vampire:

Demon Knights is set in the past, 1043 AD to be exact, so there was no Diana, but it was cool to see Bernard Chang take on the Amazons again.  I’ve been a fan of Chang since he filled in for Aaron Lopresti on a few issues during Gail Simone’s run on Wonder Woman, and I enjoyed his version of the New 52 Amazons.

Demon Knights #20 is set after the battle, with the team consulting the Amazon’s library for information on their quest to find the Holy Grail.  Lately we’ve been seeing a lot of elements from Azzarello and Chiang’s self-contained Wonder Woman run showing up elsewhere in the New 52, with Orion in Superman and the recent reveal in Teen Titans that Lennox is Wonder Girl’s father.  In Demon Knights, we got references to some of the more unsavory aspects of the New 52 Wonder Woman.

The exiled Amazon, and current Demon Knight, Exoristos explained to her team how the Amazons got news of the world:

This is a reference to the Amazons’ thrice a century raping and murdering of male sailors, which we learned about in Wonder Woman #7 and which I wasn’t at all pleased about.  I even wrote two posts about it pointing out the mythological inaccuracy of the new story.  Exoristos confirmed the brutal nature of the Amazons’ interactions with the sailors, stopping her Amazon sister, Khronika, from telling the rest of the Demon Knights what happens to the men:

I quite enjoyed the Amazons’ guest appearance generally, and Robert Venditti and the whole team are putting out a very cool book.  There’s lots of excitement, the characters are interesting, and the art is strong.  It brings me down that the Amazon’s tri-centennial raping and murdering  is bleeding into other books, though.  I was hoping it would sort of fade away and not get mentioned again.

Still, Demon Knights is a fun book.  Or was; DC just announced yesterday that its last issue ships in August, which is sad to hear.  It’s very different from the rest of the DC titles I follow, and it’s nice to have a change from the same cookie cutter superhero stories.  Plus, Hippolyta fighting vampires!  That’s just good stuff.  You’re not geting that anywhere else.

Wonder Woman #23 Cover And Solicit

It’s solicits day!  Let’s take a look at what’s in store for Wonder Woman #23 this August:

WONDER WOMAN #23
Written by BRIAN AZZARELLO
Art and cover by CLIFF CHIANG
1:25 B&W Variant cover by CLIFF CHIANG
On sale AUGUST 21 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
Wonder Woman had no choice but to abandon London to the bloodthirsty First Born—but now it’s time to take the city back! If Diana is truly War’s greatest student, then now is the time to prove it!

So a year after the First Born debuted in Wonder Woman #12, it looks like we’re finally going to get a climactic battle with Wonder Woman.  Mapping out the future issues ahead of us now, we’ve got the first half of the battle in June, a jaunt to New Genesis in July, and then back home to finish the fight in August.  That could be fun.  Maybe she’ll come back with some sweet New Gods weaponry.

Look for Wonder Woman #23 this August!  The last August issue ended with some huge reveals and a big turn for the series, so I’m curious to see if this issue does the same.

Wonder Woman #20 Preview

It feels a little early to be getting an issue of Wonder Woman already this month, but May is a five-week month and that just throws everything out of whack.  The Nerdist has a look at Wonder Woman #20, as well as an interview with Brian Azzarello where he, in classic Azzarello fashion, doesn’t really give anything away, so you can read the interview at your leisure and we’ll take a look at the pages:

Maybe it’s just me, because I’m tired and perhaps a bit grumpy from being sick all weekend, but it feels like this preview took four pages to get to exactly where we were at the end of last issue without adding any new information other than that Apollo isn’t into barbecue.  Now, the fifth page is fun!  Wonder Woman tackling Artemis through a window is great.  But it’s some slow rehashing until then.

Also, it’s another issue with a serious lack of Cliff Chiang.  He did “breakdowns” for the issue, which is like a step lower than pencils; sort of loose sketches for each page.  He finished five of the pages, but Goran Sudzuka is doing the rest.  It feels like a while since we’ve had a full Chiang issue, and I’m really missing him.  These few pages here and there lately only leave me wanting more.

Wonder Woman #20 is out this Wednesday in comic shops everywhere.  I assume more things will happen than simply rehashing last issue.  This Wonder Woman/Artemis fight looks promising!