Occasionally I will hear stories from friends about inheriting a cool collection of old comics from a relative, or (and this is true) just finding a box of comics chucked in a dumpster. More often than not these troves contain treasures, though slightly tarnished, that I would dearly love to add to my collection. Alas, it's never happened to me. However...
While tidying my basement the other day, I came across a stack of old comics and I have no recollection of where they came from. I think it might have been a 50-cent bin at a local comic store, but none of them have been entered in my database, so I've no record of where, or when, they found their way into my lair. Today's comic is one of them.
Wonder Woman is so often over-looked that even to say that has become a cliche. Part of me wonders (pun intended) if it's because she's undergone so many metamorphoses over the course of her existence (which sort of links her back to her Greek roots, I guess), many of which have been quite short-lived, that no one's really got a good sense of her. For myself, I think the original version, and some of the original comics, are probably the best version of her. But this issue, by Gerry Conway and Jose Delbo, seems to be yet another reboot, a few years after the de-powering feminist issues, and a few years before the George Perez Crisis-inspired reboot. And while such repetition can be troubling in a periodically published story, I wonder if these retellings of her origins don't actually bring her closer to her mythological roots.
I've recently finished teaching an introductory literature course, and the linking facet of the texts was their hearkening back (and forward) to myths of the past. One of the things I told the class very early one was that myths become myths because we keep telling and retelling the stories in different forms for different times. Is this why we see so many retellings of Wonder Woman's origins, why there's so many different versions of her? Perhaps. Maybe there's something fundamental going on in this tale of the girl made of clay who becomes a paragon of peace. Okay, not maybe. There definitely is. So, I suppose the question becomes, when will we actually see a version of this story burst into the popular culture and be regarded as every bit as good and important as the other members of the DCU trinity?
Hopefully soon, but, much as I like to remain optimistic, I'm not holding my breath.
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