Wonder Woman Historia

 In anticipation of the upcoming Amazon series, I read the three volumes of Wonder Woman Historia, written by Kelly Sue DeConnick and drawn by Nicola Scott - a suitably all-woman team for Wonder Woman. The art is one notch below that of an Orthodox church. An Orthodox church is designed to blind you with splendor while you listen to the mass, whereas it is critical that one be able to read a comic. The art carries the story as much as possible, especially in the cosmic sections. This is a reversal of the epic tradition, in which evocative words, whether spoken or written, provide a text for the listener's interior visuals. The majesty and inhumanity of the gods is manifest. Scott strikes a nice balance between the complete anthropomorphism of many depictions of the Olympians and the deliberately inhuman depictions of the New 52 Olympians. 

There are a plethora of characters in Wonder Woman Historia; not just the goddesses, but also their queens among the Amazons and several followers of those queens. Even when dealing with Olympians, who some readers wiil already be familiar with, each story emphasizes particular characteristics of those gods. Both the goddesses and the queens are portrayed as slates in a vertical structure. The six queens are more akin to gods in their mortality and their creation. It is not until the introduction of Hippolyta that we get a truly mortal queen. This echoes the ages of Man in standard Greek theogony. Once all the players are available, DeConnick deftly balances a need in a prequel for Amazons to be both amazingly fierce and ultimately defeated.

There are more than enough characters for an adaptation. Most of them have distinct enough personalities that new dialogue not present in the graphic novel can be easily scripted. The splendor of the page, however, may not wholly transfer to a different medium. It is certainly worth a try.