Old Man Yells at Cloud #3: One issue of ‘Wonder Woman’ is not enough to contain my disdain!

No preamble today. Let’s dive right in!

I don’t necessarily enjoy being cynical, you know. I love reading a comic or watching a movie or television show or reading a book that just enthralls me, and I wish it happened more often. I look in envy on people who watch something I find to be fairly generic entertainment and breathlessly rhapsodize about its greatness, because they just live in a world that I, somewhat sadly, do not occupy. Now, I’m not too envious, you understand, because those people don’t seem to want to poke too much at the object of their admiration lest it not withstand the scrutiny, and I happen to like the scrutinizing. But, still … there’s a bit of envy. Wouldn’t it be nice to literally read any comic at all and think it’s the greatest thing ever? I mean, this week you’d read one comic and think it’s the greatest thing ever, and next week you’d read something else and think that’s the greatest thing ever! What a way to live!

This is a roundabout way of saying that I read Wonder Woman volume 1: Outlaw, by Tom King, Daniel Sampere, Tomeu Morey, and Clayton Cowles (with edits by Brittany Holzherr). So far, with these “Old Man Yells at Cloud” posts, I buy a single issue that I don’t usually buy with the expectation that I will want to rant about it, but not here. If I thought I would not like this Wonder Woman, I certainly wouldn’t have spent 20 thin dollars on this trade. “But Greg,” you say, with excellent perspicacity, “you so dislike Tom King’s work with the Caped Crusader, so you should have known better!” Well, yes, but as I have pointed out quite a bit, whenever Tom King is NOT writing Batman, I think he’s a pretty darned good writer, and Wonder Woman is definitely NOT Batman. So I should have been safe, yes? Alas, my logic has failed me, and I read this entire trade with mounting dread and anger and despair. It is, not to put too fine a point on it, not good.

And yet! in the Comic Book Resources “Best of” list, this came in at #6 for 2023. That didn’t mean I would love it, of course – when I wrote about the CBR list, I had this to say about it: “I always appreciate how Brian writes up each one of these series as if they’re the greatest thing ever, but man, this doesn’t sound good at all. How is it #6?” I should have listened to myself!!!! But I still believed in Tom King, and I was curious, so I ordered this. Could so many readers be wrong? Could I be the only one who’s right?

Well, of course I can be! I can be a comics snob with the best of them, and there’s very few things that are good about Wonder Woman volume 1 except for the artwork, which is staggering (with one weird exception, about which I will rant below). It begins in issue #800, when, in the future, Diana’s daughter (!) meets with an old man in a prison who tells her a story about her mother, which is, of course, the one we’re about to read. This prologue gave me a sinking feeling, because it feels off. Jonathan Kent and Damian Wayne are standing around on a beach waiting for “Lizzie” (who is also called Trinity for some reason, probably a stupid one), with no idea why they’re there. Ok, fine. They’re talking about where Lizzie is and why she’s kept them waiting, and as we get to the page turn, Lizzie says off-panel that they have a lot to do and the menfolk are just standing around. We turn the page and we get a full-page shot of Lizzie:

This is not promising. This the FIRST appearance of the character, and in 28 words, she’s already established herself as an obnoxious brat who thinks she’s better than everyone. Jon and Damian have no idea what she wants them to do, but she begins by insulting them for not knowing what she wants to do. Now, I guess we learn in the back-up stories in Wonder Woman that they raised her and she sees them as kind of big brothers, so it’s not too egregious, as that’s how “siblings” talk to each other, but the point is: we don’t know that yet. These are the first words she says, and she’s obnoxious. She needs their help, but she continues to insult them, and continues to come off like a brat. It’s not the worst way to introduce a character – Damian was kind of introduced the same way – but it feels like King wants us to like her (does anyone really like Damian? – his brattiness is part of his charm, but it doesn’t feel like we as readers are supposed to, you know, actually like him), so it’s a weird way to go. But that’s just the prologue – let’s get to the actual story!

Let’s dive into WHAT happens first, so I can rant about WHY it’s bad without having to summarize. We’re in Montana, at a pool hall cleverly called “Kanigher’s Cues,” where an Amazon is playing pool and getting groped by one of the menfolk, because of course she is. She smashes him into the table, then grabs a man who says he’s the first dude’s cousin, then, in classic “you don’t get to see what happens because later we’ll reveal what REALLY happens!” form, we see the exterior of the pool hall, with blood on the windows and, in one panel, a dude getting thrown through the front window. We cut to a Giffen Grid of newscasters, when we learn that 19 people were murdered, the only two survivors were women, and the suspect is an Amazon, and then we escalate ridiculously quickly to “Amazons are all terrorists” and “Congress is deciding what to do about them.” There’s an interview with a surly-looking dude on the street who is ridiculously misogynistic, even as his daughter stands next to him talking about how great Wonder Woman is (this is a pretty good page, but sadly, it’s about as subtle as King gets in this comic). Then Sarge Steel and a bunch of gub’mint thugs show up at Cybele’s house and try to take her adopted daughter away because they have to deport all Amazons and the girl is an American citizen, and Cybele’s wife Nyx decides to beat up some of the thugs, so they kill her. Then some senator from Montana talks about how if the Amazons don’t want to be killed, perhaps they should follow the law. Finally, they come for Diana, who beats the crap out of them, gets one of them to tell the truth about their “arrest” attempt – they were there to kill Diana, not arrest her – and crushes Sarge Steel’s nifty metal hand. The big reveal at the end of the issue is that the U.S. is actually ruled by a king, who holds a Lasso of Lies to keep power. Oh dear.

After this first issue, King slows things down A LOT (Brian Michael Bendis is green with envy at how decompressed this book is). She chats with Steve Trevor before the army attacks her in Montana, and in a flashback, she fights with the Amazon who will later end up in the bar. After that, she confronts Steel AGAIN, this time in his office, where he postures and rants while she acts super-cool. Meanwhile the King of the U.S. invites one of the soldiers from Montana to his estate, where he uses the lasso to make him think that Diana took away his manhood, which he writes out as a suicide note before shooting himself in the head, thereby making the media even more anti-Wonder Woman. Then she spends an entire day (and issue) with a kid who has cancer. Then she spends an entire issue convincing the Wonder Women of the world (Cassie, Donna, and some chick I’m sure is important these days, but I’m not up on my Wonder Women, so I don’t know her) not to help her, and they agree … until the end of the issue, when they don’t. In the same issue, the King of the U.S. gathers up a bunch of Wonder Woman villains to form an Injustice League. Then, in issue #6, Diana beats them all up. Of course, she’s not in great shape either, so the volume ends with her collapsing over the unconscious body of the last villain (Darkseid’s daughter, don’t you know). Yes, it’s a patented Tom King 12-issue arc™ (I assume), and you’ll just have to wait a little longer for a resolution!

I was mocked mercilessly at yon comic book store for not loving this, but that’s ok – when I’m right and others are wrong, they can mock and I will simply pity them. So sad! Now that you know what happens in this book, I can explain why it is not good. A minor thing, something that King seems to have a problem with, is the use of grawlix. Grawlix should be used carefully – I don’t really have a problem with it in a goofier setting, as it stands out in a slightly less “adult” comic as characters trying hard to be adult and failing – it’s almost metatextual in that way, and it’s fine. Over the past few decades, it’s been used more and more in DC and Marvel comics as a crutch, as the PTB cling to the notion that some little kid is reading their comics and we can’t contaminate their brains with bad language!!!! They should, I should point out, shit or get off the pot. Either accept that you’re writing stories for people who can handle some salty language or ban it and grawlix from your comics and force your writers – you know, all those smart people you employ – to come up with better language to convey their thoughts. If Garth Ennis can use “motherlover” in Hitman all the time without resorting to grawlix, so can you! I enjoy cursing with the next guy, but in comics you know will not allow it, it’s stupid. The problem in this book is that King, by tackling a problem like sexism, wants so badly for all the men to call Diana a “bitch” (or even a “cunt”), but, of course, DC won’t allow it. The impact of Steel saying “You @#%&!” when he’s about to punch Diana is very much blunted because of the laughable grawlix (and the fact that Diana tells him she doesn’t like “that word,” but we don’t know what word he’s using!). King’s point, the one he really wants to make, isn’t made as well:

It’s even worse when Diana goes to visit the kid who has cancer. She takes him to Paradise Island and they have a good day. To take him there, she flies him in the invisible jet, of course, and she tells him to close his eyes until they’re up in the air, and when he opens them, we get this page:

It’s meant, of course, to be inspiring, and it is to a certain degree, but then we get that idiotic grawlix on the page that draws our eye and uglies up the page. You couldn’t have him say “Wow!”, Mr. King? He had to say “Holy shit!”, which you knew wouldn’t be printed? I mean, it doesn’t really matter what he says there, because the sensation is all, so you couldn’t go with a non-grawlix alternative? That’s just, if you’ll pardon my French, fucking stupid.

The grawlix, however, is just a distraction. The real problem with the book is its plot. Look, I know that plots are hard because they’ve been done, and so I tend to worry less about them than some, but King is trying to do something with the plot, something that apparently a lot of people think is great, but he fails so spectacularly at it that I wonder if the failure is so amazing that it distracts people from the fact that it is, after all, a failure. We get the stupid beginning, with “Emelie” – the Amazon in the bar – beating the shit out of obvious straw men so that we’re on her side immediately. I know that people like this exist in the real world, believe me, but King really goes over the top with their skeevy sexism. Of course, we don’t see what actually happens inside the bar, but also of course, the men in charge don’t much care. Then we get the inevitable fall-out of men rushing to condemn the Amazons and their un-American values. It’s wildly cartoonish.

“But,” you say, “look at the Blowhard Baboon who used to ‘run’ the country and may do so again!” Yes, Trump has made any over-the-top evil in fiction almost quaint, because he’s so clearly a vile human being and he gives license to so many others to be vile. The rise of Trumpism has made even satire look tame, because how can you satirize someone who does it for you even though he’s very, very scary as a candidate? The phenomenon of Trump has made previous attempts to show how would-be dictators in fiction can be stopped outdated, as Trump has no shame (and can therefore not be shamed) and his followers literally do not care what he says or does, even if he insults them personally. So people will argue that King’s over-the-top sexism isn’t ridiculous, because Trump has rendered that word meaningless. However, one thing that conservatives – even a fool like Trump – do is couch things in so-called “dog whistles”: never quite coming out and saying “the quiet part loud,” as the kids like to say. Trump often steps over the line, certainly, but he also knows that sometimes, he needs to stay on this side of the line and never name the thing he’s railing against, sticking to vague pronouncements that no one could ever disagree with – “Yes, we need to do something about thugs!” even though “thugs” clearly means “all young black men.” King dispenses with that, as the people who are interviewed in this comic are clearly anti-women, so even that tiny subtlety is lost, which is why, despite the existence of Trump, this is still more ridiculous than real life. Also, there’s no push-back against this in this comic from the regular folk, which would definitely happen in the “real world.” Have you seen the protests against Trump and the relentless posting on Facebook and TikTok (I’m not on TikTok, but I’ve heard things!) about Project 2025? Where is all that in this comic? King would say it’s not germane to the plot, but he’s the one who wants to tackle sexism, so he should be ready to address the fact that a lot of people do not like sexism at all, and not all of them have two X chromosomes. But he’s not really interested in tackling sexism. It just gives him a place to hang a fairly typical superhero story and impress the “woke” crowd. I mean, I’m as woke as anyone, but even I can see right through this. (The fact that nobody protests this brings up the fact that no other superheroes appear in this book, which I guess is addressed in issue #7 – because decompression, yay! Still, it’s a problem with a shared superhero universe that we generally ignore, and I would here, but it’s not like it’s just supervillains attacking Wonder Woman and Superman saying, “Yeah, you fight you own battles!” This is the United States government, so you’d think at least Superman and Batman would have something to say. But, as I’ve heard, King does address that.)

The problem with the sexism angle is that King introduces perhaps the dumbest supervillain in recorded history (Paste-Pot Pete and Kite-Man say hello, but I’m sticking with it!): the king of the United States. Yes, in the DC Universe, a king has ruled America since, it’s implied, before it was even a country. He is, naturally, a crabby, old, probably impotent white dude, and he holds the Lasso of Lies so he can keep everyone in line. As you might recall, I absolutely loathe organizations in comics that stretch back centuries, manipulating events, so this dude is already on my shit list. He orchestrates this big anti-Wonder Woman campaign for … reasons (I mean, he hates women, but he’s always hated women, and I guess he was just waiting for something like Emelie’s supposed massacre of Montana good ol’ boys to strike), and it bugs me. King wants to address sexism in society – good for him. But by creating this king, he implies that the sexism in American society is guided by one person – the monarch. Of course, that’s not true, and it lets far too many people off the hook. The problem with any kind of “-ism” is that far too many people think they’re doing a good thing. I mean, maybe not today – the sexists and racists are just big babies who don’t like that they’re not in charge of literally everything anymore (even though they’re still in charge of … let’s be generous and say 95% of everything) – but in the past, Victorian racists and sexists really thought that they were doing good things for the addle-pated women and savage black people, and it wasn’t necessarily malevolent (I mean, if the silly women and uncivilized Africans spoke up against it, it could get malevolent right quick, but it didn’t necessarily start out that way). Any kind of “-ism” is a complicated beast, and King reduces it to “OnE oLd WhItE mAn Is A jErK,” which is wildly simplistic and somewhat insulting. So, the monarchs over the years have manipulated literally everyone to buy into their sexism? Really? This is a superhero book, so it needs a supervillain, but by doing that and linking it to a fairly serious real-world problem, King is dumbing it down. It shouldn’t be dumbed down. Meanwhile … this is the DCU, right? Things have happened that are “still in continuity,” right? A monarch who forces presidents to kiss his ring (as the anonymous president in this comic does)? I wonder how Lex Luthor felt about doing that when he was president of the DC United States. It’s one of those minor things that doesn’t bother me that much, but it’s still an issue if you’re creating this vast conspiracy about the king of the U.S. I can’t see some actual presidents putting up with this, and I certainly can’t see Luthor doing it. Or was he never president, now that we’ve had dozens of reboots in the past 20 years?

Then there’s poor Rafael Delgado, the soldier who kills himself. I’m probably going to get in trouble with this, but bear with me. Delgado is chosen to visit the sovereign after Wonder Woman whipped the army in Montana, and he’s fairly chill about it. Sure, Wonder Woman thrashed them, but she’s a superhero, yeah, so no shame in that. Then, when the sovereign gives him the Lasso of Lies, he changes his tune – he’s “devastated” and doesn’t feel like a man any longer and he probably won’t get over it. He goes home, writes a suicide note saying just that, and shoots himself. News outlets report that politicians are labeling Wonder Woman as a murderer, which is when the president gives a speech (with some assistance from the king) saying that Diana is a “clear and present danger” to the U.S. This is, as with so much else in the book, stupid, for the reasons given above – it takes a serious problem and makes it something a supervillain conjures up. Delgado is not the kind of man who agrees with the sovereign, so the bad guy has to make him one. The choice of Delgado is interesting – he’s from Smallville, so he probably doesn’t care too much about superheroes being around. He’s white but not Anglo, which I think is important. King didn’t make him an Anglo white man, because it would be too easy, in today’s unsubtle comics (and fiction) world to make him already in agreement with the monarch. He’s not black, because, like women these days, black people are inherently more noble than white people, so the king wouldn’t have been able to corrupt him. He’s Hispanic, so he’s technically “white” but he’s not part of the dominant culture, so he can be corrupted because he’s “weaker” than noble black or Native American people but his corruption is sadder because he’s not already on the side of the king. I get that this is a controversial take, but think about it: these days, in fiction, minorities are only evil if there are plenty of other good minorities to balance them out (and even then, as in Black Panther, the villain isn’t really all that bad). If there is only one example of a minority, they’re far more noble than the white majority. I’m not saying this is good or bad, but if you start to think about it, it’s kind of true. People have swung so far away from the stereotypes of the minorities, which is a good thing, that the pendulum has gone way to the other side. It’s the problem I have with Diana, actually – DC wants her to be an icon so badly, but because she’s the only woman with any kind of stature in greater pop culture (not even Harley Quinn can match her, although I suppose she’s much closer than she used to be), they can’t make her more “human,” with human frailties, because that would damage her status as an icon. In this comic, for instance, she’s never wrong, and more than that – she’s never even close to being bested (even when she’s fighting a bunch of supervillains). She’s sooooooo much better than everyone that it’s almost impossible for King to keep up any kind of tension. Look, we all know that superheroes are going to win, and there’s something to be said for not even pretending that they might lose. But it can backfire, and it does a bit here. But that’s Diana. Getting back to “brown-but-still-kind-of-white” Rafael Delgado, King is saying – not subtly – that men, especially white men, can be easily led to sexism. Sure, there’s truth in that, but they’re led less by a Lasso of Lies and more by societal pressures, and women and other minorities aren’t immune. King, however, ignores that. (You might think I’m making too much out of Delgado’s ethnicity. But he’s not real, is he? King had to think about his name and his look, and Sampere had to draw him. Let me tell you, naming characters is a fairly crucial part of writing, and if you think “Rafael Delgado” was an arbitrary choice, I have a nice bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.)

On the plus side, issue #4 is all about Diana hanging out with the kid with cancer (which, to be fair, is a pretty good piece of writing by King). Even that, however, is tinged with the weird, annoying “wokeness” that feels right but also comes off as a bit obnoxious, as the kid wonders if there’s something wrong with him because he likes Wonder Woman instead of more manly things. I imagine he gets this from his father, but the dad seems decent enough – he doesn’t like Wonder Woman, but he’s willing to put aside his feelings because his son wants to see her, and someone who does that for their child probably doesn’t give a giant shit what the kid likes, because whatever brings the kid joy is good for a parent of a child like that. Plus, in today’s world, I doubt if it’s boys making fun of the boy, because, believe me, boys like all kinds of “girly” shit. But, whatever – it’s a good issue, and I have no problem with it being here, although King does point out how weird it is that Diana is seeing this kid while the whole country arrays against her (these kinds of stories are usually reserved for “in-between” issues AFTER the big fight is done, but Diana cares not about that!). Let it not be said that I am unfair to Tom King when he does something right!

Sampere’s art is superb, although you know I’d have a nit to pick with that, too. Jack, the cancer patient, lives in – oh, look! – Phoenix. The people at the comic book store were quite vexed when I brought this up, but in the brief instances we get of Jack’s neighborhood, it looks nothing like Phoenix. If you’re going to set a comic somewhere specific, you should try to make it look like the place. Sampere is Spanish, so I doubt he’s been to Arizona, but that’s why Google Image search exists, yeah? Jack lives in a decent-sized house on a pretty good plot of land, which is fine. His house is two stories, which isn’t completely crazy (hey, my house is two stories!) but isn’t too common, either. His house has that horizonal siding, which is far less common, as most houses in Phoenix look like adobe. The yard is completely grass, which, again, does occur here (sadly, as it’s a waste of water), but is also something of an anomaly. The other houses around Jack’s are also two-story ones, and they’re separated from Jack’s by, in one case, what appears to be a standard wooden fence made up of tightly packed planks, and also what appears to be a chain-link fence. Neither of those two kinds of fences are used in Phoenix, where the houses are separated by cinder block walls. Finally, a lot of the leaves are changing to autumnal colors, which does not happen in Phoenix. Again, you might accuse me of nit-picking, and sure, that’s what I’m going, but it’s still an annoying screw-up that affects the way I read the book. Except for that one page, the art is excellent, so we need not say anything more about it.

“Hey, wait a minute!” you say, if you’ve read this far. “Aren’t you an Old Man Yelling at a Cloud? Aren’t you supposed to tell us how bygone comics were better?”

Well, yes, indeed, and so I shall. The problem with Tom King’s underlying plot isn’t that it’s necessarily a bad idea, it’s that he wants to turn Wonder Woman into an anti-sexist warrior … which is what she’s always been. She was invented, practically, to be an anti-sexist warrior, and I would argue that, beginning with the Denny O’Neil/Mike Sekowsky “depowering” of Wonder Woman, writers have really leaned into it hard. So we have a lot to compare this story to, and it doesn’t come out all that well. I would argue the O’Neil/Sekowsky “depowered” run does a better job, in its ham-fisted way, of examining sexism in society! Of course, the modern Wonder Woman era began in the 1986 with George Pérez, and he did a much better job dealing with the attitudes that Diana – and, by extension, all women – faced, and he did it more subtly than King does here (I mean, not too subtly, because it’s still a superhero comic, but still). Pérez wisely populated the book with a lot of different women, so that Diana wasn’t the paragon of How Women Live, and all of these women had different lives and reacted to society’s sexism in different ways. So Vanessa Kapatelis (and I know King didn’t do this, but don’t even get me started on how DC wrecked such a great character) saw the world and the men living in differently than Barbara Minerva, who sees things differently than Etta Candy. The saga of Myndi Mayer contains more interesting critiques of sexism in the world than King has done here, and that probably would only make up a few issues of “screen time,” as it’s usually the background story. I know that Pérez’s story was dealing with Diana as a babe in the woods, and now she’s a much more experienced person, but that shouldn’t matter too much. I’ve often said that the more you make your story about the point you want to make, the less effective your point is. When I re-watched Smoke Signals a few years ago, I noted that because it’s not specifically about the Native American experience in the late 20th century, it becomes all about the Native American experience in the late 20th century. Pérez just wanted to tell big superhero stories, but because he’s a smart dude, he made it about the battle against sexism. His sexist characters were cartoonish – Ares being the prime example – but Ares is a metaphor (as all gods are), and he could be cartoonish in contrast to the more grounded characters because then his sexism becomes more ridiculous. Yes, again, I know we live in a cartoonish real world sometimes, so King’s talking heads don’t seem too far outside the realm of possibility, but there’s nothing to compare them against, so their ridiculousness is heightened beyond what makes sense. The only “good man” in King’s story (if we don’t count Delgado, who doesn’t last very long) is Steve Trevor, and even he’s kind of a wuss. Pérez (and, to be sure, others who have written WW in the past 35 years) created a large, diverse world and gave us many insidious examples of how sexism affects women (and men) in society, and it’s far more effective than King’s blunt instrument.

This gets back to why writers don’t use subtext very well anymore. Some would say we need a blunt instrument, because people just don’t get it. I agree with that … in real life. For decades, minorities tried to work “within the system” to play by the rules of the white majority in the hopes that the white majority would consent to share power with them. That … didn’t go as well as they planned. (I saw something recently – I think it was in conjunction with the Project 2025 mess – in which a white person wrote about the “golden age” they wanted to get back to, and they specifically referenced Booker T. Washington as an example of someone who did things the right way, or something like that. Washington was a great man, of that there is little doubt, but he also believed very much in not rocking the boat, believing that if only black men – no women, of course! – joined the capitalist revolution of post-Civil War America, they would be accepted by whites. How’d that work out, Mr. Washington?) These days, the deliberate obtuseness of people who refuse to see the more subtle forms of sexism and racism and homophobia and transphobia (although that last is still socially acceptable, so there’s less need to hide it) demands a blunt instrument. However … King is still writing fiction, and fiction that uses a blunt instrument to get across a political point isn’t exactly fiction, it’s propaganda. King can be as polemical as he wants, to be sure. However, just because you might agree with his point – and who with any brains can disagree with his ultimate point in Wonder Woman? – doesn’t mean that the actual story is any good. That’s the point far too many people are missing with this comic.

Is this just a way for me to say, “I don’t like this comic”? Well, sure. But I am an Old Man, and nobody is going to Yell at the Cloud if I don’t, right? My point is not that I don’t like this comic, it’s that so many people do, and when that happens, I must prove that I am right and they are wrong. That’s just the way it is! King forfeits actual storytelling for FUCK YEAH! moments (Wonder Woman showing up at Steel’s office with her invisible jet, for instance, which you’re very much supposed to pump your fist at) and a simplification of a complicated problem that lets good and true people all over to feel smug about themselves because we don’t think of women like that, so of course these men are douchebags! It’s frustrating, because superhero comics can address real-world problems, but it has to be done with a lot more cleverness and care than this. I’m still not jumping off the non-Batman Tom King bandwagon yet (I’m looking forward to the collection of Helen of Wyndhorn, for instance), but this comic bums me out. It looks great, there are some neat moments, but it falls flat. Dang. I guess I’m just too old to appreciate it.