Wonder Woman: Dead Earth

Product Information

Dee: You're crazy! Who are you to talk about love? You don't even know me! Nobody can live like you say! It's inhuman! Diana is woken from suspended animation to find a destroyed world. No spoilers, but part of her journey is discovering what caused the destruction and the agents behind the even more death and destruction in a devastated world.

Wonder Woman: Dead Earth by Daniel Johnson, Hardcover Wonder Woman: Dead Earth by Daniel Johnson, Hardcover

Part of the reason this setting works so soundly is because Daniel Warren Johnson, who plays double duty as both author and artist, uses the harsh world to contrast and highlight Diana’s character brilliantly. The princess of Themyscira is both compassionate and brutally ruthless in combat. Relatively early in the story, she deposes the aforementioned dictator of this society of survivors, but she chooses not to kill him, instead jailing him and even offering him a chance to help her lead. In one particularly memorable scene while Diana is imprisoned by the people she thought would be her new allies, one of her captors incredulously questions a statement she makes about loving all of humanity, even when they betray her. Diana has had many different origins over the years, but Johnson chooses to use the story that Wonder Woman was shaped out of clay by her mother while adding a new layer – that her mother stole blood from all the gods and mixed it with the clay to give her daughter unimaginable power. And it’s clear that Hippolyta made her daughter like this to be strong enough to never be harmed by the world. Yet Johnson uses this origin to add a layer of strength and tragedy to Diana that her mother could never anticipate. https://www.dccomics.com/blog/2019/12/20/jim-lee-and-daniel-warren-johnson-talk-wonder-woman-dead-earth

and especially “ Murder Falcon ” show Johnson’s love of heavy metal music and the genre’s influence on his own art, both through the subject matter of songs and the wild covers of so many albums. Johnson also clearly loves fantasy action, with most of his books dealing in swords, axes, bows, and magic. When Diana awakens from a centuries-long sleep, she discovers Earth has been reduced to a nuclear wasteland. Now she's marooned in a dark and dangerous future, protecting the last human city from titanic monsters and struggling to uncover the secret of this dead Earth…and how she may be responsible for it.

The Compassionate Brutality of WONDER WOMAN: DEAD EARTH The Compassionate Brutality of WONDER WOMAN: DEAD EARTH

Because the most important, lasting relationships in Diana’s history are with women. And because this is a story about love, trust, and the bonds forged and broken between women. What that means to Dee, Diana, Barbara, and more is what drives this story forward, creating its most beautiful and tragic moments. The Passion of Wonder Woman There are lots of great moments making this one allmost a five stars read, but I'm afraid I had to be far more familiar with Wonder Woman character to give that score. Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston, along with his polyamorous wife Elizabeth Marston and partner Olive Byrne, designed Themiscyra to be a female utopia that thrives free from the influence of man’s world. And while the island’s relationship to the world has changed over the years, “Dead Earth” explores that relationship as a cycle of abuse. As an illustrator, Daniel Warren Johnson’s art is instantly recognizable thanks to his extremely kinetic sense of action and scratchy characters. Everything is in constant motion and every character feels wounded and ragged, even when nothing has happened to them. In Johnson’s hands, each person is seen through a different lens of beauty that removes any sexualization and instead creates a vulnerable humanity.

No offense to fans of it, but I don't tend to like post-apocalyptic stories that have a bunch of grubby people with weird haircuts fighting over resources. I do realize that there are a lot of folks out there that really dig this setting, and this comic will probably be spot-on for them. That plays as a perfect setting for Wonder Woman, who has always blended Greek myth with superheroics. Diana is a warrior, willing to use violence and even kill in the name of the greater good and it’s that dynamic that makes her totally unique from Superman and Batman. Diana will take a life if absolutely necessary, but she also values every life. And because Diana is an ambassador of the mythical island of Themyscira, but has also left her home to protect humankind, she exists within multiple tensions. These make Wonder Woman a challenging character to write, but are also the cause of her best stories. And Johnson uses these contrasts within “Dead Earth,” as well.

December 2020 Book Club] Wonder Woman: Dead Earth [December 2020 Book Club] Wonder Woman: Dead Earth

It seems as though most people thought this was an incredible story. I just thought it was a Mad Max story with superheroes. And to be very honest, I've never really liked Mad Max. Because in some ways this is that famous Mad Max movie, just replacing Max with Diana. Sure, that is an over simplification of the story-line. It is an accurate description of how I felt by the end of the tale (note: I liked Fury Road). This take on an angry, hurting, and volatile Wonder Woman is one I love in theory, but in execution, it feels weak. I don’t know if having a woman write this story would’ve solved the issues I have with it...but it definitely wouldn’t have hurt. Johnson gives a solid attempt at doing something unique, and he succeeds in that he capitalizes on his setting, but he fails in his attempts to weave meaningful thematics. There’s a kind of innate trust created by a mother and her child at birth. The lifegiver and the fragile life that depends on her. And there’s a trust that an innocent child places in the world before they know how deeply they can be hurt by it.

Now in the post-apocalypse, Diana is weaker than ever but still strong enough to fight the haedra threat. And in this bloody, bone-crunching, flesh-tearing battle for survival, we find Diana’s compassion lived out to its fullest. Heavy Metal Action If we will inevitably lose everything, what will we do with the time we have? Will you reach out to others? Will you fight for what’s good in the world? The Unlikely Story of Felix and Macabber” w/ Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou & Juni Ba | CBH Interviews #114 September 26, 2023

The Compassionate Brutality of “Wonder Woman: Dead Earth” The Compassionate Brutality of “Wonder Woman: Dead Earth”

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Then there's a bunch of spoiler stuff later into the book which... fits the world, doesn't fit the characters. That's my biggest gripe. If you can put aside this being a "Wonder Woman" book and isntead just read this as a post-apocalyptic book, it's pretty neat. There are giant monsters that DWJ pencils incredibly, with distorted bodies and and giant claws and some gorgeous colours courtesy of Mike Spicer. But as the series goes on it leans heavier and heavier on DC characters, and that takes me right out of it. Right off the bat, I thought the art was off-putting. I was hoping (for once) that the cover art would be different from the stuff inside because scratchy little lines all over shit just aren't my visual jam. Dirty, gritty, raw artworks made me esitant to read this one, but in the end they turned out as perfect ones painting a dying earth and a battered unpowered Diana, so different from the usual over-sexualized pin-up one, sadly characters faces seemed too much childish to me sometimes.