Writer: Greg Rucka
Artists: Matthew Clark, Sean Parsons, and Liam Sharp
This past year I started reading The Legend of Wonder Woman by Renae de Liz and fell in love. It is a 9 issue miniseries that I will review/discuss after it is complete in a couple months or so. Then, I picked up Wonder Woman Earth One by Grant Morrison and Yanick Paquette. It was also well written, but I thought it fell short of Renae de Liz’s narrative and artistic representation. I wondered if it had to do with Grant Morrison being a male. This assessment felt a bit unfair, but I am not well read in past Wonder Woman interpretations, so I only had these two to go by. However, after reading Rucka’s Wonder Woman Rebirth, I know was unfair to men in my initial assessment. Rucka did a fantastic job with Wonder Woman in the DC Rebirth issue.
Wonder Woman holds the Lasso of Truth, which means she exposes lies. I am hoping this implies that she will be a key player in discovering the mystery of the new DC Universe. This particular issue opens with “Something’s happening…in my memory…the story keeps changing,” and it certainly does. It begins with her mother begging the gods for a child and being granted one formed by the clay, but it continues with OR she was conceived by the union of the Queen of the Amazons and the Ruler of Olympus (Zeus) and the Queen gave birth to a child (or children?). A pattern of this legend or that legend of her origin plays out back and forth through the narrative. Wonder Woman is confused and irritated at the constant changing of reality. Overall, she wants peace. I assume because of her frustrations she uses the Lasso of Truth on herself. A mirror shatters and she seems to see things more clearly. The reader is not privy to her newfound knowledge, which is great. It adds to the suspense and the intrigue as to what may have happened to our hero in the past and what will happen to our hero in the future.
Continuing the back and forth narrative presented in Wonder Woman Rebirth, this bi-weekly series will alternate storylines “as she untangles the mysteries of her present…and her past.” I am looking forward to seeing how her storylines meld into a complete narrative in the coming weeks.
Amy's Library Rambles 
Wonder Woman is one of those characters I’ve always wanted to know more about but have never been certain where to start. There’s just SO many stories out there. I appreciate your thoughts as another newbie, venturing into such a diverse canon!
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If you want a stand alone origin story for Wonder Woman I would read the Legend of Wonder Woman that I mentioned in the first paragraph. On the other hand, if you want to start picking up Wonder Woman now with the ongoing series, I think this new DC Rebirth would be a good place to start!
I completely understand not knowing where to begin, especially with DC, but that’s why I think Rebirth will be good for DC Comics as a company.
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Thanks for the insight! You spoke so highly of ‘The Legend of Wonder Woman’ that I think I’ll probably start there.
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Hi Amy,
I agree with Mike that it sounds like a good read. I am watching Flash and they are jumping into the Earth2 timeline. Are there issues with her in different realities that way or more memories of her extended lifetime?
I did a piece on her a while back called Wonder at the Woman. You should look back a few entries on God Among Geeks and see if we did her Justice.
Thank you,
Gary
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