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This controversial milestone issue, which again is light on action and focuses more on dialogue, introduces the already trailed new origin for Wonder Woman, although Azzarello kept insisting in interviews that in fact all he had done was enhance the original. And yet while Batman and Superman had emerged through the relaunch with their original origins fundamentally intact, many asked why did DC feel the need to alter Diana’s? Azzarello and Chiang explained in an interview given to Newsrama that in fact DC had been intending to make even more radical changes and that they had “stepped in” to protect the character.

So, in this issue a shocked Diana learns form her mother that in fact she had never been formed from clay and gifted her powers by the Gods and it had all been a lie. In truth Hippolyta and Zeus had enjoyed a passionate affair, which had resulted in the God giving the Amazon Queen a child. Hippolyta had kept the truth from her daughter all these years in order to protect her and to avoid Hera discovering the truth and slaying the young Amazon Princess at birth in a fit of jealous rage.

“It made sense in terms of Greek mythology.” the creators stated. “If we’re trying to tie her into that, giving her a father, it just made real clean sense to me that it would be Zeus,” Chiang added. “It also makes sense for the story. The whole reason for all this stuff is story, and adding this stuff to the origin gives us a huge family of hers to play with. She has responsibilities. This is blood we’re talking about now. And it gives her a supporting cast that’s tied so closely with her that it provides lots of story for us. And I think that’s the most important thing.”

“It brings the stakes home,” Azzarello continued. “She’s got a family now, you know? She’s got a dysfunctional family now, and it’s not all women. And how she deals with that family is what we’re going to be dealing with for the next year.”

As you can imagine, this radical change caused much heated debate amongst the fan community. Some fans felt that the change made sense – making her more human and therefore more relatable.

“Wonder Woman feels like she’s been put on a pedestal for so long, and it’s hard to write that character because they’re perfect and they can’t do anything wrong,” Chiang said. “And now, we’ve made her more human and understandable.”

Others however felt that her very uniqueness amongst the DC Universe heroes and the “magical” element that had captured the imagination of readers for so many years had been stripped away – leaving Diana to be nothing more than just another “bastard child of Zeus” and as a result a little less “Wonderous”. Some long term fans in particular were convinced that this was simply all part of DC’s new approach to make their characters more “relevant for a modern world”, by making the “Wonder Woman” title less a super heroine comic book and more reminiscent instead of a typical soap drama – in a misguided belief that this would somehow appeal better to a female readership!

There was at least unanimous relief that Hippolyta had not been raped by Zeus and instead of being born out of violence, Diana had at least been born out of a loving – albeit brief – relationship.

Azzarello rather puzzlingly also stated that Wonder Woman’s new origin story did not eliminate the old one. He said that it kept the stories that have been told in the past, but added a new layer to them. “We’re not changing her origin,” Azzarello continued. “We’re enhancing it. The story of her original origin is still there. We’re not hurting her at all. We’re making her better.”

And yet, there are so many examples where this statement makes no sense whatsoever. During the “War of the Gods” story arc by George Perez, the sorceress Circe turned Diana back into her original clay form. During John Byrne’s run, Wonder Woman again slowly reverted back to her original clay form and Brian K. Vaughn had fun in a two part filler story, in which the Batman villain Clay Face manages to steal some of Diana’s original clay essence. So, if the whole “created from clay” story is supposed to be a lie – how can any of these stories and many others like it still remain valid?

Meanwhile, Diana made her long awaited debut in the new “Justice League” title, where we see that in this new DC universe Steve Trevor is still alive and well. It seemed a little strange that this major supporting character for Wonder Woman had been revealed in a title other than her own – and as yet it was unclear how – or even if – Trevor would figure in Azzarello’s own story plans.

Geoff John’s and Jim Lee’s version of Diana was a sexy warrior, who relishes a fight and leaps rather rashly into danger at the first sign of it. She is also not viewed particularly positively by the general public -seen as both a heathen and a menace to public property and the rule of law in general -leaving a frustrated Steve Trevor with the impossible task of trying to keep her in check!

Clearly, it would be interesting to see how these very disparate interpretations of Diana would be made to gel together in the future…

Interview quotes taken from Newsrama