Not Just One of the Boys-- thoughts on Grant Morrison and Yanick Paquette's Wonder Woman Earth One

It may seem like an obvious thing to say but Wonder Woman is not Superman and she’s not Batman.  Those characters are boys and that’s in more than just the obvious ways.  They’re children and are dealing with childhood trauma.  But that’s not Wonder Woman.  She doesn’t have the issues and hangups that the other two members of DC’s trinity do and that couldn’t be any more obvious when you read Grant Morrison and Yanick Paquette’s Wonder Woman: Earth One (now out as one of DC’s nifty Compact Comics) and look at Morrison’s handling of Diana compared to his work with Clark or Bruce.  That’s not to say that Diana doesn’t have her issues to deal with but she’s not defined by her childhood or past tragedies the way that the boys are.  In Wonder Woman: Earth One, Morrison and Paquette show us a woman who is about moving toward a better world and defining the future.  Morrison and Paquette are rebellious, are having fun, and are getting the tell the kind of story that you just can’t do with the Man of Steel or the Dark Knight Detective.  

Diana does start as a child in this story.  She’s sheltered and pampered in the ways that a princess usually is.  She’s practically a Disney princess, given this dreamy life but dreaming of something more.  Morrison and Paquette begin Diana’s story with all of the traditional elements— a girl being set apart from the world who dreams of being a part of it and then sets out on an adventure to see what there is outside of the protected life that is all she knows.  It’s one of those lives that you wonder why she wants to leave the loving care that she has while also completely recognizing how much that longing to experience more can drive a person.  She’s Elsa, she’s Snow White, she’s Cinderella. She’s living a fairy tale life until she realizes that her life isn’t reality.  As Morrison and Paquette dive into Diana’s story, it’s clear that they don’t want to change it but to show that her story has meaning in the 21st century.

Morrison and Paquette are challenging the power structures that are inherent to our world and are even a bit ahead of the curve of what we were heading into in 2016 when the first volume was originally published. 
For Morrison, the DC superheroes are modern gods and myths.  His stories of Batman and Superman have grown into our modern legends and the stories that we share to explain the world to others, what it is, and what it could be.  And here in Wonder Woman: Earth One, they’re telling the story of a woman who is the child of myth and legend.  But that doesn’t mean that she’s some kind of untouchable goddess.  Morrison and Paquette’s Diana is an exciting woman, discovering the world in exciting and frightening ways.  She’s not from a distant world or a rich kid who never grew up beyond his trauma (but even there, Morrison tries to show both of those men finding new and better ways to engage with their worlds.). Their Diana is a rebel and a fighter who doesn’t just want to live in the world but to transform it.  Her very nature is rebellion, of doing what she’s told by her mother or the world what she can’t do.  

So the first chapter (originally Volume One when it was published in individual books) is a rebellion story— the princess getting a taste of the world outside her home and wanting more of that.  It’s the story of the princess wanting to be a young woman.  There are little changes that Morrison and Paquette make that are probably considered “woke” by some but that open up the world of these comics in wonderful ways— Steve Trevor is a black man, the Amazons are clearly sapphic, Etta Candy is more full figured than she usually is and even Diana manages to be as buff as she is feminine—- but these don’t change Wonder Woman’s story.  They’re not subtractive changes but additive ones, broadening the story and the character’s world in ways to better represent our own.  The basics of the origin are still there— Diana’s mother is doing everything she can to protect her and shelter her from the world when the child wants to we what there is beyond the streets and fields that she’s known for her whole life.  

When she does discover the outside world, Diana rushes headlong into it.  The second chapter shows a world that is threatened by the message that Diana brings.  The powerful men (and make no mistake, it is men here) who hold onto their power and wealth thanks to a rigged status quo, view Diana and her messages of empowerment and love as a danger to the world, meaning a threat to the machinery that gives them that wealth and power.  Morrison and Paquette are challenging the power structures that are inherent to our world and are even a bit ahead of the curve of what we were heading into in 2016 when the first volume was originally published.  Men in power holding onto power is nothing new but this before is a Presidential candidate on a bus made bold declarations about what he could do to worsen or #metoo where some powerful men started to see consequences for their actions. This is a Wonder Woman story that tried to warn us of what the years ahead would bring.  

In this book, Diana has to take on both the matriarchy and the patriarchy.  The fight with the outside world (the patriarchy) is obvious but she also fights her mother’s rule, the isolationism that these Amazons want to hold on to for as long as they can. Paquette portrays both sides of these conflicts just so confidently.  His bold, expressive layouts find ways to pull us into these stories.  Neither side knows what to think about Diana and where she’s trying to lead so they fight to keep their way of life.  Paquette draws these two worlds as separate things and then brings them together in the final chapter, having them meet head-on to either overpower the other or find some kind of synthesis between these forces.  

For Morrison, this is one of their more fanciful superhero stories. Diana is a superhero to us but within the boundaries of her story, she’s an agent of change in ways that her male counterparts in DC’s trinity can never be.  Her rebellion from her mother is the same as her rebellion against the values of the world.  This is her nature in Earth One.  She wants to love and nurture but she also wants and sees the need for change. And sometimes those wants and needs blind her to what’s happening around her.  Morrison and Paquette’s Diana is not just fighting for what she knows but she’s fighting for the future.  Wonder Woman: Earth One is a book for 2024, as we’re on the precipice of a new Presidential election, with this year’s possibilities about taking a cautious step backward into a President that we know and can predict what his actions will be or taking a hopeful step into a future of hope, change, rebellion, and love.