Wonder Woman: Earth One, Volume 1 / Grant Morrison / 144 pgs

I have to admit that I don't read a lot of superhero graphic novels. There are a precious few that I consider to be the best and I tend to reread them a lot, like Alan Moore's "The Killing Joke" or Marvel's "Civil War" series. For the ReadHarder challenge this year, I just read "Wonder Woman: Earth One, Volume 1" which I am guessing is a retelling of the Wonder Woman origin story with very heavy Greek mythology overtones. My very limited knowledge tells me that the big reveal of how Princess Diana/Wonder Woman was conceived is a departure from previous iterations of Wonder Woman.

It was an interesting take, making Diana's sexual orientation quite overt, changing Steve Trevor to a modern-day African-American pilot, and piling on the Amazons' disgust of "man's world." I mean, seriously, there's a LOT of repetition there. If I read one more time how horrible "man's world" is, even going so far as taking an obese woman and blaming "man's world" on making her body "grotesque," I would have screamed.

*You know, I had the rating at 3 stars but I just dropped it down to 2 stars because as I'm writing my review, I'm getting more and more upset about how normal, everyday women are portrayed in this graphic novel*

Anyways, if anything saves "Wonder Woman: Earth One, Volume 1" is that the graphics are gorgeous. Paradise Island is lush and colorful. The outfits worn by the Amazons, and even the ones worn by the regular folk in "man's world," are detailed and rich. The writing may have been poor, but the artistry was not.