Review: Wonder Woman Vol. 6: Bones hardcover/paperback (DC Comics)

I finished Wonder Woman Vol. 6: Bones, the final volume of Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang's superb run on the title, both impressed and a little let down. This is a worthy finale, suspenseful and shocking and action-packed. At the same time, one of my complaints about the fifth volume still stands, that as much as Azzarello packs in here, there's still quite a bit more I wish Azzarello would have addressed. Ultimately, that I'm left wanting more must be another positive sign of this run's accomplishments; I wholly expect a deluxe or omnibus edition of these issues is coming down the pike and that'd be an epic collection indeed.

[Review contains spoilers]

It's a rare and wonderful thing these days when I'm able to avoid spoilers on the internet, and I was delighted in finishing Bones to be wholly blindsided by the revelation about the goddess Athena. Given the omnipresence of the other gods in this story, Athena's absence has been conspicuous for a while (despite a brief appearance in the Zero Month issue). But like any good mystery writer, Azzarello obfuscated the truth in other, reasonable theories; we had no reason to think Zola was Athena and that her child Zeke was Zeus because Azzarello had already assigned them the role of the god-hunted quarry in the book. The revelation brings the story nicely full circle, in that nothing from the revelation of Wonder Woman's parentage to the rise of the First Born and his ultimate defeat was accidental, so much as everything unfolded in the end exactly according to plan.

Another red herring as to Zola being Athena is the cover of this book's final issue, which shows Zola in a tank top reminiscent of former Wonder Girl costumes. In the first chapter, however, I think Azzarello lays out what is Zola's real thematic resonance in the book, when Wonder Woman Diana refers to Zola jokingly as "mother." But in fact what Diana has come to understand through these six volumes is that her mother Hippolyta's lie that Diana was born of clay rather than sired with Zeus was not an act of betrayal, but rather an attempt to keep Diana safe from the jealous goddess Hera. This has been the mission forced on Zola since this title's beginning, and in the end when Diana pleads with Athena for Zola's distinct life, it seemed to me she was pleading not for a sidekick or little sister, but for her own ensorcelled mother.

And yet, this is one area where at the same time Azzarello does not satisfy, in the question of Diana and her mother Hippolyta. To great effect, Zeke resurrects Hippolyta, turned to stone by Hera, as a golem, but the action soon leaves Paradise Island for Olympus, and Hippolyta is never seen again. The audience intuits, by Diana's defeat of the First Born, that the mad god's armies have been routed on the island, but as to whether Hippolyta is made flesh, remains a golem, or turns back to a statue is never shown. Grant Morrison teaches us the three essential words of comic books are "to be continued," and maybe this is a mystery that'll be solved in Meredith Finch's debut issue that follows, but it seemed to me a facet of Azzarello's story left unfinished.

In my review of Wonder Woman Vol. 5: Flesh, I complained that though Azzarello makes Wonder Woman the God of War, he never shows how being a "god" is any different than Diana's life might be otherwise. Further, early on Azzarello revealed that Diana can call upon enhanced demigod powers to fight her enemies, controlled by the wearing or removal of her arm gauntlets, a fact on which the climax of Bones turns; however, nowhere in these six volumes has there been any explanation of what this power is, how Diana learned about it (and what she thought it was prior to understanding her own divine origins), nor why Diana hesitates to use this power until very, very late in this book, even after what seems to be a critical defeat. Nor, for a story that was meant to be Wonder Woman's "origin" in the New 52, was Athena's connection to Diana ever spelled out (except in a Secret Origins story collected here as an epilogue), making this a story that incongruously can only really be enjoyed by an audience with some foreknowledge of the Wonder Woman mythos.

Azzarello has never shied in this run from taking the Amazons into controversial and even sexually-difficult territory, something I haven't minded so much if nothing else but for the daring of it (see also Judd Winick's Catwoman Vol. 1: The Game). That continues here; after positing the Amazons as "black widows" who mate with and then kill men, and then send their male babies to death or exile, Azzarello then has Diana reproach the Amazons for their behavior, exhorting them to work alongside their Amazon brothers.

In a story about aliens that mistreat other aliens, this would be a natural and thematically correct comeuppance; in the wake of "Gamergate" and etc., however, a male writer having Wonder Woman shame the ultimate female-led society for not letting boys in their clubhouse is problematic. I don't actually think Azzarello intends such, but that rather this is a point about how old societies need to grow and change (or, if you tilt your head and squint just right, the Amazons are the misogynists in this metaphor, somehow). Still, it will be interesting to see, along with the fate of Hippolyta, how future writers utilize, or don't, this idea of male and female Amazons sharing an island together.

But again, none of this is a critique so much as a celebration of Brian Azzarello's Wonder Woman, which is dense enough to invite this kind of consideration when so many of its ilk are not. If Wonder Woman Vol. 6: Bones does not satisfy on every level, it's still an epic ending to one of the undisputed gems of the now-ending New 52. Azzarello and Cliff Chiang have assuredly left big, star-spangled boots for the next team to fill.

[Includes covers, cover and "God of War" statue sketches]