Wonder Woman: The Circle

AUTHOR: Simone, Gail

ARTIST: Terry Dodson (penciller, cover artist); Bernard Chang (penciller, inker, cover artist); Ron Randall (penciller); Jon Holdridge (inker); Rachel Dodson (inker, cover artist); Lee Loughridge (colorist); Pete Pantazis (colorist); Alex Sinclair (colorist); John J. Hill (letterer); Travis Lanham (letterer); Rob Leigh (letterer)

PUBLISHER: DC Comics

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 2008

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 2008

Publication History

Gail Simone’s Wonder Woman: The Circle was originally published in magazine format as Wonder Woman, Volume 3, issues 14-19. Individual comics were published from January to June of 2008. The story was published in a hardcover edition in September, 2008, and republished as a paperback edition one year later. Both the paperback and hardcover editions include an introduction by fantasy author Mercedes Lackey, have exactly 160 pages, and are identical in content.

Wonder Woman: The Circle followed the DC Comics event known as “One Year Later,” which took place in 2006, and was a direct result of the previous DC Comics event known as Infinite Crisis, in which Wonder Woman kills one-time Justice League advisor Maxwell Lord. Popular prose author Jodi Picoult wrote the first post-One Year Later Wonder Woman story, entitled Wonder Woman: Love and Murder, in which Wonder Woman gives up her superhuman powers in an effort to understand humanity better. Simone’s The Circle is a sequel to Picoult’s story. The fact that both authors are women received a fair amount of press and media attention.

Plot

Hippolyta, Wonder Woman’s mother, is exiled by the gods to rule the hidden island of Themyscira. In an annual visit to the four prisoners who reside on the island, Hippolyta asks each to repent, which they all refuse to do. One prisoner, Alkyone, confronts the queen with accusations of betrayal.

Meanwhile, a squadron of enhanced gorilla soldiers trained by Gorilla Grodd attack Wonder Woman as a tactical warm-up before their planned confrontation with Superman. After a short battle, she is able to separate Tolifhar, the gorillas’ leader, and reason with him. The gorillas accompany her back to her apartment, where she leads a double life as Diana Prince, a government agent. Diana and her partner, Tom Tresser, are given a mission of the utmost importance: Prevent Grodd from reorganizing a new version of the Society, a cooperative of the world’s deadliest supervillains.

Upon investigating Grodd’s suspected hideout, Diana and Tom are attacked by Captain Nazi, who wounds Tom severely and almost gets the upper hand with Diana; however, she is able to escape and transform into Wonder Woman. Using her lasso of truth, she discovers that he sent a genetically modified army of Nazi soldiers to invade Themyscira. Hippolyta foresees the army’s arrival on the island and begins using guerrilla tactics to kill them one by one. The army uncovers Alkyone and her comrades, who kill their captors, and Alkyone lies in wait for Diana.

Unable to enter Themyscira, Wonder Woman goes on a mission to request aid from various deities and is finally granted a way into her homeland. Wonder Woman, with the help of her newfound gorilla friends, fights the Nazi army in an epic battle. Diana leaves the fight to search for her mother, finding her badly wounded. Attempting to save her mother, she is attacked by Alkyone and her comrades. After an extended struggle, Wonder Woman defeats everyone but Alkyone, who she confronts on the outskirts of the island. Alkyone refuses defeat and future imprisonment, leaping to her apparent death. Hippolyta manages to recover despite her wounds.

Wonder Woman then visits Tom in the hospital and declares that she is now officially courting him, but their “date” is interrupted when a Khund spaceship appears outside to attack her. Despite the aliens’ superior force, Wonder Woman defeats the Khund in short order. She learns that they have attacked her to honor her as a great warrior and have come to request her aid in an attack on their home world.

Diana accompanies the Khund to their planet, which is being systematically destroyed by a force called the Ichor. The Khund hope that Wonder Woman’s skill as a diplomat and warrior will help convince the Ichor to stop their genocidal attack. She is shocked to discover that the Ichor have their own champion, a Green Lantern named Procannon Kaa.

After a long battle in which she is clearly outmatched, Wonder Woman is able to manipulate Kaa’s emotional state to overpower his will temporarily. Meanwhile, Etta Candy, a human who accompanied Diana with the Khund, manages to convince the Ichor to stop the attack. The pair returns to Earth victorious, and Kaa agrees to train a young Khund girl with some potential as a new Green Lantern.

Characters

•Wonder Woman, a.k.a. Diana Prince, has been exiled from Themyscira, the island she calls home. As a government agent named Diana Prince, she struggles to understand human beings. When she discovers Captain Nazi’s plans for her former home, she leads an assault to retake Themyscira.

•Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons and Wonder Woman’s mother, defends her child’s life from Alkyone and her guard and later defends Themyscira from the army of invading Nazis.

•Tom Tresser, a.k.a. Nemesis, is Diana’s field partner at the Department of Metahuman Affairs. Rash and impulsive, he is protective of Diana and has a crush on Wonder Woman, failing to realize they are the same woman. He is wounded in his encounter with Captain Nazi.

•Etta Candy, an old friend of Diana, is the only person who knows that Diana and Wonder Woman are one and the same. Initially assigned to investigate her friend, she ends up saving the Khunds after they abduct her into space. She makes an impassioned speech about life to the Ichor, which the aliens accept.

•Captain Nazi, a.k.a. Albrecht Krieger, is a member of a villainous secret society. He is the result of genetic tests done during World War II. Believing in Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party, he sees himself as superior to almost all he encounters, including Diana. Attacking her when she is Diana, he nonetheless falls victim to her lasso once she transforms into Wonder Woman.

•Alkyone is the former captain of Queen Hippolyta’s royal guard and one of the main antagonists. Her origin and ultimate imprisonment are detailed during a series of flashbacks at the start of each issue. A pariah among the Amazons, she betrays the queen after realizing that Diana’s birth will change the Amazon way of life.

•Procannon Kaa, a.k.a. the Green Lantern of Space Sector 422, directly opposes Wonder Woman’s diplomatic mission to save the Khund world from the Ichor. He seeks vengeance after his daughter is killed in a Khund attack, but Wonder Woman convinces him that the Ichor is a greater evil.

•Kho, a.k.a. Neko, is the daughter of Kharhi, the Khund emperor’s advisor. She is a Khund warrior like her father but watches MTV and idolizes Wonder Woman. She becomes a Green Lantern after Procanon Kaa presents her with a power ring.

•Tolifhar is the leader of the genetically modified gorillas enhanced by villain Gorilla Grodd. He commands the unit in Africa that Wonder Woman stops at the story’s beginning. Convincing him of Grodd’s deceptive ways, Diana offers Tolifhar and his soldiers a place to stay in her apartment. He and his troops later aid her when she returns to Themyscira.

Artistic Style

The Dodsons’ style reflects a curvier, more robust Wonder Woman than some other versions of the character and is a notable a departure from George Pérez’s style in the 1987 Gods and Mortals story. This softer style helps to feminize Wonder Woman, portraying her with a realistic and natural body. Penciller Ron Randall used an edgy style to depict Wonder Woman fighting the Nazi army in issue 16 and her battle with her Amazon kin in issue 17.

A fusion of the Dodsons and Randall’s artistic style can be seen when Bernard Chang depicts Wonder Woman’s encounters with the Khunds, maintaining much of the look from The Circle’s opening chapter. Chang uses shadows and hard-edged lines, particularly in the battle scenes. He attempts to maintain the feminine style of Wonder Woman that the Dodsons drew, but since these issues are more action-oriented, his depiction is more in line with Randall’s grim portrayal.

Color is also important in The Circle. Earth tones are used repeatedly to emphasize Wonder Woman’s connection to nature. The background sky is often depicted as red when Alkyone appears, perhaps representing her rage over Diana’s very existence. When Captain Nazi or his army is depicted, black is used heavily both in the foreground and in the background, representing the evil they embody. In the Khund story line, Wonder Woman’s entry into the cave that houses the Ichor ship is bathed in green light, foreshadowing her encounter with a Green Lantern.

Themes

As in other Wonder Woman stories, among the first comics to feature female superheroes, feminism is a major theme in The Circle. Diana is shown to be both a fierce warrior and a determined diplomat. She adjusts to her government job but laments that things would be easier if she retained her powers. As is true for women in some professional settings, she has to appear weaker to her male counterparts. While the enhanced gorillas initially see Wonder Woman as weaker than Superman, she proves them wrong when she bests them in open combat. Wonder Woman’s mother, Queen Hippolyta, is also shown as a strong and independent woman. She single-handedly defends Themyscira against the invading Nazi army, before finally falling. Etta Candy stands up to the Ichor and ends up saving the day, even without superpowers.

Religion is also significant in the story. After Hippolyta’s war on the United States, the Amazons have fallen into disfavor with the Greek gods they worship. All Amazons, other than Hippolyta, are banned from Themyscira for their role in the attack. To save her mother from the Nazis, Diana visits multiple deities, including Odin of Asgard and Shinto thunder god Raijin, before pledging her allegiance to the Hawaiian god Kane Milohai (misprinted as Kane Miohai) when he agrees to help her. In a change of religious affiliation as serious as any human conversion, Diana turns her back on the gods of her youth, promising to be Kane’s “fiery sword” in battle, and agrees to wear Kane’s symbol.

Impact

Since the character came into print in 1941, a time in which women were largely underrepresented in the media, Wonder Woman has often represented female power and womanhood. Her American-themed costume is symbolic of the vital role that women played in the U.S. workforce during World War II, when the majority of the country’s men were off fighting abroad. Yet her oft-criticized outfit allows for a degree of femininity, making her appear simultaneously tough and sexy. Wonder Woman has been a superhero, girlfriend, and government agent, fighting male and female opponents in equal measure and thereby coming to symbolize women’s changing role in society.

Wonder Woman paved the way for women superheroes not only in comics but also in popular culture in general. The syndicated television superhero Xena, as portrayed by Lucy Lawless, is both a warrior and a princess, and one would be hard-pressed not to see a direct cultural inspiration from Diana of the Amazons. The X-Men’s Storm and Buffy from Joss Whedon’s television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer also are clearly influenced by Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman proved that a female character could headline her own comic and provide compelling storylines for audiences.

Films

Wonder Woman. Directed by Lauren Montgomery. Warner Bros. Animation, 2009. Starring Keri Russell as the voice of Wonder Woman and Nathan Fillion as the voice of Major Steve Trevor, this film adaptation follows the version of Wonder Woman created after the resolution of Crisis on Infinite Earths, which is essentially the same version presented in The Circle; however, the film traces how Wonder Woman came to be in the human world and became a hero and features her romantic interest as Steve Trevor, from the original comic, not Tom Tresser.

Television Series

Wonder Woman, also known as The New Adventures of Wonder Woman. Directed by William M. Marston, Stanley Ralph Ross, and Anne Collins. ABC and CBS Television, 1975-1979. Starring Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman and Lyle Waggoner as Major Steve Trevor, this series follows the story of the original Wonder Woman comic. Several changes were made to Wonder Woman’s powers, given the special-effects restrictions and budgetary constraints of a 1970’s television program. Most notably, when transforming into her Woman Woman persona, Carter’s character would spin around until the costume appeared, an aspect of the character preserved in subsequent interpretations.

Further Reading

Johns, Geoff, Phil Jimenez, and George Pérez. Infinite Crisis (2005-2006).

Pérez, George, Len Wein, and Greg Potter. Wonder Woman: Gods and Mortals (2004).

Picoult, Jodi, and Terry Dodson. Wonder Woman: Love and Murder (2007).

Wolfman, Marv, and George Pérez. Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985-1986).

Bibliography

Cornog, Martha, and Steve Raiteri. “Fangirl to Wonder Woman.” Library Journal, July 15, 2008. http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6574065.html.

Gustines, George Gene. “Wonder Woman Gets a New Voice, and It’s Female.” The New York Times, November 27, 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/27/books/27simo.html.

Yabroff, Jennie. “Holy Hot Flash, Batman!” Newsweek, January 5, 2008. http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2008/01/05/holy-hot-flash-batman.html.