In the week leading up to the 2017 Will Eisner Awards voting deadline this Friday, the Comics Beat will feature a series of “For Your Consideration” posts highlighting a number of the nominees as a celebration of their well-deserved acknowledgement. We’ll feature some never-before-seen behind the scenes content and some of the books’ gorgeous interiors. We encourage all of our readers to check these titles out and all of the eligible comics industry members to vote for the titles they think best exemplify what make comics great.
We’ve talked about a lot of books this past week on the Beat’s Eisner Watch, but as our coverage winds down, I’d like to talk about one of my favorite titles of the past year. We recently saw Wonder Woman‘s origin story masterfully retold by director Patty Jenkins and a swath of talented cast and crew. It’s a gorgeous, heartfelt, and empowering tale that humanizes Diana Prince– something that many Wonder Woman stories in the past have not done. That said, there is one other Wonder Woman origin story that I can think of that does a great job of mortalizing this god-like figure and that’s Wonder Woman: The True Amazon by cartoonist Jill Thompson.
One of the bigger complaints some have had about the Wonder Woman movie is that, as much as it is Diana’s story, Steve Trevor gets a lot of time in the spotlight as well. Thompson’s take on Diana’s origin story in her book avoids that criticism by removing Trevor from the story entirely, instead choosing to focus on Diana’s personal development from childhood into adulthood.
Thompson’s Diana starts off as an incredibly spoiled and precocious child. She’s been blessed with great power and been pampered all her life, so why wouldn’t she be? There are hints of this precocious nature in the Wonder Woman movie but only just. Diana’s story as told by Thompson plays out much more like a classical Greek myth filled with big battles and mythical beasts. The most Greccian part though? Diana’s flaws and thoughtless whims causes her own problems and is forced to figure out how to solve them, becoming a better and kinder person and ultimately, hero, in the process.
Wonder Woman: the True Amazon is up for the Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album– New.
Check out of all of our 2017 Eisner coverage.
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