Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Wonder Woman #16


Imagine the chimera. At one point in the ancient world, a goat was bad-ass enough to stick on a lion to make it tougher.

• I bet the legend of the Chimera began when a drunk guy was walking home and he saw a lion off to the side and in the distance behind the lion was a goat so that it looked like the goat's head was sticking out of the back of the lion. Then he told people about the creature and they were all, "Bullshit! Didn't happen. Pics." But instead of admitting he was drunk and maybe he didn't exactly see things clearly, he doubled down on his story and was all, "And there was a snake coming out of its butt! And it breathed fire!" Then everybody was all, "Oh shit. Now that sounds plausible!"

• The Chimera on the cover is totally based on the Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual Chimera. But the Chimera Wonder Woman wrestles on the first page is the more historically accurate Chimera. What I'm suggesting is that Jenny Frison plays Dungeons and Dragons.

• Veronica and Adrianna of Empire Business and Hand Soap Solutions discuss Wonder Woman and how great or not-so-great she is. Adrianna is all goofy in the pants for her but Veronica remains distant and aloof to the possibility that maybe Wonder Woman is the greatest thing to ever happen to immigration. They're busy working on a thing that will cause Wonder Woman no end of problems in the odd numbered issues. But right now in these even numbered issues, Empire Business and Hand Soap Solutions still don't know how much they despise Wonder Woman or how much the hand soap is hurting the rest of their business.

• Meanwhile in Geneva, Switzercountry, Veronica's daughter, Isadore, meets a couple of men who seem to be the same man. They begin using all the regular chat-up lines on Isadore like "This painting is called 'Kill Your Father' and 'We're twins' and 'Have you ever seen a man's stick this big and fancy?' and also, the best, 'Gaze into my magic gem of secrets!'"

• After her encounter, Isadore loses her face.


This is probably some kind of metaphor for sexism, right?

• The twins who stole Isadore's identity are Phobos and Deimos. Those are the gods of Vietnamese Soup and Gay Gods, respectively. That doesn't explain why they would need the face of a little girl. Maybe I got the translations of their names wrong.

• Phobos and Deimos are, of course, the moons of Mars. Apparently they've taken human form and this is going to wind up being a Martian Manhunter crossover. Maybe they needed the little girl's face so they could build more face art on the surface of Mars.

• The Phobros believe that Empire Business and Hand Soap Solutions can meet their needs. They would like to know the location of Themyscira but they can't seem to find it in Diana's head. So they need Veronica's not-quite-ready-to-go technology. It will probably be ready in about five or six years. Once they get the information, Isadore will be freed from some tartar sauce.

• Adrianna volunteers to hook herself up to the CyberWalker machinery. That probably explains why she's a hologram in the odd numbered issues. Unless they were, at one point, the even numbered issues. It's hard to say since there was that stupid Barbara Minerva Cheetah Origin story smack dab in the middle of everything.

• Being that the technology is in that not-quite-ready-to-go status that I so scientifically detailed earlier, it fails to provide the Phobros with the information they need. But it does manage to kill Adrianna! I mean, trap her mind inside a computer. That's the way things work when you attach brains to machines and then turn switches and run currents and all the other technological stuff that I can't be bothered to explain to dullards. Not that you, the person currently reading this right now, are a dullard! It's all those other people reading this.

The Ranking!
No change! When I was a teenager and way too naive for the age I was, I wished the local zoo had been full of creatures from Dungeons and Dragons. That's not a great chat-up line in junior high. I can only tell you the not great chat-up lines from junior high since I never figured out the successful ones. That's no great surprise though since one time, Marilyn Mendoza, the girl I had a crush on for nearly my entire junior high school life, was writing notes back and forth to me in the library. Her final note to me said, "I love you anyway," and I instantly went into a fugue state. I would explain how Marilyn reacted but, as I pointed out, I went into a fugue state! Totally botched that one!

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