To understand Wonder Woman’s character, you must understand her creator: Professor William Moulton Marston. A radical feminist, Marston sculpted Wonder Woman from his belief that it was women who should lead and save the world. Pulling from the Greek myths of the Amazons, Marston conceived of the character who became Diana: a woman raised on an (all-female) Paradise Island, who was sent out into the world of men to spread a message of peace and change our hearts.
Absolute Diana is still a hero, embodying traits of the classic Wonder Woman: “Beauty. Grace. Compassion. Kindness. Wisdom.” She has these traits not because she was raised in Paradise, though, but because she was raised in Hell. In this retelling, Zeus imprisoned all the Amazons for some unspecified crime and barred their name from ever being said again. Diana, the only child among them, was given to the witch Circe (traditionally a Wonder Woman enemy) and then raised in Circe’s Hellish prison.
To depict Diana growing up, Sherman uses a series of three successive double-page spreads, with four rectangular panels stretching across two pages, each one showing Diana getting a bit older. See one below:
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These pages convey how even though she was in literal Hell, Absolute Wonder Woman still had a better childhood than Guts — because she had a loving parent. Thompson had admitted she struggled with how to properly redefine Wonder Woman until she came upon the “raised in Hell” idea. In a conversation with Snyder, she also mentioned that she didn’t want this to simply be a “God of War” Wonder Woman. So, she realized (via CBR), she could change everything around Diana — her history, her weapons, her supporting characters, etc. Absolute Diana’s design may be more “metal” in Thompson’s words, but because of Circe’s love, this Wonder Woman is still pure of heart.”Absolute Wonder Woman” #1 ends with its heroine reasserting herself as Diana of the Amazons, the hero we love and know.
Thompson has cited many other Wonder Woman comics as her research, including Daniel Warren Johnson’s 2020 “Wonder Woman: Dead Earth.” That mini-series is a non-canon story about Diana waking up in a post-apocalyptic world destroyed by nuclear war, her mission now an abject, possibly irreversible failure. “Dead Earth” Wonder Woman, like “Absolute” Wonder Woman, also carries a huge sword.
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Thompson and Sherman have not to my knowledge explicitly called “Berserk” an influence on “Absolute Wonder Woman.” (Though other critics have made the comparison too.) Johnson, however, is famously a “Berserk” fan — could the manga have helped inspire his Wonder Woman, which in turn helped inspire Thompson and Sherman’s?
In an October interview, Thompson said she had expected some backlash to equipping Absolute Wonder Woman with a sword. You see, Wonder Woman wielding a sword is a more recent character trait, seen in projects like the live-action “Wonder Woman” films and the 2011 DC Comics reboot “New 52.” There was a transparent feeling that, to make Wonder Woman “cooler,” she had to be more of a warrior (essentially DC’s Thor), but that totally betrays Marston’s original purpose in creating her.
A psychologist by trade, Marston wasn’t just the creator of Wonder Woman, but also the polygraph. So, Wonder Woman’s primary weapon has always been a lasso that forces people caught in it to tell the truth. Even when Diana fights, it’s with a nonlethal tool designed to change her foes’ hearts, not skewer them. Giving her a sword, the most classical weapon in history, representative of men’s rage (down to its phallic shape)? It’s antithetical to Wonder Woman.
It feels less wrong in “Absolute Wonder Woman,” though, because this Diana is on a mission to guard mankind from monsters. Even then, the first issue ends with Diana conjuring the lasso as she prepares to face down a demon, so the sword may not be her go-to weapon forever.
“Absolute Wonder Woman” #1 is available to purchase in print and digital. “Absolute Wonder Woman” #2 is scheduled for publication on November 27, 2024.