Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Wonder Woman (Vol. 4), Issue #3 – “Clay”! In the previous installment, Wonder Woman returns to Paradise Island (her home) with young Zola and old Hermes. Zola carries Zeus’ child right now, which is causing quite a tizzy in the Greek god circles. Strife, who I endearingly nicknamed Sinead O’Connor, one of Zeus and Hera’s children, wants to intervene for reasons that aren’t clear yet! So she travels to Paradise Island and smashes around the place for a bit like Godzilla. Greek Godzilla. heh

Strife wants to talk to “her sister”. Wonder Woman thinks she’s referring to Zola’s unborn child. Strife is actually referring to Wonder Woman.

What a tangled web. We’re going to tangle it up even further now.

Wonder Woman (Vol. 4), Issue #3 [January, 2012]
Written by: Brian Azzarello
“Clay”

Look out, Wonder Woman, Medusa’s gonna show up next. Breaking your head off. Getting you stoned.

Fires burn on the beach of Paradise Island. Four separate ones, spaced about two feet apart from one another. They appear to be small wooden structures. The entire island is gathered around wearing facial expressions somewhere between forlorn and displeased. Maybe even gassy. We’ll find out what this all about later, certainly. How exciting and *yawn* suspenseful.

“Diana… my child… I will spend a lifetime… to take back this day,” Hippolyta laments alone in the ruined downtown area.

The next morning, many people on the beach are building the structures back up. Many other people are carrying deceased carcasses wrapped up like mummies off the premises.

A woman named Daphne looks sad. She admits to Aleka that she’s ashamed, and Aleka is like “WHY?!?” As you may remember, Aleka is the tough broad who jousted with Wonder Woman like they were on Amazonian Gladiators.

The conversation that Aleka and Daphne are having doesn’t really make much sense to me at the moment, having approximately 0.0000003% of the required Wonder Woman AND Greek mythology knowledge to be able to understand any reference beyond The Iliad, which I completely skipped reading in college. Fuck tha Iliad!

Daphne is ashamed, Aleka tells Daphne she has nothing to be ashamed of and that this obviously wasn’t her fault and that it was Clay.

Clay must be referencing Diana “Clay Davis”. As in, Princess Diana of Themyscira. Not that other Princess Diana who got mangled in a car crash because her driver was drunk and no one was wearing a seat belt. Easy to confuse the two, I know.

Oh hey, heh heh…uh, we didn’t see you there…

As you can see, the 1,000-ft woman lies in a relaxed lateral recumbent position, deriding the Isla Paradiso civilians. “Goddess… you trick us into murdering our own, then watch as we gather the horror we wrought,” scolds one unnamed woman, “And now you mock us?”

Jesus, if I were Strife I’d be mocking them too. How do you get tricked into murdering people and then cleaning up the mess? Sounds like a pretty dumb situation to me.

“…not since I was a little girl have I been called that,” Wonder Woman confides to Strife later while on a balcony. Strife’s not on a balcony, that would be irresponsible. “Of course,” Strife smiles, “Children can be so cruel.”

Down below at the street, Mr. Bird and Zola the Explola hobble up to the building. Birdy throws some shade, and Strife takes joy in this shade. “Perhaps I should come down to your level,” she says as she shrinks down to the height of a normal human woman. That would be somewhere between three feet and eight feet tall, by my calculations. *mashes calculator with face*

Hermes and Strife exchange fightin’ words. Hermes is about to disparage Strife’s mother, but Strife finishes his thought for him. It’s all very petty. Wonder Woman joins in too, likening the situation to a sociopathic child who pulls wings off of flies or burning ants with a magnifying glass.

And they never play any of the fun gods. Only the vengeful ones. Oh wait… there aren’t any fun ones.

Strife takes Wonder Woman literally here, the “playing god” part, and tells her that they can stop playing gods and start being gods. Like, duh. Easy as 1-2-3 for those who are already gods!

“You said I was your sister,” Wonder Woman snaps, “I can’t think of anything I’d rather not be.”
“Unfortunately, we don’t get to choose our family…” Strife responds coyly, taking a goblet and filling to the brim with sweet, sweet nectar of the gods: Franzia boxed wine, baby.

Their mother was never very candid about this sort of thing. It probably wasn’t worth mentioning, honestly. Very trivial.

“Your father, Strife, was he more open?” hollers Queen Hungry Hungry Hippolyta and she approaches with her entourage of spear-wielding women. I believe Hippolyta is referring to Zeus’ legs, and that slut can never keep them closed.
“Wine would loosen his tongue around me, Queen Hippolyta,” Strife responds in a very Tyrion Lannister manner, only very much not even hella close as short!

Speaking of not being very candid about this sort of thing, Hippolyta takes this opportunity to admit to Wonder Woman that she fucked the balls off of Zeus before she made a clay baby and then the clay baby turned into a not-clay baby. We get to see a montage of them fighting while giving each other the ol’ sex eyes! Zeus’ eyeballs are quite literally sparking with unbridled electricity! Whoa mama!

“How did it start?” Hipplyta continues, already boring the shit out of everyone within a seventeen-mile radius of this four-mile radius island. That means she’s boring the fish too. “Those are details I prefer to keep to myself…”

Hooray!

Oh, she’s still talking about it? Nice heel turn, lady.

It was a tryst they didn’t want anyone to know about. The Queen of the Amazons cavorting with the King of the Gods?? Scandalous! TMZ would have a field day! They tried to hide it, but that was stupid of them. Zeus has cornrows.

I can only imagine what they sang. Probably some BTS shit.

Meanwhile, while Hippolyta yammers about boning Zeus, Aleka and a woman who isn’t Daphne continue grumbling on the beach about Princess Diana, the Clay Intruder of Paradise Island. Overhearing the grumbling, a woman named Demi suggests killing the Queen and making it look like an accident. That’ll surely ruffle the Princess’ feathers!

“Those are treasonous words, Demi,” rebukes Not-Daphne with a furrowed brow that at least suggests to me that she actually means it. Aleka likes the idea, though.
“No, that is a question to consider, Sister… as is where does the Princess’ allegiance lie?”

Enough about that, though. We, the audience, demand more pages of the Queen and the God doing some lip-wrasslin’! “He– we– were glorious. Strength supporting strength… sinews entwined… absolute control…given up.” It’s just a bunch of of panels of these two in various sex positions. It’s not at all erotic. It sucks.

Yeah, so am I, but you don’t see me making a big deal about it.

I don’t know who this is now; there are too many unnamed characters to keep track of, but a woman is rallying a crowd with her sword in her left hand and a torch in her right. Reminds me of that Batman shaman cult nonsense I pushed through earlier. “Immortal life is a gift…” she yells, “but dying in battle is a prize to be coveted. It defines who we are.”

Warriors. Warriors want to die. Remind me never to become one UNLESS it’ll send me straight to Hell where all the fun people are.

Aleka can’t take it anymore. This woman speaking about sacrifice and honor and dying for their civilization? Fuck that! “Amazons, we have been compromised! Paradise is ruined.

That seems a little dramatic to me! You can’t ruin Paradise. Paradise is unruinable!

Hippolyta is still spilling her guts all over Wonder Woman, who looks uncomfortable and probably just wants to leave the island now. “Our passion left me pregnant, and to guard that secret, I left him. He did not follow. Quickly I learned, possessing a god has scant to do with keeping him.”

You know what this means, right? Hippolytapotamus got knocked up. Diana wasn’t a clay baby. She was a regular baby. And if Hera ever found out, she would kill her five times before she hit the ground! And so forth.

Wonder Woman isn’t happy about any of this. Seems to her like her whole life up to this point has been one big, fat lie. “This was a conspiracy?” she growls, looking absolutely feral, “Mother? Why…?”

Again, ma’am, it’s because Hera would kill you if she ever found out. Weren’t you listening? This was kind of important. You should listen a little better!

Also love, etc.

Wonder Woman glumly looks her mother right in the eye. “When I left Paradise Island, do you know why? I ask, because you never did.”

“There are some children who need to go away” is right. Most apt thing I’ve heard all day.

Hippolyta didn’t ask because she respected her daughter’s decision to fuck off from the nest. Kids grow up after all and whatnot. Meh, not good enough. “You’re a fool,” her daughter tells her as she storms away, “And you made one out of me.”

Well that was awkward. What’s next?

Wonder Woman is punching down trees in a forest in the outskirts of town. Again, this seems a little dramatic. I know that when my own mother told me I wasn’t actually a clay baby, I didn’t start punching down trees immediately. It took a few weeks for me to get to that point.

She makes her way to the beach where the rest of the angry Amazons are waiting. On her hands and knees, Wonder Woman stares at the mob with fire in her eyes.

“The she is, Sisters–” declares Aleka, torch in hand, “–the one who brought shame to our isla–”

PUNCH! Wonder Woman socks her in the goddamn jaw before she can finish her sentence. Blood everywhere! You love to see it!

Wonder Woman has the torch now, bitch! The rest of the Amazons are stunned. Concerned. Maybe a little bit cold on the beach at night. Who has the upper hand now? She blows into the torch and sets the four wooden structures aflame. Check the beginning of this issue; we’ve come full circle. The bodies are being burned.

“The only shame on this island is mine,” Wonder Woman calmly states with CONVICTION, “and I will take it from you all…never to return.”

Yeah right, you’ll be back before the McRib.

Final Thoughts

I will say this: the writing here is phenomenal. The best I’ve come across so far by a mile. Beats Mark Waid’s “get ‘em Cap’n! Wotta riot! Woop woop woop, howzeedoindat?”, which is such a high bar to begin with.

I just looked up a picture of Brian Azzarello. He looks like if Walter White and Scott Ian from Anthrax had a baby, and then someone scared that baby pretty badly.