* Part 5 of 6 of the Blood storyline * Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Wonder Woman (Vol. 4), Issue #5 – “Lourdes”! In the previous installment, Wonder Woman is having a gay old time in London, far far away from Paradise Island, but she realizes she can’t run away from her problems like this. She returns back to Paradise Island to find her mother turned to stone. That bitch Hera did it. Did you know that she’s the sister AND wife of Zeus?? Yuck, man. No wonder half their children are little inbred mutants. Ares. Eris. Jabroni. Geronimo. Gorsuch. All of ‘em.
So there’s that. Also, Apollo meets up with his brother War in Darfur, where a lot of blood was spilled. Gallons of blood. Someone tore through the blood section of the grocery store and now it’s all over the aisle. It’s not Zeus’ blood though, that is something War can promise. Since Zeus can be killed by his own blood, apparently (what the fuck do I know, it’s all Greek to me), their family might think something hinky is going on! Apollo asks War for an alliance. War tells him to fuck off.
Tense stuff! This series is pretty good so far, I gotta say. Better than Nightwing cavorting around a circus. Goddamn I’ll never get over that.
Wonder Woman (Vol. 4), Issue #5 [March, 2012]
Written by: Brian Azzarello
“Blood”
Time for Diana to start stabbing some tentacles with a trident! Did she steal that from Neptune? Wait, that’s Rome. Poseidon? Yes! That’s the guy with the Adventure.
In London, a couple of boat men are boating around late at night talking about soccer (football) and boats (boats). They’re rollicking in the waves not too far at all from shore when they come up to a large creature floating dead in the water. Looks to be a horse. A mutilated horse. Little old horse got mutilated late last night! Werewolves in London! Aaah-hooooooo!!
Oh shit, dude. It’s not a horse at all! It’s a mythical creature with a horse head and a dragon-y serpent-y body! It’s a… hold on, let me peruse my local library. I’ll be back in about two hours…
…hippocampus? Yeah fucking right. That’s in the brain, douchebags.
Well, we’ll need to table that one for now. Diana, Zola, and Hermes are enjoying a pleasant lunch outside at a café. A man walks by with a newspaper. The headline: “MONSTER PULLED FROM THAMES”.
Diana’s going to have to rough up Hera a little bit after she turned Hippolyta to stone. Hippolyta, hippocampus, it’s hippos all the way down. Zola and Hermes are going to have to lay low, because Wonder Woman ain’t gonna be so wonderful at protecting anyone if Hera catches wind of…well, young blonde human women carrying the babies of Zeus all over the place.
Zola and Hermes grit their teeth all determined. That sort of “rawr, we’re all in this together” disposition. The folly of hubris! Diana hears them out, though, maybe they have a better idea that may not result in the three of them becoming large lawn ornaments. “Hera knows you’re Zeus’ daughter,” Hermes pipes in, “Keeping Zola close may actually make her more vulnerable.”
Stop whining, you two. It’s called “culture”. Now eat your flavorless vegetables or you’ll be sent to your room.
“Color’s a bit off, in’nit? Not sanguine enough for you, Messenger? I imagine yer used to wine, breakfast, lunch, an’ supper.”
This is a MAN speaking, butting into breakfast like he owns the breakfast. He asks the waitress to bring a pint and he scooches in to join the other three.
“Who are you?” Diana asks the guy with the broken fingers and the broken nose and all the bandages.
“Me? A man with the advantage… see, I know who you are.”
Well good! Now that we all know who everyone sort of is, we can get down to business!
Diana is peeved; tells the man that he’s invading a private conversation. Well, t’ hell wit’ yer private conversation, guv’nor. “The wind, noise to must, sure. ‘Cause every word that’s spoken, she carries. But words can be sussed out, if one cares to give a listen…”
“…daughter of Zeus,” he smiles, lighting a cigarette. Diana grabs it, extinguishes it with her bare hand, and drops it into the ashtray. “She’s pregnant,” she growls, motioning to the pregnant lady who sits there pregnant in the next seat.
This unknown man is fine with that and grabs a sausage. “It must be something, to learn yea has a dad the same day he’s scarpened off the… let’s call it the immortal coil?”
This is bullshit, man. Who is this guy with all the knowledge and the hunger for sausages? He finally introduces himself as Lennox, or at least he says “Lennox works”.
…the wind tells me… do you hear it? It’s saying “WHOOOOOSH!” lol
What this Lennox guy is getting at is that, with Zeus out of the picture, Zeus’ rowdy brothers are going to start fighting over the stuff he has left behind. Antiques, record collections, fetuses, that sort of thing. And they will likely be rather relentless about it too. Not much relenting going on with that family.
Diana isn’t phased. This isn’t new shit at all. Don’t forget, she’s 5,000 years old or something. She basically invented Greek mythology! Heh heh. And, now that she thinks about it… she looks at Lennox. “Am I dealing with [evil] now?”
Lennox wants to level with the lot of them. In his day, he has meddled quite extensively in the affairs of men. Stupid, mortal, stinky men. But today, against his own better judgment, he has decided to meddle in the affairs of stupid, immortal, stinky gods. He claims to be Diana’s older brother. We’ll see if that holds up in court! A food court!
This family stuff is getting really twisty turny, ain’t it? Later, when Diana and Zola are walking together in the rain, Diana comments that Zola is her aunt! Hey Auntie, what’s shakin’?
“It’s so weird. You being older than me, and I’m gonna give birth– to your… I think it’s a boy,” Zola smiles. Well there you go! Younger brother, older brother, gods and goddesses and Greek Life and paddling-related hazing rituals! Welcome to the family!
Diana believes this Lennox bloke. For now. And that’s all there is to it. For now.
“I believe what he said may be true,” Diana says, still thinking about the conversation they had without us, the loyal readers, like we’re all chopped liver or something, “That he learned who he was… what did he call it?… Baptism by Blitzkrieg? Something like that. And that to me is something. Coming to an understanding of who you are… in the midst of discovering… who you aren’t. And then going to war for them with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. Good against evil. Winner take all. That’s something I believe in… or want to… it’s kinda cool.”
What the FUCK is this lady talking about? While she yammers, we see some panels of Lennox rising out of the rubble of a building in a freshly bombed town. Then he’s fighting Nazis, I think.
Yeehaw! Kill dem Nazis!
“Um, Wonder Woman, I think you’re some of the other things Lennox said,” warns Zola. Hey, what’s with that buzzkill attitude, huh?
“Like what?” Diana asks, her buzz dwindling as we speak.
“Like that all Winner took was the day.”
Oh, I thought it was going to be more of an epiphany than that!
Elsewhere, Lennox leads Hermes to what looks like a culvert drainage ditch thing. “I’m not going in there,” Hermes complains. That’s a sound idea. Plus, he’s all hobbled like a three-legged dog. Except he has two legs already, so that analogy isn’t exactly accurate. Lennox asks how that happened to a strapping young “god” such as himself. “We’re immortal, not invulnerable,” he explains. That’s good to know later so that Lennox can try capping that bitch right in the knees Tonya Harding-style. Lennox bids his blue friend a temporary farewell and enters the culvert. “Be ready for what I deliver, messenger.”
For starters, getting knocked up by Zeus didn’t prove to be very relaxing.
“Look, you’re perfect–” Zola begins.
“Me? I’m not even close,” responds Diana.
Lennox had instructed Diana to stand on a particular bridge at six o’clock or she’d be in a world of hurt! So she’s standing on the bridge now, and Big Ben bongs its bells over the course of about four pages while the following happens:
-A gang of wild horse-fish hippocampus creatures angrily splash around the river.
-Diana gears up as Wonder Woman, bummed that Lennox “was right”. She instructs Zola to stay put or else she’ll be in a world of hurt!
-Wonder Woman stands in a river that has either been slightly parted to allow her to stand up, OR it’s so shallow that the water doesn’t even reach past the soles of her boots.
-She speaks at a large entity emerging from the water. “My name is Diana. My mother is… was– Hippolyta. I request an audience.”
-An audience she gets. A gigantic, fuck-ugly fish creature with menacing, milky fish eyes stares down at the Amazon woman. It’s Poseidon. All hail Poseidon. Get him a bucket of worms.
-Poseidon speaks! “MMMHUUH. HHHMMPH.” fucking lmao
Poseidon’s gonna lay down some facts, Jack. Zeus is gone. Dead. Off the worldly plane or whatever flowery language that the god-kids are speaking these days with their jive talk. So get out of his sight before he calls the cops! “I have no quarrel with you…MONGREL,” the big fish grunts.
On the other side of town, Lennox traverses the large culvert. A cascading waterfall is at the end of his path.
“My brother Zeus was a monster who cared about nothing other than himself,” Poseidon continues, “Ergo, I’m not interested in anything you have to say. And now that the heavens are without a lord… I mean to claim them as mine… to rectify the mistake it was ceding them to him… and no one will stand in my way.”
Three large pairs of red eyes are seen in the waterfall. A three-headed dog leaps out and attacks Lennox! Snarl! Woof! It doesn’t last long, because Hades (I assume) emerges and tells his three-headed dog to cut it out.
Hades looks like a several tiny atomic bombs went off on top of his head and it melted his wax crown all over his face.
BEHOLD, THE GOD OF MELTED BUTTER.
Back at Poseidon’s Lazy River, Wonder Woman respectfully understands his concern and then respectfully tells him to go fuck himself because Hera also lays claims to the heavens. He’s going to have to fight her for them. And he’s not happy about that.
“WHAT?!” he bellows, lacking what’s left of any dignity a giant, gross fish had in the first place.
Poseidon then grabs Wonder Woman with a few slimy tentacles like it’s all her fault. “SHE DARES?! he yells. The bridge is swarming with horrified lookie-loos taking photos of the bizarre spectacle to post on their Vines and TikToks and AIM chat rooms.
Now those two angry, demonic centaurs from Issue #1 enter into the mix. It’s all getting quite tiresome, isn’t it?
“SHE DOES,” Wonder Woman growls back at the stupid, slimy fish. Like, I thought you were supposed to be a shirtless man with abs. Where’s your trident? You look like Lord Jabu-Jabu from Ocarina of Time.
Hera shows up looking drunk as shit.
“WHAT?!”
Cliffhanger? I guess.
Final Thoughts
A Battle of the Gods? How exhilarating! I hope they all choke on their own buttholes. What an insufferable pile of narcissists.
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