DC’s Amazons Attack miniseries has taken quite a beating online, with critics dubbing it everything from “pointless” and “the worst event ever” to the slightly more hyperbolic “most damaging, worst Wonder Woman story ever.”
Most of the disapproval is aimed not at writer Will Pfeifer, but at DC for what’s largely viewed as an editorial-mandated storyline. Still, Pfeifer bravely opens his blog up to comments on last week’s finale, and receives a virtual avalanche (including a few positive remarks).
And speaking of editorial, Rich Johnston points to a private email from Amazons Attack editor Matt Idelson that was reposted on the DC Comics message board in which he assures that the miniseries is “but a chapter in the larger story.”
“There’s no way we wouldn’t redeem the Amazons or leave them MIA, if you will,” Idelson writes. “The nice thing about comics is that you can do pretty much any type of story knowing that you can correct things if need be. The key is to not be capricious about it, and I promise you we weren’t.”
But while some readers took their complaints to email, others went with snail mail — and YouTube. Valerie D’Orazio uncovers this video from the dissatisfied “hobomystical,” who politely seals the first five issues of Amazon Attacks in an envelope and sends them, with a letter, to Idelson.
“Hobomystical” also emailed his complaint, which received a response from Idelson:
One of the things that truly surprised me about both your letter and several other e-mails I’ve received is that people think this is the end of the story. I can understand not liking story, but it was basically left as a giant cliffhanger. The story of the gods, Hippolyta, and of course the rest of the Amazons is far from over. One of the unique things about comics is that we can tell a story that implements great change, and ultimately undo it if we need or want to (an ability that sometimes has been detrimental to the medium, I grant you). And while the ultimate endpoint of the arc is about taking the characters somewhere new, I there really isn’t permanence to where they are now.
I do wish certain things had played out differently, both in Amazons and in Wonder Woman’s own book. The research I did before starting to work on the title gave me an even greater level of respect and affection for the character, and I know all too well the things that have and haven’t worked since the book relaunched. All I can do is keep trying to produce better results. I hope the arrival of Gail Simone on the title this fall will leave you with greater satisfaction than you have now for the book.
Simone’s run on Wonder Woman begins in November with Issue 14.
September 5th, 2007 at 9:29 am
Issue 14. That number is in some of the more hyperbolic posts.
To me the “hyperbolic” fans were more damaging.
September 5th, 2007 at 9:34 am
You’re right. I even double-checked, because I knew Simone’s run had been pushed back, but I still typed “13.”
September 5th, 2007 at 10:05 am
The end of the miniseries wasn’t the end of the story?
TPTB at DC *do* understand the concept of a story, right? The whole beginning, middle, and end thing?
Should it be fans’ expectation that something labelled 1 (of 6) is something OTHER than a six-part story?
September 5th, 2007 at 10:16 am
Beginning: Amazons Attack
Middle: The Amazons are attacking
End: Amazons stop attacking
There you go.
September 5th, 2007 at 10:56 am
Thanks – you just saved me $18.
September 5th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Okay, are comics actually supposed to have a beginning, middle, and end? Or are they supposed to get you to buy the next issue (or in this case, keep tabs on the repercussions)? Because if comics really are supposed to end, then wouldn’t it have been best to cancel Spider-Man and Fantastic Four when Stan Lee left? Or to relaunch every book whenever a new creative team comes aboard? Everything DC and Marvel has done since the beginning has been designed to sell more books. Identity Crisis led into Countdown led into Infinite Crisis led into 52/OYL led into Countdown (again) will lead to Final Crisis. Avengers Disassembled led into New Avengers led into House of M led into Decimation led into Civil War led into the Initiative led into World War Hulk. Comic book stories never end. At best, the chapter ends, which leads us to the beginning of the next chapter. How can we not expect this from every single superhero story we read?
September 5th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Phunengames: ‘To me the “hyperbolic” fans were more damaging.’
And how is that exactly? Why shouldn’t we complain about a six-issue series that turns out to have been an unnannounced prequel to another series, has 360 turns on characterisation, heroes portrayed as stupid (except Batman, of course), slaughtered innocents going unavenged, a non-ending out of nowhere . . . I’ve paid £13 or something, I’m going to moan! I’m not the one saying the Amazons have, actually, always had murderous tendencies.
I feel sorry for Matt the editor, though. I also suspect he’s been given lemons from which no one could make lemonade.
September 5th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
It wasn’t just the most damaging story to Wonder Woman, but also felt like the terminal punch in the beating of this character over the last 3 years. You have to look at the bigger picture.
In the last few years we’ve seen Diana’s mother killed and her friend Vanessa mutilated. Her island home has blown up by Brainiac (OWAW), kicked out of the sky, and forced to retreat into hiding. She’s lost her sight for a moment, killed to save Superman, been estranged from the trinity and most of the DC Universe. She’s not yet been shown to be victorious over Veronica Cale (her Lex Luthor) and we still haven’t seen her beat Circe (yet) from the first story arc…but obviously she did, but to not much effect, because Circe is here in this story – again. The title was rebooted but constantly late to where there was no hope to keep new fans, there’s no real detail to the “one year later”, they give us her mother back but she’s evil, the peaceful Amazon nation is attacking out of character and made to look like men-hating murderers.
Now she really has no tools to recover from this AA line. Gail will have to do some really hard work here, and if there’s a pay-off, it won’t be big enough to remove this stain.
She hasn’t won a single battle in 3 years or so and honestly, I just think everyone who cares about her is tired of seeing her get beat down and now kicked to death. Killing her off in Infinite Crisis wouldn’t have been this bad. For some reason, the higher ups at DC are treating her like a dog – and if she were a dog, the Humane Society would have already euthanatized her.
Just my opinion.
September 5th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Scott said: “(or in this case, keep tabs on the repercussions).” There’s a difference between repercussions and a continuing plot. Or the explanations behind why the plot proceeded as it did, since it didn’t do so with any kind of logic within the current storyline, much less established continuity of any kind.
At some point SOMETHING MAJOR had to be resolved. It wasn’t.
The main plot has neither been explained acceptably nor concluded. I can see a subplot jumping off to become the main plot of another arc (many a fine comic has been structured that way), but that’s not what happened. We’re still in the middle of the story that tells us WHY (why?) the Amazons attacked and how the war is proceeding.
As has been pointed out many times on the DC boards, even if you add a hugely amped-up (even uber-godly) (why? how?) Granny being behind everything, we don’t know her motivations, not even a hint. Once Hippolyta was released from Granny’s spell she should have snapped back to her old self, but it took a number of panels for her to do so, leaving the impression that she’s still being controlled. If indeed that’s the real Hippolyta at all. (She thinks she’s a queen. The Amazons have no queen.)
And so on, across the board. Everyone’s acting out of character; many have unexplained powers and abilities; many have not begun to use or have used them in an inconsistent manner, the powers and abilities they supposedly have.
The modern DC seems to be operating from story ruling over character, when just the opposite is the satisfying, entertaining rule to storytelling.
Sometimes you can excuse and gloss over a story but sometimes — a lot of times lately, and too often with WW, DC’s whipping girl — you’ve just got to call a badly-crafted story as the excrement it is.
There are NO positives that can emerge from AA. Why not just say it never happened, and maybe do something to ensure that the person or persons responsible for this mess either get(s) educated as to what constitutes entertainment that readers will be more than willing to pay for (and demand more!) or to ensure that they’re put in a position where they can never publish anything like this again?
September 5th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
For Martin Gray
Because that is how I feel.
That is reason enough. If people feel a 6 issue mini in a larger story destroyed a character that has been around for more than sixty years, I can feel the way I do too. It is fair. I paid money for something I read and enjoyed. You paid money on something you read and did not like and did for 6 months. Complain all you want.
I feel sorry for some of the crap Mr. Idelson has had to put up with from some fan, but not for Amazons Attack.
September 5th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
“There are NO positives that can emerge from AA. Why not just say it never happened, and maybe do something to ensure that the person or persons responsible for this mess either get(s) educated as to what constitutes entertainment that readers will be more than willing to pay for (and demand more!) or to ensure that they’re put in a position where they can never publish anything like this again?”
I am postive that I will not be looking at Wonder Woman for a long time. Not because of what DC has done but because of her “true fans”. The fallout is something to follow. Bottom line is more people are reading Wonder Woman than they have in years. I do not want to read a book where a loud click in the fan base is “she has not been good since Perez left” I like Wonder Woman but not enough to put up with the noise like I do on Blue Beetle and Countdown. I hope Ms. Simone makes this a top 10 book, but the toxic atmosphere around the book made by some of her “true fans” is too much for me.
September 5th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
Phunengames – are you the same poster as Narwhalist?
If you want to blame someone for the toxic atmosphere, don’t blame the ‘true fans’. Blame DC and the editor and writer for allowing AA! and WW 31 to 12 from being published in the 1st place and treating WW and her supporting cast like crap for the last 2 years. If they treated WW with the same dignity and respect they provide to Batman, Superman and Green Lantern, the WW fans wouldn’t be up in arms in the 1st place.
September 5th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Thing is, with a comic, especially with a miniseries, you shouldn’t have to pick up the next chapter in an overall story to be satisfied.
Such stories can certainly entice readers to go to other books sure, but they should be able to stand on their own merit.
September 5th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
If this is part of a bigger story, then why on Earth didn’t it say ‘A Final Crisis Crossover’ or a ‘Countdown Tie-In?’. When stories overlap/continue, the company should advertise that on the cover like they do with everything else.
As it is, if I buy a mini-series and my regular books announce ‘This is an Amazons Attack Tie-in’ on the cover? I expect that AA is a full story arc and that I don’t need to buy something /else/ to read the end of it.
The general impression I’m getting at the moment is that DC is throwing crap to see what sticks to the wall. Whatever sticks is what they’ll keep after ‘final crisis’ and the rest will be retconned/rebooted/erased, etc. Either that or we’ll find out that AA took place on Earth 43 and that will be the explanation as to why children were being murdered, why anyone listened to Circe, why the Banas are still running around as a separate tribe (yet Artemis is a Themysciran), why there is still a monarchy on Paradise Island, etc.
As a long time comic book reader I expect a mini-series to be a self-contained story with appropriately marked cross-overs and for such stories to explain such radical discrepancies before the mini-series is over.
GF
September 5th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
To be fair AA did set up a number of things that could be interesting in the long run. It just took six issues to -do- it. Was characterization off? Definitely. The Amazons especially: they fight for Peace, the do not slaughter innocents and certainly not children. And if you want to see something really wrong, look at the way the Bana treated Grace. Circe would have been more palatable if there had been any closure to her appearances in her first arc in the re-started WW series, but there wasn’t: it skipped right from what looked to be the big finale to the first stirrings of AA.
My biggest complaint is that AA should not have been a miniseries, especially if we’re to get the ‘its the first chapter of a larger story’ schtick -again-, it should have been part of WW’s own title (which, by the way, should be a -monthly-).
AA is, however, merely a symptom of a larger problem and that is DCs use of ‘just a chapter in a larger story!’: while comics are hardly true drama, there should at least be a nod to good dramatic structure (a beginning, a middle, a climax and an ending to that particular story). While I don’t mind dangling plot threads, they make for good stories down the way, something that calls itself a mini-series (a short collection of periodical issues) or even a maxi-series (a large collection of periodical issues) should have those four elements in there -somewhere-.
September 5th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
Meh, it sold well enough here. So did other things “everyone” hates, like Meltzer’s JLA. Someone is buying and liking these, including myself.
September 6th, 2007 at 9:11 am
People in charge editing comics at DC only cares about sales. Amazon Attack isn’t much worse than Superman/Batman 15 and Matt Wagners’s Trinity. DC Editors forget about characterization, and the only characters they care are basically Superman and Batman…
September 6th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
Maybe it did “sell well enough”. That is partly why the fans are complaining. DC saw a short-term plan: make villains out of an ulikely group, Wonder WOman’s supportig cast. That’s fine, it would be an interesting story. But their vision was TOO short-term; it would have taken a whole year to set up that kind of dramatic change.
Instead they shove in our faces: A crazed Hippolyta, back from the dead and (painfully) obviously under some form of mind-control. Okay, that in itself would have been a mildly interesting plotline. Then we get a Phillipus, who was once a remarkable character, easily abdicates rulership over to this obviously out-of-her-mind Hippolyta (who was just resurrected by, oh yeah, an Amazon-slaughtering freaking supervillain! Phillipus was NEVER an idiot before. explaination, please?) Then there’s Artemis, who was a Bana Amazon, suddenly all cozy with the Themyscirans. Her whole character is tossed out the window. For what!? I don’t know. Her hair also yo-yos in length from one issue to the next. Fabulous.
How is any “real” fan of Wonder Woman supposed to accept all those changes and enjoy the story? And those are just minor ones. We have been with this caracter for years and suddenly, for the sake of “selling more comics,” Our favorite characters are altered, for no reason apparent to the story. It’s a LITTLE hard to swallow.
Fact is, nobody involved in this fiasco really did any research before they delved in to trash WW’s world. It’s as painfully obvious as the writing itself was bad.
But hey DC, at least you can sell more Batman toys.
September 8th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
I don’t get why Idelson says ‘the story’s not over’ as though that’s supposed to be a good thing. It was a horrible event that should be 1. over and 2. made to never have happened, as quickly as possible.
September 8th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
Why do I get the feeling that this will become DC’s version of the “Clone Saga” and be quietly swept under the continuity rug within 2 years?