Wonder Woman

Cover page for Sensation Comics featuring:

Wonder Woman (Issue No. 1)

- WONDER WOMAN -

The comic I've chosen is a DC Comic called "Sensation Comics featuring: Wonder Woman." I never read comics prior to taking this class so this has been a totally new learning experience for me. I figured I would start off my first blog entry with an action genre.

I’ll start by giving you guys some background knowledge about Wonder Woman. She is a fictional character created and based off of Greek mythology. She is a warrior princess of the Amazons. When outside of her own world she goes by the secret identity of Diana Prince to conceal her powers and true self. She is one of the few heroines in comics and therefore serves as a feministic icon. She possesses many combat and battle skills, but above all, she fights for justice, peace, love and gender equality.

This first issue has a lot of interesting aspects to it, I want to look at in particular the action that this comic creates, the colour schemes and art style; looking at the inclusion of realistic images within a fantasized narrative. Along with my own comments, I will be referencing Scott McCloud’s theoretical work Understanding Comics. Since we have treated his work as a basis for this course, I thought it fit to refer back to his points on various topics.

                        ACTION

I want to start off with this strong image of Wonder Woman running away from an explosion. McCloud states that “these conspicuous action lines have the ability to depict action with drama” (McCloud 112).

The lines present that there is an explosion behind her and show the abrupt movement of rocks flying all over. These lines are working outwards and away from Wonder Woman which signify that it is overpowering.

The lines underneath her foot come out towards us and they show that she is running away from the explosion. She is running towards us, almost out of the panel and off of the page it might seem.

McCloud introduces us to the term ’polyptych’ and defines it as ‘a moving figure or figures is [are] imposed over a continuous background” (McCloud 115). This panel clearly depicts a polyptych as Wonder Woman’s figure is running away from the explosion as the explosion is occurring.
                                                                                                                   COLOUR

Next, I want to look at a tier of three panels on the third page of the comic book. These three panels side-by-side stood out the most to me because of their contrasting colours.
McCloud says that through the evolution of comics and the printing commerce, "colours were picked for strength and contrasted strongly with one another, but on most pages no one colour dominated" (McCloud 188).

Typically, a distinctive feature of action comics is the bright colour palette. In this example we see that there is a strong contrast with the primary and secondary colours of the superheroes. These three images force our eyes to take it all in at once. The colour in particular is really eye-catching.

In the first panel, we see Flash’s bright red suit contrasted by the yellow details, which in whole is contrasted by the light blue background.
The second panel shows Green Lantern with his typical green and black suit emphasized by the bright green outlining his character. The bright green outlining makes him stand out more from the different shades of blue in the background.
In the last panel Super Man’s iconic blue, red and yellow suit stands out against the enemy’s purple and green colour.

                       ART STYLE

My final point refers to the distinctive art style of this action comic. All characters are created in a realistic way which is juxtaposed to the fantasy diegetic world of the narrative. Wonder Woman’s muscle structure is very prominent, her facial structure and hair resembles a real human being.

This is the perfect example because it is contrasted by the fantasized narrative and background of this particular panel. We can tell by the twirling lines that are coming out of the movement of her arms that it implies she is flying off from this scene of action.

The whole scene is a part of the diegetic world because it works in sequence with the comic’s narrative. The overly dramatized background plays with the unreal image of Wonder Woman flying off. With this in mind, everything that is going on behind her, (including the lines of motion and background) contrast the realism of her physical characteristics.


Overall, this was a really cool comic to start off with and I’m excited to read the next issue. It has a lot of cool aspects to it and what I love about it most is that the colours really jump out at you. It helps to have some background knowledge on the superheroes in general because there is a lot of intertextuality throughout this comic. It always references back to other superheroes that we have no doubt heard of through the media and the film adaptations on screen. Looking forward to hear what you guys have to say!
 



Works Consulted:
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics.