Zeus creates mankind happy and free, but the jealous Ares corrupts humans and sets them at one another's throats. In Wonder Woman, screenwriter Allan Heinberg recasts Greek mythology in a distinctly Miltonic vein. She is overqualified to kick Batman's ass.Įven though he invents elements of hiketeia for his purposes, Rucka's Greek religion is more authentic, less sensational than that in Patty Jenkins' 2017 film. Diana has family connections to the Olympian Gods themselves. Batman is a particularly vulnerable superhero: he is undeniably buff and has some excellent gadgets, but almost alone in the DC and Marvel universes, he is essentially just some guy in a cape. This isn't just some sort of feminist revisionism, either. Many critics admire the double-page spread (56-57) where Diana throws Batman off her apartment balcony. So you're waiting for that shoe to drop the whole time, but meanwhile the plot is tense, the dark visual mood is atmospheric, and the action is occasionally splendid. We learn early on that only the suppliant can break the bonds of hiketeia. In such an eye-for-an-eye world, it's a wonder anybody can see straight. But they wouldn't have been happy if Wellys had left her victims unmurdered, because vengeance was due. They won't be happy with Bruce Wayne if Diana succeeds. They will avenge Wellys if Diana betrays her. This is serious stuff – no matter what Wellys has done, Diana has to protect her, even if it means smacking Batman upside the head a few times.īut of course, the Furies want it both ways, or indeed every possible way.
She goes to Princess Diana (called "Wonder Woman" here only with a touch of scare quotes) and performs the ritual of hiketeia. We see a young woman named Danielle Wellys commit a cold-blooded, hideous murder. Like any good Greek tragedian, Rucka sets up the story as a no-win situation. Though in the world as drawn by Jones and von Grawbadger, that's the only place you are likely to meet them. These obligations are enforced by the Erinyes, three goddesses you don't want to meet in a dark alley. Rucka imagines hiketeia as a formalized ritual that binds suppliant and benefactor in mutual obligations. It means "the prayer of a suppliant," and it was used by Plato, Thucydides, and others. Hiketeia, as you might expect from Greg Rucka, is an actual classical word that I would spell in Greek here if I had better coding skills. Rucka would go on to write Wonder Woman for three years, but The Hiketeia was his first story for the Themysciran superhero. And there it was, a 2002 graphic novel called The Hiketeia, written by primo comic creator Greg Rucka, drawn by veterans J.G. Getting ready to see Wonder Woman at one of the 25,000 co-ed screenings this week, I wondered if I had any Wonder Woman comics on my bookshelf.
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