I just finished reading this, so that's why I'm going to get this out there now.
DC Super Hero Girls is a line of dolls, action figures, lego figures, cosplay items, comics, books, a few movies, and soon to be animated TV show (there are already animated shorts on Youtube, but this is going to be a full on show). I've been a huge fan from the beginning. I have a full line of the dolls including the San Diego Comic Con Exclusive Katana from last year and all the books and comics thus far. I've been generally loving everything. But this story had me stop for a number of reasons and we'll get into that in a bit.
Generally though DC Super Hero Girls is a fun action packed and girl friendly series. The few male superheroes help, but they don't save the day by any means. The girls always do it and do it with fun and flare. The dolls are awesome and the books, while a tad repetitive thus far, have been fun. The comic has often used ties to the Youtube shorts, but branched into it's own thing as well. And the Youtube shorts are just super fun and action packed even if they're only dealing with a minor issue. They've introduced several villains including Granny Goodness as the librarian, who plays up the super helpful granny librarian role before betraying everyone (booo!).
Now we get to Summer Olympus and we reveal that again Zeus is the father of Wonder Woman. This is obviously problematic for a number of reasons as Zeus is a womanizer and rapist in Greek mythology. He's not a good guy at all and yet he's here as Diana's father for no real reason other than to play off the movie and the often openly misogynistic new 52 run (which Summer Olympus borrows from in a number of ways).
The whole premise though is that Wonder Woman has been invited to Olympus to hang out with her family over summer break. She invites all her friends and no one wants to come because they all have other adventures except Bumblebee who is the last one she asks even though Bumblebee is the first person who really befriended Wonder Woman. Batgirl, Katana, and Beast Boy go off to look at museums and Big Barda, Shiva, and Supergirl go home to Smallville and the Kent farm. Wonder Woman is having a grand old time while Batgirl and her gang stumble upon a mystery that leads them straight to Themyscira and eventually Wonder Woman. The gang reunites to deal with the not-so-new threat.
So that's the basics.. Now onto some major spoilers.
First big problem with the series is Wonder Woman's new Olympus family are clearly multiracial while her dad is white. That's cool to add a little racial diversity to the Greek Gods, but it implies Zeus has had a lot of women on the side and even if he hadn't to have all the other Gods, Diana has a half-sister, Siracca who is definitely from a mortal mom, so Zeus has gotten around. Siracca also comes from Azzarello's run, tying this into the darkness of that run, which I wish they'd steer clear of. Of course the whole demi-goddess Wonder Woman origin ONLY comes from this and given that this whole thing is about girl power and strong women, it just seems odd that they would ditch the extremely female positive origin for this.
Second problem, Hera, Goddess of women, is not mentioned once. Not once.
Third problem, Zeus is a really bad dad. Which is fine as there are bad parents, but it's clearly driven home on a number of occasions that he isn't there for any of his kids really. There is a moment when Ares wants to hang with dad and Zeus brushes him off to hang with Wonder Woman. Ares has been away for a while, so it's odd. There is a moment later in the comic where Zeus decides to have a hunting game. Diana, Bumblebee, and new sister Siracca capture the Chimera that was let loose, but only by having it poison itself (which none of the girls meant to happen, but it was weird). The animal will be healed, but for doing so they get gifts from Zeus. Bumblebee, being not family, gets noise cancelling headphones that also cancel spells. That's kinda cool. Siracca gets a wind chime to alert her to danger. OK.. and Wonder Woman gets offered to be a God. Yup. Siracca, his other brown daughter, gets a wind chime while Wonder Woman, the white daughter, can be a God. That's not cool on any level. Not to mention that Siracca, earlier in the story, tells Wonder Woman how difficult it is for her being a Demi-Goddess while Wonder Woman has had a relatively easy life. So Zeus picking Wonder Woman for the gift just feels really, really odd.
Final problem, Strife and Ares are the big bads. Strife again looks exactly like her Azzarello incarnation and causes all the girls including the Amazons to fight with each other. She even forces all the Gods to fight Wonder Woman and the Super Hero Girls. At one point, Strife even makes them all fight each other. It's bonkers and weird. Oh and the mystery Batgirl and the gang were solving? Strife stealing objects. One is a shield that will make Ares impossible to beat and the other 2 items will just turn off the shield's power. Ares gets bigger and badder with all the fighting going on, so why he needs the shield is beyond me. Ares and Strife also apparently agreed to leave wherever Wonder Woman was living alone with Zeus, but when they act up.. Zeus does nothing really to stop them.
On and Wonder Woman beats Ares, not by showing him the truth, not by giving him the amulet of Harmonia or anything else, nope. She beats him by promising to join him and then telling all her friends she cares for them. That's it. I mean I guess it's an OK ending, but the whole, "I'll join you so you won't hurt my friends." thing felt weird right before she goes and saves her friends. Also the shield did notta. And that's about it.
Seriously I LOVE this line, but I cannot remotely recommend this book to anyone. There are way too many problems and if they know anything about Greek mythology this weirdly sanitized, but not Zeus will throw them off. And if they don't, let's hope they never learn that Wonder Woman's dad is a rapist and misogynist who cheats on his wife regularly and then she's the evil one for being mad about it. I can't help but think this kind of tells young girls that it's OK that their husband/boyfriend cheats on them and has dozens of kids with other ladies and that it's OK if their dad is a sucky dad if he has a bunch of kids (or if their husband/boyfriend has a bunch of kids, it's OK if he sucks as a dad). I'm not cool with that at all.
DC Super Hero Girls is a line of dolls, action figures, lego figures, cosplay items, comics, books, a few movies, and soon to be animated TV show (there are already animated shorts on Youtube, but this is going to be a full on show). I've been a huge fan from the beginning. I have a full line of the dolls including the San Diego Comic Con Exclusive Katana from last year and all the books and comics thus far. I've been generally loving everything. But this story had me stop for a number of reasons and we'll get into that in a bit.
Generally though DC Super Hero Girls is a fun action packed and girl friendly series. The few male superheroes help, but they don't save the day by any means. The girls always do it and do it with fun and flare. The dolls are awesome and the books, while a tad repetitive thus far, have been fun. The comic has often used ties to the Youtube shorts, but branched into it's own thing as well. And the Youtube shorts are just super fun and action packed even if they're only dealing with a minor issue. They've introduced several villains including Granny Goodness as the librarian, who plays up the super helpful granny librarian role before betraying everyone (booo!).
Now we get to Summer Olympus and we reveal that again Zeus is the father of Wonder Woman. This is obviously problematic for a number of reasons as Zeus is a womanizer and rapist in Greek mythology. He's not a good guy at all and yet he's here as Diana's father for no real reason other than to play off the movie and the often openly misogynistic new 52 run (which Summer Olympus borrows from in a number of ways).
The whole premise though is that Wonder Woman has been invited to Olympus to hang out with her family over summer break. She invites all her friends and no one wants to come because they all have other adventures except Bumblebee who is the last one she asks even though Bumblebee is the first person who really befriended Wonder Woman. Batgirl, Katana, and Beast Boy go off to look at museums and Big Barda, Shiva, and Supergirl go home to Smallville and the Kent farm. Wonder Woman is having a grand old time while Batgirl and her gang stumble upon a mystery that leads them straight to Themyscira and eventually Wonder Woman. The gang reunites to deal with the not-so-new threat.
So that's the basics.. Now onto some major spoilers.
First big problem with the series is Wonder Woman's new Olympus family are clearly multiracial while her dad is white. That's cool to add a little racial diversity to the Greek Gods, but it implies Zeus has had a lot of women on the side and even if he hadn't to have all the other Gods, Diana has a half-sister, Siracca who is definitely from a mortal mom, so Zeus has gotten around. Siracca also comes from Azzarello's run, tying this into the darkness of that run, which I wish they'd steer clear of. Of course the whole demi-goddess Wonder Woman origin ONLY comes from this and given that this whole thing is about girl power and strong women, it just seems odd that they would ditch the extremely female positive origin for this.
Second problem, Hera, Goddess of women, is not mentioned once. Not once.
Third problem, Zeus is a really bad dad. Which is fine as there are bad parents, but it's clearly driven home on a number of occasions that he isn't there for any of his kids really. There is a moment when Ares wants to hang with dad and Zeus brushes him off to hang with Wonder Woman. Ares has been away for a while, so it's odd. There is a moment later in the comic where Zeus decides to have a hunting game. Diana, Bumblebee, and new sister Siracca capture the Chimera that was let loose, but only by having it poison itself (which none of the girls meant to happen, but it was weird). The animal will be healed, but for doing so they get gifts from Zeus. Bumblebee, being not family, gets noise cancelling headphones that also cancel spells. That's kinda cool. Siracca gets a wind chime to alert her to danger. OK.. and Wonder Woman gets offered to be a God. Yup. Siracca, his other brown daughter, gets a wind chime while Wonder Woman, the white daughter, can be a God. That's not cool on any level. Not to mention that Siracca, earlier in the story, tells Wonder Woman how difficult it is for her being a Demi-Goddess while Wonder Woman has had a relatively easy life. So Zeus picking Wonder Woman for the gift just feels really, really odd.
Final problem, Strife and Ares are the big bads. Strife again looks exactly like her Azzarello incarnation and causes all the girls including the Amazons to fight with each other. She even forces all the Gods to fight Wonder Woman and the Super Hero Girls. At one point, Strife even makes them all fight each other. It's bonkers and weird. Oh and the mystery Batgirl and the gang were solving? Strife stealing objects. One is a shield that will make Ares impossible to beat and the other 2 items will just turn off the shield's power. Ares gets bigger and badder with all the fighting going on, so why he needs the shield is beyond me. Ares and Strife also apparently agreed to leave wherever Wonder Woman was living alone with Zeus, but when they act up.. Zeus does nothing really to stop them.
On and Wonder Woman beats Ares, not by showing him the truth, not by giving him the amulet of Harmonia or anything else, nope. She beats him by promising to join him and then telling all her friends she cares for them. That's it. I mean I guess it's an OK ending, but the whole, "I'll join you so you won't hurt my friends." thing felt weird right before she goes and saves her friends. Also the shield did notta. And that's about it.
Seriously I LOVE this line, but I cannot remotely recommend this book to anyone. There are way too many problems and if they know anything about Greek mythology this weirdly sanitized, but not Zeus will throw them off. And if they don't, let's hope they never learn that Wonder Woman's dad is a rapist and misogynist who cheats on his wife regularly and then she's the evil one for being mad about it. I can't help but think this kind of tells young girls that it's OK that their husband/boyfriend cheats on them and has dozens of kids with other ladies and that it's OK if their dad is a sucky dad if he has a bunch of kids (or if their husband/boyfriend has a bunch of kids, it's OK if he sucks as a dad). I'm not cool with that at all.
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