#i think i'm going to finish binding vol 1 first and if all goes well i'll finish typesetting and illustrating the rest

[cicadaknight]

Horizon Forbidden West items 1/2

[heckyeahstevetrevor]

So, I'm reading Rebirth Vol. 1 right now. I literally haven't read a comic since I was a kid, so I know I've missed a ton. Do you mind giving a little backstory for us newbies? I get that Diana and Clark had a thing -- what happened there? Steve mentions someone starting 8th grade and someone named Maya. Does he have kids? I did a cursory Google, but, alas. I thought you might be the expert to go to! :) Also, I am digging the beard!

Heck yeah, my friend! You came to the right place. I *love* helping people get started with Wonder Woman. Luckily, you only need backstory starting from 2011 with DC’s massive relaunch called The New 52 (there’s a New 52 reading list for those interested, as well as a Steve Trevor comics masterpost).

Pertinent backstory: The New 52 kicks off in “Justice League: Origins,” where we learn that Steve Trevor is a military pilot who crash-landed on Paradise Island. He comes back with Diana, and when there’s a massive invasion she joins other superheroes in saving the world and they form the Justice League. Steve Trevor serves as both the government liaison to the League as well as the head of an agency called ARGUS (Advanced Research Group Uniting Super-Humans). The JL timeline jumps five years in the next arc (“The Villain’s Journey”) and during this interlude apparently Diana and Steve were together. However, this story begins when Steve is kidnapped by a villain intent on taking down the League, and he’s tortured nearly to the point of death. Once the JL finally saves the day, Diana goes to visit Steve in the hospital and decides—against his protests—that she cannot endanger his life anymore and breaks up with him. Later that night, she runs into Superman and thinks to herself “This dude’s not going to get almost killed by my enemies” and then starts dating him (if this seems poorly thought out, it was).

I love Superman, but having *Wonder Woman* date literally the only man stronger than her is the antithesis of who she is. Unfortunately, as DC was going for a Twilight thing, they really drove into this hard and had Steve make occasional petty appearances in Superman/Wonder Woman. In between said petty appearances, Steve went on to assemble the Justice League of America, the government’s answer to the actual JL. As a result, he made cameos in a lot of New 52 books. 

Skipping ahead: The next relevant storyline was “Forever Evil,” where the Crime Syndicate (remember Earth-3′s evil Justice League: Owl Man, Ultraman, Superwoman?) come to our earth and trap our Justice League in another dimension. Steve got his own mini-series spinoff, Forever Evil: ARGUS, which is basically just him fighting all manner of villains in order to “free Wonder Woman—I mean the Justice League” (his words, not mine). It’s incredibly romantic and shirtless and still very surreal. Diana doesn’t know who did all of this because Steve gets knocked out by a villain at the very last minute and Cyborg has to finish the job. 

Connecting the New 52 to Rebirth: In the last big storyline of the New 52, “Darkseid War,” Diana and Steve are reunited when they have to save the world. This time, we learn that Diana still loves Steve but is unsure whether he feels the same. Just as things are about to get warm and fuzzy, one of the villains (Grail, daughter of Darkseid and a rogue Amazon) kidnaps Steve because she thinks that he is the missing element for her to get revenge on the Amazons—she literally binds him to the anti-life equation and luckily he somehow survives this; when Diana sees that he’s survived she stops frontin’ and they exchange a wordless but emotional hug. (Oh, and Superman dies, but later we learn that he was never really Superman anyway.)

Throughout *all* of this, in her home book Diana learned that she was not made from clay but instead from Zeus’s God-Sperm. The Amazons are rapist-murderers, and everyone is just super mean. DC realized that the hopeless tone of the New 52 wasn’t sustainable and so in Rebirth, they brought on Greg Rucka to fix WW. The very first issue of Rebirth starts with Diana processing all of this information—horrible Amazons, her lack-of-clay origin, her romance with Superman (basically, the horrific time she had in the New 52)—and demanding to know what the truth is. In other words, everything she thought she knew was a lie and now it’s time to find out what’s behind all of this in Wonder Woman Rebirth Vol 1 - The Truth. That should bring you up to speed!

As for the two specific points you mentioned, I would recommend starting with WW Rebirth Vol 2 - Year One before you read The Truth (I know, counter-intuitive, but it’s because of how the issues were released). It shows what the *real* (not New52) Amazons are like, and it explains who Sandy and Maya are (Steve’s goddaughter and her mother, respectively). Hope this helps you and anyone else trying to start the comics!