Amazon #1 (April, 1996)

There's a reductive tendency, and I'm guilty of this myself, to treat Amalgam Comics as simple combos. Thor + Orion = Thorion. And yes, there was some of that. Of the Amalgam Comics that I read, I figure Iron Lantern was the best at going through a list of shared concepts between DC and Marvel to create 50/50 splits all the way down the line. Pepper Ferris, Happy Kalmaku, Mandarinestro. Tick, tick, tick. However, there were quite a few people shaping this thing, with varied and sometimes conflicting approaches. For instance, and to the surprise of no one, John Byrne went his own way.

I was chagrined at the announcement of Byrne taking over Wonder Woman, and at this point was eight months into enduring a three year tour. Of all the books Byrne bailed on early, he just had to prove a point by staying on mine. He even managed to get an issue out in addition to Amazon, just one week apart. So lucky for me! While I liked Storm when I was an X-Men reader, I had unamiably separated from that fandom years earlier, and was rather unhappy with the mutant weather witch having beaten Princess Diana by popular vote in DC versus Marvel. I confess that my own store's tally was not a part of the count, because I didn't get around to mailing them in. Regardless of my efforts to lay a heavy thumb on the scale for the Amazing Amazon, Storm was still the in-store victor, and in fact I think all of my shop's voting aligned with the published winners. But anyway, I'm dealing with an X-Men creator lousing up a favorite book and character, the sour spot about the Storm victory, and now a book where Ororo usurps Diana in the role of Wonder Woman? Oh, joy. I was clearly not positively disposed toward this project, bought it for the run, read once, and filed away for nearly thirty years.

Reading it again from a much different place, it's easier to see it for what it is, which is a inter-company What If..? starring Storm. Yes, Ororo is in a Wonder Woman costume, that role being the central conceit of the tale, and there are even light overtures toward a more Amazonian take on Ororo Munroe. There's art and circumstances that associate her with Artemis of Bana-Mighdall, and Ororo's Amazon origin story lifts a key element from Donna Troy's post-Crisis "Who is Wonder Girl?" Still, regardless, this is a whole Ororo, not a combination with any other heroine, just playing out a different life trajectory. Instead of developing claustrophobia in childhood from being buried in a tunnel collapse that orphaned her, a toddler Ororo with fewer identifiers fears drowning after her parents are lost in a shipwreck. Instead of surviving through theft on the streets of Cairo, Ororo is rescued from the depths by Her Majesty Hippolyta, who raises Ororo as an adoptive daughter along with her child by divine creation, Diana. Always a rebel, and freed from our continuity's obligations to the matriarchy by an adoptive sibling eager to prove herself to their mother, Diana goes her own way while Ororo takes on the role of Wonder Woman.

An aside: While racial diversity wasn't a thing on Paradise Island before the 1970s, they have appropriately and legitimately been a "color-blind" society since the 1980s. In the Post-Crisis reboot, there were just always Amazons derived from the souls of women from across world culture. When Nubia was introduced, she was a secret second infant sculpted from clay by the Queen at the instruction of Greek Goddesses that was spirited away by their enemy Mars after being given life. When Nubia was rebooted, she was just a normal Amazon from an obscure and isolated tribe. After George Pérez created the African General Philippus as Hippolyta's military leader and most trusted council, there was a broadly accepted subtext (since made text?) within Wonder Woman fandom that they were also domestic partners. I had to pick this up from letter columns and such, because while there were moments of intimacy between Hippolyta and Philippus, I have never once detected any maternal relationship with Diana. The original conception of Nubia predated Philippus by fourteen years, with only had a handful of appearances, and the heavily revised Nubia came nearly thirteen years after Philippus' introduction. It makes sense that there would be no further connection between Philippus and Nubia beyond their African ancestry, but Amazon proposes that Ororo was raised in Hippolyta's household, but with no indication that Philippus played a role more substantial than the general "it takes a village" Themysciran vibe. I just find it extremely odd that in continuities where there are little to no children on Themyscira besides Diana, that Hippolyta would be the exclusive mother on that island to seemingly any other children that do turn up, with even her life partner uninvolved.

I haven't talked much about the story so far, but I feel a license to keep taking these tangents (but not Tangent™) because there isn't much to it. The narrative is non-linear, driven by constant flashbacks to different but relative points in Ororo's history, plus a subplot moment to play into a non-existent ongoing shared universe element. If you set aside those conceits, it's a very simple tale. A Black male professor named Malcolm (eyeroll) located an ancient statuette while scuba diving in ruins uncovered by an earthquake. The statue was part of the treasury of Poseidon, who cursed Malcolm for "stealing" his property. Plagued by misfortune, Malcolm finally decided that he had to return the statuette to the seas where he found it. That also brought him back into the domain of Poseidon, who could directly punish Malcolm by sinking his ship. Ororo as Wonder Woman is similarly accused by Poseidon and briefly held captive, but points out that the Greek Gods' pettiness and possessiveness had caused them to kill anyone that could have kept them relevant in modern times, this winnowing away the power they once held through believers. It's the exact same resolution as Diana's first encounter with Ares in the initial arc of the Wonder Woman volume that Byrne had been working on.

The flashbacks help explore Ororo's altered history and contentious relationship with Diana, and the abortive "subplots" feature (underdeveloped, forgotten) characters that Byrne was using in his actual Wonder Woman run. I wasn't particularly moved one way or the other by either of my readings of this comic. It wasn't interested enough in Wonder Woman lore to explore the effects Amalgam could have had on it, instead rehashing simple origin elements. "Family History" was a disposable "imaginary story" where a Marvel character goes through the broad motions of a DC character's narrative. I noted that Byrne was still trying to add Image Comics touches to his art, particularly from Todd McFarlane's style, and that inker Terry Austin helped him in trying to reach that hyper-rendered state, while still falling far short of their more famous pairing (as well as Austin's work over Arthur Adams.) As I work to divest myself of comics that I don't need to possess unto my demise, this was an easy pitch into the discard pile.