If you want a lesson in how not to reinvent a mythos, look no further than the New 52's Wonder Woman series.
Although there were positives to be found with Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang's series, it also introduced a retcon to the Amazons that had Wonder Woman fans positively furious. How so? Well Azzarello - drawing upon old Greek myth to tell his new horror-laden series - decided to update the Amazons' origin so that they raped sailors on the high seas, murdered them, tossed their corpses into the ocean, and sold any and all sons into slavery.
As far as retcons go, this one was just nasty. Not content with revealing that Diana was actually the progeny of Zeus and no longer sculpted from clay, the writer transformed the Amazons from a noble, warrior people into a horrifying force content with committing unspeakable crimes against sailors and their children.
Needless to say, this isn't a story Wonder Woman fans look upon too highly.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
