And I wasn't expecting two-thirds of this creative team! From 1996,
Wonder Woman Annual #5, "The Unremembered" Written by John Byrne, pencils by Dave Cockrum, inks by Norm Breyfogle.
Not unlike the
Robin Annual for
Legends of the Dead Earth, this one also starts with a colony ship, but this one has apparently been going for way longer and not come anywhere near a planet, possibly due to mishap. It's been going for so long that evolution has taken some weird turns for the inhabitants within, although there were still humans, like young AylXa of the Unremembered. They were a tribe of humans, living in what used to be a hydroponics bay; and she had left before what would have been her wedding day; although it's unclear why. Y'know what, she doesn't owe me an explanation: maybe she wasn't ready to settle down, maybe she wasn't into him, whatever. We see her betrothed, ValXan, leading a hunting party elsewhere in the ship, and he does smack one of his guys in the mouth for badmouthing AylXa. The party comes across a group of Ratbats, and kills them; but later that 'night' an older Unremembered tells a barely-recalled tale, that the Unremembered and the Ratbats could have common ancestry, just adapted for different conditions. And, they also share legends: the elder tells of earth's legendary heroes--which even had dames in their number!--while deeper in the ship, AylXa watches a larger, female Ratbat use a strange instrument, to relive the history of Wonder Woman!
AylXa tries the machine out herself, and realizes the Ratbats were not that unlike the Unremembered, even more advanced in some ways; but can she arrive in time to keep the hunting party from murdering the Ratbat tribe? She might not have to...
I won't spoil it, but yeah, there was at least one twist there I didn't expect. Also unexpected was the art pairing of Cockrum and Breyfogle, but I'm always glad to see anything from them. Byrne, however...Maybe I'm being oversensitive, since I think he's maybe been creepier, but some of this one feels leering, and maybe not respectfully. But that twist maybe flips that? I don't know. Anyway, I hadn't read this one before, but we've only got one more
Legends of the Dead Earth annual to go! That one will probably be sooner rather than later, since I've already bought
another sprocking one of it..
2 comments:
Ok I’ll bite, what’s the twist?
In lieu of the fact that both Cockrum & Breyfogle are no longer with us, it was definitely a nice surprise to see they worked together on a comic project. Even as an inker, Breyfogle’s work stands out, while Cockrum’s style got more cartoonish with age apparently.
OK, spoilers for a 30 year old book:
The hunting party--which wear little homemade logos of what they remember as superheroes--gets just wrecked by the Ratbat mother, wearing a homemade Wonder Woman outfit! It's, uh, not conventionally attractive; but it is an important lesson about how we're all the same. AylXa helps a bit with the peace at the end, but doesn't suit up or do much.
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