In Wonder Woman: Earth One, Ares and Max Lord come together in a subversive effort to attack and overtake the home of the Amazons.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Wonder Woman: Earth One Vol.3 from Grant Morrison, Yanick Paquette, Nathan Fairbairn and Todd Klein, on sale now.
Over decades of intense DC stories, it’s easy to understand why two of Wonder Woman’s greatest enemies have been Max Lord and Ares. Both always push her to the brink, hoping to break her mentally too so they can expose her as a fraud to the world, and shatter her benevolent philosophies.
The third volume of Wonder Woman: Earth One presents a revised take on both warlords to create something even more sinister.
Diana’s trying to build a new world, knowing Ares, her grandfather, is hidden on Earth and will be launching an attack on Paradise Island. It adds nuance to their relationship as he’s always hated Hippolyta but now that the queen’s dead and the mantle has been passed to Diana, he thinks it’s time to strike. However, Ares isn’t a soldier or a brute, he’s a businessman and politician, using the form of man to take over the weapons department of the U.S. government.
He’s convinced the president to wage war on Diana’s women, and femininity in general, using violence to quell protests and imprison women. The twist is that in this reality, Ares is actually Max Lord. It’s a nice play on the first Wonder Woman movie where David Thewlis’ Sir Patrick Morgan was really Ares in disguise, sowing discord and wars across the globe. Here, Lord’s doing the same and he’s using old greek technology from the Automatons to create giant Iron Man-esque robots to invade Diana’s home.
While Ares doesn’t have Lord’s mental abilities, the God of War is using another way to infiltrate people’s minds: the media. Using oppressive groups, he’s corrupting and manipulating the masses to maintain the facade that women are poisoning the world. It not only helps blind people to this true intentions, but keeps stoking civil war, and distracts from the genocide he’s enacting.
The A.R.E.S. (Armed Response Emergency Suits) robots are quite powerful, taking out a lot of Paradise Island and wounding many Amazons from the united tribes. Diana tries to use her peace rays to subjugate the men, but Ares has planned for this, using pilots back in Washington to control them via remote control.
When Diana and the Amazons discovers the robots are empty, they take more aggressive action towards the drones, sending the message that they won’t go down without a fight. Ares gets the message loud and clear and responds by sending an even more powerful robot against them. Whatever the end result of this confrontation may be, both sides have made a clear stand, and neither intends to back down from the war that continues to wage between them.
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