The following contains spoilers from Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons #1, on sale now from DC Comics.

Long before they appeared in modern comics, the Amazons and their home of Themyscira were recorded in Greek Mythology. And just as Wonder Woman and her sisters are themselves mythic heroes come to life, they also have their own versions of those myths. One such tale is recorded in Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons #1 (by Kelly Sue DeConnick, Phil Jimenez, HiFi, Arif Prianto, Romulo Fajardo, Jr., and Clayton Cowles). This story recounts how - and even more importantly, why - the Olympian goddesses created the Amazons, using cosmic powers and forbidden magic.

Wonder Woman Historia begins by introducing six powerful goddesses: Hestia, Artemis, Demeter, Hecate, Aphrodite, and Athena - as well as a seventh goddess, Hera, who has the power of foresight. They all bear witness to the degradation, subjugation, assaults, and other brutalities that are inflicted upon mortal women. In fact, Hera's prophetic vision means that she can see all of these events happening at once across the full span of time and space - an amount of pain that is impossible to comprehend.

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Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons #1. Hera

The seven goddesses confront Zeus, King of the Gods, explaining their grievances and urging him to bring an end to mortal men's oppression of women. When Zeus rejects them, all of the goddesses except for Hera (who is his wife) meet in secret in the underworld, as it is a place beyond his power to reach. Each sacrifices a part of herself in a spell to create a new type of woman not bound by the whims and cruelty of patriarchal male gods or their mortal counterparts.

These sacrifices create the Amazons, the greatest warrior women ever to exist, and the first sacrifice is one of pain - the tears of Aphrodite, which the goddess vows will bestow "passion and the relentless nature of the ocean." Each goddess contributes to the spell, and soon after, each one mothers a new tribe of Amazons.

Almost anyone familiar with Greek Mythology is aware that women are regularly mistreated in its tales, and that Zeus has been responsible for a number of these acts. Notably, some of the sexism present in contemporary translations is actually the bias of the modern translators, as the classicist Emily Wilson has observed while translating The Odyssey.

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Wonder Woman Historia spell

However, the stories themselves tend to revel in so much violence against women that one quickly becomes enraged when they realize just how pervasive it is. This anger is itself part of the tradition. Among the most important - and most hypermasculine - works of Greek Mythology is Homer's Iliad, whose first word, "menin," means rage, and is followed with a cry to a goddess to sing of this feeling.

It is in this vein that Wonder Woman Historia perfectly captures this divine rage of old myths as the goddesses voice their fury at the injustices that women suffer. This is, tragically, a timeless issue, both deeply connected to the oppressive patriarchies of the ancient Mediterranean world and to modern systems of injustice that subjugate women - a vast timeline of abuse that Hera's prophetic gaze saw happening all at once. The comic is imbued primal pain and moral outrage, feelings as great and overwhelming as the goddesses themselves.

Superhero stories are modern myths. Their costumed heroes, like the heroes of old, have superhuman strength and skills. Wonder Woman Historia may be set in the ancient past, but the evil that its heroines oppose is still very real in the present day.

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