DC Comics was in a pretty cool place in the ’00s. The publisher had weathered the ’90s very well, with teams like the Justice League and the Justice Society becoming important again, making legends out of characters like Wally West, Kyle Rayner, Dick Grayson, and Tim Drake, finding new directions to take Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman, creating a new ecosystem of teen heroes, and much more. From 2000 to 2005, the publisher was cooking, releasing amazing series and building towards one of the greatest event stories ever in the ’05-’06 sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths known as Infinite Crisis.
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Infinite Crisis is a legendary event comic, with DC taking years to set up all of the various plot lines that would pay off in the book. The entire point of the story was to bring pre-Crisis elements back to the history of the DC Universe, and set up 52, which ended with the return of the DC Multiverse. DC was making big moves to get readers interested, but 2007 would see them make a massive misstep. Instead of following up Infinite Crisis with yet another blockbuster event, they gave readers Amazons Attack!, by Will Pfeiffer and Pete Wood, one of the worst events ever. It’s one of the biggest mistakes in DC history.
Amazon Attacks! Was Surprisingly Bad In a Way It Shouldn’t Have Been
One of the worst parts about Amazon Attacks! is that the story should have worked. The recent Wonder Woman reboot saw the heroine imprisoned by the US government against the wishes of the Amazons, who were dealing with an infiltration by Granny Goodness. This pushed the Amazons to war against the United States, with only the superhero community able to stop the armies of Amazons attacking the nation. Honestly, everything about that is pretty cool. This story should have been a easy lay-up, built partly by the weekly Countdown to Final Crisis series, and moved the heroes towards Grant Morrison’s upcoming superhero opus.
However, things weren’t great from the beginning. Pfeiffer and Wood did their best, but after the more serious events of stories like Infinite Crisis and 52, some of the ideas of Amazon Attacks! just didn’t work. In fact, one moment has come to define the series in the eyes of fans of DC: Batman talking about the Amazons using bees as one of their weapons and saying, “Bees. My God.” It was hilarious, and it destroyed any seriousness that the story had. There are some who believe that it may have been a satire of the then-recent Wicker Man remake, which also had some bee jokes and came out the previous year, but the damage was done. No one could take this story seriously.
Amazon Attacks! was building off the interest in the newest volume of Wonder Woman, which DC had been putting A-list talents like Young Avengers co-creator Allan Heinberg, Terry and Rachel Dodson, and novelist Jodi Picoult on. However, it feels like DC didn’t want to put the same amount of work into the event as they did the main series. Pfeiffer and Woods weren’t stars at the times, especially not compared to the actual stars on Wonder Woman, and few fans weren’t going to pick up the book on their name. On top of all that, it just didn’t fit what was being done with the DC Multiverse at the time.
In 2007, we were basically getting neo-Bronze Age ideas. The Justice League and Justice Society were being focused on again, Superman was getting back things like the Legion of Superheroes and his old pre-Crisis origin. Batman was in the midst of the Morrison run, canonizing everything. Wonder Woman had brought back the idea of Diana Prince, and was pushing the character in new directions. Amazons Attack! didn’t feel like it fit the tone of this new DC and nothing in the book made readers want it. In fact, it was quite the opposite; the more readers heard about the book, the less they wanted to read it.
DC Completely Bungled Amazons Attack!
Infinite Crisis was a huge turning point for DC and it led into 52, another hit that drove readers’ interest. Fans were rabid for DC Comics at the time, with books like Superman, Action Comics, Batman, Justice League of America, Justice Society of America, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, Secret Six, and many more all giving fans what they wanted from the DC Multiverse. The publisher needed to keep hitting on that kind of level, and Amazons Attack! dropped the ball.
It’s easy to see where the publisher went wrong. Instead of going with A-list talent for this event, they went with two good, but not great, creators who lost readers very quickly with their strange creative choices. Of course, part of the problem was that Wonder Woman wasn’t as popular as it could have been; fans didn’t really know why the story was happening because not enough people were picking up Diana’s book. It was a perfect storm of mistakes, and it led to one of the worst DC events ever.
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