Issue 1: "The Swords of the Amazons!"

A mob of protesters had gathered outside the Themysciran Embassy, jabbing their signs in the air, and chanting their slogans. Cameras and TV crews captured it all: the righteous indignation of the faithful against the pagan idolater, and her campaign to corrupt the world to a worship of false gods, long abandoned.

The movement seemed to be led by one charismatic man in a white seersucker suit, marked by a thatch of thick orange hair. He riled up the crowd with fiery rhetoric, all with a demonic gleam in his eye, exhorting them like a fire and brimstone preacher at an old-time revival.

“She comes to us from a magical island with no men, sending the sweet smell of incense burning up to their hungry gods during who knows what kind of bacchanalian depravities!” His voice swelled as he faced his followers on the sidewalk, tossing sneering glances at the one, stoic Amazon guard outside the embassy door. “And she lectures us about piety and peace…! She who worships the gods of the grape and consorts with satyrs…?”

A stir in the crowd stole the demagogue’s thunder. People pointed excitedly above his head, and he whirled around and looked up to see her emerging onto the iron-wrought balcony over the door.

The setting sun caught the gold of her tiara and set a shimmering halo blazing around her head. If they expected a stern and haughty princess, or even an implacable super heroine, they were disappointed. What they got was Diana, in her simple red tunic and blue skirt, still smeared with the blood of her friend Arsinoe, who was even now fighting for her life only hours after the vicious attack of the Cheetah. She was tired and angry and confused that her message had been so misunderstood, and a storm cloud rumbled on her brow.

“Are you mad?” She called down to the rabble rouser, the crowd hushing to hear her words. “You can’t belittle what I stand for, so you make slanderous suppositions about me and my sisters…? Why do you hate us?”

“Hate?” Chortled the fiery-haired preacher. “Godfrey’s Glorious Crusade is not about hate, Amazon, but about love and forgiveness, and about preparing the way for the Most High, who will come after me!” He spread his hands wide, a fever in his eyes. “I would forgive even you, take you into these very arms, if you would only renounce your filthy pagan ways! Embrace me, Princess! Follow us into the Light and Truth!”

“What do you know of truth, who distorts every word I say?” Demanded Diana. “And you that follow him, can you not see the truth for yourselves?” She implored, sweeping the crowd with violet eyes. “Look with your own eyes, not through his! I fight and bleed for the ideals I espouse--- Peace, Truth and Love! What battle scars does Godfrey bear?”

“You are the enemy I strive against, Amazon!” Godfrey cried, spittle flying from his mouth. “Poisoning our youth with your talk of gods of lust and war and thunder! My battlefields are the hearts and minds of our chil---.”

A dazzling burst of light erupted over the embassy, and in a ringing carillon of sound, a nearly naked man appeared in the sky, wearing only a red loincloth, winged sandals and a winged metal cap, carrying a golden staff of office with two serpents entwined around the pole: the Caduceus.

Shielding her eyes from the god-glare, Diana stared up at Hermes, the Messenger of the Gods.

“Lord Hermes…?” She gasped, puzzled and alarmed. The gods of Olympus rarely, if ever, intruded upon the mortal realm anymore. The Herald’s presence now could only presage momentous events.

The crowd below was struck into silence at the apparition, including Godfrey, who seemed to wear a self-satisfied smirk.

“Diana, Princess of Themyscira, Champion of Athena and bearer of the mantle of Wonder Woman,” Intoned the son of Zeus. He floated down towards the balcony, the very air around him humming. “The Amazons have failed in their charge! Grave dangers are upon us! Gird yourself for war: Doom’s Doorway is open!”

On Olympus, Zeus gazed into the Seeing Pool, pulling on his beard thoughtfully. In the deceptively placid waters he watched as the tattered remnants of Queen Hippolyta’s escort thundered back towards Themyscira, hardly more than the Queen herself, the mortal man Steve Trevor, General Phillipus and the priestess Penelope, bearing the body of her lover, mad Menalippe--- none of them were unscathed.

How had he not seen this coming? The opening of Doom’s Doorway was a disaster, beyond even the mortal consequences of losing Paradise Island.

Was she making her move at last?

He waved his hand over the pool, and the image shimmered and become the valley of the Bronze Gates. The Minotaur rallied the spawn of Uranus as they were vomited from the portal to the underworld. Their numbers were vast and incalculable, spilling out of the valley and roiling towards Themyscira. He knew they would not rest until they were howling outside the gates of Olympus itself…!

“Lord Father…”

Grey-eyed Athena came up next to the King of the Gods, an owl perched on her shoulder. She stared down at the water, at the gaping Door, and Zeus had the impression that she saw more than was there.

“It has begun.” She said sadly. “What was ordained before even Kronos was born, is now upon us. All that is left to us now is to face it.” She waved her own hand over the pool and the picture shifted again, this time to an image of two figures, streaking hand in hand through the air amidst darkened skies, yet some light there was, to gleam off of golden Amazonian armor. “I have dispatched Hermes for Princess Diana. And we must make ready ourselves. The opening of Doom’s Doorway and the escape of the spawn of Uranus is just the beginning. Come, my Lord Father. The others await us, and we have much counsel to take.”

The King of the Gods allowed his daughter to lead him from the pool, while in the waters, Wonder Woman sped towards an uncertain destiny…

Steve raced through the city to the palace, horns and bells calling the alarm. Amazon warriors rushed past him, hurrying to the imminent attack on the walls. When he reached his rooms in the palace, he frantically ransacked his steamer trunk for extra clips of ammo as his laptop booted up. He glanced at the view outside, and could already see the hordes of monsters swarming towards the city…

He shuddered as a memory of the carnage in the valley of the Bronze Gates flashed before him--- the great spidery thing with the face of a man that click-clacked out of Doom’s Doorway… He had pumped five rounds into it, but it took the might of Hippolyta herself to bring the beast down.

And it had only been the first…

Steve was a soldier, and a veteran of the First Gulf War. But this was war on another scale entirely…

His email chimed and he dismissed the waiting messages, and dashed off one of his own, to the captain of a cloaked US submarine, patrolling the waters very close to Paradise Island.

themyscira under attack. alert princess diana. send help immediately!

His finger was hovering over the send button when an ear-piercing screech caused him to turn. He was hit full-on and knocked across the room, catching only a glimpse of his assailant: black, feathery wings, the form of a snarling, naked woman with shriveled, pendulous breasts, and hands outstretched into claws!

The harpy clattered into the room from the balcony, kicking aside the smashed laptop and swiping at Steve with her talons. Oozing red stripes opened across his chest where she scratched him, and he stumbled backward; after all he had seen, he was still awestruck by the existence of this mythical monster assailing him.

“So long in the underworld…!” She breathed in a harsh whisper, stalking him. “I forgot how warm and sweet human blood tastes.” She licked her crimsoned talons, and looked him up and down as he circled away from her, towards the bed stand where he had left his 9mm. Her hideous visage twisted into the mockery of a smile, her tongue flickering, testing the air. “I will drink deep of you, mortal…”

She launched herself at him and Steve lunged for the gun.

Abruptly, the harpy was yanked back with a gurgling cry, lassoed by the golden girdle of Hestia! Wonder Woman stood on the balcony, clad in her eagle-visored war-armor, and held the other end of the lasso. She pulled and swung the creature in a wide arc, smashing it into the far wall, and into unconsciousness.

“Diana!” Steve exhaled, his blood racing at the majestic sight of her. Here was a warrior and a champion that would not be denied! She gathered up the strands of her lasso, and spared him a relieved smile.

“Name of the Gods, Steve, what’s happened here?” She asked, taking in his various wounds and bruises, and the blood covering his clothes. “Hermes said that Doom’s Doorway was opened and there is an army at the walls of Themyscira…!”

“Menalippe betrayed us.” He said grimly, tucking his gun into his waistband. “She opened the Door, and released those monsters. She was under some sort of madness, said that this fate was kinder than what was coming…”

The words told like blows, each one registering on Diana’s face. Her eyes were moist, but her mouth was set grimly. She hung the golden lasso back at her side, her resolve set.

“We have no time to waste, then. War has at last come to Paradise Island, and let those beware who would face the swords of the Amazons!”

The swelling ocean of his army roiled and lapped against the walls of Themyscira. Hundreds of thousands strong, all of them thirsting for blood and vengeance, the spawn of Uranus shook their weapons and barked their wrath in rough voices unused to anything but howling in torment. The Minotaur stood atop a hill across from the city, watching the frenzied preparations of the Amazons. Their walls were weak, and had never been tested; never had they imagined Themyscira would be under siege…

The air was filled with swirling, screeching harpies, which he used to send messages to his captains. Now they harried the warriors on the walls, picking them off, dropping them into the sea: but he held back the attack, allowing fear to spread through the city, softening up his foes…

The ground trembled slightly, and the very air vibrated. The hills around the city shook. A cruel, twisted smile cracked the bovine face of the Minotaur as he steadied his footing, and peered into the distance, towards the sound of the monstrous stomping.

“Ah, Typhon, so glad you could join us…”

Epilogue...


In the Critical Care Ward of St. Vincent’s Hospital, Manhattan, Arsinoe, Captain of the Guard of the Themysciran Embassy lay recovering from the hideous wounds she received in the attack by the Cheetah earlier that day. Her breath was thin and reedy, her throat bandaged in bloody cloths, but the machines that monitored her heart rate, blood pressure and brain activity all suggested she would not succumb to the cold embrace of Hades.

Arsinoe was a proud Amazon warrior. Only her sisters Phillipus and Diana had ever bested her in combat; in fact, in the tournament to choose Wonder Woman, it was Arsinoe who had fought Diana at the last for the honor.

She was not conscious when the man in the white suit entered the room. He approached her bed in slow deliberate steps, marking her condition and smiling. He watched her for a long while, as if taking her measure, and finally allowed a smile to spread across his face.

“Ah, my lovely Amazon darlin’… Such beauty, scarred by such violence.” He toyed with a strand of her platinum curls, wrapping and unwrapping it around his finger. “What has that Wonder Woman done to you…? I do believe I will introduce you to my Granny, my silvery-haired beauty,” As he stroked her long, pale neck, the smile on Godfrey’s face became a wolfish grin. “My vicious little silver swan…”