kellysue

[kellysue]

[kellysue]

Today on Instagram Live

https://www.instagram.com/kellysued/ Hey, Kelly Sue here. Today at -- Friday, May 16th -- at 3pm Pacific I'm hosting cameron whitten of Brown Hope over on Instagram Live to discuss a month of action in honor of the 5 year anniversary of the loss of George Floyd and do a Q&A. We'd love it if you could signal boost and/or join us.

Here's the link for more info on Brown Hope -- https://www.brownhope.org/

These events will be our focus: https://www.brownhope.org/get-involved/events/wearethebridgepdx … but we expect this conversation to be relevant to folks outside of #portlandor #pdx as well and welcome one and all.

Week of action events -- Community Grief Circle: 12:30pm on Saturday, May 17 at Alberta Park (1905 NE Killingsworth St). Experienced facilitators will lead activities that help attendees release emotional wounds connected to George Floyd’s murder and racial violence. #pdx

Know Your Rights Training: 6pm on Thursday, May 22nd, Online. Facilitated by the National Lawyers Guild, the workshop covers constitutional rights related to activism and police interactions at first amendment events. #pdx #orpol

We Are The Bridge Rally and March: noon on Saturday, May 24th at Revolution Hall (1300 SE Stark St). A rally featuring Black and Indigenous leaders, followed by a peaceful march through downtown #Portland with a moment of silence on Burnside Bridge.

[NOTE TO WHITE FOLKS: among other topics we're gonna talk about how we can and should show up for the members of our community who don't look like us, maintaining momentum and earning trust. Not about shame -- about invitation, investment and education. Bring questions or just listen. But if you're in a place of fear or overwhelm with how to show up, let's talk about it.]

[kellysue]

#nailed it

[kellysue]

Did you ever read WW historia?

I have now!

In terms of pure visuals, easily the prettiest thing I've read this year (in the February-to-February sense of the term, I'm not pulling a 30-rock cutesy non-statement here.) It definitely feels constructed as a negotiation with some of the tensions I've been waving at, but it's a deft one- handily resolving the overarching "what's the exact nature of the project here" energy through its aggressive commitment to a specific direction- an epic in the idiom of the Illiad or the Oddessy- it's status as the narrative of the founding of a nation, with enumerated mythological lineages for the Amazons, godly politics-of-personality jerking around the protagonists even at their best-intentioned, slaughters predicated on myopic cries for "justice" that are couched in a fundamentally misogynistic moral ordering of the universe (Getting Oresteia flashbacks with Apollo.) Zeus is a particularly compelling villain in the piece, with that cheerful, condescending, paternalistic adherence to a bronze age morality that's not nearly as alien to the present day as one might like it to be. From within his own moral system, he does nothing wrong, which is as good a condemnation of that system as any.

What I really like about it is how it in particular addresses the longstanding tension- not unique to Wonder Woman as a franchise, but always present to some extent- of an impossibly-advanced sequestered utopia trying to provide guidance to a population under so many more material constraints than them that they might as well be space aliens. The book expresses that there's a level on which the initial group of 30 goddess-crafted Amazons- the divine, born-as-adult utopian agents- can look like women, intervene on the behalf of, fundamentally align with women, but, before they meet Hippolyta, there are important ways in which they only fleetingly interact with women as a human social category. They strike from the shadows, kill some oppressors, and fuck right back off- which is cathartic, but none of the mortal women they "rescue" are left in a significantly better position by this alone. That's not an arbitrary strategy; In suitable Greek tragedy fashion, everyone in this narrative is beholden to something, and the original Amazons are beholden to the system in the sense that they have to hide what they're doing so they don't get turbofucked by Zeus and company. But they are very pointedly not beholden in the sense of having to make soul-destroying choices as a result of the gendered boot that they're under. They don't have to, say, live with the guilt of being made to leave an extraneous newborn girl to die of exposure.

Moreover, even in isolation, even with a headcount of 30, the book gestures at the idea that the first wave of Amazons are developing their own systems of norms, orderings of power and hierarchy, valorization of specific traits and rigid systems of categorization based on aligning with different goddesses:

Hippolyta bounces off these requests for categorization hard even as she petitions to join- she sees value in the category, but not the expectations. What DeConnick has done here is engineer a situation where the Amazonian founding narrative is a story about how the identity category of "Amazon" was forcibly expanded until it could accommodate everyone to whom it would be useful- do the work it was intended to do as a positive force in the world. Strict ontology subordinated to questions of practical harm. I think the intended applicability to other issues is obvious.

This brings me to the tail end of the narrative, another of many things I like- As I mentioned before, this whole thing is constructed as a national founding myth, right? The Aeneid, but for Themyscira. But it's not a triumphant story. It's not a tale of glorious conquest, it's not a narrative about how the Amazons turned their backs on a fallen world and carved out their utopian little enclave. They don't live on Themyscira because they're nationalists, or female separatists, or whatever other dunk Azzarello wants to advance. They live on Themyscira because they aren't allowed to leave. Themyscira is an act of suppression. Partly a "cruel mercy" punishment from Zeus and company, loss of freedom constructed as worse than death for the Amazons; implicitly, also a containment tactic, to keep their ideas from spreading.

Much of this was engineered through the machinations of Hera, who presents this National-founding-as-tragedy as the best that could be done under the existing constraints; a setback, a compromise, a launch pad for future endeavors, but still a meaningful defeat, something that Diana, the first and only child actually born on the island, is going to have to work to rectify.

[kellysue]

Just read Wonder Woman Historia and I feel like I'm going to explode

[kellysue]

Doing the Math

My latest piece is an essay called "Doing the Math," that went live at Uncanny Magazine today. It's dark, but also funny maybe? Anyway, it's sincere.

I hope you'll check it out.

xo

Kelly Sue

[kellysue]

[kellysue]

FML #6 (Dark Horse Comics, June 2025) cover by David Lopez

[kellysue]

FML #6 (Dark Horse Comics, June 2025) variant cover by Jennifer Ely

[kellysue]

Wonder Woman Historia Book Three.

Rest in pieces, Heracles.

[kellysue]

Wonder Woman Historia Book Three.

Going to be honest, if I saw a giant snake saying Confess, would immediately admit whatever I did.

Also, this is the first time I've read the word "unbosoming."

[kellysue]

Wonder Woman Historia Book Three.

Things are going great right now.

[kellysue]

God damn, I'm sure you're sick of me praising the art and colours but I cannot help it.

It's just so good...

[kellysue]

FML 4 #

[kellysue]

FML 4 #

[kellysue]

FML #4 (2025)

Art by: David López

[kellysue]