On Jan. 5 DC released the first editions of the Future State line up, and while Diana Prince is nowhere to be found in Wonder Woman: Future State #1, her Amazonian sister Yara Flor takes center stage and shows she is just as formidable as the Goddess of Truth herself. The first Latina superhero depicted in the DC universe, Yara Flor is the daughter of an Amazon warrior and a river god. Her quick to inflame temper is uncannily like the hostile rages that Hercules—low on wit but high on emotion—echoes throughout each of his original Greek quests.
Projected in the year 2050, Wonder Woman: Future State #1 opens on Yara battling a Hydra while relating her origin story between sword strokes. Her temper is up, and she is even more enraged by her Pegasus companion—aptly named Jerry—taking his sweet time sipping water before coming to her rescue. Sound familiar? Not only is Yara embroiled in battle with a creature Hercules himself fought, her Pegasus companion’s quirky character is pulled directly from Disney’s Hercules and all but promises the coming interactions between Yara and Jerry will not be easily forgotten.
Her battle won, Yara makes to remove a horn from the Hydra and vows she will save her Themyscrian sister from the clutches of Hades. However, she is interrupted by Caipora, a Brazilian forest guardian, who tells Yara she can not have the horn, but that Caipora will guide Yara through the Underworld to help save her sister. Naturally, Yara is inflamed by this request and it is revealed that Caipora has deceived Yara before. Ironically, Yara gives in and Caipora, a spirit designated to haunt travelers lost in the forest, helps Yara find her way into the Underworld and their quest begins, but not without incident.
The Future State comic is the epic call to adventure as Yara heads into the first threshold of her hero’s journey, but is it a coincidence that Yara’s journey begins with sprinkles of the Disney version of Hercules intertwined into the plot? After killing a Hydra, she meets a small woodland creature to guide her, and then ventures into the Underworld to save someone. Maybe. As soon as she enters Hade’s domain, the three-headed dog Hercules battles in his 12th Labor (and domesticated in the Disney movie) is present and watching guard over the entrance. Will she battle Cerberus or domesticate him? The events which follow are also resemblant of another myth of Hercules, in which he battles the river god Achelous, and suggests there will be more myths of Hercules seen in later editions of Wonder Woman: Future State.
The original Wonder Woman produced in 1942 was a rewrite of the 9th Labor of Hercules in which Hercules is sent to take the girdle, a gift from Aphrodite, from Queen Hippolyta. In his 9th Labor, Hercules steals the girdle and kills queen Hippolyta, but William Marston (Charles Moulton) rewrote the story to create a world for the Amazon’s to reign over. His equally sexual and feministic approach was welcomed with open arms, and as we can see with Future State, the connections to Hercules will keep coming.
