The Amazon Bubble

Prior relevant discussion: Bubble World Theory in Myth Building.

If superhero comics are rooted in myth, why can't Wonder Woman get ahead of the curve? Writers have tried many things in the past couple decades, but nothing's really worked to everyone's satisfaction, has it? Dynastic models (supporting casts) have been created and discarded. John Byrne tried to give her a contextualizing city. In perhaps the most successful run, George Perez bubbled her up in Greek Myth.

But here's the thing about Bubble Worlds: They're meant to broaden the number of stories you can tell, not limit them, and I think that's what ultimately happened. While a Bubble World theoretically means your hero's book could exist without the company's shared universe, you still don't want it to be alien to that universe. To use a previous example, making Green Lantern happen entirely in space, isolating it from other characters and DC Earth LESSENS its appeal, just as making Wonder Woman operate in updated Greek Myths, seemingly divorced from the rest of the DCU (no longer a member of the JLA, and using a worldview somewhat incompatible with a modern world) did the same thing. In the recent GL storyline, the addition of new Corps hasn't cut off the franchise from DC Earth or other titles. Indeed, it's drafted characters from other properties and has had an impact on the entire shared universe. Wonder Woman's "mythical run" didn't do that. It kept her apart.

Bubble Worlds exist in a larger universe. If they don't, they're just Worlds.

Things for Wonder Woman are looking up, however. After the last shift's wrong-headed direction (divorcing the character totally from her actual concept), she's building a Bubble World for Diana. Temporally, she's telling the story of Amazons through time and how Hippolyta even conceived of having a daughter. I'm actually interested in the queen's honor guard, so Simone is doing something right.
I would gladly read occasional issues starring interesting Amazons from Paradise Island's past. How they settled there. How their traditions started. The origins of Wonder Woman's artifacts. These can easily strengthen whatever narrative is occuring in the present.

Spatially, the idea of Greek Myth is back, but one of the things that isolated Wonder Woman's world in the 80s is that the DCU has shown us countless pantheons and religious worldviews come to life (and I'm not really talking about the disappointing War of the Gods, though it does get a passing mention in WW #15). The Greek worldview should be important, but Gail Simone gives us a Wonder Woman who exists in a polytheistic universe.
By putting various pantheons in Wonder Woman's "bubble", the character gets to parcel out that part of the DCU, just like GL has a monopoly on the space opera. She's tied to the mystical side of the DCU like no one else this side of Vertigo.

And yet, she's not outside the mainstream DCU. Just as Green Lantern gets to bring the fight to Earth, Diana fights Captain Nazi and hangs out with talking gorillas. Gail Simone is uniquely suited to keeping the Amazons in the real world because she's got her fingers in so many titles. Characters and events she's developped for Birds of Prey can swerve into Wonder Woman or the All-New Atom, etc.

Though it's going to take a few issues to shake off or reinvent the trappings of the last shift's creative choices, I think Wonder Woman has finally become a title I can get into.