Warning! Spoilers for Wonder Woman #774!
Over the course of Wonder Woman’s long and storied history in DC Comics, Diana has come across a wide range of unique and deadly weaponry, and now she’s just discovered a brand new god-killing weapon – the God Scraper. Cool sounding name aside, this new weapon has just been used to murder every single Greek god on Olympus, and now it's up to Wonder Woman to find out exactly how accomplishing something that by all means should have been impossible actually went down.
Seen in the continuation of Diana's epic journey back to the DC universe proper, Wonder Woman #774 by Michael W. Conrad & Becky Cloonan and Andy MacDonald, sees Wonder Woman finally crossing afterlife lines as she has successfully escaped the twisted heaven of Valhalla and made it to her rightful place on Olympus. But not everything’s as it seems, as the moment she arrives it’s clear that something has gone horribly wrong in the land of the Greek gods: Olympus has been destroyed and its keepers are nowhere to be found.
Barely able to comprehend the destruction before her, Diana comes across an injured Roman god by the name of Janus – god of “transitions, beginnings, and endings” – who claims that every deity on Olympus has been slaughtered at the hands of his evil other half, conveniently also named Janus. But the kicker here isn’t just that Olympus is in ruins and its gods murdered in cold blood, but how it happened.
Unbelievable to Diana that the entire Greek pantheon of gods could be murdered in the first place, Janus goes on to tell Wonder Woman that while the original weapon capable of killing a god – the God Killer sword – may be safely locked away, another blade made “from the same forge, by the same hand, from the same molten metal” has also been created, one that’s “sharper, faster, more deadly in every way.” He calls it the God Scraper and reveals that his other half has wielded it to great effect.
Originally given to the mercenary Deathstroke in order to kill a god, the God Killer sword has been used frequently in the comics and was made more popular by its use in 2017’s Wonder Woman film. New to Wonder Woman lore and now clearly just as important and dangerous as its predecessor, the God Scraper is a sickle-like weapon that Diana not only cannot allow to stay in the hands of her newest villainous threat, but more likely than not, cannot allow to exist at all.
So although the exact motive for evil Janus’ killing of the Greek gods is one that’s a bit vague outside of a mysterious vision of hers that saw Wonder Woman’s return lead to Olympus being engulfed in flames, the more probable reason is that this new villain is simply bad to the bone. The God Scraper may be a new addition to Wonder Woman’s mythology, but it’s already shaping up to be an exciting and dangerous wrinkle in an epic journey that Diana is only just beginning.