Wonder Woman #33 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (story), Cliff Chiang (art), Matthew Wilson (colors)

The Story: Among other things, Diana is queen of rejection.

The Review: Just a word of warning that there’ll be delays in reviews this week. It’s Bar Exam times in California, so at least you’ll know that I’m not shirking my semi-duties for the fun of it. Believe me when I tell you that I would much rather be spending my day discussing Wonder Woman with you guys. But since that can’t be, we’ll just have to content ourselves with this passing, though potentially enlightening, review.

I don’t much like monsters for villains, except in cartoons. They’re easy to hate and kill, but that’s not a very interesting use of a character. Needless to say, I’ve had my issues with the First Born as the main antagonist for this series. When his ultimate goal is simply to destroy everything—not for any particular reason other than just to make sure everything’s destroyed—there’s not much more you can do with him except hope his defeat comes sooner rather than later.

Wonder Woman #32 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (story), Cliff Chiang (breakdowns), Goran Sudžuka (art), Matthew Wilson (colors)

The Story: Diana gets her Braveheart on.

The Review: This all started with a squabble among gods: to save a pregnant Zola from Hera’s wrath, Hermes teleports her into Diana’s apartment. Diana hasn’t been able to escape the Olympians’ domestic affairs since, and now she finds herself leading the effort to topple the balance of power on Olympus itself. That’s the interesting thing about this series: Diana is a reluctant heroine, whose involvement has mostly been to clean up her relatives’ messes.

That’s a small-minded way of looking at this storyline, but what else are you supposed to think when these divine struggles seem to have no overt effect on the world at large? In fighting the First Born, Diana may be saving humanity from certain disaster, but no one, other than the Amazons and the gods themselves, seems to notice. With the kind of stakes involved here—even the New Gods are paying attention, for heaven’s sake—shouldn’t the ramifications be felt by people outside of Diana’s direct circle of supporting characters?

Wonder Woman #29 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (story), Cliff Chiang (art), Matthew Wilson (colors)

The Story: First Born takes the prize for Extreme Home Makeover.

The Review: Finally—this is the kind of issue I’ve been waiting for. For the past, oh, I’d say dozen or so issues, Azzarello has been stringing us along with storylines that have really led nowhere in terms of character or plot development. More often than not, Azzarello leads us to a destination and accomplishes nothing more than finding a reason to go someplace else, making you wonder why you followed in the first place.

And it’s not surprising that after all the jumping around, we end up back on Mt. Olympus, the site of one of the series’ very best issues, #12. What made this issue so strong, so different from what the series has become since, was the many, major changes in status quo, the final weaving of the many threads Azzarello had lain down before: Apollo’s rise and Hera’s fall; the birth of Zola’s baby and the betrayal of Hermes; and most importantly, Wonder Woman taking up and revealing her godhood.

Wonder Woman #28 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (story), Cliff Chiang (art), Goran Sudzuka (layouts), Matthew Wilson (colors)

The Story: Diana versus the Minotaur—round two.

The Review: Much as it pains me to admit it, this series has definitely suffered some ongoing problems as of late, namely its ungodly slowness and a strange reluctance to let its star shine.  In spite of this, I remain steadfast to Wonder Woman in a way that I would with only a handful of titles.  I’m not enjoying each issue as much I’d like, but I still look forward to the next one every month because I know I’ll be getting a different reading experience from your typical superhero.

In a way, the series’ lack of focus on Diana is simultaneously one of its biggest weaknesses as well as one of its greatest strengths.  With Diana reduced to a tertiary figure, Azzarello is free to juggle multiple storylines featuring different members of the supporting cast: Apollo and the First Born’s struggle for power, Zola going solo with Zeke, Hera’s mortal self-discovery,  Cassandra’s quest for Olympus.  If you think about it, this isn’t so different from what Brian K. Vaughan is doing over on Saga, only Vaughan has a much, much tighter focus.

Wonder Woman #27 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (story), Cliff Chiang (art), Matthew Wilson (colors)

The Story: Diana’s not the first person to leave a home visit in tears.

The Review: About a month ago, I had a friendly debate with some buddies about the relative merits of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.  At first, I couldn’t help being a little stunned that they preferred the comically adventurous Hobbit over the epic saga of LOTR.  As we talked on, however, I realized it’s those very same qualities that makes Hobbit easier to take in and enjoy, while LOTR turns people off with its obsession of building its mythology.

I was reminded of all this reading the latest chapter of Wonder Woman because Azzarello has gotten the title into the same kind of trouble as LOTR.  There’s no doubt he’s succeeded in making the series different from any Wonder Woman series before it, especially in his vision for the Olympians and how their mythological traditions intersect with her superhero roots.  This is not unlike how J.R.R. Tolkien took Arthurian legend and updated it within the contemporary fantasy genre.  The big difference is Tolkien laid out clear paths for his characters to tread, and to date, our starring heroine has mostly stumbled from plot to plot like signposts in the dark.

The Witching Hour #1 – Review

By: Too many to list—or even to review.  Just check out the issue.

The Story: Will you catch any of these folks speaking with the devil?

The Review: These Vertigo showcases are proof positive that there really are an endless number of ways to look at the world, or even just one thing in it.  Both Ghosts and Time Warp offered stories that dealt with actual spirits and time-travel, but just as many stories that explored spirits and time as concepts, and a few that struck at the subjects on both a literal and figurative level.  It’s pretty amazing to see what the imagination will dream up when prompted.

Take Brett Lewis’ “Mars to Stay,” which in both substance and form resembles less like anything having to do with witches and more like a hard piece of science-fiction—the hardest kind, given how Lewis doesn’t take too many liberties with the fiction to deliver science that actually falls within the realm of possibility, if you have a cynical view of the way people work.  Maybe that’s where the witchcraft lies, in the slow, creeping way that the stranded crew’s psyches break down, as if infected with a curse.  Either way, it’s an impactful, haunting tale, despite having no clear connection to magical women whatsoever (and it doesn’t hurt that you get Cliff Chiang’s starkly sharp art illustrating the whole thing).

Wonder Woman #23 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (story), Cliff Chiang (art), Matthew Wilson (colors)

The Story: Now’s our chance to see which era had the most badass warriors.

The Review: Troubled as some people were by the slow pace Wonder Woman had been running at for some time, it’s been even more troubling to see the title suddenly speed up in the last few issues.  Last issue in particular was something of a disappointment for how much it truncated Diana and Co.’s time on New Genesis when we had all been so longing to see the Fourth World’s standing in the new DCU.  It was the very definition of a missed opportunity.

In the same fashion, we’ve all hankered to see the ultimate throwdown between Diana and the First Born, yet now doesn’t seem like the right time for it.  To make the First Born a truly worthy adversary in Wonder Woman’s gallery, there has to be time for the two to develop a relationship, even an antagonistic one.  Given that in context, she’s only known him for about a few hours (setting aside the time she spent comatose), having a final confrontation now seems premature.

Wonder Woman #22 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (story), Cliff Chiang (art), Matthew Wilson (colors)

The Story: Figures that Diana would sleep through her time in Paradise.

The Review: I’m not versed enough in comics and their history to make broad statements about certain works and creators, but I don’t think I’m out of line in saying that Jack Kirby’s Fourth World was and remains one of the most important concepts in DC lore.  Wildly unappreciated in its time, it is now one of the bedrocks of the DCU, inspiring comic book writers to aspire beyond the superhero to the neo-mythic.

Azzarello is the lucky man who gets to decide what the New Gods mean and stand for in the current DCU.  Yet despite putting Orion in an ongoing role on this title, Azzarello has otherwise kept mostly mum about the Fourth World’s purpose.  To be frank, even though this issue takes place almost entirely on New Genesis, we only learn about the blessed realm and its denizens in the most general, if wonderfully hyperbolic terms:

“[A] world caught up in the joyful strains of life!  There are no structures on its green surface—except those which serve the cause of wellbeing…  Destiny’s road is charted in the city, massive, yet graceful—gleaming on its platform—a skyborne satellite drawn in endless silence by its hidden mechanisms!  The true place of peace.“

Wonder Woman #21 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (story), Cliff Chiang (art), Matthew Wilson (colors)

The Story: What say we cut the talk short and Boom Tube our way out of here?

The Review: I’ve made my remarks about the difficulty of writing Superman before, so I need not repeat them now.  I will say, however, that hard as it is to get a handle on a man who seems to embody superhuman virtue, it’s even harder to get inside a character who represents womanly perfection.  For a while, Azzarello has built up such an interesting story around his heroine that you could ignore her defects as a sympathetic, accessible protagonist—until now.

Now, Azzarello has fallen into a kind of trap, the same one that captures most Wonder Woman writers sooner or later: she has become a cypher in her own story.  Her character development seems to have stopped somewhere after her line to Hades about loving “[e]veryone,” and since then, our attention has largely been fixed on the characters and events around her.  You can see here that she rarely asserts her presence except when called to spar or defend her own dignity (“…I thought I told you to respect me, Orion…”).  You simply can’t generate an engaging personality from that.

Wonder Woman #20 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (story), Cliff Chiang & Goran Sudzuka (art), Matthew Wilson (colors)

The Story: Diana versus Diana—round two.

The Review: I don’t believe I’m the first to compare the kind of intrigue that goes on in this title to that shared by any good mafia story, where family affections and attachments are ultimately subordinated to ruthless power plays, suspicion, and constant backstabbing.  This free-for-all is made even more interesting by the building of alliances, their eventual dissolutions, and the new ones that take their place.

In Wonder Woman, we’ve got a few set camps and their dear leaders: Apollo with Artemis and Dionysus representing the current Olympian regime; Hermes partnered with Demeter in a mission from some undisclosed higher power; Poseidon in cahoots with the First Born, who plans to retake Olympus for himself; and then Diana with her merry little crew.  Although all of these folks are related in some manner, only Diana’s group functions like a family—a “weird, wonderful family,” as Zola says.

Wonder Woman #18 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (story), Goran Sudzuka & Cliff Chiang (art), Tony Akins (pencils), Dan Green (inks), Matthew Wilson (colors)

The Story: Who’s fastest—old god, new god, or demi-goddess?

The Review: I’ve officially reviewed Azzarello’s Wonder Woman for over a year and a half now, and I still feel like I haven’t quite grasped the nature of his craft just yet.  He doesn’t quite fall into any easy category.  He’s not really a character writer in the vein of Pete Tomasi or Paul Cornell; an ideas-man like Grant Morrison or Jonathan Hickman; or a weaver of universes like Brian Michael Bendis or Geoff Johns.  Of all writers, he truly stands alone.

In fact, Azzarello has something of all three elements in his writing, with such equal weight that it’s easy to take his work for granted.  While there aren’t any striking personalities in this title, over time the voices of the characters have grown distinct and recognizable, even unattached to a face.  Azzarello’s ideas are no less profound for being based in myth rather than science.  And by bringing old and new gods together, he’s done some of the most intriguing world-building of all.

Wonder Woman #16 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (story), Cliff Chiang (art), Matthew Wilson (colors)

The Story: And here Zola and Hera live the city high life while Diana ambles the sewers.

The Review: When the DC relaunch first started, Wonder Woman took nearly everyone by surprise with the particular direction Azzarello chose to run with.  You can associate a lot of different qualities with comics’ leading lady, but “horror” wasn’t really one of them.  In his first arc, Azzarello made you realize that Greek myth was full of monsters and horror, not all of it centered on actual monsters.

As Wonder Woman’s feats grew bolder and more adventurous, the visceral feeling of fear, established when we first saw a bloodied arm stretching from the fleshy torso of a decapitated horse, has slowly ebbed away.  This issue doesn’t quite restore that element of terror, but it does start building suspense once more; it distinctly feels that events are closing in on the plot, that traps are being laid around our heroes even as they still move freely.

Wonder Woman #15 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (story), Cliff Chiang (art), Matthew Wilson (colors)

The Story: The best part about being buddies with a New God?  The joyrides.

The Review: Ever since Orion made his silhouetted, booming appearance in #12, we’ve all been waiting with to see whether that cameo was any more than a tease.  The final scene of #14 showed that the New Gods’ presence in this arc goes beyond just the Dog of War and may mean a permanent place for them in the new DCU—if, you know, time and space itself doesn’t completely unravel first.

Now it appears that not only are the New Gods firmly established in the DCU, but that they have always been a part of it.  Orion apparently makes trips to Earth with some regularity, given the familiarity he has with Milan, another of Zeus’ passel of wedlock children.  Although Orion’s kindly treatment of Milan shows you a cool, unexpected side to his character, it does make you wonder how this friendship started, and why Orion is so invested in these Earthbound demigods.

Wonder Woman #0 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (story), Cliff Chiang (art), Matt Wilson (colors)

The Story: Just what every girl wants for her birthday—a romp with a murderous animal.

The Review: At his core, Azzarello is a mystery writer.  Being a very good one, he has become very practiced in the art of misdirection.  No one and nothing is ever as it seems in his tales.  Even outside a pure detective or crime genre, he’ll lead you down a primrose path, making you think he’s telling one kind of story, only for you to suddenly find somewhere along the way, he veered you off into a different place altogether.  Almost always, the detour is worth it.

So it goes here.  The first page sets you up to believe this will be a joke issue, what with the outrageous claim that “this magnificent missive originally appeared in ‘All-Girl Adventure Tales for Men #41”—a very pointed, if bald-faced lie.  At one point, you might even speculate the creators are merely killing time on a #0 issue forced upon them.  It’s pretty easy to consider “Brian ‘Kiss My’ Azzarello” and “Cliff ‘Chump’ Chiang” in the credits as a thinly veiled middle finger to editorial.

Wonder Woman #12 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (story), Cliff Chiang (art), Matthew Wilson (colors)

The Story: In business terms, Mount Olympus is going through a period of “reorganization.”

The Review: Over a year ago—and it makes me feel a bit odd and anxious to say that—I wrote in an op-ed with SoldierHawk the kind of things I wanted to see from Wonder Woman to make her more of the icon she should be:

“I’d simply like to know more about her makeup as a person… We already have plenty of stories that depict her as both warrior and humanitarian.   We need to see stories where she embraces the other roles that make a woman: as sister, mentor, friend, even as employee or lover… If anything, these are the things she truly lacks in contrast to her male peers, and why the public at large can respect her, but can’t sympathize with her.  And really, it’s how much we sympathize with a character that makes them popular and beloved, regardless of whatever principles they represent.”

The DC relaunch seemed the perfect opportunity to achieve some of these things, and DC certainly offered some of the best talent to do it.  So how have they done?

Wonder Woman #11 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (story), Cliff Chiang (art), Matthew Wilson (colors)

The Story: Wonder Woman in the Appalachian emergency room.

The Review: I think we tend to forget, in our experience of smooth political transitions and well-oiled government systems, how critical and damaging the vacuum of leadership can be.  Once it disappears, the chaos that follows rushes toward critical mass—a comment, I suppose, on our human nature as followers—with some striving to keep the status quo in place and others seeing it as an opportunity to change things up.

For the Greek pantheon, their view of Zeus’ absence depends largely on their essential natures, which Azzarello portrays with faithful attention to mythic tradition.  Clearly, the family boasts a number of go-getters, who spend the bulk of their time forging alliances and inviting favor for the inevitable battle for the throne.  It’s been fascinating, watching these Medici-style schemes play out, a series of power plays whose appeal is more cerebral than anything else.

Wonder Woman #8 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (writer), Cliff Chiang (artist), Matthew Wilson (colorist)

The Story: Don’t take this the wrong way, Diana, but death really becomes you.

The Review: My favorite creative writing professor in college loved Ernest Hemingway, and he got us to love him, too.  Even though Hemingway was a morose, chauvinist drunk who treated nearly all four of his wives unconscionably (third wife Martha was forced to take a ship full of explosives to meet him in London because he refused to help her get a press pass on a plane), his ability to craft stories of great depth from few words made him a master of the highest order.

Azzarello may be the Hemingway of comics today.  Whereas most of his contemporaries love to embellish their scripts, filling up panels with long captions of text, Azzarello goes for sparse bursts of dialogue which, like Hemingway’s famous “iceberg” analogy, contain profound levels of meaning beneath the surface.  He doesn’t impose his own interpretation of the story on you; he leaves you space to fill in with your own understanding and perspective.

While in the underworld, Diana is aghast to find the souls of the dead are indeed all around her—making the composition of hell itself.  Hermes claims that since mortal souls can thus reinvent themselves eternally, they have greater freedom than the gods, who must remain bound to their natures for their immortal lives.  Diana doubts any soul would wish to be “reinvented” into such horrors.  In response, Hermes says, “…Free will is a funny thing.”  The ambiguity of the statement leaves you free to interpret it as you wish.  Perhaps it’s noting how we’d prefer to endure pain rather than stagnancy; maybe it’s a commentary on how free will allows us to choose evil; it could also be Hermes’ way of saying we humans waste our freedoms.

At times, Azzarello’s minimalist scripting can be a double-edged sword.  It gives each word a semblance of import, but also produces ambiguity.  Hades says to Hermes, “You came here with one, but to get another.  So…which child of Zeus is your ‘we’?”  It’s a rhetorical, if confusing question, but for some reason it makes Hermes fly into an uncharacteristic rage.  Even now, after several readings, I confess I don’t know why Hades’ words provoke such a reaction.

Wonder Woman #7 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (writer), Cliff Chiang (artist), Matthew Wilson (colorist)

The Story: Getting rid of the sibling is one way to cure sibling rivalry, I suppose

The Review: Soldierhawk and I had this convo about Wonder Woman before, but I still think that the biggest reason why she has such iconographic status and yet doesn’t really connect with anyone is because she’s imbued with such power and virtue that it tends to overwhelm her reserved personality.  We come away respecting her, admiring her, but not really understanding her.  She is akin to Greek statuary—beautiful, proud, dignified, but remote and lofty.

Azzarello has striven to bring her closer to us by removing some of the qualities of her character that made her seem so much higher than us.  He gave her flesh, complicated parental issues, and most importantly, vulnerability.  These are all steps in the right direction, but I’m not so sure we yet have a Wonder Woman who resonates on the same level as her peers.

Part of the problem is that even in her own ongoing, it frequently feels she spends much more time reacting to the events around her rather than being an active protagonist on her own right.  Possibly the most deliberate thing she’s done this entire run was pit Hades and Poseidon against Hera so she could blind the queen goddess for a while, only it turns out the whole idea came from Lennox, her half-brother of hardly a three issue’s acquaintance.  And consider how much time she spends in this issue absorbing exposition in comparison to the time she spends doing something about what she learns.  For sure, there’s something to be said for a hero who does more listening than acting in haste, but it also makes her seem rather passive.

It doesn’t help that nearly every time she does raise arms and summon the warrior spirit we expect from her, Azzarello throws in a twist which turns all her effort for naught.  If it’s not striking a blow against one god only to be backstabbed by another, it’s attempting to rally a downtrodden people to regain their pride, only to discover they’re not downtrodden at all and their pride is very much intact.

Wonder Woman #4 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (writer), Cliff Chiang (artist), Matthew Wilson (colorist)

The Story: Someone pop on some AC/DC and turn it up—Wonder Woman’s mourning.

The Review: As a young buff of Greek mythology, I always found the gods and goddesses baffling in their arbitrariness.  Even the most reasoned and benevolent ones would have their petty streaks from time to time, and few of them had any moral compunction about using their power with impunity and without regard for the consequences to mortals.  For that reason, I’ve never felt inclined to feel sympathetic to any of them.  They are gods, after all.

For the most part, Azzarello stays true to the conniving, scheming world of the Greek pantheon.  Ever since Apollo’s oracles revealed Zeus “doesn’t exist,” a truly astonishing pronouncement if you ever heard one, you’d think there’d be some kind of uproar among the divinities, or at least some kind of inquiry as to how this could possibly happen.  But we’re talking about the ultimate mafia family here, so when the head of the household disappears, power plays abound.

To that end, Apollo goes to Ares to secure an alliance of sorts, or at least support for when he makes his bid for leadership.  To your surprise, Ares agrees to stay out of the bidding with little resistance.  In fact, he seems quite lethargic, even melancholy in this portrayal.  While Apollo states that Ares is “vital—now, more than ever,” Ares responds with only a weary smile, as if millennia of spinning the world’s conflict has finally gotten to him.

Hera doesn’t even seem aware, much less affected, by her husband’s disappearance; she only wants to get her revenge on the dalliances he left behind.  Now, her oft-extreme retaliations against those she feels has wronged her may sway you into thinking her mean-spirited or horribly spiteful, but here, she reminds us she has every reason to be: “I am the queen of the gods…the goddess of women…ultimately yet, a woman.”  And any woman would be enraged by such constant infidelity from her husband.

Wonder Woman #3 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (writer), Cliff Chiang (artist), Matthew Wilson (colorist)

The Story: Diana joins the ranks of women (and men) who have major daddy issues.

The Review: Even back in ancient days the concept of the Amazons captured people’s fancies.  Granted, society at that point was such that a race of women who lived and acted on the same footing as men had the same novelty as, say, hydras and sheep with golden wool.  Anyway, DC’s fictional Amazons for a while followed their traditional forbears in a strict ban on interaction with men, but Wonder Woman’s relationship to Man’s world weakened that prejudice over time.

In this new DCU, the Amazons are back to man-hating with passion; even male gods aren’t spared from their wrath and scorn, judging by their threats to the injured Hermes last issue.  Actually, the Amazons don’t tiptoe around any god at all, not even the literally shadowing presence of Strife.  Even as they bury the casualties of the demi-goddess’ power, that doesn’t prevent them from back-talking her with seeming impunity: “…you trick us into murdering our own…and now you mock us.”  “A god’s appetite truly has no shame.”

This brings up a question I bring from the original myths: if the gods are so inclined  and capable of interfering in mortals’ lives, why don’t they go all out in exercising that power?  The most likely answer, of course, is the gods simply enjoy themselves more going the hard way about it.  They indisputably have the upper hand in raw power, so the only amusement they can get out of us is to bring themselves down to our level and see if we can match them that way.  Little wonder why Hippolyta and Zeus hooked up; she saw a man who could actually match her skill in battle, and he saw a mortal woman who could give the king of gods a challenge.

Ultimately, the truth about Diana’s parentage indeed creates discord on the island (one woman darkly speculates on Hippolyta’s death), but it also brings to light tensions that have afflicted Diana since childhood.  Paradise, it seems, offers little protection from the usual mean-spirited taunts most people receive as kids (“…not since I was a little girl have I been called [Clay].”).

Wonder Woman #2 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (writer), Cliff Chiang (art), Matthew Wilson (colorist)

The Story: Can’t you gods work out your issues on Maury or something?

The Review: Actually, it may have been in Wonder Woman that I read this, but I distinctly remember a character musing on the idea that gods, as idealizations of humans, represent not only the brightest, greatest, finest parts of humanity, but also humanity at its very worst.  Only the gods are ever so much better at it.  They not only scheme, nurse grudges, and arbitrarily act with the best of them, they have the power to carry out even their least thought-out agendas.

If you didn’t realize that before, this issue will ring the idea home, big time.  You have Wonder Woman carrying a wounded god in her arms.  She brings with her a young, pregnant woman to a secret island populated by outrageously tall, semi-barbarian women.  Her mother, a figure even more impressive than Diana, who carries a large double-headed axe in one hand, expresses fear of the future.  All this because of one goddess’ jealousy.  These immortals don’t mess around.

Wonder Woman #1 – Review

By Brian Azzarello (writer), Cliff Chiang (art), Matthew Wilson (colors), Jarred K. Fletcher (letters)

Minhquan Nguyen and I both felt strongly about this book and wanted to give it a review. Rather than publish two separate reviews, we decided to co-author one together. Two opinions for the price of one! Let us know what you think of this format!

The Story: Diana discovers that the gods are up to no good, and its up to her to save the life of a young mortal woman in their sights.

What I liked: Although this issue obviously doesn’t follow the enormous Odyssey storyline in terms of continuity, it feels like it could have from a character standpoint–and that’s a fantastic thing. Odyssey was all about building Diana up as the strong, powerful and compassionate hero we know and love, and that is exactly the Diana that this book delivers. Thank the gods–I’ve missed her a great deal. I love that her first act is defending a woman; it has echoes of The Hiketeia, one of my favorite Wonder Woman stories. Instead of simply standing up to Batman though, here Diana is forced to stand up to the gods and their minions. It is really wonderful to see the pantheon involved so early and directly, and it’s handled so well that I didn’t feel any inkling of longing for Themyscira, Hippolyta, or any of the other traditional trappings of a new Wonder Woman beginning. The script is tightly reigned, with no unnecessary dialog or exposition, and is extremely well directed–whether it was Azzarello’s script, Chiang’s visual storytelling, or a fortunate combination of both elements working in synch, there is not a wasted gesture, action, panel or word to be found in the whole of the book.

Also, can I just say how nice it is to have a Wonder Woman book with a normally sized creative team? Because it is.

Zatanna #10 – Review

By: Paul Dini (writer), Cliff Chiang (artist), John Kausz (colorist)

The Story: This sadistic, knife-wielding marionette ain’t your mama’s puppet.

The Review: People have a tough time defining Zatanna’s position of power in the DCU.  Her magical abilities have had a lot of pretty wide swings: one moment capable of spectacular feats, like merging Aquaman’s spirit with the entire ocean, another limited to neat tricks, like turning fans to flamingoes.  Clearly, there’s heavy work to be done in cleaning up these inconsistencies.

This issue features some small steps in that direction.  You get a revisit to Zatanna’s family estate, Shadowcrest, a place Dini established with some flair back in Countdown but has rarely been seen since.  It’s still apparently packed to the gills with all kinds of imaginative stuff, including a wry stuffed dodo and gargoyle named, respectively, Abelard and Chauncy.

But this is all just scratching the surface of the imaginative things that can be done with the character.  Dini includes a lot of grandiose descriptions about magical rules and the mystic order, but you only see a couple pieces of evidence, which in this issue is pretty much a glowing crystal that compels the truth from people.  You just expect more creativity from DC’s one title dedicated to magic, featuring its premier magician.

Zatanna #9 – Review

By: Paul Dini (writer), Cliff Chiang (artist), John Kalisz (colorist), Adam Beechen (feature writer), Jamal Igle (feature penciller), Robin Riggs (feature inker)

The Story: What better way to treat the puppet that’s going to kill you than invite him to your home?  Also, Zatanna, junior sorceress, learns braces can really get you down.

The Review: Magic is an enormously potent sowing ground for stories.  Because it can do and be pretty much anything, it’s limited only by writer’s ingenuity—and by the writer’s skill.  Too often, especially in superhero comics, it gets used as story fodder for the characters, or a deus ex machina to explain away anything the writer can’t figure out more tangibly.  Because of magic’s elastic nature, writers have to create some physics for how it works in their stories.  When they don’t, magical stories easily become unconvincing, confusing, or just plain random.

Paul Dini may be starting to apply some rules to magic in Zatanna’s world—a good thing, especially for this particular character.  No two writers have ever portrayed her powers the same way, with the possible exception of her backwards-talk, and even that doesn’t get consistent treatment.  Despite all her many appearances throughout the years, you still don’t really have a handle on her abilities, and that’s partially because in the DCU, magic is so elastically defined by all the writers who have tried to use it that there’s no sense of order to it at all.

You can see this disorder every time Zatanna uses her powers in this issue, which always leaves you with a bunch of nagging questions.  For example, with her infamous “pots” spell, does she freeze time around the person?  Are they paralyzed?  If they’re paralyzed, how come the puppet can still talk?  Is it because he’s magicked already?  Can people think in this “deppots” state?  How long do they stay that way?  What are the spell’s limitations?  Sure, you can just accept it for what it is, but you’re sure to be bothered when it pops up again and works a different way.

Zatanna #8 – Review

By: Paul Dini (writer), Cliff Chiang (artist), John Kalisz (colorist)

The Story: Zatanna confronts a childhood horror that has re-manifested itself dangerously into her present.

The Review: Zatanna’s an interesting case in the world of comics: well-known, likable, a killer costume, the fun gimmicks of backwards talk, and the woman does magic! Yet as a character, writers seem to like the idea of her, but don’t know what to do with her.  It mostly has to do with the messiness of writing magic in superhero comics.  Superpowers have at least a semi-logical basis of which ones work or counter against others, but writers must create the rules of magic from the ground up.  It’s a simple challenge in creator-owned properties, but in mainstream comics, the second another writer comes along, the magic rules get muddied or rewritten altogether.  Hence you get portrayals of Zatanna where she’s the most powerful member of the Justice League, or where putting a bandana around her mouth renders her effectively useless.

Paul Dini now has the chance to reverse that trend with an ongoing featuring his pet character.  Unsurprisingly, he’s shown that he has a great handle on her personality, which is bright and assertive while still proud of her femininity.  Her voice and mannerisms leap off the page and always leave a strong impression of who she is.  The other characters get very little to do in comparison.  Then again, there’s never been any doubt that Dini can write a great Zatanna.  But to make her stand up with the big leagues—so to speak—of DC heroes, he has to offer big outlets to use her powers in a really spectacular way.

So far, Dini has fallen into some age-old formulas for putting Zee in danger and getting her out of it: set up the villain; get the villain to trap, befuddle, or silence her in some way to make her temporarily innocuous; let her figure her way out of the trap, befuddlement, or silence; backwards words and done—villain suitably and ironically punished, Zee does a show, applause-applause, curtains down, fourth-wall-breaking wink to the audience, end scene.