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?

Batman Beyond Universe #6 – Review

By: Christos Gage & Kyle Higgins (writers), Iban Coello & Thony Silas (artists), Rob Lean (inks), Ulises Arreola & Emilio Lopez (colorists)

The Story: Bats or robots: pick your poison…

The Review: We open this month in the midst of Brainiac’s invasion. From the first moment, Christos Gage makes it clear that this is no standard supervillain plot. Brainiac’s monotone arrogance comes through crystal clear and Gage imbues him with just enough malice to make him particularly detestable, without losing his connection to rationality. The first sequence aboard Brainiac’s skull-ship is a great example of what Gage has to offer.

As Brainiac’s natural nemesis, Superman receives similarly strong dialogue. His speeches, though slightly corny, manage to express the natural leadership and sincerity that make Superman primus inter pares in most every version of the Justice League. Even so, there’s a touch of desperation in him, perhaps even fear, that keeps the threat that Brainiac poses in constant play.

But despite his gift for writing the Boy Scout, I sincerely hope that, when this saga is ended, Gage will pen some stories starring the other members of the league. Six months into the print run of Justice League Beyond, we’ve still seen relatively little of many of the League’s members. It’s great to have such an strong version of Superman on the stands, especially as that’s been something of a rarity of late, but it seems like a waste, especially after seeing Gage’s handle on Scott and Barda this month.

The large cast all get lip service, but the best moments belong to Mister Miracle, Big Barda, and a certain classic Leaguer I won’t spoil. It’s impressive that Gage can keep so many balls in the air, especially as he continues to grow the cast, but there aren’t many places where we get to breathe and absorb this information unless you count scenes that don’t catch your fancy.

Wonder Woman #26 – Review

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

The Story: A sibling rivalry to end all sibling rivalries.

The Review: I take back everything I ever said about Geoff Johns and his decompressed style of writing.  I think it’s safe to say that Azzarello has taken decompression to a whole new level on Wonder Woman, with entire issues going by that have only so much to say for themselves.  Not that every issue (or even every comic, come to that) has to be packed with action or direct confrontation, but the pace of advancement on this series has gotten quite ridiculous.

Azzarello’s problem is in his choice of intrigue, which is almost purely speculative.  No other writer indulges so much in the stimulation of euphemism, vagaries, double-meanings, and almost nothing else as Azzarello does.  And for a long while, he got away with it.  His reconstruction of what a Wonder Woman comic could look like kept us entranced at first, but there has to be a point when he stops building and starts living in the house he has built.

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 #19 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (story), Goran Sudźuka (art), Tony Akins (pencils), Dan Green (inks), Matthew Wilson (colors)

The Story: A god can do with worse names than Zeke.

The Review: As we begin the title’s fourth arc, it seems only fair that longtime investors in this series get a chance to consider what we want from the story.  While I do appreciate that Azzarello has a very specific direction for his heroine, I feel it’s well past time for him to up the pace a bit.  He’s spent a lot of time establishing the principal characters, mythologies, and interacting forces for his plot; now’s the time to lose the reins and let them go wild on each other.

It seems Azzarello’s about to do just that by the end of this issue, though we have to sit through quite a bit of set-up first, not all of which seems entirely necessary or even useful.  The intro with Apollo, Artemis, and Dionysus basically reiterates most of the info we already know, and does little to round out their personalities or goals.  It doesn’t get simpler than gods wanting to retain their positions of power and wanting to shut down any threat to them, right?

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 #17 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (story), Tony Akins (pencils), Amilcar Pinna (art), Dan Green (inks), Matthew Wilson & Nick Filard (colors)

The Story: Clearly, Diana’s mother never warned her about leaving clubs with sketchy old men.

The Review: Whatever the naysayers might say (most likely but not guaranteed to be “nay”), Azzarello has accomplished quite a lot for this title.  For one, he made Wonder Woman Top Fifty, which hasn’t happened in ages, to my understanding.  For another, he introduced this incredibly rich new mythology to the character, allowing Wonder Woman to cross over between the grounded, the divine, and the cosmic all at once.

But if I had to pick out the most important thing Azzarello has given to DC’s first lady, it’s her irresistibly intriguing extended family, quite possibly the most compelling supporting cast she’s ever had.  For a while, you fell into the habit of placing the Pantheon gods into one of two camps: those on Wonder Woman’s side and those who aren’t.  That all changed once Hermes went rogue; now, you can’t trust anyone who calls Olympus home.

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 #14 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (story), Tony Akins (pencils), Dan Green & Rick Burchett (inks), Matthew Wilson (colors)

The Story: Even the Olympians have the one family member they don’t like to talk about.

The Review: I’ve come down pretty hard on Geoff Johns for his weak-sauce approach to Wonder Woman in Justice League, and a lot of my ire comes from comparing his take to Azzarello’s undeniably impressive version of her in her own ongoing.  It makes me wonder if Johns even reads Wonder Woman.  How can you reduce the demi-goddess of that book into the often uncertain and simple-minded princess who doesn’t even know how friendship works?

Even though I still think she remains a kind of unrelatable character, Diana strikes such a compelling balance between warrior and nurturer, in a way few superheroes from either of the Big Two do.  It’s true that given the connection between her and Siracca, it wouldn’t be that extraordinary for them to reach an understanding.  Nevertheless, how often do you see your heroes showing compassion and offering peace to their enemies?  How often do you see such unashamed, non-cynical love from a character?