Superman/Wonder Woman #5 – Review

By: Charles Soule (story), Tony S. Daniel (pencils), Batt & Sandu Florea (inks), Tomev Morey (colors)

The Story: Diana wonders when she can stop stepping in to end her boyfriend’s battles.

The Review: If you ever get to know me well, you’ll know that I have a very low tolerance for the general public’s overexcitedness over, well, most everything.  Sometimes, it’s the hay made over the latest political scandal; other times, it’s the hysteria ensuing from a celebrity’s baby or new flame.  For full disclosure, and judge me how you will, the overreaction I can stand the least is the obsession with flash-in-the-pan internet memes.*

So it was with no small amount of amusement that I watched the world respond to Superman and Wonder Woman’s relationship, combining political and celebrity mania all at once.  That was to be expected.  Even so, I had hoped that the cooler minds of the DCU, at least the ones in the superhero community, could manage to keep their acts together.

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.

Demon Knights #19 – Review

By: Robert Venditti (story), Bernard Chang (art), Marcelo Maiolo (colors)

The Story: It’s a pretty bad economy when even the devil fears losing his job.*

The Review: I don’t think I’m unique in liking creators who can surprise me, particularly if they can do it without resorting to cheap tricks or totally groundless gimmicks.  If you expose yourself enough to any medium of fiction, you eventually catch on to most of its patterns, formulas, clichés, and tropes, rendering many stories too predictable to enjoy.  A writer who manages to spring some genuinely unexpected moments through all that deserves some credit.

Venditti manages to surprise you in precisely this manner several times in this issue, starting with one that quite impressed me from the opening: Vandal Savage revealing that his recent animosity towards Jason Blood is due to Etrigan nearly cutting Savage’s immortal life short in the title’s last arc.  “I’m immortal, but the demon dragged me into the afterlife anyway,” he states coldly.  The moment he says it, it’s like a switch flips on in your head: of course—makes total sense.  Yet you probably didn’t think of it until Venditti wrote it.

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.

Flashpoint #2 – Review

By: Geoff Johns (writer), Andy Kubert (penciller), Sandra Hope (inker), Alex Sinclair (colorist)

The Story: Barry, I need you to know, if you don’t make it through this…this is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.

The Review: Unlike many comic book Events, Flashpoint intends to move fast (ba-dum­-tch!), as its story has been written to fit five issues instead of the traditional seven, and we’re already on the second.  Some see this truncation as a welcome relief from having to deal with Event-mania for a few extra months.  But it’s worth pointing out it also cuts down the time for proper world-building and pacing, which can be hazardous to such an important, large-scale story.

Here we do get some up-close, personal moments with the new, hardened Aquaman and Wonder Woman, being among the most integral obstacles/players in this story.  The encounter between Diana and the resisting Steve Trevor feels more profound and useful, since it reveals some developments to the Atlantean-Themysciran war, but Aquaman’s confrontation with pirate-Deathstroke is just an opportunity to show off his current inclination for violence.

Johns would’ve been better off had he cut down the amount of time we spend with the Flash and not-really-Batman; their scenes take up most the issue, and do little to advance the plot.  Basically, they spend half the time fighting (though you can’t really call it a fight, since it’s mostly the depowered Barry getting his butt handed to him) while dealing with all the “I don’t believe you, you’re crazy!” issues that come hand-in-hand with these altered-universe stories.

That’s all fine and necessary; the several pages Barry spends describing his past and the real world to Thomas Wayne are not.  It basically re-describes everything we already know, instead of moving on to some new points.  It also makes little sense how all this suddenly gets Thomas to place his faith in Barry; it’s hard to understand how someone that cynical can so quickly flip-flop from calling Barry a “delusional son-of-a-bitch” to believing that SOB can get his son back.

The problem is selling these moments with more credibility requires more time, which Johns can’t afford.  He even sets up a ticking clock of sorts as Barry’s memories start to adapt to the new reality, just to motivate the characters to act as hastily as possible.  And yet for all this haste, you don’t feel like you’ve moved very far forward on this story.  It seems like Johns wants you to assume there’s some high-stakes tension here, rather than showing it to you.

Wonder Woman #601 – Review

by J. Michael Straczynski (writer), Don Kramer (pencils), Michael Babinski (inks), Alex Sinclair (colors), and Travis Lanham (letters)

The Story: Diana learns about the fall of Paradise Island and sets off in pursuit of her people’s mysterious tormenters.

What’s Good: If there’s one thing JMS’ first full issue of Wonder Woman has going for it, it’s tone, and that’s a very big thing that I fully expect will carry his run.  This story feels big, it feels epic, it feels important, and it feels grand.  I’ve at times referred to comic artwork that has a “high-budget feel,” but in this case, I think that’s just as appropriately applied to JMS’ storytelling.  This doesn’t come across like just another day in the office for Wonder Woman.  Rather, this issue presents sweeping storytelling and high stakes that, if anything, feel fresh and vital.  I was excited reading this issue, and that’s not something I’ve felt about the character in some time.

A lot of this is thanks to JMS’ decision to spend the first half of the issue recounting the fall of Themyscira.  The narration does a good job depicting the scale and the heroism of Hippolyta and the Amazons.  The wholesale slaughter and the mysterious bad guy all seem credible, visceral, and emotional; this doesn’t read like just another typical scene of hackneyed mass destruction.  I was surprised by how much I was invested in this flashback, especially the downfall of Hippolyta.  The extended scene very effectively propelled Diana on a quest where she has to balance her hunger for vengeance and her obligation to save the surviving Amazons.