Wonder Woman #17

Here we’ve got the conclusion of the storyline for “The Circle,” with a flashback to the night of Diana’s birth, when Queen Hippolyta’s honor guard decided that they had to kill Diana to save the Amazons from, um, something or other. Obviously, they failed, and were imprisoned for the attempt. Meanwhile, back in the present, a very pissed-off Wonder Woman delivers a serious beat-down on the Nazis who’ve invaded Paradise Island and shot Hippolyta, and she gives the whole bunch of them a boot off the island. After that, it’s Wondy vs. the Amazon members of the Circle, who attack her with magical, god-made weapons. She still manages to beat them, and the leader, Alkyone, apparently throws herself to her death, though everyone knows she’ll come back later.

Verdict: Generally, thumbs up. There’s a lot of story packed into a fairly small space, and the story all seems to be good. I’ve got some quibbles, of course. Why does the Circle give Wondy time to recover when they’ve got her on the ropes? We’re still getting no real idea what it means that Wondy’s serving gods other than the Greek ones now. And I have no idea when the modern version of Etta Candy went from being an adversary in Diana’s intelligence agency to being one of her best friends. Still, the story is pretty good. Writer Gail Simone’s doing good work.

 

Wonder Woman #16

A flashback shows us how Queen Hippolyta’s royal guardians turned against her — they thought the birth of Diana threatened the Amazonian way of life. Meanwhile, in the present, the neo-nazi army gets stomped by Hippolyta, by Wonder Woman, by Diana’s gorilla pals, and by the escaped royal guardians. But there is at least one very important casualty.

Verdict: Thumbs up, mostly because people stomping on neo-nazis is always a good thing. However, I do wish they’d go somewhere solid with the story soon.

 

Teen Titans #55

Supergirl and Wonder Girl argue, and Supergirl leaves in a huff! Kid Devil likes Ravager, but she likes Blue Beetle instead! Miss Martian has her evil future self living in her head! Robin and Wonder Girl like each other, but (sob!) they can never be together!

Verdict: Thumbs down. Gaaah, the angst is absolutely murderous!

Well, there won’t be any new comics coming in this week here in Lubbock, but I’ve still got a lot of comics I can review from last week, so let’s hit a couple of them right now.

 

Wonder Woman #15

We start off with a glimpse of the distant past as Queen Hippolyta’s honor guard slowly lets their loyalty to her be replaced by demented and ultimately treasonous obsession with her. From there, we jump to the modern day, as Wonder Woman beats the snot out of Captain Nazi and then, touchingly, empathizes with the tortures he suffered as a child. From him, she learns that a bunch of neo-nazis are about to take over the mostly-deserted Paradise Island (though it looks like Hippolyta herself is doing some good old-fashioned nazi-stompage of her own). Diana wants to get to the island, but Athena has blocked off all access to the island, so she has to go ask members of Earth’s other pantheons for assistance in getting back home.

Verdict: Thumbs up. First, Terry Dodson’s artwork is just outstanding. Second, I actually enjoyed the scene with Captain Nazi — yeah, he gets thoroughly clobbered — as all nazis should be clobbered, of course — but when she forces him to confront the abuse he suffered as a child, and he starts just weeping and blubbering about it, and she feels sympathy for him — that’s getting something that’s been missing from Diana’s character for an awfully long time. The character seems to work best as a compassionate ass-kicker, despite all the contradictions involved. And the idea of Diana pledging her allegiance to a pantheon other than the Olympians is looking like something that’ll be really, really interesting.

 

She-Hulk #24

Well, we meet a little more of She-Hulk’s new supporting cast. Besides Jazinda, there’s an arrogant cop, the folks at the trailer park where Jen and Jazinda live, the people at the bonding company where Jen works, the mysterious new terrorist who’s got a mad on for She-Hulk. There’s a bombing, and She-Hulk pulls people to safety.

Verdict: I gotta give it a thumbs down. I love seeing good character development and interaction, but right now, we don’t have a plot or a direction for the comic. Once we get a good overarching plot going, this book is gonna start shining, but for now, it’s motionless.

Wonder Woman #14

This is a series that has had a lot of problems. After they relaunched it last year, they started a new storyline that they weren’t able to finish — they actually started a new storyarc and delayed the last issue of the old one almost a year. After that, there were way too many months of novelist Jodi Picoult’s less-than-acceptable writing. But new writer Gail Simone has a lot of people entertaining high hopes that this title is going to get very good very quickly.

Plotwise, this issue sees Wonder Woman fighting off and then befriending a bunch of genetically engineered super-gorillas from Gorilla City, and then undertaking a mission in her secret identity as superspy Diana Prince to capture Gorilla Grodd for the Department of Metahuman Affairs — except it’s not Grodd, it’s Captain Nazi and a horde of his evil Nazi minions! You know what that means? It means next issue is going to feature a Guatemalan megaton of Nazi-stompage. Good times for us all!

This issue has several small moments that still come across as unusually cool. There’s Wonder Woman letting the rogue gorillas live in her apartment for a while, and one of them apologizing for the “flinging incident.” There’s also Agent Prince getting a surprise birthday party and getting stuck with a mouthful of birthday cake just as the boss wants to talk to her.

But the really interesting thing is the re-introduction of Etta Candy, one of Wondy’s oldest supporting cast members. Back in the ’40s, Etta was — not to mince words — fat. But she was loud and enthusiastic and funny and positive, and she kicked about nine kinds of ass every issue. This new version of Etta is Lt. Colonel Candy, an undercover government operative who’s looking for a good excuse to ruin Wondy’s life. And she’s not fat anymore. Frankly, I don’t think she even qualifies as overweight. Sure, she’s not the comic-book world’s ideal — but as she’s depicted here, if you met her in real life, you’d certainly classify her as a knockout. I’m not sure what I think of this new character yet. I may end up liking the character, but I really did kinda like the old chubby version of Etta.

Verdict: Thumbs up. I’m hoping this comic continues to stay good.

Rich Johnston reports a rumor — far from confirmed — that DC plans to kill Bruce Wayne next summer and have one of the Robins replace him as Batman.

Sure, DC, we totally believe you.

Yeah, Bruce Wayne’s totally gonna stay dead forever, ain’t no doubt about that, is there? It’s not like you’d do something like this just for a quick sales boost for your comics before bringing the character back to life, right?