Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Wonder Woman #47 Review and *SPOILERS*


So Many Issues


Written By: Meredith Finch
Art By: Miguel Mendonca, Dexter Vines, Beth Sotela, Rob Leigh
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: December 30, 2015

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Remember when the Spice Girls were running around, yelling about Girl Power?  Well, not even Scary Spice could of foreseen the horror that would become what should be the all around most prominent source of "Girl Power" or in this case "Woman Power" and of course I'm talking about the current state of Wonder Woman.  This series has been a mess for awhile now and while I originally had high hopes for our last story arc, it crashed and burned quicker than Hal Jordan's daddy.  While I'd like to say that this issue will be the beginning of a new era of awesomeness for our God of War, this is only a one shot and I'll say right off the bat........... This is a mess.  Not even the fact that we get my favorite Wonder Woman villain: Cheetah in this issue was enough to combat the just all around badness.  Alright, let's quit complaining and get to it before we spend the next ten minutes wondering what the hell zigga zig ah actually meant.......... Yeah, now I'm on a Spice Girls kick.  Let's check this issue out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with Diana just day dreaming on the shores of Themyscira about Ares being alive again, but instead of giving us some useful information about what that will mean for her God of War status, she just kind of sits there and moons over it like a simp.  Eventually, her alone time is interrupted when Dessa comes to her to tell her about how she must be happy because everyone on the island is in a great mood........ you know, since all the Amazons now feel what Diana does, but the crazy thing is......... a shit ton of Amazons had just been murdered by Cheetah when she came to the island....... I don't know Dessa, maybe you want to start with the mass murder thing before telling people how happy you've been.  So yeah, it seems that Cheetah has come to Themyscira to get The Eye of Antiope......... don't ask me how Dessa got this knowledge, she just seems to know and we're supposed to go with it.......... so that's what we'll do.  The Eye of Antiope was given to the first Amazon Queen, Wonder Woman's Grandmother by Hera and it's the source of the Amazon's immortality, which means if Cheetah makes like a tree and gets out of there, no more looking that good that old for our warrior women........ also though, it won't work for Cheetah either because the gem is tied to the island........ So it's kind of like the Holy Grail from Last Crusade.


While Wonder Woman hunts for Cheetah through all the perils that the jungles of Themyscia offer, she first encounters Anastasios, who appears to be the only survivor of Donna Troy's slaughter of the brothers of the Amazons............ and some how Anastasios guilts Diana enough that she starts that whole crying blood thing again, that just doesn't make any sense to me from how we've seen it presented.  I mean, she gets shot with a god killer arrow...... she cries blood, she denies her God of War duties........ she cries blood and now when she feels guilty........ she cries blood.......... I just don't get it.


So yeah, even though Anastasios went all 127 Hours to get free from the slaughter and has become some sort of paranoid wildman living in the jungles of Themyscira, Wonder Woman doesn't have time to reconnect..... even if that's what Anastasios wanted because Cheetah is still on the loose and looking to get all immortal.


In the end, Diana catches up to her former friend, but before she could stop Cheetah, the ghost of Hippolyta showed up and pretty much said that Diana should have just stayed daydreaming on the shoreline because nothing she does really matters and everything will sort itself out........ kind of like nothing in this issue matters.  That's right, Cheetah gets the Eye of Antiope, but with Gods being the petty, jealous types that they are, the Goddess of The Hunt isn't about to let Barbara Minerva double dip into the immortal power bestowed by Hera and let her eat her Cheetah cake too.  So yeah, either Minerva chooses immortality or Cheetah and since our villain hated her former weak self, she simply drops the jewel and curses Wonder Woman's name as she exits stage left......... and even though Cheetah slaughtered a shit load of Amazons on her quest for immortality, Wonder Woman just lets her go........ for some reason.


That's it for this issue of Wonder Woman and after having a really lackluster ending to the last story arc and now having a one-shot that by the end of the book you find out means absolutely nothing...... well, that doesn't do much to inspire me to care about what's going to happen next in the wild world of our God of War.  Hell, we have this whole aspect of Wonder Woman killing herself because she refuses to act in the way that a God of War should act, which is causing her pain and crying blood and all that.......... but I'm not really sure exactly what's going on with that because she just seems to cry blood at any given moment.  So yeah, this issue does nothing to further our story or really add anything to past stories except the addition of Anastasios and his new one armed hatred for his sister that he believes betrayed him, but it's shown to us so fast and so non-consequential that it just felt weird being in this story at all.  The art in this book though was really decent, even though it had a simpler look than what we're used to from David Finch rocking this title and the colors here were terrific.  That's right, we got something out of this book........... just not a whole lot.

Bits and Pieces:

I like a story that has a twist, but when the twist is that nothing in the book matters at all and that it didn't even need to involve our hero........... well, that's a bit of a let down.  This issue does nothing for either our hero our her most popular villain and while it might add something small to a previous story or quite possibly a story we'll deal with in the future, it's not enough to really get excited about when it will probably get recapped later on anyway.  The only thing that this book has going for it is the art, which by normal means is really decent, but when your used to David Finch on this book, it's just not up to snuff to what we expect going in.

4.5/10

1 comment:

  1. Its weird...The way this book is approached it almost feels like it has two completely different writers on it. Scenes like the crying blood and the dead amazons seem completely out of place for the rest of the narrative.

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