Dark Crisis: Worlds Without A Justice League: Wonder Woman #1 Review

 

The Dream is Over

Writer: Tini Howard & Dan Watters

Artist: Leila Del Duca & Brandon Peterson

Cover Price: $4.99

Release Date: September 13, 2022

These Dark Crisis: World's Without a Justice League tie-in books have not been great.  Taken as separate  Elseworld stories, they are harmless enough.  However, as main tie-ins to the Dark Crisis Event?  Yea, they kind of suck in that light.  So, does this Wonder Woman issue buck the trend or keep up with the shitty status quo?  Let's find out...

The thing to remember when reading these one-shots is these are custom-made worlds "created from the innermost ho of the Justice League."  Pariah made them to contain and feed off the Justice Leaguers, and while the whole thing is still in the grey area, I wish someone would go with this concept a little bit more!

Tini Howard starts things off okay as we see Etta Candy sworn in as President of the United States, which I could see Diana hoping would happen.  Unfortunatley, it's all downhill from there.

I might be idiotic for trying to figure things out here, but throughout this issue, I wondered if we were seeing Diana's hopes and dreams or maybe Tini Howard's.  The third choice is that most of this issue is non-sensical garbage; perhaps I'll go with that one.

After the inauguration of Etta's second term, Diana takes her to Themyscira to make her an honorary Amazon (I guess the Amazons don't want any one-termers on the team!), but afterward, Etta goes away.  I know she has Presidential things to do, but it felt like a random scene and a total waste of space, but nothing in this story is anything but that.

Diana does visit her mother.  Now we are getting somewhere, right?  Hippolyta is dead, and Wonder Woman would surely want a dream world where she and her mother could spend quality time together... Nope, they bicker a little and fight about missles and Dr. Psycho.  Fuck!!!

While Dr. Psycho is only here as a narrative device to try to tie this shit show together (spoiler alert - He fails!), he may be the best thing in the issue.  But, of course, that doesn't mean Tini Howard writes a great Dr. Psycho; it just means she writes a shitty everybody else!

Ultimately, Diana decides to stay on Earth to fight the neverending battle for a world that may not appreciate it.   This is a custom-made dream world made from Diana's hopes, right?!?  Oh well, I guess even Diana's dreams suck nowadays!

This story is awful but worse than that, it's unnecessary.  Tini Howard doesn't ruin the Event here because that would be silly, but why does it seem equally silly to expect something even a tiny bit meaningful?!?  The art by Leila Del Luca was great, though, so it wasn't a total loss.

Dan Watters then checks in with a Martian Manhunter backup that is better but can't save the issue.  Thanks to Brandon Peterson's art, it looks fantastic, but it doesn't feel necessary.  At least this one is decent if you forget what it's supposed to be doing and read it like a stand-alone one-shot.

Bits and Pieces:

Dark Crisis: World's Without a Justice League: Wonder Woman #1 reads like Tini Howard was given an assignment and decided to throw that out the window and do whatever the hell she wanted.  It does NOTHING for the Dark Crisis Event which makes you wonder why it even exists (insert cash register sound here!)  The issue looks great, but that alone is not worth the price of admission, though it did bump up my score.  

4.0/10