Early New Comic Day June 12, 2006

Wonder Woman #1

I resisted this last week when it first came out, but caved when I was at the Comic Shop yesterday. I'm not super familiar with the Wonder Woman comics and have only a handful in my collection (issues #190ish to 204 or so). The good thing about this comic is that it should be able to be enjoyed by people that either had no previous experience with Wonder Woman, and those that have been following it since the early bondage days. However, if you have a mediocre knowledge of WW then you might be left a little confused like I was.

Despite that though Allan Heinberg and the Dodsons bring us a good comic. We open with some close up shots of the various armaments in Wonder Woman's arsenal: lasso, sword, breastplate, etc then the next page reveals that this incarnation of Wonder Woman is Donna Troy, formerly Wonder Girl. The switch has to do with the One Year Later business DC is doing. The previous WW went into self imposed exile after the events of Infinite Crisis and is still missing, thus Donna took up the mantle. Heinberg does a good job introducing us to Donna and the fact that this is a new job for her ie. "I am the new Wonder Woman." If you weren't familiar with WW, then this line tells you ok, there used to be another Wonder Woman but something happened to her, now we have this newbie trying to fill her boots. This adds an element of mystery that encourages us to keep reading.

So we do and we find out that some villains are holding Steve Trevor, a friend of Wonder Woman, hostage. Here Heinberg does an excellent job of introducing some of the main villains in the WW rouge gallery. We get to see a new and improved Cheetah, who can turn herself into and control cheetahs, as well as Giganta, a woman who can change her size. Dr. Psycho shows up too, but more on him later. The goal of the villains was to lure the real Wonder Woman, Diana of Themyscira, out of hiding and it looks like they did as the old Wonder Woman shows up and proceeds to beat the living hell out of Cheetah. WW looks to make sure Cheetah never hurts anyone again and tries to kill her ala Max Lord, but Donna tries to stop her and gets stabbed through the chest for her efforts. So the reader thinks WW has gone off the deep end, but it is revealed that it was all a telepathic projection from Dr. Psycho... I think. It's pretty unclear and here is where Heinberg drops the ball a bit. With Cheetah and Giganta their powers are explained sufficiently but with Dr. Psycho, not so much. As well, if that is what happened, did Cheetah really get beaten up? If so does it make sense that Psycho would beat her ass down? Maybe the beat down was all in Donna's head...I'm not sure. If it was though, then it's unclear how Donna gets stabbed. Anyways, I would have preferred more explanation and it was weird that Dr. Psycho didn't get his own little caption box explaining his powers like Cheetah and Giganta did.

In a surprising twist, Steve Trevor is not actually Steve Trevor but Tom Tresser, the master of disguise known as Nemesis who is working for a police-type agency. For new readers, this won't be too much of a shocker because they probably never heard of him. I've been reading comics for a while and I never heard of him. The exposure I got was from a recent post at Chris's Invincible Super Blog found here (there's two parts). Finally on the last page, we get the big reveal that Tresser's new partner will be none other than Diana Prince in a hot white jumpsuit. Again for new readers, this might not be too shocking. For a long time reader though, it's cool because Diana Prince was an alias of the real Wonder Woman when she lost her powers. This is what left me kind of confused. I thought Diana Prince was Wonder Woman and the idea of her teaming up with Nemesis to rescue Donna from the terrible trio seemed weird. Apparently, through reading some other articles online, this is the new persona that WW took on after going into exile and I guess no one knows that she's really Wonder Woman. I think this is only a problem for people who've had a passing interest in the character over the years as new readers will eventually find out that WW is incognito and longtime fans will already know.

So enough praise about the story, what about the art? Terry Dodson has a penchant for drawing buxom beauties, and damn he draws them well! I have no complaints about the artwork save for the panel shown in flashback where WW is crouching over the newly deceased Maxwell Lord. Is that a look of surprise on her face? You just killed the guy! An expression of smug satisfaction would be better suited I think. The fight scenes are handled well and there is never any clutter that distracts from the story.

So this is issue is recommended with the reservation that to truley enjoy it, I think you need to either know nothing about Wonder Woman, or tons about Wonder Woman.

And always remember kids, Wonder Woman is cool because she can kick your ass and tie you up (not necessarily in that order), a hallmark of any good woman.

FUN FACTOID: the creator of Wonder Woman, Dr. William Marston, also invented the modern polygraph (ie. lie-detector) machine!