YES! FINALLY!
This is seriously what I have been waiting for this entire reboot.
This comic has what I’ve been looking for in all the first issues I’ve read. It’s engaging, yet simple enough for any reader to jump in. The comic opens up with three women on a rooftop suite of a hotel with a man whose eyes glow, yet they seem to not be bothered by it. Before the scene changes to a woman with a scythe chopping off horse heads (I thought of the Godfather too), it seems as if he kills the girls by throwing them off the rooftop. And this, ladies and gentlemen is what sets the tone for the rest of the book. A woman named Zola is visited by Hermes, and is suddenly attacked by centaurs. Hermes pushes her out of the way and takes an arrow in the chest for her, and gives her a key to teleport her away to save her.
The key teleports Zola to London and into the room of none other than our heroine Diana aka Wonder Woman. Zola explains the situation and they teleport back to Zola’s home. What follows is one of the best scenes I’ve read in comics lately. Wonder Woman fights the centaurs while some dialogue exchanges are occurring between characters that are elsewhere. The dialogue has nothing to do with the images, and yet they completely relate by the end of the book, and it is just so beautifully laid out. I will leave out what happens after Diana kills the centaurs, since I don’t want to spoil it, but just know that it ties everything that happened in the issue together so perfectly that it warrants a rereading just to see it all again.
I can’t get over how awesome this book is. I’ve always been a huge fan of Greek mythology and this iteration of Wonder Woman does not disappoint. While only one god is specifically named, subtle visual and textual clues point out who’s who, and it’s a treat to decode and realize who seems to be setting stuff in motion. That’s not to say though that anyone unfamiliar with Greek mythology can’t read and enjoy this issue; far from it, actually. It’s not necessary to understand what’s going on; it just adds an extra layer to the comic, like rewatching a show and catching jokes/events in the background you didn’t see the first time.
Like I mentioned above, the writing is superb all throughout the book. There’s no long winded exposition, yet there’s enough backstory revealed to whet our appetites. Likewise, the art is excellent. The colors are bright and vivid, but don’t overpower, and the actual drawings themselves are simple and understated, yet portray everything clearly.
The issue was so good in fact that the only issue I had was that I wished they had kept Wonder Woman’s previous costume, with the pants, and this issue is SUPER minor. The new costume looks just fine.
I will most definitely be back next month for Wonder Woman #2.
(Please excuse the lack of pictures. It was hard finding some that kept out spoilers.)
1 comments:
Cliff Chiang is a great visual storyteller. I feel like Brian Azzarello really was able to be light on words here because his art is so strong. Loved this book.
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