There were all manner of different Wonder Women in last week comics, almost all of them Elseworlds Wonder Women, largely thanks to the mighty behemoth that is Convergence.
Although Injustice: Gods Among Us’ Wonder Woman got a week off, we had the continuing adventures of Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman’s Wonder Woman as she tries to deal with Ares’ attempts to upset some peace negotiations. We also saw Flashpoint‘s, Kingdom Come‘s and AN Other Wonder Woman’s efforts to determine the one true universe through punching in Convergence and Convergence: Justice League International. All of those I’ll chat about after the jump.
But first, as WWW is more than just a set of reviews as it also covers news (versatile, hey?), I’ll just mention that there’ll be yet another Elseworlds Wonder Woman joining the line up this summer. A while back, DC did a range of alternative covers for its comics featuring (mainly) superheroines in the style of World War 2-era propaganda posters and pin-ups. These then became a range of collectible figures and now, we’re going to get DC Bombshells, a World War 2-set Elseworld in which the various slightly scantily dressed superheroines are going to fight on the front line.
Thought you’d like to know.
Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman #34
Plot
After ambushing some UN peacekeepers, Ares challenges one surviving soldier to a duel, so that he can cover the dragons’ teeth of Cadmus with some blood and bring an army of spartoi to life.
He offers the soldier a sword that he’s blessed himself and that can even kill gods. Unfortunately, it’s all for nothing.
He then marches with his army on Wonder Woman’s peace negotiations. Wonder Woman tries to negotiate a peace with Ares. But that’s all for nothing, too.
Fortunately, she has an army of her own.
Is it any good?
Following on from last week’s excellent, if slightly fannish first issue, the second part of Vendetta gets straight down to its two (perhaps arguably even one) main themes: Greek myth and the nature of war. Here we have first an interesting and accurate relating of the story of Cadmus and the spartoi, which is nice in and of itself; but we also have an explanation of the importance of Ares as a god and the nature of war – that many people want war for its ability to right injustice and overthrow oppression and Ares is there to answer their prayers.
This goes right through to an easily missable moment where one of the spartoi calls Ares ‘Ares Enyalius’:
The story ends, as Diana’s peace negotiations do, with the acknowledgement that sometimes there need to be sacrifices to achieve peace:
All in all, a pretty high-calibre piece of work that’s well written, is thoughtful and does Greek myth well, although I’m not sure about the god-killing sword… or those gloves.
Rating: 5/5
Convergence #6
Over in Convergence, it’s punching time again, with various Elseworlds and past-continuity superheroes fighting to decide who should the only ones left standing at the end of the epic crossover. While the nu52 superheroes (including Wonder Woman) are mainly just standing around, watching what’s happening…
…the others are duking it out en masse. This includes a past Donna Troy, drawn in typically subtle Ed Benes style…
…and Flashpoint Wonder Woman, as well as what looks like Kingdom Come Wonder Woman, but might not be, for reasons that’ll become clearer in a minute:
Despite a plot that’s simultaneously more complicated than but simpler than Injustice’s, with so many poorly differentiated and uncharacterised heroes and villains to try to recognise as they simply hit each other, Convergence is practically a must-miss title, unless you either like seeing much-loved characters uncharacteristically fighting each other for no real purpose or have some sort of Observer’s Book of Comic Characters and you want to keep ticking them off as you spot them. So I’d probably wait till the end to see what happens, if I were you.
Convergence – Justice League International #1-2
All these ‘duke out’ titles have been two-parters, with the first part introducing the characters who are going to fight, the second showing us the outcome of the fight. Justice League International has been no different, with issue #1 introducing us to a version of Justice League International, issue #2 showing us them getting pummelled by the Kingdom Come Justice League. Look – it says so here:
The problem here is that Kingdom Come Wonder Woman has easily identifiable outfits, including the ‘Screaming Chicken’ armour on the cover.
Look up in the top-right of the final panel of the Convergence review above and you’ll spot someone who looks a lot like this Wonder Woman. However, here, in the explicitly Kingdom Come issue, we have this Wonder Woman:
Confusing, no?
Anyway, this two-parter is reasonably fun, if you’re into the JLI, with very little of it punching. And while Wondy and co from Kingdom Come spend all their time being dark and gritty, explaining that they’re all mean and moody because of all the things they’ve seen in their continuity, when it comes to the crunch and they’ve won the war, they’re still bang up chaps and chapesses.
Your friends are unconscious, at worst. We inflicted no serious injuries. We wanted victory, nothing more permanent. I trust you have the wisdom to accept that this fight is over.
Very splendid of them, hey? But, as with all these Convergence titles, there’s nothing that interesting about them, beyond seeing (potentially) familiar characters again, so I wouldn’t recommend it unless that’s your thing.
It’s a Bank Holiday here in the UK next Monday so unless I manage to squeeze the next one of these in this Friday, it’s likely Weekly Wonder Woman will be taking a fortnight’s break. TTFN!
Disclaimer: Owing to the small fortune it would take to buy every single DC comic each week, this is not a guaranteed rundown of all the comics that feature Wonder Woman. If you know of any I’ve missed, email me or leave a comment below and I’ll cover them the following week
