Weekly Wonder Woman: Wonder Woman #30

Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot
Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot during the filming of Wonder Woman

Yes, it’s Weekly Wonder Woman – keeping you up to date on pretty much anything involving DC Comics’ premier superheroine, including how much Patty Jenkins is getting paid to direct Wonder Woman 2

Another week’s gone by. Can you believe it? I hope you’ve all been off helping the sick and needy, studying for your third masters degree or doing something equally worthy. Because I’ve been surfing the Internet, watching tele and reading comics, so someone somewhere had better be doing something worthwhile, for all our sakes.

Here’s what I learned.

Movie news

The big news is that Patty Jenkins has been hired to direct Wonder Woman 2 and is getting paid a big chunk of cash to do it – at (roughly) $8m, which is eight times what she got for Wonder Woman, she’s now officially the highest paid female director ever.

She’s also co-writing the sequel and although the plot is tightly under wraps (maybe the Cold War, maybe with the Invisible Jet), all we can say for sure is that she’s going to be co-writing it with Geoff Johns (again) and now Dave Callahan. Callahan’s best known for writing The Expendables, but he was also working with Jenkins on an adaptation of Jo Nesbo’s Jackpot before the big chunk of cash arrived. I’m guessing that’s on hold for a while now.

Meanwhile, publicity for the release of Wonder Woman on Blu-Ray continues apace, with more clips from the extras. Top of these again is another Etta Candy video, this time about Steve Trevor:

But there’s also a clip about the photograph linking Wonder Woman with Batman v Superman:

Of course, Blu-Ray isn’t the only way to watch Wonder Woman and in the US, you can watch it on DirecTV Cinema. Rather nicely, they’ve put out an ad for it that’s voiced by none other than Susan Eisenberg – the voice of Wonder Woman for an entire generation who grew up on the Justice League cartoons:

https://twitter.com/amazonheroicon/status/905183907296903168

That’s about it though, so after the jump, we’ll be looking at the only comic of note to feature Diana this week: Wonder Woman #30. TTFN!

Comics reviews

Wonder Woman #30

Wonder Woman #30

Plot

Diana decides not to hand over her blood to the government after all, since it plans to focus on boosting soldiers rather than healing. However, she faces a group of soldiers who have all been enhanced with her own powers using that bad doctor’s technology. Fortunately, Etta and Steve come to the rescue and Diana is able to use her lasso to revert the soldiers back to normal.

The lasso reveals all

Is it any good?

It’s basically issue #27 again. Same idea, same resolution. It also makes you wonder how Diana ever manages to do anything in the Rebirth universe without Steve and Etta to help.

Extra notes
  • You can apparently get Diana’s powers – the gifts of the gods – through her DNA, including flight. Hmm. However, you need a bit more than just blood to stand a chance of making it permanent.
  • Diana’s reverted to not trusting her patrons. But still calling them her patrons.
  • In the DC Rebirth Universe, there were apparently superheroes around for ages but no superheroines before Diana turned up, which was a long time ago – we’re talking long enough for one of the soldiers to have been a kid at the time:

Just a kid

From which we can conclude… not much except that editorial consistency across the DC comics universe is as weak as it’s always been.

On balance, quite a weak ending to an average beginning for Shea Fontana’s run on the title. The attempt to create fake superheroes using science is a familiar trope that even Injustice Gods Among Us mined for years. A lot of the good things Rucka established have been ignored, particularly the tone, while making Diana part of yet another secret US government operation is so Volume 3. And Diana’s continual depowering throughout Rebirth hasn’t really endeared the new universe to me.

Rebirth is starting to feel like it should simply be called ‘regurgitated’.

Rating: 2/7 (Artwork: 4/7)

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 and I’ll cover them the following week

Author

  • Rob Buckley

    I’m Rob Buckley, a journalist who writes for UK media magazines that most people have never heard of although you might have heard me on the podcast Lockdown Land or Radio 5 Live’s Saturday Edition or Afternoon Edition. I’ve edited Dreamwatch, Sprocket and Cambridge Film Festival Daily; been technical editor for TV producers magazine Televisual; reviewed films for the short-lived newspaper Cambridge Insider; written features for the even shorter-lived newspaper Soho Independent; and was regularly sarcastic about television on the blink-and-you-missed-it “web site for urban hedonists” The Tribe. Since going freelance, I've contributed to the likes of Broadcast, Total Content + Media, Action TV, Off The Telly, Action Network, TV Scoop and The Custard TV.

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