Yes, it’s Weekly Wonder Woman – keeping you up to date on pretty much anything involving DC Comics’ premier superheroine, including how naff her dad is
Happy New Year, True Believers! Yes, I know Stan Lee’s a Marvel man, but I doubt he’s trademarked it. So, True Believers, I hope you had a great time; Diana was off lighting a bonfire with Batman, apparently, so whatever you did, it was probably better than her Christmas/New Year celebrations.
Everyone else in the real world was off celebrating, too, so not a lot of news came out over the festive period. But here’s what did happen, for what it’s worth.
Movie news
Justice League looks set to close its run in cinemas with just $700m in takings, which is apparently enough to break even – just. It’s still not great though.
JUSTICE LEAGUE dropped over 1,500+ theaters this weekend and fell -76%, topping out w/ $222M domestic. Folks, that's $190M less than WONDER WOMAN and $5M less than Will Smith's HANCOCK–that's gonna sting for a bit.
— Exhibitor Relations (@ERCboxoffice) December 24, 2017
Looking more to the future, though, Patty Jenkins says Wonder Woman 2 will be totally different from Wonder Woman:
“We’re actually making a totally different film with a lot of the same, similar like things that we love, but it’s its own movie completely, so it’s not ‘two’ to us,” the director told ET. “It’s an entirely new adventure together that we couldn’t be luckier [to do].”
Comics news
Liam Sharp revealed some more art from his forthcoming Brave and the Bold:
Meanwhile, Jill Thompson was at the DC Comics Art Academy to explain how she draws Diana:
Comics reviews
Just the usual titles featured Diana Prime this fortnight, although Superman #38 might contain a visit from a future Wonder Woman (I can’t even), if you want to give that a whirl. So after the jump, we’ll see who won in that fight between Zeus and teenage Darkseid (the cover contains a bit of a spoiler, mind) in Wonder Woman #37 and in Justice League #36, she’s still agonising about her mission. And whether Germany is in the EU. Maybe not so much the second one, but it’s a concern.
Wonder Woman #37
Plot
Zeus and Darkseid have a massive fight. Darkseid talks a lot then drains Zeus dry, enabling him to become his grown-up self. Meanwhile, Diana gets her energy back and clobbers Grail for a bit, but ultimately isn’t able to save her Dad, even with the help of the Justice League. Then Darkseid booms away with his daughter.
Extra notes
Hmm, well it’s pretty clear that Rebirth Zeus not only looks nothing like nu52 Zeus, he doesn’t act anything like him either. nu52 Zeus examined the prophecies and then had himself reborn as his own child through his own daughter to avoid a fight with his First Born child, knowing that chances are, Diana would be able to put things right. Assuming there aren’t further revelations of plans within plans further down the line, Rebirth Zeus, when faced with a god capable of draining the power from other gods decided it would be a cracking idea to try to twat him one. That was his plan, while Darkseid had laid down a plan for months designed to lure Zeus out and drain him. Darkseid is a better schemer than Zeus.
Sigh.
Still, it did at least have a bit more potency to it than most of Robinson’s other fights, with Zeus actually giving a decent pushback at least. I’m not quite sure why Diana – veteran of many a fight with gods, demi-gods, speedsters and new gods alike, including one with Darkseid – thought that she’d never seen a fight as fast as this one, but maybe she was a bit slow after her premature ageing experience.
I’m also staggered that Robinson has found a way to make comic book monologuing even worse:
Yep, Darkseid had actually been monologuing and when Diana interrupts, Darkseid gets annoyed and returns to his monologue. Seriously. And Diana called the fight fast?
Still, thus concludes James Robinson’s opening story on Wonder Woman. All in all, quite a variable experience, with some definite highs and some definite lows. On the one hand, the story was all a lot more grown-up than his predecessor’s; he was also more attuned to past continuity, even if that basically meant ignoring about 95% of everything Greg Rucka had set up for the Rebirth Universe. Bringing Zeus back purely to kill him seems a bit odd, but if your complaint is that having Zeus as Diana’s dad means the story is always going to be about him, this should fix it for you – it also brings continuity more in line with DCEU.
On the other hand, unfortunately, it does mean we’re going to have more of Jason, who’s almost the very definition of ‘twathead’. Robinson’s dialogue leaves a lot to be desired, with way too much discussion taking place. He has also spent most of his allotted issues not bothering to include Diana at all, bar the occasional appearance on TV. It’s been all about Hercules, Grail, Darkseid, Jason and Zeus, as well as anyone else Robinson has been able to dredge up from 1970s comics – the signposted reappearance of the Silver Swan at the end suggests Robinson hasn’t kicked that particular habit yet.
When Diana has shown up, she hasn’t fared very well or had much depth. She’s cheery and optimistic for sure, but has little fight, is easily beaten and doesn’t really do much except hit hard. Other titles can be forgiven, but surely in Wonder Woman she should at least be the protagonist and have her skillset shown off to the max? But then I’ve been saying that since the nu52 started, and look how that fared. Where’s Charles Soule and Superman/Wonder Woman when you need them, hey?
Rating: 4/7 (Artwork: 5/7)
Justice League #36
What happens?
Blah blah blah, Batman has an imitator, blah blah blah.
What does Diana do?
Fret about her ‘mission’. Again.
Glare.
Extra notes
Not very auspicious for our Diana, hey?
Oddly, the Germans are the bad guys in this.
Now, it’s entirely possible, as we’ve seen before, that things work differently in the DC Universe. But in our universe, no member state of the EU can have a separate trade deal with a third-country. So has Germany left the EU in the DC Universe?
Or maybe looking for accuracy in trade law in Justice League is probably a stupid idea to begin with.
Sigh.
