Every week (or fortnight) At least once a month, Weekly Wonder Woman keeps you up to date on everything involving DC Comics’ premier superheroine
With July 4th out the way, things have been perking up news-wise, you’ll be glad to hear…
Film news
Not technically film news, but Gal Gadot did go visit a children’s hospital in full movie costume:
https://twitter.com/WonderWomanHQ/status/1015633202646568961
https://twitter.com/WonderWomanHQ/status/1015671323849379840
We also got a glimpse of Kristen Wiig in action on the set of Wonder Woman 1984
https://twitter.com/WonderWomanHQ/status/1016852355311161344
Comics news
The new line up for Wonder Woman from November 14 has been confirmed. Ms Marvel‘s G Willow Wilson will be writing, while Cary Nord will be the new artist in residence. And that’s official:
Meanwhile, maybe you’d like to colour in Wonder Woman the Alex Sinclair way. Here’s how:
Comics reviews
The only appearance by Diana that I spotted was in the bumper-sized Wonder Woman anniversary issue this week – issue #50 – and it marks both the end of the Dark Gods storyline and James Robinson’s run on the title, before he hands over the reins to guest writer Steve Orlando.
Will he be much missed? Let’s talk about that after the jump…
Wonder Woman #50
Plot
Together, Diana and Jason defeat the Dark Gods, but both them have to make sacrifices.
Extra notes
Beyond not featuring any 70s comic-book characters, Robinson’s final issue is pretty much an exemplar of his run on Wonder Woman and his style. It starts, predictably, in medias res, with Di and Steve chatting at length about their relationship, etc, without a whole bunch of nuance, “show don’t tell”, etc, etc.
We get Diana being defeated in battle as per usual.
We get the usual implication that other than being able to fight quite well, there’s not much to Diana, as far as Robinson’s concerned.
Robinson would much rather be writing about Jason and since he likes to show off his continuity knowledge – albeit of Greek myth continuity – we then get a very long and protracted explanation of how Jason has been deceiving everyone using the powers of the Greek gods. Isn’t he cunning?
(Although he messes up slightly since Morpheus is the god of dreams, not sleep – that’s Hypnos. BTW, I’m surprised DC let that one through, given Sandman).
Then Jason makes the ultimate sacrifice.
Leaving Diana alone, since Steve’s off, too…
Final notes
So there you go. James Robinson. A man who obviously would rather have written for just about anyone than Diana. Often there were issues when she didn’t appear at all – or if she did, it was on tele. When she did appear, she didn’t really show much aptitude at anything. Not great at fighting, not especially smart, not many superpowers, easily outwitted. About the only thing Robinson really managed to pull off was Diana’s love for other people, but all that seemed to do was make her miserable.
What’s Robinson’s legacy? I don’t think he has one, at least for Diana. He did at least manage to do well at building up Jason as a character, although Jason is gone for now. He brought Zeus back briefly, but now he’s gone. He brought back a whole bunch of demi-gods. But now they’re gone. He reintroduced a massive set of Diana’s old enemies into the Rebirth Universe. But didn’t do anything with them.
So if he has a legacy, it’s that just like Greg Rucka before him, he created a set of building blocks for other writers to use, potentially even in interesting ways. He just never did anything good with them himself and some (cough, cough, the Dark Gods, cough, cough) I doubt anyone will want to touch with a barge pole.
But let’s see what happens next…
Writing: 4/7
Artwork: 5/7
