Weekly Wonder Woman: Justice League Dark-Wonder Woman #1, Justice League #11, Heroes in Crisis #2, Drowned Earth #1

Every week (or fortnight) At least once a month, Sometimes, Weekly Wonder Woman keeps you up to date on everything involving DC Comics’ premier superheroine

Another week-long gap between WWWs (sorry about that), but she’s back this week, you’ll be glad to hear.

TV news

Fan of the 70 series? Then there’s good and bad news.

  • Stunt woman Kitty O’Neil, who used to double for Lynda Carter, has died.
  • Some props are up for sale. Fancy buying a steel bar that Wonder Woman bent?

Comics news

  • The 50th Anniversary Omnibus has changed its name to Wonder Woman: Diana Prince: Celebrating The ’60s Omnibus. Mind you, it now costs $150

Comics reviews

Three issues featured Diana in the past fortnight…

Heroes in Crisis #2

Heroes in Crisis #2

Superheroes are getting killed. Oh noes. Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman are investigating to find out who. They comes across Harley Quinn. Harley nicks Diana’s Lasso.

Harley Quinn

Yes, very silly, particularly when Superman suggests that HQ is as good a fighter as Batman. Also slightly silly – but also moderately interesting – is Diana’s discussion with an AI therapist.

Bite my lip

Drowned Earth #1/Justice League #11

The aquatic invasion of Earth that started last WWW continued in Drowned Earth #1. This answered the vexing question of “Where’s Diana?”

Cool, hey? And is Diana’s outfit darker because she’s travelled, DC’s run out of ink or is this supposed to be a new look for her? It certainly pops up later in this review in another comic, so maybe it’s a keeper?

The adventure continues in Justice League #11, where Diana rescues Aquaman, who’s had all his watery powers taken away from him. Together, they go looking for Poseidon again, who’s only ‘mostly dead‘, it turns out, as he currently resides in the Graveyard of the Gods. That’s guarded by its own watery Cerberus and Poseidon turns out not to be as big a help as they’d hoped.

(Technically, Asteria only means ‘of the stars’, not ‘of the sky’ – sorry, Diana)

As usual, cool by herself, but under-written when the blokes are around. Sigh.

Still, over in The Witching Hour, she’s the centre of attention…

Justice League Dark/Wonder Woman #1

This is such an intricate piece of Golden Bough retelling, it feels like James Tynion IV has been taking crib notes from George Perez – and that you’ll need crib notes to follow it, too. It’s another retelling of Hecate’s story through the lens of triple goddess-hood, but it’s actually a pretty decent interpretation and reinterpretation of Greek myth at the same time.

Following Diana/Hecate’s invasion of Olympus to get her revenge, where she discovers all the gods have legged it somewhere (I know not where), we get told the history of the universe’s magic:

All very interesting and probably worth several re-reads at some point in the future, too. However, just as Justice League Dark is tooling up to fight Diana/Hecate, Diana manages to return to her own body to offer Hecate a deal – that she can refuse. In return, Diana lets the badness from Stranger Things come in (it’s the same Upside Down, right?)…

…and then shuts the gates of Olympus behind her. Phew. It’s all over right.

Except maybe Circe was playing everyone…

Oh dear.

Anyway, as with Justice League‘s take on the Greek gods, it seems Greg Rucka’s more benevolent Patrons have been chucked to one side, so we’re back in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys territory again. Oh well.

Still, The Witching Hour is shaping up to be one of the best written, most intricate and most interesting of all the Rebirth Universe storylines we’ve had in the past few years, and it might even go down as being a classic once the dust has settled.