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A review by themyskira
Wonder Woman: Who is Wonder Woman? by Allan Heinberg
1.0
The good: Donna kicking butt as Wonder Woman. Wonderfam moments. Terry Dodson's art is nice, even if his women are a little too samefacey for my liking.
The bad: Everything else.
This is a 'soft' relaunch of Wonder Woman evidently based on the view that Wonder Woman is inherently unrelatable, that she's so majestic and powerful that she can't relate to ordinary human beings, and that something needs to be done to 'fix' these problems.
In this case, the solution is for Diana to quit superheroing and get an ordinary, human secret identity and an ordinary, human job as... er, a secret agent using futuristic weaponry to tackle metahuman threats. Yeah. And that's about how quickly the logic of this story falls apart.
I could write an essay on how fundamentally out-of-character the premise is for Diana -- she has literally spent years at this stage living among ordinary humans, she's never seen any value in hiding her identity and there have been epic story arcs devoted to her dedication to the principle of truth.
But aside from that, it's just not a very good story.
Heinberg's writing is all tell, no show. We know that the overriding theme is supposed to be Diana's search for identity mostly because he insists on having her remind us over and over again that she doesn't know who she is.
His treatment of Circe is frankly awful. And I mean, I recognise that Circe is a character who's been written without a lot of consistency over the years and she has often ended up in the role of moustache-twirling-villain, but-- "I was a princess once. Like you, Diana. But when my husband and my subjects betrayed me, I traded my soul for the power of the goddess Hecate and used her magicks to become the immortal avenger of all wronged women."
...yeah. Apparently Circe wants to steal Wonder Woman's power so she can systematically murder all the rapists in the world. (Because apparently having 'the power of the goddess Hecate' isn't enough...?!) (This is even more hilaristupid if you're aware of Circe's long history of fucking over 'wronged' Amazons.)
So anyway, Circe is trying to steal all of Wonder Woman's power, which means Diana needs to fight her despite not being sure if she even wants the power or the title and I think you can see where this plot-anvil is going.
My recommendation: Don't even bother. If you're just starting out with Wonder Woman, try A League of One, The Hiketeia, Golden Perfect or Greg Rucka's run instead.
The bad: Everything else.
This is a 'soft' relaunch of Wonder Woman evidently based on the view that Wonder Woman is inherently unrelatable, that she's so majestic and powerful that she can't relate to ordinary human beings, and that something needs to be done to 'fix' these problems.
In this case, the solution is for Diana to quit superheroing and get an ordinary, human secret identity and an ordinary, human job as... er, a secret agent using futuristic weaponry to tackle metahuman threats. Yeah. And that's about how quickly the logic of this story falls apart.
I could write an essay on how fundamentally out-of-character the premise is for Diana -- she has literally spent years at this stage living among ordinary humans, she's never seen any value in hiding her identity and there have been epic story arcs devoted to her dedication to the principle of truth.
But aside from that, it's just not a very good story.
Heinberg's writing is all tell, no show. We know that the overriding theme is supposed to be Diana's search for identity mostly because he insists on having her remind us over and over again that she doesn't know who she is.
His treatment of Circe is frankly awful. And I mean, I recognise that Circe is a character who's been written without a lot of consistency over the years and she has often ended up in the role of moustache-twirling-villain, but-- "I was a princess once. Like you, Diana. But when my husband and my subjects betrayed me, I traded my soul for the power of the goddess Hecate and used her magicks to become the immortal avenger of all wronged women."
...yeah. Apparently Circe wants to steal Wonder Woman's power so she can systematically murder all the rapists in the world. (Because apparently having 'the power of the goddess Hecate' isn't enough...?!) (This is even more hilaristupid if you're aware of Circe's long history of fucking over 'wronged' Amazons.)
So anyway, Circe is trying to steal all of Wonder Woman's power, which means Diana needs to fight her despite not being sure if she even wants the power or the title and I think you can see where this plot-anvil is going.
My recommendation: Don't even bother. If you're just starting out with Wonder Woman, try A League of One, The Hiketeia, Golden Perfect or Greg Rucka's run instead.