Another Crisis done, and that means yet another Wonder Woman #1. I think Diana wins for number of times her comic has been restarted of the major DC heroes (well, maybe she’s still behind Green Lantern). So how does this revamp do? Too early to tell, but intriguing nonetheless. This time out, we’ve got Allan Heinberg writing, with Terry and Rachel Dodson doing the artwork. I haven’t read any of Heinberg’s work previously that I know of (I hear his claim to fame is Young Avengers), but he does a nice enough job so far.
The first surprise for readers is that the new Wonder Woman is actually a former Wonder Girl, Donna Troy. Looks like post-Infinite Crisis continuity is a lot like pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths continuity: the Donna Troy grew up with Diana as a sister, and has taken over her role. It’s a little weird, though: in the captions, she refers to herself as “The New Wonder Woman” but I would image she’s been doing it for the past year. Also, it looks like Steve Trevor’s been de-aged.
I like the new costume: armor, cape, sword along with the bracelets, lasso and tiara. Donna’s still wearing the star-shaped earrings, though. The art overall is very nice: Terry Dodson draws a great Wonder Woman (among others). The plot is nice and simple: Wonder Woman’s rogue gallery is looking for Wonder Woman, setting up a hostage situation with Steve Trevor to flush her out. But they don’t want Donna: they want the real thing.
So Dr. Psycho, Cheetah, and Giganta take out Donna pretty easily (it would have been nicer to see Donna actually have some success before failure, though). They hope that having Donna will force Diana out of hiding. And they are correct. It’s not likely to be the Diana they were expecting, though.
There’s a lot to like about this issue: Donna as Wonder Woman is nice (even though it seems that Wally West is still going to be the only Titan who ever gets to replace his elder counterpart for more than a short while) and I hope they explore Donna’s Wonder Woman experience either in this comic or in 52. The title of the issue is also amusing to all us Donna Troy fans: “Who is Wonder Woman?” How many times have we seen that variation? The two reveals at the end of the issue are also for old time DC Comic fans: the return of a character we haven’t seen in a while, and the return of a character wearing a familiar uniform (I’ll say no more, since I don’t want to spoil anything).
I’ll admit that I’m intrigued enough to continue. I hope that I’m wrong and that Donna does stay as Wonder Woman for a while, but it seems unlikely. How does it stack up to the last reboot, the celebrated Potter/Perez/Wein version from the 80s? Too early to tell. It certainly isn’t as mythic as the Perez version, but I like the idea of Wonder Woman being cut off from her home and gods. I think I’ll be in through the first arc, at least, to see where it goes.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 7th, 2006 at 8:33 pm and is filed under DC Comics, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
The URI to TrackBack this entry is:
http://spandexjustice.com/2006/06/07/121/trackback
Responses to “Wonder Woman #1”
Diana Prince, Agent of SHIELD?
Kind of a re-hash of her old Prince identity in the military. Let’s see if trevor is still married to Etta in this reboot.
June 7th, 2006 at 9:20 pm |
Y’know, Etta has not done anything major during the whole Post-Crisis series. They really could jsut retcon her out and reintroduce her as a neighbor or coworker. Steve would still work just as well de-aged and unmarried.
June 9th, 2006 at 3:31 am |
Actually no, only Superman and Batman have had less new #1’s than Wonder Woman. So it really is not fair to say that she series has started over a lot. She is actually tied with the Flash and Green Arrow for third place in the catagory of less series reboots. Green Lantern, Aquaman, Blue Beetle ect..more reboots than Wonder Woman.
June 17th, 2006 at 4:57 pm |