Wonder Woman #197 Review

Archive

Reviewer: William Cooling
Title: Down to Earth – part 2

Writer: Greg Rucka
Penciller: Drew Johnson
Inker: Ray Synder
Colouring: Richard & Tanya Horie
Letterer: Todd Klein
Editor: Ivan Cohen
Publisher: DC Comics

The best thing in Rucka’s three issues has definitely been the character of Diana. Rucka has managed to transform her from a 70’s gay icon to a super-powered (liberal) version of Ronald Reagan; right down to the “naïve” charm, good nature, poor timekeeping and organisation. She also has that slight feeling of “other-worldliness” that Reagan often had when compared to the men in grey suits (like one Bush Sr. for example) and of course like Reagan she’s in the habit of saving the world (sorry, couldn’t resist that one). Also, the reactions of her enemies are similar too with many of them thinking that she is “dumb” when of course she (like he) is not.

What Rucka does in this issue as in the others is explore what it actually means for Diana to be a Goddess, a political figure and a superhero all in one and how these roles effect her interaction with the world. To show her as a political figure he has developed a “West Wing” style office for her and developed enemies that reflect her political status.

To develop her as a Goddess Rucka shows how Diana interacts with the world. One of the more controversial aspects of this is Rucka showing Diana to be a vegetarian. Now although to me it did seem a bit like an attempt to get street cred on the liberal streets of Hampstead in this issue he does justify it by showing how Diana interacts with animals. In light of this it seems (even to this butcher’s son) that Diana would not want to eat meat (her loss).

Also due to being a Goddess, Diana is able to see the bigger picture as shown brilliantly by her confrontation with Flash over how to deal with a forest fire. Flash has the obvious, instinctive human reaction based on a mortal’s fear of death whilst Diana’s reaction is the considered view of an immortal who can see all aspects of “creation”. Also the “average-Joe” nature of Wally West makes him the perfect choice to play the human foil to Diana’s tree hugging statements. This scene also allows Rucka to show Diana as a superhero and so introduce some action into an otherwise dialogue based issue.

This spandex adventure is a brief interlude to the main plot, which is based on the publishing and reaction to Diana’s book “Reflections”. For most of the issue Diana is carrying out a book tour with her new assistant Jonah, meeting her adoring fans. Both of them do come across as your typical liberal “do-gooders” which may or may not irritate you depending on your political belief. Personally as someone is very right-wing I’m not all that bothered which is largely down to the quality of the writing.

During the last issue we saw a backlash against the book as Wonder Woman inspired women groups being closed down. This is backlash is further developed with protests at Diana’s book tour. There are hints that these efforts are being manipulated by a bunch of bad people led by a Doctor Cale (who we have seen) and someone called Keynes (our only sight of which has been a mention of a letter to the Times he wrote).

One of the problems with introducing politics into superhero comics is that often the conventions of the genre come to the fore turning those who share the opposite political views of the lead character (or should that be the writer?) into nothing more complex than your average super-villain. Due to the over-representation of liberals in comics this means that right-wingers become as much crude stereotypes as the Japanese and Germans of the 40s. At the moment Rucka is coming very close to this state especially as Doctor Cale has recently took charge of a super-villain a move that jars with the realism of her forming her political strategy.

What adds to my worries that Rucka might turn the anti-Diana forces into traditional super-villains is the wild card of a God called Ares who we saw last issue consorting with someone who looks suspiciously like Doctor Cale. He turns up this issue to have a cryptic confrontation with Diana’s sister Io. I’m fearful that Rucka will link the two threads and so weaken the realism and purity of the political debate over Diana’s book. I think this arc will read better if Rucka keeps the anti-Diana forces as what they are currently; analogues of the (liberal perception of) the anti-Clinton forces of the nineties.

It may sound like I’m criticising Rucka’s writing but really these are minor points that don’t detract from my enjoyment of the issue. Rucka’s writing manages to be political and relevant whilst not being in any way dark or grim. The writing is full of charm and a lightness of touch that adds much to the character.

Rucka’s pacing is better than in Wolverine with more happening in a single issue despite using similar pacing techniques such as lots of non-dialogue panels to develop atmosphere and highlight important actions.

I also like the art although Johnson’s art does have some quite important flaws in both the body posture and body proportions of the characters. His faces often look slightly weird especially Diana’s which has an extremely weird nose. That said despite these flaws his pencils have a charm and energy that draws you in. What also adds to the art are the excellent colours of the Hories, which are wonderfully bright and vivid and bring out the best in the linework.

During the summer Greg Rucka took control of two of the biggest characters in comics; Marvel’s Wolverine and DC’s Wonder Woman, both of which had been under-performing (which is a huge understatement in Wonder Woman’s case). With Wolverine he has play it safe and is largely covering what is old ground for the character. On the other hand with Wonder Woman he has radically changed the focus of the character bringing to the fore that which elevates Diana above being Superman with ovaries; namely her political position, immortality and her relationship with Themyscira. He has radically and ruthlessly established an exciting status quo from which has developed a very interesting story. This issue he continues to develop this expertly whilst also sowing in hints at plots to come (Diana’s love life being one of them) although there are a few small problems that if allowed to grow could harm it.

A Comics Nexus original, Will Cooling has written about comics since 2004 despite the best efforts of the industry to kill his love of the medium. He now spends much of his time over at Inside Fights where he gets to see muscle-bound men beat each up without retcons and summer crossovers.