Superman/Wonder Woman #12 – Review

I think I’ve come to the end of my rope with Superman/Wonder Woman. Just to be clear, I didn’t come to this decision based solely on the mostly exhausting Doomed arc. I’ve been feeling my passion for this series ebb for a while before that, which is more than I can say for Clark and Diana, whose attraction to each other has been largely academic from the start. They’re kind of the perfect couple in all respects except reality.

Soule tries and tries, putting them into increasingly sensational scenarios, but always with sadly limited yields in actual feeling. Nothing can really top their end-of-days moment in #6, but they give it their best shot in their most high-profile PDA yet, a nice, juicy reunion lip-lock in the middle of a crowded stadium, above the knocked out body of Giganta. It’d be kind of sweet if it didn’t go against continuity and much of what we know about Clark and Diana.

The question I have is why, after shocking the world with his whole “Who Needs Superman” nonsense, Clark would then show up in public and in costume.* That’s just the thing: he wouldn’t. Same thing with why, after all the drama about having their relationship outed, he would parade it so brazenly. Again: he wouldn’t. That leads you to the conclusion that Soule really was just desperate to engage in some gushy romance, and didn’t care what he had to do to get there.

And then he undercuts the whole thing with a screwball bit involving the Kryptonian flower Clark gave her in #1, which apparently gets a nasty streak if not properly cared for. Their spat is almost as forced as their attraction, with Clark acting the jerk as they chase the plant around. After complaining about the trials he had to go through in the last few months, he makes the mistake of acting like his girlfriend is the final straw: “[Y]ou couldn’t remember to give a plant a little cooking oil every once in a while.”

Diana is rightfully appalled. “What?”

The whole argument turns out to be Strife’s trickery (mostly) anyway, once again removing any need to delve into any genuine personal connection between the two. Instead, the issue’s conflict arises from the comically extreme escalation of consequences from the escaped plant’s oil-guzzling, sending the world on the verge of war: “—Hostilities could commence at any moment—” “—Diplomatic efforts failed almost before they began—”

There’s also the distracting intrusion of Swamp Thing into the story, and Soule’s bizarrely unnatural depiction of him in the issue. This is a character Soule’s killing with in his own title, yet here, Alec sounds more like the inhuman monster of ages past than the everyman he is on Swamp Thing. As he watches the plant wrap itself around an oil platform, Alec muses, “A world without oil. A world where humans could not effect such drastic changes on the planet. A world brought back to balance. To nature. I am not certain that would be such a bad thing.”** Readers unfamiliar with the current incarnation of Swamp Thing may not care, but even they will notice how suddenly the story jumps from Alec just about to commune with the creature to an unearned sappy ending for the title couple.

Despite the combination of artists, the visuals are comparable to Tony Daniel’s work, perhaps a little less sharp, if anything. It’s a higher-end brand of DC’s house art, which means pretty and sparkling, with Morey’s always warm, bright, glossy colors, but not terribly ambitious, storytelling-wise. Herbert-Wong-Richards do add a bit of zip to the weak comedy in the issue, but that’s as far as they can elevate the script.

– Minhquan Nguyen