Wonder Girl #1 – Review

By: JT Krul (writer), Adriana Melo (artist), Mariah Benes (inker)

The Story: Cassie visits her mother, who disapproves of her being a superhero. The conference gets attacked. Wonder Girl leaps into action.

What’s Good: Melo and Benes did a good job on the art. Cassie looks like a perfect princess at all times (an action princess), if mildly cartoony. The poses are suitably dynamic and express the story and the mood. The layouts were competent, but really didn’t push the envelope of innovation, serving instead a lot of stacked rectangles. A few exceptions showed why Melo could have taken more artistic risks, like the earthquake, where layout really contributed to the visualizing of the story, and page 12, where the panel edges were all converging diagonals and added dynamism.

What’s Not so Good: I went out of my way to buy this issue because JT Krul was writing it. I was super impressed with his solo character work on a run of stand-alone Titans books last year. I thought I would get more of the same. Unfortunately, I didn’t. This book was pretty disappointing in the story department. Cassie’ mom disapproves of Cassie flying and being super-strong. Pardon? Wasn’t the mom the one who made it with that old lech Zeus, thereby giving Cass her demi-godhood? Even if Zeus tricked Cassie’s mom (I don’t know her origin), how is that Cassie’s fault? Completely unbelievable behavior on the mom’s part, which smacks of writer’s convenience rather than real character work. And worse than fake conflict, we also had overly coincidental conflict. While Cassie is visiting her mom (which she rarely does), the museum where her mother is working is attacked by a supervillain Cassie knows. And there’s another girl superhero there (uber-lame…I’m not even going to put her lame name in the review….), who just happened to meet Cassie moment before, in their secret identities. While I understand why Krul wanted to show the other girl’s loving parents for thematic contrast, the saccharine sweetness hurt my teeth. And it was an awful lot of coincidence to swallow all at once. Waiter, could I get a glass of water with this lazy story please?

Conclusion: I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was hoping for more. Krul has given us so much in the past, but this one felt phoned-in, low-stakes and contrived. I see no reason for anyone to buy this issue, because even the reconciliation at the end didn’t seem to be that meaningful.

Grade: D

-DS Arsenault