Wonder Woman #35 – Review

It’s been a long road, but we’ve finally come to the end of Azzarello’s remarkable run on this series. It hasn’t always been a smooth ride, nor a consistently exciting one, but it was definitely new and different and mostly well-done, and that counts for a lot in this business. I don’t know if history will look back on these 35+ issues and see greatness, but I’m pretty sure their importance will be crystal clear. Even so, you’re left with a handful of might-have-beens, some produced by this issue.

As insane as it might have been to make a long arc even longer, Azzarello probably could have used at least one more issue (or, better yet, a double-sized issue) to fully cover all his tracks. Instead, he winds up scraping over a few here, most notably the Amazons’ last stand against the First Born. Last we checked in, the course of battle looked fairly up in the air, so it’s a bit of a shock when Strife delivers the final update: “It appeared that the Amazons and Hephaestus’ combined legions were doing the crushing.” Sounds awesome—too bad we don’t get to see it.

Granted, Azzarello’s got his hands full wrapping up the mystery of Zeus’ disappearance, Athena’s notable absence, and Zeke’s importance, but the resolution is most bewildering. [Major spoiler alert!] So it turns out Zeke is Zeus, Zola is Athena, and Zeke is now the new king of Olympus. A whiplashing left turn to be sure, but one that has some sense to it. It’s true that Azzarello’s never conclusively established that Zola slept with and got knocked up by Zeus; I vaguely recall her listing a number of one-night-stands that could’ve been him without settling on one. And I suppose if Zeus would choose anybody to give birth to him, it’d be his favorite child in a poetic (albeit shudder-inducing) role reversal. Even his motivations for doing so are credible enough: “Even gods have regrets… Perhaps Zeus grew weary of the man he’d become and wanted a chance to be different.”

So execution, rather logic, is the problem with Azzarello’s narrative choices. It just seems overwhelming and a bit rushed for Athena to dump all this info on you and expect you to deal with it. But that’s exactly what she does. Before any real follow-up questions can be asked, Athena’s flown off, leaving Diana, Zola, Zeke, and all the rest of figure out what to do from now on.

If Azzarello seems to have shortchanged his own plot, at least he has left firm, clear ground for his successors to sow upon. Diana is not only more powerful than she’s ever been before (as evidenced by her going god-mode against the First Born), her values couldn’t be stated clearer: “Love requires compassion…nurturing…and, above all, submission… Submission is faith in the strength of others.” Yet she also reminds us that in addition to the kind of love that makes her offer her hand to the First Born even at the end, there’s the love that sends him plunging down Tartarus: “Tough love.” That seems to capture the essence of Wonder Woman pretty well, don’t you think?

Chiang’s art has been an integral part of this run, even if he wasn’t always the one on art duties. Just as Greg Capullo revolutionized the way a Batman title should look, Chiang did the same for Wonder Woman. Instead of settling to make it look like any other superhero series, Chiang pulled out every elegant and horror-infused stop, emphasizing Diana’s strength as much as her beauty, bringing wonder and mystery to everything she does. Wilson has been no less crucial in this work; his colors, as deep and rich as newly-dyed silk, refuses to mess with the saturated hues of his peers. It’s almost a misnomer to call his colors flat; their lack of glossiness makes them all the more absorbing.

– Minhquan Nguyen