Starting in the middle makes it hard

I didn’t realize I read the second in this series until I started writing this review. I might be.. dim.

I picked this up at the library to share with my son, because I have been consciously trying to give him more female superhero characters to read about, and those are a little thin on the ground. I last really knew about Wonder Woman from the 1980s cartoon, but did know that the invisible jet is a thing of the past. It was interesting to have such a female-centred narrative, no romance alluded to at all. It most certainly would pass the Bechdel test. Although Diana’s costume is skin tight, at least she is wearing pants and she actually looks strong and fierce throughout her battle scenes.

This book is a bit complicated, and seemed to start in the middle of a larger story (OF COURSE, DUH). Diana is left beaten and isolated, having lost all her friends and family being hunted by what seem to be former allies. There are some inter-dimension travelling facilitated by Dr. Psycho, leading Diana to learn about the nature of destiny and how she has unknowingly functioned almost as a motif over the centuries. Motif might not be quite the right word, but I am struggling to come up with something else, and the idea reminds me of themes about the nature of story – maybe like Neil Gaiman, The Unwritten, or something similar. Story unifies people, Diana has existed in one form or another over the years and dimensions as a symbol of hope, part of the fabric of existence. It seems a complex subject to explore in a superhero novel, and I appreciate the effort.

All this being said, did I like the book? It is hard for me to say, now knowing I have missed the first half of the series, which colours how I understood the story. The art (Don Kramer and Eduardo Panisca) is ok – many of the female characters have virtually identical faces, which is a sensitivity of mine since the Frozen outrage. The story itself is ambitious, which is something I appreciate, as I am usually not a huge fan of superhero graphic novels in general. I would like to read more, which is a good sign, but I understand from the interwebs that this was the end of this particular run and Wonder Woman was swept up into a different series. It was certainly enough to get me excited about the movie and also Straczynki’s Netflix series Sense8, so I am going to chalk this one up as a win.