Green Girls and Wonder Women

Well, there won’t be any new comics coming in this week here in Lubbock, but I’ve still got a lot of comics I can review from last week, so let’s hit a couple of them right now.

 

Wonder Woman #15

We start off with a glimpse of the distant past as Queen Hippolyta’s honor guard slowly lets their loyalty to her be replaced by demented and ultimately treasonous obsession with her. From there, we jump to the modern day, as Wonder Woman beats the snot out of Captain Nazi and then, touchingly, empathizes with the tortures he suffered as a child. From him, she learns that a bunch of neo-nazis are about to take over the mostly-deserted Paradise Island (though it looks like Hippolyta herself is doing some good old-fashioned nazi-stompage of her own). Diana wants to get to the island, but Athena has blocked off all access to the island, so she has to go ask members of Earth’s other pantheons for assistance in getting back home.

Verdict: Thumbs up. First, Terry Dodson’s artwork is just outstanding. Second, I actually enjoyed the scene with Captain Nazi — yeah, he gets thoroughly clobbered — as all nazis should be clobbered, of course — but when she forces him to confront the abuse he suffered as a child, and he starts just weeping and blubbering about it, and she feels sympathy for him — that’s getting something that’s been missing from Diana’s character for an awfully long time. The character seems to work best as a compassionate ass-kicker, despite all the contradictions involved. And the idea of Diana pledging her allegiance to a pantheon other than the Olympians is looking like something that’ll be really, really interesting.

 

She-Hulk #24

Well, we meet a little more of She-Hulk’s new supporting cast. Besides Jazinda, there’s an arrogant cop, the folks at the trailer park where Jen and Jazinda live, the people at the bonding company where Jen works, the mysterious new terrorist who’s got a mad on for She-Hulk. There’s a bombing, and She-Hulk pulls people to safety.

Verdict: I gotta give it a thumbs down. I love seeing good character development and interaction, but right now, we don’t have a plot or a direction for the comic. Once we get a good overarching plot going, this book is gonna start shining, but for now, it’s motionless.