Wonder Girl 2022 Annual #1 – Joelle Jones/Douglas Marques, Writers; Emi Lenox, Adriana Melo, Sweeney Boo, Ben Dewey, Artists; Jordie Bellaire, Colorist
Ray – 7/10
Ray: Wonder Girl has always been a weird series—air-dropping the character in from her debut in Future State where she became the new Wonder Woman, only for the series to only run for just over half a year of issues with significant delays. It was then followed up with a Trial of the Amazons mini where Yara sort of played second-fiddle to Cassie Sandsmark. And now original writer Joelle Jones returns for an oversized annual to tie up loose ends before whatever Yara’s next act is—but the problem is, what are those loose ends, exactly? The original series was trying to do so much that it barely gave Yara a supporting cast, and this annual is just as wildly ambitious, with four different artists all telling different stories though space and time. The best part of the issue is probably Emi Lenox’s opening focusing on the origin of Jerry the Pegasus—which turns out to be surprisingly tragic.
In the present day, Yara is enjoying a concert and reuniting with her old friend Joao—but he has a new girlfriend who seems overly clingy. At the same time, the Esquecida tribe comes under attack by mystical enemies—who have ties to an ancient enemy of the tribe, one who started out as one of them before a romantic rivalry turned her into a monster in more ways than one. As she shows up and disrupts Yara’s life, the comic turns into an explosive mystical action battle, although the flashback segments to the villain’s origin are stronger than her presence in the modern day. There are some genuinely nice moments towards the end of the issue, but Yara often feels like she’s taking a backstage in her own comic once again to the larger mythological elements. Unlike Jon Kent, Jo Mullein, or even Jace Fox, it never felt like Yara got to come into her own as the next generation of a DC hero.
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GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
