Wonder Woman #35 – Stephanie Williams, Writer; Clayton Henry, Artist; Pedro Estouco, Colorist
Ray – 9/10
Ray: Stephanie Williams has been backing Tom King up on this run for a while now between arcs, leading many to suspect she’s teeing up to take over once his main arc is done. I’d be pretty happy with that, given how long she’s been helping to steer the story of the Amazons. But while her previous two-parter was an interlude focusing on Strife trying to turn the Wonder Girls against each other as they pulled babysitting duty with Lizzie, this one is set right in the middle of the Wonder War – namely, right after the devastating end of the first arc. After defeating the Matriarch, a sacrifice was neede to open the gate to the underworld – and Diana didn’t hesitate, turning the sword on herself in an act of self-sacrifice. That just leaves a grieving Trinity and a returned-to-life Steve Trevor, having just been reunited, to take the long ride on a slow ferry together and try to process the loss they’ve suffered.
Now, we know Diana isn’t going to stay dead long-term, of course. But the test of a good writer is that they can take a status quo we know won’t stick and weave some genuine emotion out of it anyway. As they struggle to hold it together, Steve tries to bond with his daughter by telling her the story of the day he arrived at Themyscira, with a lot more context of how Diana was already striving to make it to man’s world and explore long before he crash-landed. It gives a lot of context to her decision to enter the tournament against her mother’s wishes – and it also explores Hippolyta’s own visit to the outside world, which we just saw explored in JSA as she was the first Wonder Woman, mostly keeping to the shadows. The relationship between the two is always pretty interesting, and I think Williams does a really good job of expanding it and making this flashback-heavy story feel new.
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