WONDER WOMAN #34

Birds Of Paradise, Part One:  Malignant Isolation

September 2009

Written by Gail Simone

Pencils by Aaron Lopresti

Inks by Matt Ryan

Cover by Aaron Lopresti and Bernard Chang

Synopsis

After renouncing all connection to her Gods and her people, Diana (aka Wonder Woman) returns to her home in Washington DC and her job at the department of Metahuman Affairs.  There, T. O. Morrow tells Diana that Genocide is still alive.  The body is in Tokyo, where Dr. Psycho is using a metahuman fight arena as cover while he repairs Genocide’s body.  Diana asks Dinah Lance (aka black Canary) for help to locate Dr. Psycho.  In Themyscira, new leader Achilles tells the Amazons to relinquish their weapons so they can retire in peace.  Afterwards, Achilles asks Alkyone if she would be his Queen.  In Japan, Dinah and Diana go undercover as contestants at the arena.  In the fight, Diana displays new powers that she doesn’t know where they came from.  However, they are able to win the fight.  Watching, the Goddess of Violence declares she wants to fight Diana to the death because she killed her father.

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

Overall, this was a decent issue.  I enjoyed the scenes between Diana and Dinah and the fight was a nice blend of action and humor.  It is a nice change of pace in regards to the tone and style and I think a good choice for the follow-up to the “Rise Of the Olympian”.  That story was serious and important, so to have a little bit of humor gives the reader a good chance to catch their breath and wait for the next big story to come around the bend.  Black Canary seems a little too chipper to me, but in contrast the dour, morose Wonder Woman (who acts that way based on story elements), the difference in tone between the two woman works very well.  Beyond being humorous, the scenes also have a very serious undercurrent as we get a strong indication of what Zeus means to the Amazons and how difficult it was for Diana to renounce him. 

This issue also reveals that T. O. Morrow is Jewish and from Warsaw, Poland and presumably lived there right around the time of World War II (and would be quite old at this point).  Is this a retcon or has this always been part of his character?  If it is a retcon, I am not buying it.  It seems to convenient for Morrow to suddenly have the right background to dislike a creation called Genocide.  If fits too nicely within the story to make it seem a natural extension of the character.  Of course that may be the point and Morrow may be mis-leading Diana (she does question whether she can trust him).  So, either Simone subtly set up betrayal down the road or she went for too much convenience to convincingly portray Morrow’s sudden guilt at what he created. 

If Diana renounced her claim to the Greek Gods and Themyscira and the God that she had pledged herself to was killed, how does Diana still have her powers?  I thought her powers were granted to her by the Gods when she won the contests.  After all, none of the other Amazons have the same abilities.  It is an interesting question, especially after reading the scene where she displays the power of lighting (or whatever it might’ve been).  Are her powers glitching because of her deity problem?  Personally, I would’ve thought she would lose her powers, but if what happened in this issue is what I think it is, then at least Simone is aware of the situation. 

Speaking of Simone, I’ve got to wonder about her right now.  In the other book she is writing, the Secret Six, we have a Wonder Woman appearance and, of course we have Black Canary, who was one of the leads from a previous book she wrote, Birds Of Prey.  While I understand Simone is comfortable writing these characters, it also shows a little bit of laziness that she can’t create newer characters to populate each book. 

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