This review contains spoilers.
Amanda Conner, Jimmy Palmiotti, and Chad Hardin offer a relatively sterile setup to an all new Wonder Woman story in this simple first issue pulled from Walmart’s new Justice League Giant series bolstered only by snappy colors from Alex Sinclair and the promise of something more to come.
What’s it about?
DC’s solicit reads:
Wildfires are sweeping across the mountains of Montana, and it’s up to the Amazon Princess to save the day!
And, that’s kind of all that happens. We’re introduced in quick succession to where Princess Diana’s relationship is at with Steve Trevor, covering her concerns around his test flight of some top-secret military planes, and there’s some painfully unfunny and stiff dialogue between Etta Candy and the two. Then, we get down to the action of rescuing some woefully underdeveloped firefighters from a towering inferno of a forest fire before Diana returns home to find Steve has disappeared where the issue abruptly ends in a kind of messy, un-compelling cliffhanger.
It’s a weak narrative effort, one that leans into portraying Wonder Woman as the hero we all know she is without much other substance as she saves some trapped folks without trouble or hindrance in the slightest. The simplicity is almost refreshing, I’ll admit, especially in a time when hero stories have gotten overly convoluted, but the issue’s limited page count doesn’t do it any favors as much of the time spent here seems like stalling for the cliffhanger which is ultimately disappointing in its introduction anyways.
The art fares slightly better, but only slightly. The most immediately striking misstep is that almost everyone, firefighters in particular, look scared rather than surprised to see our warrior princess when she makes her appearance. Still, Hardin’s linework is fittingly simple and clean, and the layouts are smart and really highlight Wonder Woman’s physique. Sinclair’s colorwork hones that same kind of clean, bright, immaculate energy that makes this issue, and Wonder Woman herself by extension, feel heroic and light where the narrative fails to do so.
In the end, this isn’t a total misfire but it does feel like a perfunctory setup issue that could be a lot better if it either leaned into its heroic aspects or ramped up the central mystery instead of something in the middle, trying to do much at once that ends up feeling like far too little.
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