After some “side quests,” so to speak, Wonder Woman is back on track with Tom King and Daniel Sampere’s ongoing epic. Wonder Woman #23 aims to begin to explain the mouse people in a cliffhanger a few issues ago, and what we find there is deeply disturbing. In an almost wordless issue, we see Wonder Woman put what’s right before doing what she’s told to do.
Wonder Woman#23 opens on a digital mouse clock that reads “Mouseman know,” and then flips to “Mouseman knows.” The alarm screetches “Mouseman knows.” A child clicks it off saying “Mice have ears…mice have ears…” which is a bit disturbing.
We then cut to Wonder Woman in the watchtower interacting with Stephanie, aka Batgirl. It’s a nice moment unrelated to the story, reminding us that Wonder Woman is truly loved and kind of a celebrity amongst heroes. Juxtaposed with this scene is a meeting with Mr. Terrific, which reveals he’s forbidding her from helping out someone inside the “Mouseman knows” area.
At face value, there isn’t a lot to this issue. We follow a young girl going about her day in the mouse area, where everyone can only say “mouse man knows” and “Mice have ears.” There’s a bizarreness to everyone speaking only a few words, as if they are prisoners who can’t speak and thus can’t fight back.
What a strange world.
Credit: DC Comics
These scenes are driven by Sampere’s art, which does the heavy lifting in regard to what they are actually saying and feeling. They may be saying two lines over and over, but between their facial expressions, actions, and well-placed question marks and exclamation marks, the reader must ascertain what is being said. It makes for an interesting interpretation, driven by art, something we could only get in comics.
While it’s an interesting experiment, these scenes run on too long. The cliffhanger finally gets us somewhere, but it will try your patience that the gimmick goes on for so long.
Intercut with these scenes are meetings Wonder Woman takes with Mr. Terrific, Superman, and Batman. There’s a great moment between Batman and Wonder Woman that harkens back to the last two-issue arc, but again, there’s a lot of absence of progression and dialogue. It’s a calmer subplot with the mouse area feeling overly drawn out.
Tom King and Daniel Sampere take a big swing with Wonder Woman #23, delivering a visually driven and conceptually unsettling chapter that highlights the unique strengths of comic storytelling. While the issue offers powerful moments and rich atmosphere, its slow pacing and prolonged gimmick may leave some readers eager for more movement in the plot.
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