As the Wonder War enters its second chapter, Wonder Woman #32 gives just enough answers to last month’s issue to satisfy the reader but also twists them into asking themselves one hundred more questions. We’re finally treated to an older Trinity walking beside an older Wonder Woman, but what’s happening isn’t always clear, though the stakes and imagery suggests massive, Earth-shattering story beats and revelations. The problem is much of this is told through flashback, and you never really feel like you’re in on the story, just its aftermath.
What’s most tough about Tom King penned books, among, y’know, other things, is figuring out when things are happening. I can wrap my head around a past, a present, and a future, that’s fine. But there are layers to each of those, and part of the fun (and frustration) is figuring out when each of those is happening.
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Wonder Woman #32 simultaneously takes place in the past and the future, where we see things that haven’t happened yet, but have been heavily implied, and it feels like we’re also seeing things things that may not happen, but need to happen for certain premises to really click together. Hell, it feels like this entire story may not happen, or may never even click.
There’s something endlessly frustrating about that. However, there’s also something beautiful about it too. There’s a density to this book that rewards as much as it confounds, but in every page you feel the ambition that’s being poured into it. The book reeks of that kind of deconstructed storytelling really only happens in comics and 90’s semi-indie movies.
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Part of that frustration stems from the atypical delivery of what should be pulse-pounding, borderline “gotcha” reveals. They just don’t happen in this book. Finding out who the Matriarch’s father is should feel like a bigger deal, something with more heft to it. It’s so casually mentioned here that you almost forget it’s even brought up.
The framing device of the story is an interview that Lyssa, is giving from the White House, where she sits as the ruler of the ‘free’ world. She is perfectly picturesque, with just the right levels of confidence, apprehension, and humility you expect from a superstar dominating a global tour. This interview is intercut with images of her ruthless ambition to conquer the world, Wonder Woman and Trinity fighting a world turned against them, imprisoned heroes—what turns out to be the real nuts and bolts of the story.
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The story is better than the execution. Last month I appreciated the brave new world the story was taking place in, but besides a narrator with the benefit of recounting the story, it was a relatively straightforward issue. With a story that’s trying to establish a new major Wonder Woman villain at the expense of her existing rogues gallery, I wish it were a more straightforward tale. The nonlinear storytelling makes the book feel more like fragments of a story that are pulling a narrative in a general direction. Moments that are meant to elevate the Matriarch that are presented as showing, not telling feel expressly the opposite.
It’s a weirdly memetic approach that didn’t work for me. Retelling the story to a friend will probably have more impact than reading it and trying to piece together the timeline in your head.
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While I have no problem criticizing how the story is being told, I can’t criticize how it looks. Daniel Sampere’s art sings, especially in the talking head segments of the Matriarch’s interview. He does a great job of capturing the affectations of a performance that we know is B.S., but the public is eating up. We see several heroes and villains in great rendition that I hope we get to see more of (although there’s one I’m betting we won’t).
I greatly enjoyed last month’s Wonder Woman #31 because it felt like an exciting kickoff to an event that was bigger than a monthly ongoing. Wonder Woman #32 takes a necessary foot off the gas pedal to explain the messed up world we were shown, but it feels like a slight step backward. The storytelling is non-linear, dense, and not always effective, but I have to applaud its ambition, even when it didn’t strike me as the best way to tell what’s amounting to be a massive story. Even the segments that are showing you the scope feel more like telling because they’re told through quick (and gorgeous) flashbacks with no context to themselves, just as an “oh yeah and this happened” to the present. It’s fun, it’s interesting, I just wish it were being told in a slightly more straightforward fashion. The Matriarch is supposed to be this crazy big villain and while I’m totally willing to be surprised, it feels like her darkest deeds already happened.
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