Creative Staff:
Story: Gail Simone
Art: Ethan Van Sciver
What They Say:
Gothamazon part 1 of 2! Things are dark in Gotham, and Oracle needs help from Paradise Island. Wonder Woman heeds the call, but things don’t go as expected!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
While there’s a lot of variety to the slate of digital first books out there, one of the things that they feel like to me in terms of overall tone is that they’re supposed to be fun. We do get our serious books, but a number of what I get from the DC Comics side is that it’s supposed to harken back to a little bit of a simpler approach to story and art while still doing it well and making it enjoyable to read. So when I found out about Sensation Comics and that it was kicking off with a Gail Simone story about Wonder Woman with Ethan Van Sciver handling the art chores, I was definitely interested. And it’s very easy to be interested, though the caveat is there that you do get what you pay for when it’s a buck an issue. And that’s mostly just layout/formatting, which still feels weird with the panel approach per page.
With a series like this, I’m not trying to figure out continuity, placement in the scheme of things or anything else. What I’m getting is that things have gone bad in Gotham as Batman has been taken down after the villains of the city finally worked together for a bit to get it accomplished. That’s lead to some chaos and we see how Barbara Gordon as Oracle is trying to salvage something from it all so that Gotham doesn’t go down in flames. She knows she needs help and that means reaching out to some other heroes. Her choices are a bit limited since she’s taking the style of the city into consideration here. Calling Flash too kindhearted fits and Green Lantern certainly has a different kind of approach to things than Batman would. And Superman would clash with the citizens themselves, making him a no go just in style and approach.
That leaves just Wonder Woman, which she’s not exactly keen on since she really represents a very brunt and straightforward approach to things. But it’s what Oracle feels is right for the moment since the chaos is getting so large and sprawling across the city. The fun comes in watching Diana stride through the city, almost like a conqueror at times, and taking out the villains with relative ease since she doesn’t put up with their kind of mindgame crap. There’s an appeal to that, especially as she wonders why this is so hard for Bruce to deal with as she seems like she’s cleaning it up quickly, but there are minor twists and turns along the way in dealing with Mister Freeze and Two-Face, though it’s amusing to see Joker basically get out of the way for the moment since he knows his style won’t work here.
In Summary:
The style of this book works more towards action and fight scenes and that serves it well as we get the villains doing their thing, including some fun manipulation of Man-Bat by the Joker, but a lot of it is also Diana getting up close and personal with most of them as she thrashes them about. There’s not a lot of depth here, but it’s the kind of fun rock ‘em sock ‘em stuff that lets you just glide through it and enjoy the experience. Diana’s seriousness works well, the variety of villains is spot on and we get a fun cliffhanger piece that leaves you wanting to see where it’s going to go since it’s just a two part story. Simone handles all the scripting and dialogue well and she’s paired well with Van Sciver as he has the dynamic down right, even if I’m not a convert to this style of widescreen layouts for the pages. That just makes it feel like it’s going by quicker than it should, but it does work for the approach of the story and its action focus.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics
Release Date: August 13th, 2014
MSRP: $0.99
