Creative Staff:
Story: Ivan Cohen
Art: Marcus To
What They Say:
“Taketh Away” part 1 of 2! Wonder Woman faces her greatest peril as the Gods’ gifts are withdrawn one by one. And since their first gift was life, how far will her unraveling go?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With some fun and simple stories so far, Sensation Comics opts to dip into faith and politics a bit with a new two part story from Ivan Cohen and Marcus To. Outside of some independent books, I largely try to avoid these stories in comics mostly because it’s done to boil things down to a few basic points with a nod to there being some shades of gray before moving on to something else without any real changes. Diana has always been a character where faith and religion can play into her stories because of her connection to the gods and all that it entails. The majority of books and stories tend to ignore it for the most part, or at least present it as a separate storyline all of its own without impacting the main world and view of her.
Here, following the events involving Diana taking down Circe in D.C., she ends up on a political talk show with that deals with a little of the fallout from that and the kinds of accusation that comes from certain politicians after they were turned into pigs. Bringing the political atmosphere into comics isn’t a surprise, but considering how destructive and scorching it can be, I’d rather do without it. Of course, we get the nod here to how those that are involved in such things, even the hosts, play both sides of the fence as the host grills her pretty well during the interview on her faith and the paganistic aspects of it that don’t play well to many in the nation. When the interview is over and the cameras are off, he flirts with her as best as he can and even asks her out. It’s the kind of mindset that’d destructive in its own right and frustrating for those that pay close attention to such things since its so full of hypocrisy.
Because of the way Diana has to downplay her faith in her gods, that starts to have an effect on her abilities as the story goes on. She gets involved in a number of things along the way that starts to show that she’s not quite the Wonder Woman she was. Her strength isn’t quite the same, her speed is a bit slower and one attack with a gunman hsa her actually being shot. This has her making her way to where she can return home to find out what’s going on, which has its own series of trials to overcome as well, and the revelation for her that makes it even clearer that something is going on as her beauty is gone as well. That part left me less than enamored with the story, more so than I already was, as I don’t recall in my readings years ago that her beauty was tied to her faith in her gods. And it doesn’t quite jive with some of what we saw in just the previous issue with the story of her past and how she worked to gain her bracers.
In Summary:
With the kind of light and fun approach that Sensation Comics has taken so far, this issue plays things a little more seriously while still trying to have a touch of that. Diana’s faith in her gods has never really been worn on her sleeve or anything, especially when dealing with the majority of her arcs and stories. When she has events involving the gods directly, it’s a different beast then and even still it’s never been a hugely big part of her. Focusing on it a bit more here, with her not denying them but downplaying them, puts her in a bad spot and it’s uncertain how much of it is just spiteful gods or her own psychological stage playing tricks on her. The book just leaves me feeling a little wary of it for this particular arc because of the tools it’s playing with, especially in comparison to the other ones so far.
Grade: C
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics
Release Date: September 11th, 2014
MSRP: $0.99
