Not quite hades….
Creative Staff:
Story: Corrina Sara Bechko, Gabriel Hardman
Art: Gabriel Hardman
What They Say:
Wonder Woman has always trusted her mother, Queen Hippolyta. But recent events on Apokolips may force a wedge between them! “Dig for Fire” part 3 of 3.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
It’s definitely been interesting going through this particular interpretation of Diana as we’ve had a lot of dialogue heavy interpretations for a bit now whereas this one is more about the deed than anything else. I definitely like the interpretations we’ve had for the most part, but here it’s all about getting down to business, which makes sense since she’s on an incredibly dangerous world with no friends. Seeing her free her Amazon sisters in the previous issue and make their escape worked well, particularly because of the minimalist dialogue approach and the focus on the very rough artwork that makes this world feel even more oppressive than it usually does. The combination has been better than I expected based on the first installment.
Now that they’re on the run, we see the escape move about as you’d expect with some good moments showing Amazon ingenuity and quick response in such a situation and it’s driven by Diana’s intent to see her sisters kept free and brought back home. It’s got some good layouts to it and the action flows well as they secure themselves more time, but time is the last thing that Diana really needed in the end. When they end up back with the down below scavengers from before, the other two discover the Lexcorp device and reveal to Diana that it’s a world destroying weapon that they were given by the company in order to end Apokalips. While it wasn’t the Amazon’s original mission, they took it on as a suicide job to save Earth in the end, since they know that a war will come with Darkseid and their chances are slim.
Suffice to say, it doesn’t go over well with Diana, even more so when the other two manage to activate the device and send it into the deepest pit nearby for it to do its job. What I like about how this unfolds is the way Diana does what so few do in standing up to Darkseid and laying out what the problem is and the deal she wants to fix it while Darkseid himself is pragmatic, but not trusting, and sets things in motion since both courses favor him in the end as he’s pretty much indestructible. Part of me just wishes he’d set up shop on another world someday and begin anew. The book does some good stuff here as it closes it out and we see Diana’s risky mission, which again plays more to the actions of the character than the dialogue, though part of me wishes we had an epilogue or time spent with her explaining to Hippolyta what happened and how she decides to explain it.
In Summary:
Bechko and Hardman put together a pretty good arc here overall across the three chapters and it definitely reads better in full like that rather than over the three weeks. The scripting and plotting is solid and I like the minimalist approach for a decent change here with the dialogue, which complements Hardman’s art style that really does tell the story in a pretty good way. There’s a good rough and raw design to it that gives it a lot of appeal as it definitely feels like they’re all in the deep grime and churn of a world like Apokalips, something Jordan Boyd’s color style brings out well here. I won’t say this is my favorite interpretation of Diana, but it’s a nice change from what the last few issues have been and I’d love to see this team take another spin at the character sometime to see what else they can bring out about her.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: December 4th, 2014
MSRP: $0.99
