Peace is the toughest course to follow.
Creative Staff:
Story: Karen Traviss
Art: Andres Guinaldo, Raul Fernandez
What They Say:
Nyx, primordial goddess of night, is indifferent to the fate of the mortals below when she decides to teach her daughter Strife a lesson. But Diana of Themyscira is determined to protect humanity from the consequences. “Nine Days” part 2 of 3.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
After a week first installment of this part series, I’ll easily admit that I wasn’t ready to come back to it right away and other events took over anyway. Revisiting it now a few weeks after its release and I still find this arc to be a difficult one. Not because of its politics, tone or the characters involved but rather just the presentation and approach about it. Everything comes across as so stiff and somewhat disconnected in ways that’s hard to pin down. It simply feels distant and aloof and with it coming on top of several other military/dictator kind of stories in the last several arcs and single issue installments, it paints the series as being in a rut.
With this installment, Diana’s doing her best to try and figure out a path forward for the two countries considering what’s at stake. With both of them mirror images of each other in so many ways with so many similarities, there’s little chance of really getting through to them easily. Her time making her way through the area to where she’ll be meeting with them gives her a bit more of a taste of the way the people are, especially in that there’s a lot of anger and hope about sharing within what the oil discoveries will mean for the country. But they also know that wealth really doesn’t flow downward so it’s a tense and volatile situation for Diana to be stepping into. And she does do her best to try and play to the region and its people, avoiding her more colorful garb when dealing with them and being quite forward and direct.
Unfortunately, there’s other things in the mix that’s causing plenty of problems. While she believes Ares is involved in some way, she has to deal with Strife first. That’s complicated enough with the split aspect that we get with Eris, but it also turns curious and odd with the interaction Diana has with Mother Night. It fleshes out a bit of what she’s done to Strife to try and tone her down a bit amid the delicacies here, but Mother Night’s actions are things that are chaotic to be sure. And we get that with Strife playing both nations against each other so that they both distrust Diana. A little common enemy, perhaps? Even if so, it’s so awkwardly designed that none of these characters connect in the slightest.
In Summary:
While I can still get the gist of what’s being attempted here, it really falls flat in just about all ways. From artwork to dialogue and pacing, all of it kind of just hangs there without feeling like it knows how to come together or be compelling. Though there have been standalones and arcs that didn’t do much for me previously within Sensation Comics, this is the first where it feels like an actual chore to read.
Grade: D+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: July 16th, 2015
MSRP: $0.99
