These get more complicated for our amazing leads.
Creative Staff:
Story: Andy Mangels
Art: Judit Tondora
Colors: Roland Pilcz
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski, Lois Buhalis
What They Say:
Bullets & Bracelets & Bionics! The dream team that no one thought was even possible is now reeling after the events of the debut issue! Diana Prince (aka Wonder Woman) and Jaime Sommers (The Bionic Woman) must join forces to find out who laid waste at the IADC headquarters, without the help of a powerful ally. Meanwhile, the evil cabal CASTRA continues its evil plans, and not one, not two, but three familiar villains are revealed! But while Wonder Woman and the Bionic Woman engage in a battle at sea, a jailbreak in Washington, D.C. leads to another shocking returnee…with a very deadly agenda!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The opening installment of this six-part miniseries was an interesting experience with the way it took me back to things I was familiar with but lost touch with decades ago. Though I’ve been reading and reviewing Wonder Woman comics for several years now there’s a definite difference in what those have been like and the Wonder Woman ‘77 series. And while I avoided the recent attempted reboot of the Bionic Woman TV show, I do have some very vague memories of the original. That makes getting into the books a touch awkward but it’s worked mostly because Mangels has ensured that each character is accessible enough without having seen those shows so you can enjoy the story.
With the death of Director Atkinson the last time around, this issue focuses on the fallout from that a bit, though mostly with the service and his background with family and friends. It’s a nice piece (presumably) for fans of the Bionic Woman character and it provides for a way to bring different people together in a social format so we know them more, such as Trevor and Oscar. What I do like that we get from this is that it has Jaime confronting Wonder Woman about the truth of who she is since playing the game is not going to work for the two of them. It’s not a hard confrontation and Wonder Woman certainly has her reasons, but Jaime handles it all well and makes it clear that she’s going to help support her in what they need to do to protect her cover, which in turn strengthens the bond between the two women going forward in a good way.
A lot of this book is focused on the action as we get the leads heading to the ship where the experimental missiles that Castra has made off with are and it’s a fun piece, especially as we get Diana’s transformation with the swimsuit version of her outfit. It’s also fun just to see how Jaime handles dealing with bigger than usual events like this, such as jumping out of the invisible jet. The book also starts to dig into the people behind the scenes, revealing the mystery woman that we saw before and her connection across both franchises that’s showcasing a long desired revenge plan coming to fruition. These are fun elements that are definitely geared more towards longtime fans (they don’t resonate hugely with me) but it works well enough that you can fill in the blanks and have fun with it, remembering that the real attraction are the title characters.
In Summary:
This series is moving along at a good clip but is spending some decent quality time with the characters to let them breathe a bit, giving us a chance to get to know them. It definitely works out well in making it fun and engaging and I was glad to see that Mangels eased up on the misogyny a bit that was simply prevalent and true at the time. Tondora has another solid issue, this time with color work by Pilcz that gives it a slightly different feeling, but still captures the appeal of the designs, costumes, and the settings themselves. It’s definitely a fun book and it’s drawing on a whole lot of different elements to bring together the larger story that’s being told across the six issues.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: January 25th, 2017
MSRP: $3.99
