The fight comes to Paradise Island!
Creative Staff:
Story: Andy Mangels
Art: Judit Tondora
Colors: Roland Pilcz
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski, Lois Buhalis
What They Say:
Bullets & Bracelets & Bionics! If it’s always darkest before the dawn, Wonder Woman and the Bionic Woman — along with some familiar faces — had better pray that the dawn comes soon. Because from where the story continues, things look awfully dire. The evil cabal of villains have sprung their trap, and have staged a monumental assault, and one major character is already badly hurt. Our heroines will soon find that nothing is unbreakable!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The penultimate chapter of this team-up series has arrived and it’s one that lends most of its focus on Jaime. The series has had a good balance so far with leaning toward both characters in a good manner but it also serves well to highlight them individually. Mangels has had a lot of fun with this series as we’ve seen so far, even if it’s not always worked for me, as it knows the mythology of it all very well and blends it in a pretty fun and engaging way. It also doesn’t hurt that Judit Tondora has been nailing it in terms of the visual design where it gets a strong bump from how Roland Pilcz brings it to life with the color work. It may not be lighting my world on fire but I can definitely appreciate it.
The fallout from the previous issue is what sets things in motion here with Jaime taking Diana back to Transformation Isle to hopefully be saved from the wound that she received. It’s fun to see Jaime figuring out how to fly the plane and willing it to go faster while also spending some quality time with the Amazons on this isle as they do their best to save her, first through traditional methods and then with the purple ray. The location that they left isn’t ignored, however, as Wonder Girl and Max are on the case in dealing with the evil queen there and they make some decent progress and work to nudge a subplot or two along the way. I’m far less invested in all of this, however, as the characters don’t mean much to me. But it does what it needs to in order to smooth these areas out.
Where the bulk of the issue focuses is on Paradise Island itself as we get the arrival of the Fembots and human soldiers to take over the island. The intent of killing most of the Amazons off and saving a few to learn how to mine the ore is no surprise and it makes for some pretty difficult fight sequences as the Amazons are capable but are fearing that they’ve either lost some of their skill over the years or mankind has progressed too far. Jaime ends up being pretty solidly instrumental at times in helping and comes up with the smart plan that will get the finale set up in a good way but it’s just fun to see her interacting with all of the Amazons and holding her own while being properly deferential. When she gets a little bit better gear to protect herself, amusingly knowing it wouldn’t be up to the dress code “back at the office” and all, she fits in well and you can easily imagine some fun adventures in the future with these two forces properly aligned and with what Jaime could learn here.
In Summary:
The series is getting ready to wrap up and while it is fairly predictable in a lot of ways it’s the execution and the trappings that make it work so well. Well, for fans of it. I can definitely appreciate it but I have no real love for either of these incarnations of the franchise even having grown up watching them. The pairing is solid and the story overall shows a great reverence and understanding of what has come before that has shifted well to expanded comic book form storytelling. Mangels continues to delight fans with the way all of this is coming together and his story and characterizations are very well served by Tondora and Pilcz’s artwork that captures it in a very special way.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: June 28th, 2017
MSRP: $3.99
