It’s a smart creature that knows to destroy the spaceship first.
Creative Staff:
Story: Alex de Campi
Art: Neil Googe
What They Say:
The atmosphere of Venus is hostile to human (and Amazon) life, but the giant kaiju attacking the space station are even more alarming. How will Wonder Woman handle this new threat? “Venus Rising” part 2 of 2.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With a couple of weeks between issues that had me fearing that the series had been canceled midstream, Sensation Comics returns with its first issue of the year and brings us the second half of the very fun storyline from Alex de Campi and Neil Googe. The first installment as a real treat with it going with a science fiction route off-world with an actual science angle while also giving us a Wonder Woman that is very much aware of her role in the world and the cultural respect angle that she can work with at times when dealing with different nations. There was a lot of odd things that were coming from comic readers in general about it, but for me I found it to be a treat and a new way at looking at the character and their adaptability that keeps me interested in comics.
Having things go wrong with their arrival at Venus was not a surprise, though I did like that it went for a kind of goofy giant aliens living in the mists of the planet that couldn’t be seen angle. We get the first one here destroying things, which has Diana out there trying to do some damage control and push back to save everyone, but we see how badly it goes simply because the creature isn’t intent on destroying the space station but rather spaceship itself so that nobody can leave. We get some decent heroics along the way and some real panic as well as a number of people die along the way, leaving the survivors to figure out how to get back home considering how bad off things really do end up. Even Diana’s a bit uncertain, having lost the Mother Box on the spaceship itself.
But the story takes an even weirder turn, almost in a kind of classic 60’s science fiction comic kind of way, as we get a second creature attacking the place. But some actual observation has Diana figuring out what’s really going on and soothing the savage beast while telling him that he can’t do what he’s doing, even if it was right for him to go through this process. I’ll admit I did a double take and reread it all as it played out, and I do like it in a sense, but some of what we get is just a struggle to work within the confines of the shortness of the story, seeing Egon wanting to become one of the creatures while everyone else just wants to go home. It’s a giant black hole mystery of events that we find on Venus and no real exploration of what happened goes on here. It’s fun and quirky though, which has its own appeal with a self-contained arc like this.
In Summary:
While the two parter started out stronger in the first issue and feels a bit underwhelming with the trick of it all here, there’s still plenty to like. Neil Googe brings the dynamic together well, even with diana in a hard to distinguish space suit, and we get some good quirky things along the way with some fun creature designs. There’s more than enough material here for this to be spread out over double the length and it could be a really good Aliens style take on things, but the simple approach also works, even if it is a bit underwhelming. Diana in space is something that we don’t get in this context too much, as it tends to be more like the Apokalips story we had previously, so this was a fun and welcome change of pace overall.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: January 13th, 2015
MSRP: $0.99
