Diana versus Ares – Fight!
Creative Staff:
Story: Josh Elder
Art: Jamal Igle, Juan Castro
What They Say:
Ares is confident that Wonder Woman will fail-even if by some miracle she defeats him in battle, the Itari people will never make peace amongst themselves. But Diana’s convinced that both battles can be won! “Vendetta” part 3 of 3.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
This Sensation Comics storyline comes to a close with this third installment as it deals with both the events going on in this small nation and that of the larger battle that Diana and Ares continue to have. The first two installments brought us plenty of basics for the nation, what goes on there and why there’s trouble – in the most basic of senses that keeps one side from feeling more worthy than the other – and Diana’s own connection to it, which helped to personalize it a bit. Having her still trying to bring peace to this war torn place makes a lot of sense considering her overall commitment, and being involved in the peace process with her commentary on what war really is towards the end helps to reinforce her as a larger ambassador for world good.
Bringing Ares into the picture is what helped salvage the actual story here because it gave the atrocities here a physical form, though there’s that aspect of playing off all of them as being due to Ares influence. But in reality, Ares is simply drawn to and reinforces what people do, so with both sides craving vengeance here and the farthest thing from peace, it’s like it’s calling to him in a huge way. And his presence simply helps to reinforce the sides in their feelings, ramping it up a few extra notches and making it all the more desperate in a sense. He has some choice lines here about how there can be no true victory over war, and that the people desire and crave this fight, which puts him squarely in his position without any kind of mealy mouthed aspect where you could say he might have a sliver of good in him. And I welcome that, because while nuanced villains are engaging, ones like Ares almost need to be totally true to their cause.
The fight between him and Diana essentially sprawls over the entire book, though there’s not a lot of really juicy sequences to it, and some of Igle’s artwork – notably with her faces – just feels somewhat malformed. The initial fight is one that has Ares gaining the upper hand, as to be expected, and it’s amusing seeing the Dragonborn claw her down, only to have Steve show up and drop missiles on them because he knows she should be able to survive that. There’s also an amusing World War Z reference that gets thrown in later. The end fight is one that has some decent moments, but it doesn’t feel like it has the right weight to work with what Diana does. but even though this is a three issue arc, it would be a single issue in “old” books I used to read, so I didn’t have much expectation of real depth to it.
In Summary:
The closing of this arc is largely welcome for me as it was one that just didn’t do much and felt like it didn’t establish anything unique or strong about Diana’s character or motivations. There are some nice elements to it, but it could have focused in larger and more interesting ways by dealing with them on their own rather than as a whole story being blended together. Though the appeal of Sensation Comics for me is to allow more creative voices to provide unique takes on the character, I do enjoy the more traditional ones and this is certainly more traditional as I can imagine it being done from my 80’s reading days of Wonder Woman books. But there’s nothing really memorable here in the end unfortunately.
Grade: B-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: May 21st, 2015
MSRP: $0.99
