Never cross a goddess.
Creative Staff:
Story: Brian Buccellato
Art: Bruno Redondo, Juan Albarran
What They Say:
Robin, Flash, and Cyborg’s friendships are strained, while a new force is drafted in the war against Superman—the full might of the Amazon army.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
One of the fun things about this series is the way that it plays the snark so well, since the standalone aspect means that they can get away with it without causing too many ripple effects in other books. Here, after taking a pretty hard defeat from Montoya, Damian is training hard in order to get back where he needs to be and is pretty intense. That has Cyborg and Flash coming to offer some friendship to him in that he can talk to them about things that are bothering him. The banter between the three is spot on, especially since they do manage to kind of put Damian in his place in a couple of ways. Not that Damian doesn’t get a shot or two in himself, but they’ve taken so much banter over their careers that it’s easy to process it.
Where most of this book wants to delve into things is with the arrival of Amazonian army, which is now looking to evict Superman from Earth. After the recent events that Superman has faced, he’s thankfully looking for a peaceful way to resolve all of this, asking to meet with Zeus and discuss it, but he’s basically going up against repurposed fanatics in a sense. While the Amazons are strong in many ways, they’re also adherent to the whims of the gods, and the gods are not to be trifled with – even in the face of Superman and his allies. There’s also some thorny moments with Diana trying to dissuade them herself, looking to talk to her mother about it, but it becomes clear quickly that Diana has no real options here either.
A lot of this is because of the minor flashback we get, in which we see Hera going to Hippolyta to have her raise the army and send them to their task. It’s interesting to see how quickly compliant she is towards Hera, knowing that their true mission is in service of the gods, but she has to question things at least a bit when it’s revealed what the target is, since she knows Diana is aligned with “the regime.” What this harkens back to is the year three segment where Hera helped in waking up Diana, and now Hippolyta owes her, and is being called to task for it. Even worse, whens he refuses to raise the army to go against her daughter, citing that it’s Zeus’ own daughter as well, that sets off the infidelity rage meter on Hera to the max, leaving the remains of a once powerful queen in its wake.
In Summary:
The book sets the stage for the fight to come, but it has that interesting little bit at the end with the arrival of Batman and his crew and you can’t be completely sure which side he’s going to align with. Pragmatic he may be, but there are some sizable forces at work here. I liked the exploration of events with Hera and Hippolyta, and seeing the way both Superman and Diana try to find ways to ease the tension before it all gets a lot worse, only to end up on the bad end of the wrath of the gods. Add in the absolutely wonderfully fun material at the start with Damian and the others and it’s another very fun read that ups the body count only a little. So far…
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: June 9th, 2015
MSRP: $0.99
