The law is always a few steps behind…
Creative Staff:
Story: Adam Beechen
Art: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, Kevin Nowlan
What They Say:
“Our Little Dance” part 1 of 2! When the well-meaning members of Debbi Domaine’s family argue that Cheetah needs rehabilitation more than incarceration, Wonder Woman is dragged into court!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Sensation Comics moves towards something a bit more interesting in the first part of this two part storyline, as it begins to explore a bit more of the reality of a world with superheroes – and villains – in it. Contextually, it’s an interesting thing to watch amid the chaos in the real world these days and the kinds of checks and balances there are, which often don’t work. The story comes from writer Adam Beechen and artist Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, and the pair work well together here, particularly since a lot of it is all court based stuff and there’s a lot of dialogue and framing shots to try and make it exciting. Of course, it helps if you can hear certain TV show music cues in your head while reading it.
The premise is straightforward enough where Wonder Woman is testifying in court about where Cheetah, aka Debbi Domaine, should be placed after being incarcerated and going through the trial system for an attack she committed the year prior at the Air and Space Museum in DC. Her elder sister wants her to get the help she needs, since she believes Debbi’s story that she’s possessed by demons, and is insistent not on incarceration in Iron Heights, but rather a different facility so she can get the mental clinical help that she needs. Considering the way the two facilities operate, it makes sense. But Wonder Woman, and the lawyer arguing against the Domaine family, are intent on keeping her in Iron Heights because of her history of escapes and the sheer amount of collateral damage caused to other people over the years.
While it goes about as you’d expect, there’s a lot of simple but decent done legal aspects at play here, some solid emotional drama, and Cheetah shown as a Hannibal Lecter type. What helps to drive the emotional context home is the lawyer, Latimer, who lost his sister years ago to a Scarecrow attack and is looking for ways to deal with this since criminal keep escaping. It’s a joke to comic book readers, but contextually it’s the kind of problem that you know would have taken a far more serious turn in this world if treated realistically. Latimer’s story is one that works well to explore his motivation, and we get Cheetah’s sister doing her best as well to humanize that side of it from the smaller window she has. Of course, we know the reality of how it’s going to play out.
In Summary:
I’m generally a fan of books that try to deal with some of the ramifications of what the real world results of various actions that exist in comics would be like, but a two part story is only going to scratch the surface. In fact, It’s only going to really play the emotional issue. That’s not a bad thing, but it does limit the discourse that will be had about it. What we get are ages old positions that can be translated to other problems in the real world, so it’s easy to pick sides and run with it. Beechen does his best to provide both sides, to varying depths, and the end result is about as you’d expect for the first half. What will be curious is to see how it all ties up, especially since it’ll give Garcia-Lopez a chance to do a lot more action material than he gets to do here.
Grade: B-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: June 25th, 2015
MSRP: $0.99
