A forced peace.
Creative Staff:
Story: Karen Traviss
Art: Andres Guinaldo, Raul Fernandez
What They Say:
Diana has nine days to step between two warring facets of godhood and stave off a disaster for those caught in the crossfire. “Nine Days” part 3 of 3.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
After two issues of struggling with Sensation Comics, this Nine Days are comes to a close and it provides nothing in the end that feels really tangible. After getting an issue of setup that focused heavily on Strife and her two sides, some disembodied material with Mother Night/Nyx that didn’t feel like it was laid out for casual readers to enjoy and understand enough, and then a second installment of playing fruitless politics, the final act brings it to a close in traditional superhero form. Some clobbering. While Diana wants to be the ambassador of peace to bring change to the world, she had a good bit of her own home’s problems thrown at her before. And that sent everything else spiraling into action.
The initial part is all about the fight with Strife and Eris as it goes back and forth a bit with Mother Night providing some mild commentary. It’s not terribly engaging because Strife and Eris have been so poorly presented that even though we know they’re a part of what Diana’s heritage is, it feels like they’ve not been truly established in a way that makes sense. It’s decent enough seeing the action play out, but there’s no meaning to it. What it does do is to put Diana back in contact with Mother Night about why events played out as they did to create the border conflict when there were more peaceful ways to go about it. Mother Night is of course mysterious and chaotic, but she does provide an angle for Diana to work with.
And that takes us into the bland final act, where since she knows that these nations are valuable now that they have oil that the international allies are going to force them a peace, so they better do it themselves. Making the two leaders realize that America and her allies are basically gearing up for a military and then corporate invasion, they have to agree to a peace and work forward. It’s all so hamfisted – even if truthful in its most basic ways – that it just comes across as terrible propaganda rather than a meaningful look at the situation and its difficulties. The end result is a temporary peace, and a temporary restraint for Strife, that will last only so long until it all goes to hell again.
In Summary:
This was a hard and arduous arc to go through and it’s pretty much in my mind the worst of the Sensation Comics run so far. It’s certainly not going to knock me off of the series since there’s so many opportunities for creative teams out there, but I’m really hoping that the editors become more judicious about what stories are told here because this one on top of all the other similar ones recently is turning this into a one-note series.
Grade: D+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: July 23rd, 2015
MSRP: $0.99
