The sickness continues to spread.
Creative Staff:
Story: Marguerite Bennett
Art: Marguerite Sauvage
Colors: Marguerite Sauvage
Letterer: Wes Abbott
What They Say:
Cassie and Donna’s friends and families are being displaced from their homes and forced into internment camps. To save them, can Wonder Woman fight against the same people she once fought alongside?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
While I had enjoyed getting back into the Bombshells world after far too long away from it for my tastes, the opening salvo of the United run didn’t light a fire under me like the original did at the start. I have the highest of faith in Marguerite Bennett to deliver a great story when all is said and done but the opening was a bit rough and uncertain in introducting the fundamentals. To make matters work in some ways was that as much as I enjoy Marguerite Sauvage’s artwork there was a lack of real definition of who is who thanks to the way everything came together, making it hard to really pin down some of the characters who weren’t even named for a bit. That combined with the concept for this run, which has a lot of potential, made for an awkward start.
And that carries over into the second installment here where it’s trying to do some character/information dump work and that just doesn’t have a good flow to it at all. With the rescue that we had previously we have Diana bringing everyone back to the enclave that’s been set up in the pacific northwest. There’s some interesting pieces here about the legend that is Wonder Woman and contrasting some of that with the reality, which is given to Donna Troy to bring about as she masterminded the plan to save those on the train by getting Diana’s help. The problem continues to be that nobody feels well introduced here and even Diana doesn’t feel like the Diana from the previous series in a lot of ways that I can’t quite pin down. She’s far more cautious and uncertain here and the facial expressions Sauvage gives her are rife with emotion that feels out of place.
A good portion of this installment is focused on the way that everyone come together after the event and is working to figure out what’s next for them. Nobody wants to be in the camps, obviously, but they also aren’t in the same position as the Jews that escaped from Germany and found a reprieve in Atlantis. The want to go back to their homes but are fearful about the way that their neighbors across America either protested locally or simply closed their shutters and ignored the world. There’s a weight to all of this but it isn’t earned yet because the characters themselves feel so new and without weight. We do get some action in this installment thanks to the secret way that Clayface snuck into the camp but it’s like something out of a horror movie in that you’re not sure what’s going on and it can carry things only so far by being surreal as Diana faces off against his other form first.
In Summary:
Bombshells is still a series that I’m excited to see what it’s going to do and how but this is proving to be a rough start to the series and the arc, making me wonder just how it must be for those coming in blind by not reading the other one. There are fun moments, scenes, and dialogue to be had here and it’s setting up so many other things that I have to hope that it all comes together well as an eight-part arc that this one is being billed as. Right now, however, it’s just kind of a weird mess that’s not clicking for me anywhere near as well as what preceded it.
Grade: C
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: September 1st, 2017
MSRP: $0.99