“The Bodyguard”
Creative Staff:
Story: Andrea Shea
Art: Isaac Goodhart
Colors: Cris Peter
Letterer: Becca Carey
What They Say:
A teenage girl puts Wonder Woman’s saintly patience to the test as they’re chased throughout New England by assassins.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With a good healthy run of Wonder Woman: Agent of Peace lately, it’s been fun to get into some very diverse stories from a range of creators. This installment brings Andrea Shea onto the writing duties and they capture the right tone with this piece that’s definitely a lot of fun on different levels. And Shea is very well paired with Isaac Goodhart here – especially with the strong color deign from Cris Peter – to give us something that feels really vibrant and engaging while dealing with the teenage age set. The end result is a story that moves quickly but allows for a couple of breathers where we get to know the characters a bit more, which definitely helps.
The premise here introduces us to Effie, a young woman who is now under the protection of Wonder Woman. Diana is dealing with some bad dudes that are attacking Effie in her house, though Effie is more interested in a few candid pictures on her phone than anything else. As we discover, a hit has been put out on Effie because her father is a key member of ARGUS and that’s now put her into a dangerous spot. With her father being a good friend of Diana’s, she’s stepped in to help out and protect the young woman who is oblivious to the danger that she’s in as it’s played comically with the violence around her and how Effie just barely manages to survive it thanks to Diana’s quick thinking.
This gives us a kind of road trip thing going on with the two of them trying to stay ahead of the various bad guys. While there is an amusing twist to the whole thing, I just rather enjoyed how at first they stop at Diana’s Boston apartment and Effie starts digging into her love of romance novels and questioning her about Steve Trevor. She gets pretty into questioning their long distance relationship and all, which sets off the alarms about the core of the real story here itself, but it works well as Diana gets a bit defensive on it and tries to explain things out. Which isn’t easy when you’ve got a teenager that just wants validation for their own feelings. The book moves at a good pace and wraps up nicely but I really just liked the dynamic between the two during the quiet moments.
In Summary:
Wonder Woman: Agent of Peace shifts gears from the teenage boy story previous to this to a teenage girl problem. There are some common threads to a degree but what works here is that it has a chance to spend some quality downtime between our two leads. Shea delivers a solid and engaging story with enough humor to carry it along while Goodhart and Peter’s artwork and coloring brings it to life wonderfully. It’s a delight to watch as Effie goes through things here under Diana’s protection as some Bad Dudes are definitely after her. It’s a good and enjoyable standalone tale.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology and Kindle
Release Date: November 18th, 2020
MSRP: $0.99
