“Fight Night”
Creative Staff:
Story: Cavan Scott
Art: Jose Luis, Jonas Trindade
Colors: Rex Lokus
Letterer: Becca Carey
What They Say:
Cage fights and mythical beasts. A minotaur is running amok in Washington DC. Can Wonder Woman calm the crazed creature and uncover the cruel reason that it’s so far from home? Who is torturing legendary monsters beneath the streets of the Capital and why have they set their sights on the Champion of Paradise Island?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Sometimes you just want to let Diana beat the crap out of things. Cavan Scott doesn’t quite get us there as there’s a real connection at play here but when you get a story called “Fight Night,” you are going to get some fighting. Scott puts together a pretty dense issue here with a lot of dialogue so it has a slower flow to it but it definitely works well. This largely works because Jose Luis and Jonas Trindade manage to pack it all into the pages in a way that keeps it moving and interest even at its most dense, which is not the easiest thing in the world to do. It has a pretty good look to it with our title character looking great. Trevor never has much consistency in my mind to begin with and he’d be impossible to place in my mind here if not knowing who he likely was to begin with.
The opening gives us something of a classic with a minotaur beast wrecking havoc across Washington DC and Steve Trevor does his best with ARGUS to try and keep him at bay. But their weapons aren’t doing much good, so it’s welcome when Wonder Woman shows up. While Steve was involved in the fight, he’s surprised by Diana’s apologizing to the creature and then essentially protecting it by taking it to the sewers with a hard smash. As it turns out, the creature is named Reemos and was kidnapped from his underground labyrinth home recently in order to fight within a series of cage matches.He had managed to bust his way out before being fully strapped in but upon seeing the sky and the lack of ceilings, some serious panic set in and he just went kind of wild.
Everything just goes from bad to worse here with this as it doesn’t take long for both Diana and Reemos to be “acquired” and put in cages, setting them up for the fight. It turns out that one of Hades’ former Nymphs has now taken on the role of Mistress of the pits and is organizing the fights but it’s really Roulette who is running the show. She’s always been a fun character from what I’ve seen before and there’s some amusement in how she sets herself up in all of this so that it’s Nymph that takes the hardest aspect of it. We get a pretty good fight, a lot of dialogue, and some good emotion out of it overall but it’s really just enjoyable to see Diana going strong on this and how she ends up helping Reemos and pairing up with him against those that run the pit.
In Summary:
Wonder Woman has a pretty solid story here and I can see how it could have been expanded out to a couple more issues as a mainline story with some bigger details and ideas to it. Cavan Scott distills it down to its core, however, and presents a solid and engaging story that doesn’t skimp on the details and puts it all out there. Combined with the solid artwork and color design that captures everything well, especially the impact of a good fight, there’s a lot to like here. Definitely worth the price of admission if not more.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology and Kindle
Release Date: November 24th, 2020
MSRP: $0.99
