A new danger from the stars!
Creative Staff:
Story: Amanda Connor, Jimmy Palmiotti
Art: Daniel Sampere, Juan Albarran
Colors: Hi-Fi
Letterer: Travis Lanham
What They Say:
Wonder Woman thinks she’s saved the day when she stops an asteroid from crashing into the Earth-but a fragment of it lands near the shores of Gorilla City, unleashing an alien horror upon the unsuspecting simians. Now the Amazing Amazon must stop the creature before the entire gorilla race is destroyed!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
I’ve enjoyed the way that Connor and Palmiotti have handled writing Wonder Woman as they do keep her largely serious but with enough of a human side to her that the laughter comes through at the right times. The stories have been decent but they haven’t really gotten me excited for what’s happening in this run. This one fits into that category even while well-executed and fun but it suffers a bit as I struggled with the lettering for our villain du jour as it was just damn hard to read on a screen. What was a lot of fun, however, was getting to see Sampere and Albarran tackle Gorilla City and its denizens for a bit and to work up some interesting alien design work to play with. There’s a base familiarity to it but with just enough tweaks for it to feel like its own thing.
The tale here is a fun one at the start as Steve and Diana are off on a lake enjoying the sun and getting in some fishing, getting the down time that they need. I’m actually amused by Steve wondering why there isn’t a resort for superheroes with mental health and physical health services. Their time is interrupted when Etta calls in to alert them to an asteroid that got bounced off course and is coming in for a cataclysmic crash. It’s pretty standard fare end of the world stuff but it plays well with Diana launching into space and breaking the thing apart, though it doesn’t go in the way she wants. Which means some clean-up time and dealing with a large chunk that broke through the atmosphere that could be threatening. She does manage to stop it from causing any sort of real issue with its splashdown before heading off to deal with the rest.
The problem is that within that chunk was an alien that was being shipped between galaxies to a black hole for crimes and it’s now been freed and is killing warriors from Gorilla City. That has General Talihfor calling on Diana to help since she’s responsible for this and it turns into a bit of a bug hunt for a bit as a lot of Gorilla’s have been killed and the danger is high. It’s an engaging enough story in that but when it reveals itself more and plugs into Diana’s consciousness to absorb her and her knowledge, it becomes more of a mental game. Which is fun because Diana has a lot to offer on that front as well, in addition to being a demigod and her mind operating differently, but it also leans into a problem where the lettering is just terrible for the alien and so much of it is hard to read. The Guided View does help some but I wish some letterers would find a better way of handling this stuff. I miss the old days when it was just bracketed with a note saying it’s an alien language.
In Summary:
Wonder Woman: Agent of Peace goes for a big event here with an impending asteroid impact and shifts gears to a bug hunt working alongside Gorilla City’s leaders. It’s a lot of fun but played very straight and serious in all the right ways. The dialogue is spot on with its lighter moments at the start and shifts gears to Diana taking things seriously across the board in different ways. I loved getting more time with the Gorillas here as they’re always something fun about the DC world that I love. Connor and Palmiotti continue to have fun here while Sampere and Albarran deliver more striking artwork that makes me admire their output all the more.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology and Kindle
Release Date: April 29th, 2020
MSRP: $0.99
