“One Night in Tokyo”
Creative Staff:
Story: Bryan Edward Hill
Art: Andrea Broccardo
Colors: Sian Mandrake
Letterer: Travis Lanham
What They Say:
In order to save the world, Wonder Woman must first save…Lex Luthor?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Wonder Woman has paired up with a lot of heroes and villains over the years but Bryan Edward Hill brings her together with Lex Luthor in a way that works far better than I expected. I’m not a huge fan of Lex but I like the complexity of his character if written well and Hill nails it pretty well here. For this, he’s paired up with the talented Andrea Broccardo for the artwork with color design by Sian Mandrake and they deliver a strong book with a couple of great action sequences and some spot-on expressions for Luthor. It’s a fast-moving book but one that lets you slow down to enjoy the details of the moment throughout and admire the overall design, which is fluid and strong as it makes clear that Diana is definitely full of power.
Taking place in Tokyo but largely nondescript in terms of personality, the tale involves a terrorist that has gained control of a virus that Luthor had created some time ago that will take twenty-five of the world’s nuclear power plants and force them into meltdown status. That’s being used to draw him out so that an assassin can get him, which has him requesting protection before he’ll give up the codes to override the virus. He’s not going to ask the boy scout and Batman doesn’t play well with others, as he puts it, and he’s got a real curiosity about Wonder Woman and asked for her specifically. She’s not thrilled about this but is doing the job for all the right reasons. Of course, he changes the nature of the deal at a couple of turns here, such as saying that he’ll give her the codes once she gets him to his plane in Narita.
So begins the chase as the terrorist, a masked person of no real name I believe, begins to give chase and uses magic in order to go after Luthor. That doesn’t thrill Wonder Woman at all as that has its own unpredictability but she’s able to hold her own against him. What makes it fun is that as they drive off to get to the airport as the assassin gives chase, she reveals that he’s muted her powers for the next few hours and made her mortal, so they really need to be careful. His reactions are priceless but it fits in with Diana just tormenting him a bit and also trying to get at why he operates as he does. The two do have a fairly decent conversation about things and it reinforces why we do see them from time to time in other books able to work constructively, if begrudgingly, with each other.
In Summary:
With a number of solid stories in this series overall, this is one that definitely ranks up pretty high for me in enjoyment. Diana and Lex together offer a number of possibilities and with this in the “early” part of things rather than decades of back and forth leaves it open to a lot of ways it can go. The dynamic between the two of them is just delightful here as Lex is made uncertain more often than he likely ever has been and that definitely makes for some great scenes. Hill’s script is solid with some good lines and flow to it while Broccardo’s artwork is as strong as always with some really great layouts to capture everything that’s going on, making it engaging and easy to read.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology and Kindle
Release Date: December 2nd, 2020
MSRP: $0.99
