Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Wonder Woman #53 Review

Shot Through the Heart...

Writer: Steve Orlando
Artist: Aco, David Lorenzo, Hugo Petrus, Romulo Fajardo Jr, and Saida Temofonte
Release Date: August 22, 2018
Cover Price: $3.99

Oh Steve Orlando, we meet again.  When Justice League of America ended, I thought our little dance had finally come to pass, but here we are again.  I'll let you lead as usual, but please, watch the toes.

We open the issue in Mexico and maybe it's because he's with his old creative partner Aco or some other inspiration, but this is just classic Orlando dialogue.  The kind of dialogue that demands to be spoken out loud just so you can hear for yourself the combination of words that no sane human has ever spoken in a comic book or anywhere else for that matter,  Simple explanations become mind benders, name drops are thrown around like bouncy balls that nobody can possibly grasp and while I had a smile on my face the whole time, I was certainly not laughing along with what I was reading.  No, I was laughing at it!

Diana, Artemis, and Aztek take over for Atalanta and as they go through the Thirteen Heavens, we get information thrown at us from each gal and while they are trying to defeat Tezcatlipoca, they are way to busy throwing some of the worst sounding insults at each other.  To make matters worse, Aco's art, while good on a per panel basis, does not help in any way to convey what is happening on the page.  Everything is so close up that at times you are only getting a series of facial expressions as the characters yell out their nonsense.

They finally come face to face with Tezcatlipoca and the dialogue hits eleven!  We have reached full Orlando!  Oh, the humanity!!!  In between shouts and pronouncements, Artemis decides to use the Bow of Ra and we get Diana saying the exact dialogue about it from the last issue right before the three join forces to take their foe down...but does it work?  Well, Tezcatlipoca says he is fighting in Hypertime now, but at this moment, there is no Hypertime!  It was taken off the board after the Flash War.  Someone get ahold of Steve, stat!

In the end, the heroes win and everything seems so much smaller than I think it was supposed to and we get talk of Qurac, Themyscira, and Bana-Mighdall that is boring mainly because it lacks any real setup in this story.  We are then left with a cliffhanger that will seem familiar to those who have been reading Red Hood and the Outlaws.  

This book reads like a bunch of words were just thrown on the page and while the art looked fantastic at times, it didn't help to tell the story.  Then, on top of that, Steve Orlando plays loose with current continuity and ends with a cliffhanger that better be explained because it makes no sense at all.  I will now start counting the days until G. Willow Wilson begins her run on this book.

Bits and Pieces:

This book is such a fantastic combination of awful dialogue and continuity issues that I really don't know what to say.  Aco's art would look great framed, but it doesn't help tell the story that may be buried underneath this landslide of nonsense.  I'd love to say it's one of those so awful its good type of things, but sadly, it's just plain awful.  



  1. This book is literally trashing Artemis Grace's character. She acts like she never been on the outlaws and she's out of character acting so angrily VS how she really acts in the Outlaws which is wise and calculating. It's bullshit that Artemis could not wield the Bow of Ra, because she has already wielded and controlled the Bow when she took out Akila. It's even more bullshit that Diana was wielding the Bow since it corrupts anyone who is not the True Shim-Tar, to which Artemis is. Orlando is just trying to prop up Diana by making Artemis look bad. This story was trash, and Orlando really knows how to ruin a character. Art was a bit wild this issue, and it was hard to follow panels sometimes.

    Ruin Diana all you want Orlando, but stay the hell away from Artemis.

  2. Wait, is there really no Hypertime? I was under the impression that the events of the Flash War just severed the ties between the Speed Force and Hypertime.

    1. They didnt fully explain it, but just said no hypertime and since wally didnt look at or mention other avenues of getting to hypertime, i assumed it was totally gone (and inherently always a speed force connected thing now). That and fact that orlando seems to always get crap like this wrong, it upset me.