CREDIT: DC Comics
Rating: 3/5 – A New Direction That Is More Mainstream DCU.
by ComicSpectrum senior reviewer Shawn Hoklas.
After a strong and critically successful run on Wonder Woman for thirty-five issues, Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang depart the title making way for an all new creative team of husband and wife Meredith and David Finch. It’s quite a big change in art and writing. Chiang had a clean line while Finch packs in a lot of pencil lines to add to the depth and details. So just how does this new team fare on this jumping on point issue? A bit mixed. Let’s start with the writing.
Meredith Finch has been writing for Zenescope but now takes a much larger step into the limelight with DC’s, and comics’, premier female character. After natural disasters strike different parts of the globe, Wonder Woman becomes enraged by the loss of life and does everything in her power to find the cause. That rage leads her into what feels like a forced confrontation with Swamp Thing. Meanwhile, Paradise Island is struggling with the idea of the Amazonian men gaining too much power. It’s this part of the story that really carries this issue, as the politics and intrigue introduced seems as though will carry forward for quite some time. Regrettably too much time is spent on the battle with Swamp Thing, and when that scene runs it’s course, it all felt unnecessary.
David Finch is making the most of a single character book with his art. Where he seemed to struggled at times with the heavy cast in Forever Evil, here he’s allowed to take the time to draw some fantastic action scenes, as well as some nice quiet moments on Paradise Island with one character at the forefront. There are times where some splash pages looked a bit off to me in regards to the number of characters on the page, as well as some inconsistencies in Wonder Woman’s appearance, as she looks younger and smaller in stature when compared to the previous run, but I think this is stronger than his previous work.
Overall Wonder Woman #36 a fairly enjoyable issue that’s setting the stage for a couple major storylines. Given some time, these storylines will start to take shape, but they don’t necessarily deliver in this opening chapter. Finch’s art was a nice surprise in how well he’s able to handle Wonder Woman. Azzarello and Chiang are a tough act to follow and it’s always a challenge for a new team to step in after a run that receives a lot of critical acclaim. We’ll see if this team can have the same level of success as the previous one, but so far it’s a wait and see.
Reviewed by: Shawn Hoklas
(shawn@comicspectrum.com)
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