The simple, sweet progression of friendship between Mayfly and Diana in last issue was extremely effective. Between Steve Orlando’s demonstration of his grasp of Diana’s character and Laura Braga’s delicately powerful illustration, “Wonder Woman” #51 hit it out of the park. Can #52 live up to its predecessor?
Written by Steve OrlandoCover by David Yardin
Penciled by ACO
Inked by David Lorenzo
Colored by Romulo Fajardo Jr.
Lettered by Saida TemofonteAt the behest of Aztek, Diana and Artemis join her for a trip to Mexico, but there’s no sightseeing on the agenda. Instead, they must rescue a long-lost Amazon who’s being held captive by rogue deity Tezcatlipoca, who’s trying to break into our world. Can our three heroes save the missing Amazon, stop a raging god and not kill one another in the process?
Many of the best comic books bask in the science fiction concepts, uphold the integrity of long-loved characters, and tell us a story that leaves us aching for more all while creating a book that is both accessible and enriched by prior knowledge of the character. Unfortunately, this issue fails on every account.
This issue proves to be less than accessible for many reasons; one of these reasons being the messy artwork. Much of it feels like someone drew the panels, cut them out, and pasted them on top of bizarrely psychedelic backgrounds (see pages 1 and 12 for the best examples of this), leaving the reader to get 2×4” images of what’s happening while most of their vision is blocked by Aztec-inspired patterns.t While this can look creative in some fashion, ACO boxes up some of the most integral moments in action sequences or pieces of exposition into these tiny 2×4 boxes, leaving the reader unable to track the action smoothly. Instead of a feeling of dynamism and movement, the reader often gets an impression of stale, frozen characters stuck in psychedelic, Aztec-themed fever dream with no hope of escaping. Likewise, conversations prove to be almost as confusing – a fault of both artist and writer. On page 5, we read a conversation between Diana and Aztek in which large text bubbles (the result of Orlando’s clunky exposition concerning the character) block our vision of two very static, unmoving characters. Whereas Laura Braga from last month’s issue demonstrated such a fine example of progression and dynamism in these little moments of conversation and exposition, ACO falls flat.
Often when a writer hands an artist a script with huge chunks of exposition, the artists can illustrate it in such a way that the reader may not notice they are getting force-fed information. By creating a sense of character movement, expression, or a change in the environment, an artist can slip even the clunkiest writing under a reader’s nose. Unfortunately, ACO’s odd paneling structure, wooden character illustration, and poor use of motion accentuate Orlando’s clunky script.
Orlando’s script consists of two meetings involving an ungodly amount of exposition and a final showdown in one of the least sensical places on earth, all while giving more exposition on the dangers of their nemesis, Tezcatlipoca or their own powers and abilities.
Just as an artist can smooth out a clunky script, a book filled with poor art can be forgiven by excellent characterization and plotting. This book attempts to bask in the science fiction concepts of the Wonder Woman world, but it feels too much like the characters are participating in a group-learning session about Aztec mythology. And since the character’s main purpose appears to be explaining the elements of this world, there is little to no room left to develop them past their obvious identifiers.
This issue is more about set-up than characters, using the characters as an end to that means. Unfortunately, without establishing a reason to care about these characters (particularly Artemis and Aztek), we don’t particularly care about their lives being threatened by an angry Aztec deity. Diana rarely gets any chance to shine (ability-wise or character-wise), Artemis is characterized as a hot-headed, fly-off-the-handle rogue with little depth, and Aztek is the primary conduit of Aztec mythology and plot exposition.
Fajardo Jr.’s colors contribute to some of the problems of this issue (such as the psychedelic full-page panels), but for the most part, the colors in this book provide enough contrast and dynamism to bring this script to life.
However, it appears to be a half-life. This book fails to provide an accessible journey into Wonder Woman’s world, give us reasons to care about these characters, or to give us a reason to come back.
Final Verdict: 4.8 – Despite the incredibly strong previous issue, “Wonder Woman 52” fails to leave us wanting more. Between the messy, clunky artwork and the exposition-heavy script, this book leaves much to be desired.
