Superheroes on holiday, that’s something I love to see.
A change of scene, a chance to see the person behind the costume unwind, sun, sand and sea… monsters!?
Sea monsters attacking some of the brave warriors of Gorilla City, to be precise. And they don’t strike during Diana’s date with Steve Trevor, but a few days later. Not that the boat trip isn’t interrupted – Etta Candy needs Wonder Woman to stop the earth being devastated by an asteroid. Diana manages the feat, but a piece of space rock that does make landfall has a stowaway – and it has murder in mind.
What happens next is classic Wonder Woman – a fun fight sequence topped off by Diana using her goddess-given wisdom to put her foe in their place. Plus, super-gorillas! And not just any super-gorillas, one of them is General Tolifhar from Gail Simone’s excellent Wonder Woman run a few years ago. I love that Agent of Peace writers Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti like the older material enough to incorporate elements of them, right down to a classic Etta Candy.
The boat scene, which runs across three pages, is just lovely, one of the more convincing presentations of Diana and Steve’s relationship, there’s a nice maturity to it; it may help that Conner and Palmiotti are partners in life and well as comics. Or perhaps they’re ‘just’ great writers.
They’re paired with a great artist, Daniel Sampere, whose clear, attractive pencils make every page a pleasure, especially paired with the sharp inks of Juan Albarran. Gorillas, aliens, the world’s most wonderful super-heroine smashing an asteroid – you want it, they can provide it. And Adriano Lucas can light it up with a veritable cornucopia of colour.
It’s a scene that’s almost black, though, that’s one of my favourites in the book, with subtle changes to Diana’s silhouetted expression arriving as she springs a trap.
Travis Lanham letters with perfect precision, and I’d love to know if the attractive alien font he uses is representing actual words. The cover by illustrator Chad Hardin and colourist Paul Mounts is terrific… again, super-heroine meets super gorillas!
It’s a delight to see a confident, calm Wonder Woman handling the weirdest and worst that the universe has to offer without stabbing everything in sight while preaching peace. This is an Amazon Princess who’s heroic without the hypocrisy. A true Agent of Peace.
Too Dangerous For a Girl 2 
I know these digital books are all out of continuity but has anyone thought of what Wonder Woman debuting during WW2 does to Steve? He’s old enough to be a colonel then so he must be close to one hundred years old now…
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I suppose they’ll come up with some comicy explanation – time travel, eternal youth, Steve Howard… but really, I hate the WWI idea, I’m hope it goes as DC retools following Dan DiDio’s DiParture.
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I’ve had this in the Walmart edition for a few months, but just got around to reading it tonight. I was so happy she wasn’t using the sword! That damn thing. I loved it when Mark Waid & Alex Ross introduced it in Kingdom Come, because it was so unusual and spoke to the direness of her the world’s situation. But now that it’s de rigeur, it’s just bleh. Everyone’s just chasing that same high, and it’s not there anymore.
Steve, I’m not sure if Trevor is attached to Diana’s earlier debut for 5G. We’ll see — or, more likely, we won’t.
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Yes indeed, less sword, more rope please!
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