WONDER WOMAN #184

By: Tony Whitt
Review Date: Friday, September 06, 2002

Golden Age fans have every right to be incensed over this month's issue of WONDER WOMAN, especially given the false advertising of the cover. What self-respecting fan of the Amazon's pre-CRISIS exploits wouldn't be smitten with the image of the William Moulton Marston-era Diana surrounded by those grotesquely-drawn Nazis, coming face-to-face with the glossy modern version underneath the classic logo? But this is no Elseworlds story, this is still post-CRISIS continuity - and this book is still a dud.

In case you'd forgotten, here's how the modern Wonder Woman story goes: Diana's mother Hippolyta traveled back in time to become Wonder Woman in the 1940s when she believed that Diana had died in the present. (Don't ask me how that happened. Post-CRISIS continuity has never been my favorite subject.) Diana herself has been traveling in time with her friend Trevor, defending the ancient realm of Skartaris - yes, the Warlord's Skartaris, which just goes to show that even the post-CRISIS DC Universe can be unbearably cheesy. Jimenez gives us full details of what happened in a two-page flashback, just in case you're not interested in going back and getting those issues - which of course is highly likely. Unfortunately, Jennifer Morgan, the Sorceress Supreme, has sent Diana and Trevor to the wrong place and time, bringing mother and daughter together - but since Diana doesn't want to alter the timestream any further than it has been (bless you, Diana!), she disguises herself as another Golden Age heroine, Miss America (who bears a striking resemblance to the Phantom Lady, only in a different color costume). Madcap Amazonian hijinks ensue - not.

Bad enough that whoever was responsible for an otherwise attractive cover cheats us completely by throwing us into Continuity Hell (TM), but Jimenez compounds it by giving us an overly talky and surprisingly boring script. It's also loaded with inconsistencies, such as Diana taking on the Miss America persona to keep her mother in the dark but not bothering to hide her Amazonian fighting skills, her ability to understand several languages including Atlantean, or her knowledge of the Invisible Plane. It also doesn't make a lot of sense that Trevor should try to whisper to Diana while she's talking to her mother, knowing that she can hear it and yet expecting that Hippolyta can't! Add to this Jimenez's tendency to overload his pages with dialogue, therefore ensuring he'll have to shoehorn in as many tiny panels as possible and even guaranteeing that certain things will have to be described rather than depicted because there's no more room, and you have a busy, silly mess completely unworthy of such a staggeringly impressive cover. Pity Andy Lanning - he's the one having to go behind and ink up all this stuff. I hope he's getting hazard pay, and I hope you won't judge this book by its cover and consider it worth your time. It isn't.


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