The Justice League doesn't really seem to enjoy reading DC Comics.

Many of this past week's DC Comics contained a two-page house ad promoting the DC Essential Catalog, which you can find at your comic shop, or online at dccomics.com/dcessential. It's designed to help sell DC's graphic novels and collections as gifts. Most of the ad consists of the above image by pencil artist David Finch, depicting the founding members of the New 52 Justice League, crowded around a pile of short boxes and graphic novels and reading in the snow in front of the Hall of Justice. The far right includes a checklist of the Top 25 collections and graphic novels on that "essentials" list, under the heading "DC Essential Graphic Novels 2018" (More on that in a bit).

What most struck me about the ad, however, is how downright unhappy the Justice Leaguers all look to be reading comics at all.

Granted, most people don't grin, smile or otherwise evince great joy while they are reading, but come on gang, aren't you trying to sell these dang things? It wouldn't hurt to at least fake some enthusiasm!

Here we see Superman and Wonder Woman, both standing up and reading--they both have super-endurance, so it may not be as uncomfortable for them to stand up and read as it would be for any of us--and standing incredibly close to one another while they do so. Each of them hold half of the book in one hand, and I have no idea who turns the pages, given that they are so close neither would be able to reach it with their other arm.

They are reading DC Universe: Rebirth #1. Superman looks pretty bored, while Wonder Woman either has a slight smile, or maybe that's just the way she did her lipstick. Perhaps Superman is bored, though; he can probably read each spread at super-speed, and then has to wait for Wonder Woman to catch up.

Green Lantern Hal Jordan is hovering above his teammates reading Batman Vol. 1: I Am Gotham by Tom King, David Finch and others. He seems to be the happiest of all the Leaguers, but I think there's a pretty good chance he's just faking it for the picture. After all, I'm not entirely sure that Hal Jordan can read.

The Flash is reading Watchmen over Batman's shoulder. He looks bored, but then, he probably is bored, given the speed at which he can read. He may be off fighting the Rogues in Central City, and just running back to the Hall of Justice to read a page every thirty seconds or so during the slow parts of the battle.

Cyborg, resting his huge mechanical bulk atop a pair of short boxes and no doubt crushing the contents within--so much for Near Mint!--is taking in Sandman: Overture. He looks pissed.

Aquaman has similarly tried to make himself comfortable by using the short boxes full of comics as furniture. They don't have either comic books or cardboard boxes in Atlantis, so perhaps his confusion is understandable, but I can't imagine his super-dense, well-muscled body is good for the boxes or the books within. If this scene continues very long, I imagine both he and Cyborg will fall through the collapsing boxes at some point.

Aquaman is frowning at the pages of Justice League Vol. 1: Origins, and I don't blame him! What has got him so upset about the book? Is he shocked at how casually Superman murders his foes? Is he appalled at everyone's New 52 costume redesigns? Is he missing his pal Martian Manhunter? Or can he just not believe his sideburns and necklaces in that story?

Finally, here's Batman's frozen scowl as he reads Watchmen. Does he hate the book? Or is he simply irritated that Flash is reading over his shoulder? Neither. That's the face he always makes; he's Batman, after all.

As for the top 25 books on the 2018 reading list, I was struck by how damn old so many of them are. From the 1980s you have Watchmen, Batman: The Killing Joke, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, V For Vendetta and Batman: Year One. Of slightly more recent vintage is The Sandman Vol. 1: Predludes & Nocturnes which, of course, brings us into the '90s, when such books as Batman Adventures: Mad Love, Preacher Book One and Batman: The Long Halloween were published.

There are a handful of collections from The New 52 reboot/relaunch, including Justice League Vol. 1: Origin, Batman Vol. 1: The Court of Owls, Wonder Woman Vol. 1: Blood, The Flash Vol. 1: Move Forward and Aquaman Vol. 1: The Trench. From the most recent publishing initiative, the "Rebirth" era, there's DC Universe: Rebirth, Batman Vol. 1: I Am Gotham and Superman Vol. 1: Son of Superman.

I think Batman: The Dark Knight: Master Race is the most recent publication on the list.

Many of those 25 are classics of the super-comic genre, and are therefore evergreens, but I found it somewhat striking that there are so many decades-old comics being promoted in that house ad, you know?

Of possible interest is the fact that of these 25 books,  two are drawn by DC co-publisher Jim Lee, three are written by the publisher's president and chief creative officer Geoff Johns, three are either written and/or drawn in part by Frank Miller and three are written by Alan Moore, whose Watchmen is currently being used as fodder for a DC Universe event story written by the company's publisher, very much against his will.

I don't know what to make of Tom King's Batman just yet.

I loved the above few panels from Batman #2, which is written by Tom King, pencilled by David Finch and inked by Matt Banning and Danny Miki. Bruce Wayne excuses himself from a fundraising event in The Morrison Room of the mansion and walks to the secret entrance to the Batcave with partners Alfred Pennyworth and Duke Thomas a few steps behind him. When Wayne tells them that he's going to bring new Gotham-based superheroes Gotham and Gotham Girl with him to answer Commissioner James Gordon's Bat-signal summons, Thomas asks, "Do you trust them?"

Above you see Wayne's answer, and Alfred's response. It's a nice, sharply-scripted exchange showing essential elements of both Batman Bruce Wayne and Alfred's personalities, as well as their unique relationship, which is at once a father-son and boss-employee thing. They're technically partners, but their balance of power is like a see-saw, and obviously as the older one, Alfred was in charge for a long time, and now just seems resigned to Batman's child-like qualities.

He's also joking, of course, which is one of the cool things about a well-written Alfred; he's ability to constantly needle and deflate Batman in a way no other characters can. At least, not effectively.

So that scene was great. The rest of the book, I'm still not so sure about. I wrote about the first issue previously. The main plot, based on the attention given to them in the first two issues, revolve around the sudden appearance of two new super-powered superheroes with unimaginative names, characters who are essentially just one more analogue to Superman...and Supergirl. (The inclusion of Gotham Girl at least makes this slightly different than all those other comics where Superman-in-all-but-name show up.)

Gotham, the hero, wears a cape, he's super-strong, he flies and he has all sorts of vision powers. His female companion is a blond woman in a skirt, with all the same powers. They arrive at the same time that Batman begins contemplating his mortality and his legacy, and that a few, high-profile crimes are committed by a mysterious, behind-the-scenes player who will be familiar to fans of Batman comics, cartoons and even video games.

It all seems a little disconnected from what I've been reading in the other Batman books prior to the "Rebirth" brahnding of the DC Universe, although I did miss the last few issues of the previous volume of Batman, so it's quite possible these things were addressed satisfactorily and I just didn't catch them.

For example, while Batman: Rebirth #1 went to some lengths to explain how Bruce Wayne got his entire fortune back, how he reclaimed Wayne Manor and even that he had a new costume, I was and remain surprised to see Gordon is police commissioner again after the events of Batman Eternal and the "Superheavy" story arc of Batman. It's also weird to hear him cracking a joke about the new heroes' costumes.

"Is it really easier to fight crime with a mask on?" he asks, lighting his pipe. "I'd think it would itch." Well, having fought crime with a mask on as Batman, Gordon should know, shouldn't he? I suppose he's trying to keep that fact secret from Gotham and Gotham Girl, but it's a weird crack for a guy who spent so much time this past year being Batman. (Also, I was caught off guard with the pipe smoking. I thought New 52 Gordon smoked, then quite to be Batman, resorting on patches and stolen cigarettes. Odd to see him going back to a pipe now. Hell, he's only supposed to be like 40 or something now, right? Maybe he should be vaping.)

There's a weird scene previous to either of those in which Bruce Wayne, still wearing his costume, is standing in the Batcave, contemplating his mortality as Alfred comes down to urge him to get up to the fundraiser.

Says Batman:

I was dead. I knew the options. I knew there weren't any options. There's going to be others, Alfred. Other planes. Asteroids. Aliens.

I won't be able to stop them. I'll die. Then Dick will take my place.

Then he'll die.

I can't... There's nothing I can do.

This is a weird line of thinking coming from Batman. He explicitly mentions his protegee Dick Grayson, who filled in as him for Batman the time he died before the last time he died, but he's also trained or is currently training such partners and successors as Red Hood Jason Todd, Red Robin Tim Drake, Robin Damian Wayne, Batgirl Barbara Gordon, Bluebird Harper Row, Spoiler Stephanie Brown, Orphan Cassandra Cain and now Duke Thomas. That's a lot of young people able to defend the city from crashing airplanes and aliens in the future. And hell, the last time Batman died, none of them took over, but a completely different person without his sanction stood up and did a pretty good job of being Batman (That would be Gordon, as mentioned above).

And please correct me if I'm wrong, as things got a little wonky at the end there and, like I said, I missed a few pages, but I thought a large part of Scott Snyder's "Endgame" and "Superheavy" story arcs revolved around Bruce Wayne's attempts to build an immortal Batman, which involved backing-up his own brain and mind and storing it outside of his body and, I don't know, cloned bodies...?

I'm not sure where Taylor is going with this scene just yet, and how exactly Gotham and Gotham Girl will fit into it–presumably their being supermen is an attractive quality that Batman would like in a successor–but it feels like its coming a little too close on the heels of Snyder's last arcs that dealt so much with the idea of Batman as a legacy and an immortal idea that can exist outside of Bruce Wayne.

Finally, there's the reveal of the villain on the last page. I'm relieved it wasn't Rorschach or Ozymandius, as I initially feared, but I was surprised to see that particular villain, in that particular company, and involved in such particular acts, given the last time I saw him he was in Gotham Academy, where minor Batman villains fill-out the ranks of the school's faculty.

Wonder Woman's new direction: Clothes

In addition to launching all of those new titles as part of their "DC You" publishing initiative, DC also attempted to make the June issues all of their pre-existing titles good jumping-on points, by starting new story arcs and launching new directions for the titles. In the case of the bigger characters, those new directions were rather radical.

Superman's secret identity was revealed to the world, he was greatly de-powered, he got a haircut and started wearing a more casual costume of jeans and a Superman t-shirt again. Batman is presumed dead, and so former police commissioner James Gordon is taking over the role of Batman, wearing a huge suit of robotic armor. Even Aquaman and Green Lantern Hal Jordan received pretty dramatic new costume changes and shifts to their status quo (with both being labeled fugitives).

And as for Wonder Woman? Well, she basically just changed clothes.

June's issue of Wonder Woman, which is still being written by Meredith Finch and still being penciled by David Finch, includes a scene where Wonder Woman visits her half-brother Smith/Hephaestus to pick up her new outfit. It's mean to be a reflction of everything she is now, she says, "god, queen, warrior for justice."

I suppose some in-story rationale was needed, but it's not really apparent from looking at the costume how it reflects any of that, and does so better than her "old" costume (which is only about four years old at this point). Well, the bigger, pointier wristbands and shoulder armor perhaps suggests "warrior" in a way her old costume didn't. And maybe replacing all of the silver bits with gold is meant to denote a promotion from princess to queen, and from demi-god to god...? She already wore a tiara at all times, which already suggested royalty.

In the back of the $3.99, 20-page Wonder Woman #41, there's a two-page feature labeled "Warrior Wear" which features a half-dozen preliminary sketches–including one which looks an awful lot like a Donna Troy/Wonder Girl costume, and another that looks like the final version with a cape attached–and a sheet of the final costume from three different views.

There's a block quote from Finch, and six short paragraphs about the design process.

"Meredith has been in my ear for a while about the costume, and how it's not in keeping with what any of the men wear, or really, what a woman in the real world would wear to fight crime," he says.

Meredith Finch is quoted saying basically what Wonder Woman does in the script: I really wanted her new costume to reflect all of her roles: old–as in, member of the Justice League; and new–as in, God of War and Queen of Themyscira."

By "what any of the men wear," I assume Finch was referring to what the other Justice Leaguers wear, and that, of course, means showing less skin. In that regard, pants are usually what gets added whenever someone tries to improve upon Wonder Woman's costume (in fact, New 52 Wonder Woman was going to wear pants instead of shorts, until fandom collectively freaked out). Covering her bare arms as well is a more unusual move (Jim Lee's infamous pre-Flashpoint redesign included a jacket though). Interestingly, "the men" are showing a bit more skin now than they did when they last had makeovers: Superman's wearing short-sleeves, and Aquaman's wearing no sleeves.

I always find it a little silly when someone tries to articulate practicality and what a superhero costume should look like in "the real world," especially for a fantastic character like Wonder Woman. Like, what would "a woman in the real world" wear to fight crime? A police uniform. And...that's about the only option, really.

What would a super-powered demi-goddess from an ancient, immortal race of warrior women wear to fight crime in the real world...? Who cares? The real world is not one in which a super-powered demi-goddes from an ancient, immortal race of warrior women exist at all, full-stop.

I don't care for the costume at all. It's a worse one than the original New 52 redesign (which was just her New 52 costume, but with black pants instead of shorts) and Jim Lee's redesign from J. Michael Stracynski's ill-fated run on Wonder Woman. It's basically just her current costume worn over a black unitard, with a pointy loincloth and shoulder-pads and thigh-high boots. As for how her knife-bracelets work, she doesn't use them at all in this issue, but I've never really understood outfitting Wonder Woman with edged weapons. A "warrior for peace" doesn't really need anything to stab with, you know?

Ideally, Wonder Woman would just change clothes when she was fulfilling the different roles in her life: Wearing her superhero costume when being a superhero, adding Bronze Age accessories like bits of armor and a battle-skirt when being an Amazonian warrior, putting on a nice clean toga when being a queen, and putting on War/Ares' helm and cape when god of warring. It's not like anyone has one outfit they wear in all occasions, designed to reflect every aspect of themselves, you know?

But then, this costume change is really just a change for change's sake, something to give Wonder Woman a hook to potentially draw in new readers, and it shouldn't last all that long.

Eh, why not? Here's a review of Wonder Woman #38

It's the third issue Meredith and David Finch's still new-ish run on Wonder Woman, continuing their "War-Torn" story arc, in which the titular heroine finds herself increasingly overwhelmed by her many duties. The last issue ended with Wonder Woman flying off to help the Justice League just as her fellow Amazons (and subjects, now that she's their queen) were complaining to her about the fact that she's always flying off to help the Justice League instead of them.

And some alien bug-people were plotting something, maybe.

And the evil queen from Snow White and some co-conspirators cooked a naked Donna Troy in a pot.

All of which naturally leads us to this, I guess.

THE COVER

The previous two cover penciled by David Finch have been pretty bad, but this one? This one is just the worst. DC even moved the logo to the side of the book to better accommodate the drawing, but they might have been better off lowering the figure to hide her legs and keep the logo atop the page, just above Wonder Woman's horned helm.

So this is Wonder Woman in her God of War get-up, a title she assumed from War/Ares in the pages of the previous run of the New 52 Wonder Woman. At least, the horned helm and cape are part of the War garb; I'm not so sure about Finch's other touches, such as putting a WW tiara-esque band around the front of the helm, and the more battle-ready, heavily accessorized version of Wonder Woman's costume.

What is probably most notable about this image is Wonder Woman's blood-splattered cleavage, which I always find to be a pretty perfect metaphor for the target audience of modern mainstream super-comics, and the bloody sword she's holding between her legs, like a surrogate erection.

The closer one looks at the image, however, the worse it becomes. Wonder Woman is not merely crouching down in a fighting stance, sword held at the ready. Look closer at her right leg (on your left). Her foot is visible. Wonder Woman is either running awkwardly at the reader, or maybe jumping, or even flying at the reader. The background is a pretty dark, clumsy attempt at action lines, furthering the effect that Wonder Woman is moving fast at the reader, despite the fact that nothing about her figure suggests that that is the case. Little bubbling clouds of blood appear in her wake.

PAGE 1

This is a four-panel page, which is about average for a Finch/Finch production (there's one eight-panel page, one seven-panel page, and the rest tend to be between two and four panels...the ones that aren't just splash images, or half of a two-page splashes, anyway). It opens with a close up of beautiful woman wearing bits and bobs of armor and other Bronze Age signifiers.

She stares with off into the distance with lifeless, vacant eyes, which means she is either dead, or David Finch drew her, or both.

As the "camera" pulls back, we see that she is indeed dead, and a black Amazon with braids in her hair shouts orders as she runs over this dead Amazon, and some other dead Amazons.

"We'll cover you as long as we can!" she screams in a red-ringed dialogue bubble, pointing her sword off-panel at an unseen adversary.

PAGES 2-3

We see the adversary, presented in a two-page, space-wasting splash that, despite all the space it takes up, still fails to reveal much of the giant monster that is its supposed focus.

It is apparently a two-head dragon of some kind, although Finch doesn't really do anything resembling an establishing shot here, so we only see its heads and forelimbs. Maybe he would have needed a four-page, fold-out splash panel in order to draw a whole dragon...?

PAGES 4-6

Wonder Woman appears for the first time in her book, standing in the background of a panel saying Wha...?. She runs around for a few pages, frantically asking people where Dessa is, and being told off by various wounded Amazons, who say things like, "Do I look like I have time to answer your questions?" and "The injured are too numerous...we dont' have time to remember names."

Wonder Woman finally finds Dessa, the black Amazon with the braids who charged the two-headed dragon, dying on the ground. Her last words are ones castigating Wonder Woman for not being there to help them.

PAGE 7

After an what must have been a simply exhausting to draw three straight pages with panels on them, we get a splash page. This one is of Wonder Woman posing over Dessa's body, looking off into the distance and swearing to kill the dragon that killed her fellow Amazons.

PAGES 8-10

Sword in hand, tear in eye, Wonder Woman flies toward the dragon (see the panel atop this post), which we finally see a full body shot of on page page 8, and is about to attack it when it suddenly bows down before her. Out from somewhere between its necks walks another Wonder Woman, this one dressed like the one on the cover. She tells the first Wonder Woman off, yelling at her about the same basic things the Amazons are all pissed off at her about, and then this Bad Wonder Woman draws a sword and raises it to strike down Good Wonder Woman, who merely turns her head and raises her hands as if to ward off the blow.

PAGE 11

Wonder Woman awakes screaming in her bed. Oh, it was all a dream! A ten-page dream sequence, filling the entire first half of the book. Awesome.

Wonder Woman is covered in blood.

Her hands are positively dripping with it, and her bedsheet looks like a Jackson Pollack painting. No idea where all that blood came from, but I am refraining from making any sort of joke that may be miscontrued as misogynist.

I guess it's possible she was slaughtering cattle or something all day, and was so exhausted she didn't have time to wash up before bed...?

Meanwhile, Discord from the previous, Brian Azzarello-written, mostly Cliff Chiang-drawn run on the series is shown watching Wonder Woman via a scrying pool.

PAGE 12

Donna Troy silently suits up, while the witch lady gives her a pep talk.

PAGE 13-14

Wonder Woman, now in civilian garb, meets her friend for coffee in London. Her friend is Hessia, the former Amazon living in man's world that I believe was introduced in the first arc of Superman/Wonder Woman, in order to give Diana someone to talk to. They discuss Diana's commitment problems with the Amazons, and whether being the God of War will have any sort of negative impact on Diana's life. At one point, Diana bites off Hessia's head, shouting, "I'M NOTHING LIKE ARES!"

If nothing else, being the God of War is making Diana pretty moody.

PAGES 15-18

Wonder Woman's intense coffee talk is broken up by a call from Justice League receptionist Cyborg. Another village disappeared. Remember, this started happening in "War-Torn" part one; that's the reason why Diana tried kicking off Swamp Thing's head and then beating him to death. Because he was at the scene of one such disappearance.

Here, the village seems to have been swallowed up by a volcano? Or it was atop a mountain that became a volcano? I don't really get it. Superman straps a camera and head lamp and other equipment on and descends into the volcano, while Wonder Woman sits next to Batman in the Bat-plane and has a pretty similar conversation to the one she had with Aquaman in Wonder Woman #36.

Underground, Superman encounters sone sort of gate with runes on it, and then some bugs that knock out his camera.

Welp, he's probably dead.

PAGE 19

The wicked witch Amazon, Derinoe, addresses the Amazonian leadership council about the same old "Wonder Woman's never here" bullshit, and, after a little bit of debate that comes down to Dessa versus everyone else, one of the councilmembers tells Derinoe to "bring forth your perfect Amazon, that we might judge her worthiness for ourselves."

PAGE 20

Surprise! It's Donna Troy! This is the book's second full-page splash; coupled with the two-page splash, that means 1/5th of this single issue was devoted to just three panels.

"All hail Donna Troy," Derinoe says from off-panel, "All hail the new queen."

...

Is Donna Troy an Amazon name? "Donna" doesn't sound very Amazonian to me...

Wonder Woman #37: The issue that guarantees DC will need to reboot again soon

When Wonder Woman #36 was released last month, I struggled a bit with whether to bother reviewing it or not, and ultimately decided that the character was important enough that the debut of the new creative team on her main comic book series during a pretty critical time in the fictional character's history was a big enough deal to go ahead and do so, even though the book turned out to be every bit as awful as anyone familiar with that creative team assumed it would be.

So, what's my excuse this month? The last page, which features a big reveal as a cliffhanger ending, a reveal so big that I may have released a strangled "Oh no!" from my throat when I read it in disbelief. It was, quite literally, the last thing that should be included in a Wonder Woman comic set in the New 52, which was, you'll recall, created to streamline and simplify the DC Universe into a more welcoming place for new readers.

This post will obviously contain spoilers, well a spoiler, which is why I'm writing about it now, a few weeks after release. Anyone who is reading Wonder Woman monthly should have gotten to that terrible, terrible page by now; anyone trade-waiting, you've been warned here, so don't try and make me feel bad if I spoil the ending for you in the course of this post.

In the previous issue, Wonder Woman took a shower to wash all the blood from her latest adventure off, while thinking about water. Cyborg called her and the rest of the Justice League up to their satellite headquarters, where he explained villages full of people have been suddenly disappearing, as if being swallowed up by the Earth instantly. They split up into groups to investigate the scenes of the disasters or crimes or whatever, and Wonder Woman happened to see Swamp Thing standing nearby one. So she did the most Wonder Woman-ly think she could think of, and ambushed him, almost flying kicking his head off. She then proceeded to scream accusations at him while punching whole chunks out of his body.

When Swamp Thing and teammate Aquaman finally got her to calm down, and Aquaman asked what that was all about, Wondy explained that she's just been under a lot of stress lately: She's the current Greek God of War, she's acting Queen of the Amazons, she's Superman's girlfriend and she's on the Justice League. It's a little overwhelming for any woman, even a Wonder Woman.

Then she went back to Paradise Island, to find the Amazons bickering over her divided loyalties and the fact that she let some male Amazons (don't ask) on to the island to live with them, and then she gets more bad news: Her mom, who was turned into what I assumed stone during the early issues of the New 52 relaunch, was "dead;" her stone form melted away in the rain. Writer Meredith Finch didn't get into it last issue, as that was the shocking cliffhanger ending of the last issue, and doesn't mention it here, but the art seems to suggest that Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons wasn't petrified, but turned into clay, and then washed away in the rain, because neither Wonder Woman nor any other Amazon thought to, like move or cover her in case it rained. It was as if their mother and/or queen was a bike, left out in the rain by a careless child, and now she's all rusted. Only instead of rusted, she's dead.

And that's where the first issue of Finch, pencil artist David Finch and inker Richard Friend left off. Ready for the second chapter of their story?

THE COVER

Wonder Woman is once again posed awkwardly, apparently bound from the ankles to the knees and hopping around a battlefield, while gesturing with a gnarled, three-fingered hand at a metallic-looking bird (presumably a Stymphalian bird of the sort Hercules dealt with during his sixth labor) as it crashes into her logo.

Two other Amazons in scanty armor stand around, looking up at the birds, one of them smiling rather happily—perhaps she's pleased that Wonder Woman's logo seems to be preventing the birds from getting to them. A third Amazon with her back to the reader draws back a bow, preparing to fire an arrow a bird trying to squeeze through the narrow opening between the issue number and credits on one side and the Wonder Woman logo on the other.

PAGES 1-3

Credit where credit's due, the general conception of these metallic monster birds is pretty cool. On the three-panel first page, we see some Amazons dressed as they have been for a decade or two (or maybe even three now), in bits and bobs of Bronze Age armor, as if they're all dressing up as Naughty Spartans for Halloween.

There's a red-outlined black "SCRREEECH" sound-effect (thanks to letterer Dezi Sienty) as the birds rocket out of the sky toward Paradise Island like bottle rockets, and then they hover above the Amazons.

That's followed by a double-page splash—the 20-page issue's first of two—in which the birds engage the Amazons. Here we get a sense of how big they are, standing about as high as an Amazon, so, you know, fucking huge for a bird, and we see one of the Amazons has a cool undercut hairstyle. Yes, they may only use weapons from the time of Christ, but they do keep abreast of current trends in hairstyle.

One of them's like, "Hey, where's Wonder Woman?" and the other's like, "I don't know; I wish she was here as often as these giant monster birds are here."

I paraphrase.

PAGES 4-5

Meanwhile, on the set of Macbeth, a Dark Lord of the Sith and the witch from Snow White stand on either side of a boiling cauldron, while a lady dressed like an Amazon kneels before them, reluctantly handing her/a baby over to them. The Sith lady raises a knife and kills the baby—off-panel, of course. DC may have gotten a lot more graphic and gory over the last decade or so, but they haven't gone so far as to show babies getting stabbed to death yet.

PAGES 6-9

There's a full splash page—actually, about a page and a half; it would have been another double-page splash, but for four small-ish panels running down the right-hand side of the spread of an athletic, dark haired man fighting an athletic, dark-haired woman, both of them armed with staffs and wearing work-out clothes. The woman is Wonder Woman, which is made clear by the fact that the man calls her "Diana." The man turns out to be Superman, which is only made clear on page eight, when Diana calls him "Clark." They are in a vaguely eastern-looking place on pages 6 and 7, and then there's no backgroun on page 8, and it's not until page 9 when they walk into a generic metal room that it becomes clear they were probably in the Justice League's version of the X-Men's Danger Room (which Brad Meltzer called "The Kitchen," but which I thought—perhaps hoped—was New 52-ed away with the rest of Meltzer's run).

Superman tries to talk to Wonder Woman about her feelings, particularly regarding her clay mother having been melted away by the rain, and she tries shutting the conversation down.

He keeps pushing until she snaps and yells at him, and then walks away saying, "Grief isn't a luxury I have time for."

PAGE 10

The Sith lady is walking away from the witch from Snow White and the boiling cauldron. She's holding the baby—Alive? Dead?—in her hands, while the Amazon lies prone on the ground, a stream of red blood pouring from her. I guess she killed the mother, not the baby. Or maybe she killed both? It's unclear.

The witch looks into the pot, in which Wonder Woman's mom's clay face appears to be boiling, and the witch sheds a single tear (those are the panels atop the post; Wonder Woman's dead clay mom being an "ingredient" in the pot will become weirder on page 20, so keep in mind that she's in there, okay?).

PAGES 11-13

Wonder Woman, now wearing her Wonder Woman costume, appears before "the council," the group of Amazons who were complaining at her last issue. Their leader appears to be the wicked witch. They demand that Wonder Woman choose to either stay with them permanently to serve as their queen, or abdicate to someone else. While the argument continues, a lady runs in and says they're under attack.

"Quickly," Wonder Woman shouts, "Sound the alarm!"

PAGES 14-15

The book's second two-page splash (yes, 20% of this book is devoted to just two panels), as Wonder Woman, now wearing an entirely different costume including a battle skirt, cape and shoulder armor, disembowels one of those bird things with a sword.

What happened to "quickly," Wonder Woman? You still had time to change, did you?

Also, here it becomes clear that the birds are machines, as when Wonder Woman chops the bird open, gears and wires and metal pieces fall out of it. They are basically like scary, giant versions of Bubo from the good Clash of The Titans movie, then.

PAGE 16

Wonder Woman gives battle orders while she and the Amazons fight the birds. One of them swoops for the old witch lady, and Wonder Woman says "Derinoe, NO!," so I guess I should start calling that lady Derinoe now, and then Wonder Woman says "HRRAGH!" and cuts off its talons.

PAGE 17-18

Derinoe is mad at Wonder Woman for saving her, and Wonder Woman changes the subject, asking what those things are. They are "man-eating Stymphalian birds--Ares' idea of pets," one of the Amazons says, noting they started attacking about a week ago. They are apparently flocking to the island, as that's where Wonder Woman lives, and as the God of War, they apparently belong to her now.

Wonder Woman makes a face of grim determination and is right in the middle of swearing to take care of the problem, when Cyborg calls to say another village vanished, and Wonder Woman flies away to deal with that, saying she'll be back to deal with the whole giant man-eating* metal bird problem soon.

PAGE 19

A vaguely insect-like humanoid in a loin cloth stands before the glowing throne of a dark-skinned, red-eyed lady who may or may not be of the same species as him, in a room that looks like a mixture of sci-fi stuff and an anicent temple.

"It is begun, my lady," the bug guy says, his words encapsulated in a scratchily-drawn dialogue balloon.

"And the traitor?" the red-eyed lady says, speaking in her own font.

PAGE 20

Here, see for yourself:

So meanwhile, there's a cauldron, with a naked dark haired lady floating out of it. This is probably meant to be the same cauldron from earlier in the book, but there's no background, so it could be anywhere, really. It's probably not in the temple of the bug guy though, as his answer appears in a narration box, as if the scene has changed.

The important bit, is of course, the dialogue coming from off-panel, which is probably coming from Derinoe, as her dialogue bubbles are shaped like that, but it's unclear. This page probably could have used another panel or three, like an establishing shot for location, an establishing shot for who the fuck is talking, and then the reveal.

That, or David Finch coulda drew a background and had the speaker appear on the page.

But it's the words that are the really troubling part: "DONNA TROY."

I'm assuming everyone who managed to read this far knows exactly who Donna Troy is; the fact that Meredith Finch could use the mention of her name alone as a cliffhanger indicates that she at least expects readers to know who Donna Troy is, and for that knowledge in and of itself to prove extremely dramatic (This is odd, as Meredith Finch has said in interviews she's not very familiar with Wonder Woman, and has really only read the previous New 52 run, during which Donna Troy never appeared).

If you are, skip these next four paragraphs. If not, read them.

Donna Troy, along with the Legion of Super-Heroes and Hawkman, is one of the biggest continuity "problems" in DC history, a scab that creators can't seem to stop picking at. That's because her original appearance—along with the sidekicks that formed the first iteration of the Teen Titans—was a mistake. "Wonder Girl" wasn't Wonder Woman's sidekick, but Wonder Woman herself as a teenager (similar to Superman and the original Superboy), and she regularly teamed up with grown-up Wonder Woman via time-travel (along with Wonder Tot, Wonder Woman as a toddler) because, you know, comics.

Once introduced to the Titans, however, she needed a new identity and origin, so Marve Wolfman and Gil Kane came up with an origin in a 1969 issue of Teen Titans, in which Wonder Girl was a human girl Wonder Woman saved from a fire and, unable to find her parents, brought her back to Paradise Island and gave her Amazon powers. The origin is expanded by Wolfman and George Perez in 1984 storyline "Who Is Donna Troy?". And then Crisis On Infinite Earths strikes, Wonder Woman's continuity is radically rebooted, so that she was making her debut in the late 1980s, retroactively erasing all of her adventures in Man's World prior to that, and thus severing her from Wonder Girl/Donna Troy, which, of course, is a bit of a problem.

So then we get "Who Is Wonder Girl?", divorcing Donna Troy from Wonder Woman and marrying her origins instead to "The Titans of Myth" (She also gets a haircut, new costume and new codename of "Troia"). In the '90s, John Byrne revised her origin again, now making her a magical duplicate pesudo-sister of Wonder Woman's, adding in some parallel dimension jazz. Then, leading into Infinite Crisis, Phil Jimenez brings her back from the dead and re-clarifies her origin again, in a storyline entitled "The Return of Donna Troy?" The new status quo hardly mattered, as the multiverse would go through a series of cosmic reboots to history/continuity—Infinite Crisis, 52, Final Crisis—in the next few years, one effect of which was reverting Wonder Woman to her pre-Crisis timeline, in terms of how long she has been in Man's World anyway (around the same amount of time as Batman and Superman, rather than years and years later).

When the next and latest cosmic re-set button was hit during the climax of Flashpoint, it wiped out Donna Troy's entire generation of superheroes—or, at least the less popular ones. Fellow Titans Nightwing, Cyborg, Starfire and Roy Harper remained in the new continuity, as did Donna's one-time boyfriend Kyle Rayner, but they all had new origins, and none of them were ever Titans. That's one way of dealing with the Donna Troy problem, then: Simply removing her from existence.

And now? She's back! I'm sure there were plenty of people bummed out about her being erased from existence, just as there were plenty of people bummed out about The Flash Wally West being wiped out of existence thanks to Flashpoint, but one thing Wally West's New 52 debut has demonstrated, it's to be careful what you wish for.

Over the decades, there have literally been hundreds of pages devoted to explaining who the hell Wonder Girl/Donna Troy is and how to make her fit in the current DC Universe, but the problem remains that the DC Universe is itself being altered so frequently, that every new explanation of the character needs constant revision. If she's going to work, she needs to do so in a way that's not too closely tied to a time period, or to Wonder Woman or to the Titans. This might work, although given the poor quality of the first 40-issues of the Finch's Wonder Woman I don't exactly have any faith it will, but, like Wally West, Donna Troy is probably a casualty of the New 52 reboot better left dead.

She belongs to the a now lost generation of characters, who don't fit into the DCU in any logical way anymore (Dick Grayson's still here because he's a popular character, but he doesn't make sense in a six-year timeline, and makes less sense the more a reader thinks about him). And like her generation of sidekicks-who-grew up, Donna Troy has been replaced by other sidekicks. She can't be Wonder Girl, because there's already a Wonder Girl (Cassie Sandsmark, who survived the continuity purge of Flashpoint; I'm not sure what her deal is, or why she exists, as The New 52 Teen Titans hurt my eyes too much to read).

And unlike Grayson, Harper and even former-Aqualad Garth, Donna never developed a decent identity and codename to grow into her own, independent superhero. She's a great character, but she's a great character for the pre-Flashpoint DCU, not the New 52, where she's more likely than not just going to irritate the (relatively) few people who want to see Donna Troy in the modern DCU again, and create another seeping continuity wound that will need healed by a future creative team.

I suppose we can begin a countdown to the next "Who Is..." storyline making sense of the character. Might I recommend the title "Who The @#$% Is Donna Troy Supposed to be Now...?"


********************

Say, so we've had a book with this title...

...and one with this title...

...how is it that there's never been a comic book called Wonder Girl and The Legion of Super-Heroes or Donna Troy and The Legion of Super-Heroes...?



*Say, do you think an all-female society would use the word "man-eating," or would they instead use "woman-eating," or, at the very least, "person-eating"...? "Man-eating" seems a strange term to develop in a society that has been pretty much devoid of all men for pretty much ever..

We need to talk about the new issue of Wonder Woman

...or...

"I Read Wonder Woman #36 So You Don't Have To"

As a comics critic, I never quite know what to do with terrible comic books when I come across them. I never go out of my way to read a comic book that I suspect will be terrible without any mitigating circumstances, and, when I do read one, I then wonder if it's better to just not mention it anywhere at all, under the ignore-it-and-it-will-go-away school of thought, or if I should go out of my way to discuss the book and its negative qualities, so as to not let the only reviews of the book to get written be positive ones.

In the case of Wonder Woman #36, I obviously decided to review it rather than ignore it, not simply because it was terrible, but because the character is so damn...well, important. I think it's well worth noting that this was one of three comics with the name "Wonder Woman" in the title. In addition to this issue, the first by the new creative team of Meredith Finch, David Finch and Richard Friend, Wednesday also saw the release of the excellent Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman #4 (discussed here) and the first issue of Superman/Wonder Woman by it's new creative team of Peter Tomasi, Doug Mahnke and Jaime Mendoza (more on that book in another day or two).

I quite literally set down one prose book about the character and picked up another one, that latter getting what seems to me like an unprecedented amount of mainstream media attention for a book about a comics creator and his creation (Do correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall any books on other creators and characters ending up on, say, The Colbert Report, for example).

With a long-awaited movie finally—finally!—in the works, we're only going to be hearing more and more about Wonder Woman in the next few years, so it seems well worth while to see how publisher DC Comics is handling their stewardship of the character.

Relaunched with a new #1 and a new direction in September of 2011, Wonder Woman has thus far had only one creative team, a rather rare feat for a DC comic from that period. Writer Brian Azzarello, artist Cliff Chiang and several different fill-in artists recreated Wonder Woman in several dramatic and controversial ways during that time, pulling focus away from the character and her past to something that, for better or worse, was at least new, a sort of urban fantasy that re-cast Wonder Woman as an adult female Percy Jackson.

Azzarello also pulled off the pretty neat trick of rebooting the character without really rebooting her—most of the changes involved were merely Diana learning things about her origins and the Amazons she didn't know before—so that it wasn't impossible, or even too terribly difficult, to line the run up with the ones that preceded it (continuity-wise, if not tonally). And, remarkably, he managed to keep Wonder Woman completely divorced from the rest of the DC Universe, to the extent that DC had to create a new team-up title—Superman/Wonder Woman—in which to address her relationship with the rest of the DC Universe, particularly her new boyfriend Superman.

Who did DC tap to follow the long three-year, 740-page run of Azzarello, Chiang and company...?

Writer Meredith Finch and artist David Finch. You'll be forgiven for not recognizing the first name; she has little to no prior comics writing experience (Scripting one of the three stories in 2014's Grimm Fairy Tales Presents: Tales From Oz from another writer's story is the only credit I could find), and her main qualification for the title seems to be that she is married to artist David Finch, who remains inexplicably popular with DC editors, despite being wholly unreliable at hitting deadlines or producing semi-legible artwork.

Neither seems a particularly good fit for a top-tier DC comic book featuring one of their biggest stars, but DC seems to be counting on whatever fanbase Mr. Finch still retains after his poor showing during Forever Evil, the first few issues of Justice League of America and his abandoned vanity Batman book The Dark Knight will off-set whatever readers were following Azzarello and Chiang as they left the book (If I had to guess, I would assume the Finch team is only going to be around for an arc or so anyway; that seems to be about as long as David Finch can devote to a book, so this may just be a temporary "stunt" creative team while DC firms up the next, "real" creative team who might be able to commit to a run at least as long as Azzarello and Chiang's).

So, how did Finch, Finch and Friend do...?

Like you had to ask.


THE COVER

Personally, I don't mind Wonder Woman being portrayed as particularly youthful, small or even dainty. I think the large, powerful, statuesque warrior woman portrayal is valid, and it's certainly been the default version since at least Crisis On Infinite Earths, but I don't think she has to be portrayed with that particular body type or presence.

Her strength doesn't come from her body, after all, but the gods, and I generally think of William Moulton Marston and H.G. Peter's Wonder Woman as the "real" Wonder Woman. Peter's Wonder Woman was fit, but she was 1940s fit; she wasn't musclebound or even particularly imposing.

Her girlishness was part of her charm, as was her male opponents constantly being surprised when she performed some incredible feat of speed or strength before their astonished eyes.

Finch's Wonder Woman definitely looks young, particularly here on this cover, which he seems to have spent much more time on than any panel of the comic within, as it's maybe his best drawing of the character, and she's not particularly tall or muscular.

Of course, she's posed in a sort of zig-zagging pattern, so her stature's a little hard to judge, isn't it? Finch give her a young face and slim body, with disproportionately large breasts, and poses her awkwardly crouched, butt thrust back, back arched to thrust her breasts forward. Maybe he was trying to crouch behind that big-ass shield to protect herself from all those arrows being shot at her?

The posing reminded me of this...

...although I think Emmy Rossum looks like she might have a better fighting stance on that Cosmo cover.

Anyway, it's a pretty basic, even generic image of the character, of the sort that DC might slap on any random issue of Sensation. It works well enough for a first issue of a new run in that it's divorced from any particular story elements, but it's also yet one more image of Wonder Woman as violent warrior goddess.

Apparently engaged in battle with humans—or humanoids—with a level of technology that involves arrows, Wonder Woman just got done fighting them off with a sword, which is still stained and dripping with their blood.

I'm afraid I never really understood why Wonder Woman needs to carry axes, swords or spears. She is super-strong, right? Almost as strong as Superman? Superman doesn't need to carry a knife to fight crime or defend himself; why does Wonder Woman need weapons on all the time?


PAGES 1-3

The first few pages of the story feature the title character meditating—via dark red narration boxes with a "WW" symbol in the first one, to assure us it is indeed Wonder Woman narrating—on the nature of water. "It nourishes and sustains life," reads the first one, "But it can also bring devastation and death."

The art in the first panel depicts a close up image of grass, while rain falls upon it. The following panels correspond to the narration pretty closely. "It is the answer to a prayer," appears in a panel of two vaguely Asian-looking farmers holding out their hands to feel the rain falling into them, while the words "Or our worst nightmare" appears on a panel depicting five little children running through a slum while the muddy wave of a flood bears down on them.

Some relevant visual information is communicated during this sequence. For example, there are three panels in a row of what appears to be be a statue of Wonder Woman in the rain (this is actually her mother Hippolyta, who was turned to stone earlier in this volume of Wonder Woman, but you would only know that if you've been reading Wonder Woman a while. Finch draws her identicallyt o WOnder Woman herself, and she even wears a tiara with a star in the middle).

On the third page, there are a series of images of a damn-breaking, a well-dressed man standing atop it as it does. On a cliff overlooking the broken damn, there's a mysterious figure, of whom nothing can really be determined; in two of the panels he's in silhouette, and in the other he's mostly in silhouette. Unlike the image of Hippolyta, this is likely intentional, and meant to be a mystery that will be explored in future issues.


PAGE 4

Here's the first appearance of Wonder Woman in the new run by the new creative team: A shower scene!

With a bar of soap, Wonder Woman is washing away the copious amounts of blood that apparently coat her entire body—it's safe to assume that it's other people's blood. Perhaps it belongs to whoever she was cutting and stabbing just before the cover shoot...?

While a reader might think, "A shower scene? Featuring Wonder Woman? In Wonder Woman? Ugh," said reader need not ugh. There is absolutely nothing the least bit sexy, exploitive or even mildly titillating about the scene. Because, remember, this is drawn by David Finch. I had to stare at the second panel for quite a while to determine exaclty what I was looking at; I eventually realized that it's supposed to be Wonder Woman washing her right elbow with her left hand, while cupping her right breast with her right hand.

Yeah, Finch is the kind of artist where it's difficult to tell what body parts are supposed to be what body parts.


PAGE 5

Wonder Woman steps out of the shower in her London apartment. I know it's London, because there's a caption that says "London" in the first panel. The first three pages, with the poor people and the Asian farmers and the dam or dams breaking? No idea where that was; they didn't get captions.

Wonder Woman walks up to a framed 2D image of two little girls in Wonder Woman tiaras. I think it's meant to be a child's drawing, but I can't rule out that it's a photograph. Finch isn't exactly the best of artists, you know? Maybe that's how he draws little kids.

Cyborg skypes Wonder Woman and tells her "We have a situation," to which she responds, "On my way." Great dialogue.


PAGES 6-7

"Paradise Island," a caption informs us. There are a bunch of Amazons posing in a room, arguing about developments at the climax of the previous run, which I am not privy to, as I have been reading it in trade. But This much is clear: The Amazons have been freed from their curse (all save Hippolyta, who is still stone), and apparently Wonder Woman has invited the Amazon men back to the island...?

A retcon from the Azzarello era was that rather than being immortals, the Amazons reproduced by capturing ships, mating with the sailors, killing the sailors spider-style, keeping any girl children born from the encounters and selling any male children to the god Hephaestus/Vulcan/Smith in exchange for arms.

Three ladies present having speaking parts, two are opposed to any men being welcomed into Amazon society. One of them, a withered crone who looks like she should be flying around outside a Scottish castle, foretelling an imminent death, is apparently Hippolyta's sister.


PAGES 8-9

This is just a two-page spread of most of the current roster of The Justice League—Flash gets a line noting that Luthor is absent—standing behind Cyborg, who is sitting in a chair in front of a computer.

Everyone looks terrible.


PAGE 10

Batman and Cyborg fill the team in on why they called the meeting: Apparently thriving villages have disappeared over night, leaving no signs of human or animal life behind. The team is going to split up to find "something...anything" that Cyborg's scanners couldn't find.


PAGES 11-16

On page 11, we see David Finch's fairly off-model Swamp Thing in the boughs of a tree in Thailand, talking to himself.

Wonder Woman says "Monster--" from off-panel right, and then she comes flying foot first at him from off-panel left (I knew Superman used to use super-ventriloquism, but I didn't realize Wonder Woman had wonder-ventriloquism!), screaming "What vegetative injustice was worth so many lives?!"

Wonder Woman continues screaming at Swamp Thing, accusing him of destroying the villages and punching him to pieces, while he retaliates by throwing her against a tree trunk and turning his arm into a swamp gunk hose.

The fight only ends when Swamp Thing summons a bunch of vines to entrap her, and protesting that he's innocent: "I felt a massive disturbance in the green and came to investigate."

Aquaman shows up and asks the obvious question.

PAGES 17-18

Aquaman and Wonder Woman are flying in a visible jet plane of some sort, and Aquaman tells her that maybe ambushing other super-people and tearing them to pieces might not be that great of an idea, Wonder Woman replies curtly, "Now we know he didn't do it. Let's move on."

That entire fight scene would have been a bit like Wonder Woman going to investigate a murder scene, and beating the fuck out of the policeman who might be there, just in case they were the killers.

And if Wonder Woman didn't think she could trust Swamp Thing to tell her the truth if she just, you know, asked him if he killed a couple villages full of people, she does happen to have a magical rope that can compel him to tell the truth if she just lassos his ass; why didn't she ambush with a lariat around the torso, rather than trying to kick his head off and then punching big chunks out of him?

Eventually, she opens up to Aquaman a little, in an info-dump that summarizes her status quo in as prosaic and uninteresting a manner as possible:

In addition to plain old bad comics storytelling, the panel reveals a conflict that's a bit of an uncomfortable one for Wonder Woman to be having—she's so busy with work and family and her relationships that she's feeling overwhelmed by it all.


PAGE 19

Wonder Woman alights on Paradise Island and meets Dessa, the Amazon with a speaking part earlier in the book who wasn't all bent out of shape about the Amazon men returning to the island.

They chat briefly about the brewing conflict, and Wonder Woman asks for a few minutes to spend with her mother before they continue any discussion, at which point we get the cliffhanger splash page.


PAGE 20

In the foreground there's a lumpy, viscous brown pile, atop which rests Hippolyta's face; her body apparently melted out from under neath it.

"She's dead," says Dessa in the background, while a shocked Wonder Woman looks down at what used to be her mother.

The end.

Oh, I see Wonder Woman has already heard the news...

Uh-oh.

I believe the fact that artist David Finch and his wife Meredith Finch would be taking over DC's Wonder Woman title has been rumored for a while now, probably through that one particular disreputable comic book rumor site, but DC made it official today.

Mr. and Mrs. Finch will be inheriting the title from writer Brian Azzarello and artists Cliff Chiang, Tony Akins and Goran Sudzuka, a team that's been on the book since the September 2011 relaunch. I read the book for a while, and it was always a very well-made book, with even the fill-in artists Chiang frequently needed being of exceptionally high caliber (and able to match his designs and storytelling without jarring the reader too badly). I didn't particularly care for Azzarello's take on the character, which was the basic Wonder Woman-as-warrior take that's dominated the character since the success of Kingdom Come, only with a little less personality than usual. The storyline, which was one continuous story arc, was also rather repetitive and dull, particularly when experienced in monthly, 20-page installments, and I eventually dropped the book.

That said, it was always one of the best-looking titles of the New 52, and while I personally quickly grew disenchanted with Azzarello's particular take, it's worth noting that he and Chiang really created a standalone Wonder Woman book that could have worked perfectly well in the old continuity or the new continuity and was, almost entirely, divorced from the rest of the DC Universe line (a passing familiarity with classic mythology was probably more useful than a passing familiarity with DC continuity). It was basically modern, urban fantasy, with a character that looked a lot like Wonder Woman at the center. I'm sure it will read quite well as the five or six collections it will ultimately end up being, and it will be a rare modern Wonder Woman run that reads smoothly all on its own, with no need to turn to Wikipedia between chapters.

Theirs will be a tough act to follow, and wile I suspect David Finch is regarded as a "hotter" or more popular artist than Chiang (it wasn't Chiang DC hired to draw Forever Evil, after all), I don't know of anyone who thinks Finch is actually a better artist, nor can I imagine such a person existing.

Azzarello is a rather well-respected writer (his willingness to work on Before Watchmen projects aside), with a long list of comics good, bad and great to his name. He's not the best nor the best-selling writer to have worked on a New 52 book to date, but he's certainly among the most respected.

And the Finchs...?

Well, David Finch's work since coming to DC Comics has so far has consisted of the following:

—Two volumes (one pre-Flashpoint, one post-Flashpoint of a signature Batman title he was meant to be both writing and drawing, Batman: The Dark Knight, which he immediately fell behind schedule on, and gradually took on inkers, and then a co-writer, and then a writer-writer, and then fill-in artists, until eventually he the Batman title launched as David Finch's Batman title became just another Batman title.

—Three issues of Justice League of America, a high-profile series launched in 2013 and sold as an ongoing by writer Geoff Johns and Ficnch (it has since been canceled after 14 issues, only about half of which Johns scripted or co-scripted.

—The seven-issue Forever Evil miniseries, which shipped late on two occasions

—A bunch of mostly bland, terrible covers, including a widely ridiculed variant cover for 2011's Justice League #1, the first book of the New 52 relaunch (above). While there's nothing at all good about that cover, many of those who  mocked it focused on his Wonder Woman and her jutting hip.

As for Meredith Finch, she is apparently a newcomer to comics, although I've heard mention that she's done some work for Zenescope, and did some behind-the-scenes, uncredited co-plotting with her husband on a few of the very few comics he wrote.

While it's great to see another woman working in a creative capacity at DC these days (and to hear from the Finch family that the publisher is actively trying to involve more women in making their comics and are actively trying to appeal them), and to see a relative newcomer can still score a prime gig at one of the bigger IPs at one of the Big Two superhero publishers, the stink of nepotism certainly sours all of that. It would be a lot easier to be enthusiastic about DC hiring a relatively new writer who happens to be a woman if this particular woman had some sort of body of work to show for herself and, of course, if she didn't also happen to be married to one of the publisher's more high-profile artists (If she did have a career in comics prior to this, then I'm sure she, her husband and DC would still be open to charges of nepotism, or the appearance of nepotism, but it could be easily negated with a "Fuck you, I wrote all this stuff before I even met David Finch, thanks!").

I wonder if this will actually appeal to any women, as I imagine David Finch will be a big turn-off, and the fact that Meredith Finch seems to have gotten the gig primarily by being married to him could rub lots of female comics fans who know and love lots of comics creators (and may be aspiring comics creators themselves) the wrong way.

If DC wanted to have a male and female couple on Wonder Woman, I'm a little surprised they didn't go with a couple already on their radar, like Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti, who are co-writing the surprise hit Harley Quinn (and are a well-respected pencil artist and well-respected inker, respectively), or even Maris Wicks and Joe Quinones, who recently collaborated on a Batman: Black and White short...and Quinones is coming off the excellent, Bechdel test-passing original graphic novel Black Canary and Zatanna: Bloodspell.

It's been suggested that this is likely just a very temporary creative team, which would make sense given Finch's track record for hitting his deadlines for too many months in a row, and would make more sense still given the fact that Wonder Woman is now the flagship book in an honest-to-goodness line of Wonder Woman comics (consisting of Superman/Wonder Woman and the upcoming anthology series Sensation Comics Starring Wonder Woman). Even if Finch and Finch are only there to kill six months while DC locks down, I don't know, Phil Jimenez and Jerry Ordway or Steve Rude or Devin Grayson and Rick Burchett, or Becky Cloonan and Quinones, or Greg Pak and Jae Lee,  or John Ostrander and Jan Duursema, they're still a rather surprising, and even suspect, creative team. Wouldn't writer Geoff Johns, who has been writing a Wonder Woman who is very, very different than Azzarello's in Justice League for some three years now, or Charles Soule, the Superman/Wonder Woman writer who has been diligently bridge the gap between the Wondy of Justice League and the Wondy of Wonder Woman seemed to be better choices?

Personally, I find myself much more interested in whatever team comes after the Finch/Finch team, as if they're not being hired as placeholders meant to keep the title warm for the next team, chances are between David Finch's deadline issues and the creative team merry-go-round of the New 52, they won't be there that long anyway.

Forever Evil am over!

It was all worth it for this moment.

It's the moment you've waited more months than originally scheduled for, the final, climactic issue of Forever Evil! Who will live and who will die? Will any more limbs be lost? Which Bronze Age concept will get a new coat of New 52 paint and appear on the final page, setting up the next crossover? And who will emerge victorious from the senses-shattering showdown of Bald Luthor Vs. Beard Luthor! There's only one way to find out, and that's to buy a copy to read for yourself. Wait, no, there's two ways to find out! You can buy a copy to read for yourself, or you can click over to Comics Alliance for my seventh and final installment of Assessor Evil, featuring the final special 3D motion cover. Complete your collection now!

Meanwhile, at ComicsAlliance... (Some thoughts on Forever Evil so far)

Norm Breyfogle. Mark Buckingham. Greg Capullo. Cliff Chiang. Gary Frank. Patrick Gleason. Ig Guara. Chad Hardin. Dan Jurgens. Aaron Kuder. Jae Lee. Jim Lee. Doug Mahnke. Francis Manapul Inaki Miranda. Moritat. Sean Murphy. Peter Nguyen. Paul Pelletier. Nicola Scott. Thony Silas. Ethan Van Sciver.

These are some of the names that tend to pop into my head during the first reading of each issue of Forever Evil (I tend to read them about a half-dozen times or so, in preparation for these pieces at ComicsAlliance). Those are the names of some of the better artists doing work regularly for DC Comics these days, artists whose styles are at least within the conceivable spectrum for a mainstream, DCU/New 52 book.

Certainly some of them have trouble keeping up with their current commitments, some are no doubt loyal to the monthlies they're working on and some are working on books that may actually be higher-profile and, in the long-run, more profitable for them than an event series like Forever Evil might be. But one thing they all have in common is that they are far better artists than David Finch by most of the metrics in which superhero comic art can be measured, and I wonder about them because it's hard to look at the finished, printed art for the series and understand why the people who decide who-does-what for DC Comics wanted Finch on this particular project.

I was never the biggest fan of Finch' style, but he seems to have certainly declined quite a bit since Marvel pushed him as one of their "Young Guns" creators, back in 2004-2005 or so, when he helped Brian Michael Bendis remake The Avengers into Marvel's number one franchise. He seems to have trouble hitting deadlines, his work seems rushed when he does hit them, he's not very good with figure work, he's not very good at facial expressions, he's not very good at settings or filling up pages with cool stuff to look at (this was, by the way, pretty evident before this particular series was even solicited; Justice League of America, or at least the three issues he drew for the title launched as a Geoff Johns/David Finch book, were pretty poor).

A big superhero crossover series isn't the best place for an artist of Finch's particular skills, as the dozens of characters mean a lot of drawing, much of it very precise (For example, among the many characters in this narrative are ones who are supposed to look exactly like other characters in the book, including, for example, Superman, an evil Superman duplicate from an alternate dimension, and a failed cloning experiment of Superman; in this fifth issue, Sinestro regards Hal Jordan's Earth-3 doppleganger and remarks, "You're a strange creature, are you not? You look like Hal Jordan..." and you just have to take his word for it).

Johns also writes for the splash page, something he has always done—and, in fact, his writing for big "moments" within his stories are, I think, a component in his success—but if an artist isn't quite up to the challenge, those splashes only accentuate the artist's weakness.

For example, this splash page in which Power Ring decides to fight back against Sinestro, rather than fleeing. Not only is it not that big a moment—I, for example, might have OMG SPOILERS!!!! chosen to instead highlight the part where Sinestro creates a yellow light construct of a buzzsaw to cut off Power Ring's right arm, or the part where Sienstro completely incinerates Power Ring with a blast of yellow energy—but it only served to highlight, underline and advertise a pretty basic fuck-up Finch made in its drawing. (Also, it looks like Power Ring is totally grabbing Sinestro's dick in that picture.)

Or take pages two and three, a splash in which Deathstroke leads a a team of villains against Luthor, Batman and their allies; many of the "new" characters arriving on the scene are obscurbed by one another (Of Giganta, we only see her arm and face and, in fact, never see much more of her, except in an extreme long shot).

What's New 52 Copperhead look like? I know he has a snake head and what look like long, boneless, snake-y arms, but does he have legs, or a big snake tail, or legs and a tail? Does he wear clothes? I don't know; we never see him on-panel in way that let's us see him; he's never visually introduced, despite two pages (almost 1/10th) of the book devoted to a panel in which he and his allies arrive. This is the best look we get at the character—

—the other panels are just images of his arms or head reaching in from off-panel.

That same splash includes this awkward section:

After a few split-seconds of confusion, I figured out that the gun there is held in Captain Cold's right hand (half of which is obscured by Blockbuster's huge forearm), but at a glance it looks like it could just as easily be something mounted on Black Manta's shoulder, or being held by Bizarro or something on Blockbuster's forearm. You wouldn't take a photograph like that, because of how the flattening of the image would confuse where an object behind a figure fits, so why would you draw a picture like that, given that you are in 100% complete control of every element of it in a way that's difficult for a photographer to achieve?

And then, of course, there's the final two page spread, posted at the top of this post (Yes, there are two two-page spreads in a 21-page comic). It's supposed to be a very big moment, and it was one of the two in this issue that really piqued my curiosity. According to the verbal component of the comic, it signals the arrival of the "creature" that destroyed Earth-3, something from somewhere in the Multiverse that evil Superman Ultraman was worried about, and was so worried about that he wanted to conquer this Earth and prepare it for the creature's coming.

This should be another moment for Finch to really show how, but in actuality, he only does about a half a page of drawing; just some cliffs, pine trees, and tiny little figures representing the Crime Syndicate. The colorists fill in the sky and the water and the red stuff.

It apparently looks like something from some TV shows and movies that comics readers would recognize, but I never saw any Star Trek or Doctor Who, as unusual as that might make me among comic book readers.

As a fan who would really like to give myself over to this story, I feel like I should care immensely about that last page, and pore over it for clues to what I imagine is meant to be a pretty shocking reveal, but Finch and the rest of the art team aren't really giving us anything to work with in that image.

Is that something stationary, glowing in the sky? Is it something streaking through the sky, leaving a light trail? Is it a bolt of lightning, appearing for only a moment, and the thing they all recognize is something off-page...?

No idea.

I've been trying to guess what it could be for most of the week now. As I noted in the CA piece, Deathstorm says "Look. Up in the sky." when he sees it, alluding to Superman...or, since this is something that destroyed Earth-3, something Superman-like...an evil Superman of some kind. But then, that's Ultraman, the evil Superman of Earth-3. Is there a more evil Superman from a more evil alternate Earth? Is that Ultraman-Red, flying through the sky like a comment?

I wondered if maybe it was meant to be something Shazam-related, as lightning is the source and signifier of their power, and while it's usually golden or electric blue color, this being an alternate universe version, maybe their Shazam is red (I don't think there's ever been an Earth-3 version of Captain Marvel/Shazam in the comics*, as the character hailed from Earth-S pre-Crisis, and thus an evil, Earth-3 version might make for something new). But while it might make some sense to have something Shazam-y in the climax, with Black Adam a player in the story, Captain Marvel/Shazam a player in "Trinity War" (and currently exiled from Earth like all of the Justice Leaguers who aren't Batman, Catwoman or Cyborg) and the original wizard Shazam having some part to play in the vague story revolving around Pandora and the Trinity of Sin you would think DC might actually get around to telling one day, perhaps in the New 52's first event series, it should be noted that Ultraman made short work of Black Adam, and thus probably wouldn't be overly worried about another version of the character.

I also wondered if maybe it might be the Thunderbolt, as in the magical creature that used to pal around with Johnny Thunder in the Golden Age and then on Earth-2, a near-omnipotent creature that Grant Morrison posited was actually an entity from Mr. Mxyzptl's Fifth Dimension, a characterization that Johns and other writers kept through the end of the "old" DCU...and I don't think we've seen Johnny or a T-Bolt of any kind since the reboot (I'm a story arc or two behind in Earth 2, the title in which they'd be most likely to show up, though).

I know several folks have guessed it is Darkseid or an Apokalytpian threat, but given how relatively easy it is to defeat Darkseid—Cyborg did it by believing in himself five years ago, when there were only six superheroes fighting Darkseid and his army of Parademons—I can't imagine him having wiped out a world of more ruthless versions of the DCU's heroes, nor posing a threat to Earth-New 52 at this point, when it's chockfull of super-people.

I'm a little worried that whatever it is, it's not going to be something that gets dealt with by the end of the series. We're a good 100 pages into the story so far, and relatively little has actually happened in the 48-hours that this issue says has passed since Forever Evil #1.** The Crime Syndicate called a big meeting and said they were in charge of the world now, they captured Dick Grayson, Ultraman flew around looking for Kryptonite to snort and Superwoman told everyone she was pregnant with their baby. Meanwhile, Luthor and some disaffected villains teamed-up, and Batman and Catwoman dropped Cyborg's torso off at his dad's place and then went to a Wayne Enterprises basement to get something. That was the first five issues. Is their time to introduce a new threat and defeat it in just two more issues, as the rate they're going?

It seems more likely that the book might end as "Trinity War" ended, not with a conclusion so much as a lead-in to a different story, the main difference here being that Forever Evil was announced and solicited by the time "Trinity War" was playing out, whereas we've already seen solicitations for the month of comics following the conclusion of Forever Evil, and there's now Pandora War or Crisis On Earth-52 or New Crisis On Infinite Earths announced.

In that case, if it is just setting up the next storyline, then I suppose it could be the New 52 introduction to Harbinger, or The Monitor, or Anti-Monitor (although I feel like Johns might have written all the the Anti-Monitor stories he felt he needed to at this point, given that character's appearances in his his Lantern sagas). And this could be the first act in a New 52 equivalent of Crisis On Infinite Earths, perhaps finally getting around to explaining just what the hell happened at the end of Flashpoint, why—and how—Pandora mixed the WildStorm Universe with the DC Universe to create a new continuitiverse, what the threat she thought this new universe was needed in order to combat and the battle with that conflict.

Perhaps it's what I've been assuming will occur sooner or later—some sort of cosmic "crisis" in which time and space are in flux, resulting in a partial re-setting of DC's continuity, marrying the "good" parts of the New 52 (The Batman stuff, the Green Lantern stuff, maybe some of the Superman and Wonder Woman stuff) with the "good" parts of the old DCU (like timeline long-enough to allow for generations of heroes, reinstating the two generations of Titans and, more likely than not, the Golden Age characters).

But anything I could think of as being the threat behind the red streak of light in the sky has the same argument against it: There hasn't been anything in the story so far to suggest it might be any of those things, and as loose as Geoff Johns and DC Comics might play with some story-telling conventions, I would hope the ending wouldn't be completely out of left-field, as in a character that hasn't been mentioned or teased or foreshadowed in anyway suddenly becoming a surprise antagonist (I suppose the argument could be made that that is basically happened at the end of "Trinity War," but Johns did at least sprinkle some clues throughout the story, including in the title of the story, albeit it awkwardly).

As a critic, I don't think Forever Evil has been very good so far, mainly due to the terrible nature of the artwork (the story side is better if one is reading Johns' Justice League along with the main series). As a consumer, I find it sort of annoying to the point of galling, given the steep cover price and the lack of perceived value, given all the space wasted on bland, nothing-going-on splash pages...and that some important story beats are happening in another title (For example, Owlman's seemingly flipping Nightwing to his side in Forever Evil rang false, given that it went down in the space of like two panels, whereas a larger portion of an issue of Justice League presented a more compelling argument, and explained Owlman's motivation for even wanting to team with Nightwing). As a fan, I finally perked up a bit with this issue, as it at least proposed two mysteries to which I'm interested enough in the answers that I'm genuinely curious about what happens next.
The first, and biggest, is, of course, the identity of the "creature" that destroyed Earth-3 and has now come to Earth-New 52. And the second is where Power Ring's power ring will end up, since this ring, like the Green Lantern and Sinestro Corps rings, is apparently programmed to seek out a replacement host upon the death of its bearer.

*The direct-to-DVD cartoon movie Justice League: Crisis on Two Worlds did include evil opposites of The Marvel Family on the reversed-morality world that Owlman, Superwoman and their gang hailed from.

**It's only been two days?! Have you seen what happened to Gotham City, either in Forever Evil: Arkham War or the Scarecrow issue from Villains Month? Apparently, Gotham City is always just about ten hours away from being Planet of the Apes.