Future State: Wonder Woman #1 // Review
Written, drawn, and inked by Joëlle Jones, with colors by Jordie Bellaire, and letters by Clayton Cowles. Future State: Wonder Woman #1 explores an Earth where Yara Flor has risen to take the mantle of Wonder Woman, and she’s ready to take on Hades himself to bring one of her warrior sisters back to life.
Even if you’re Wonder Woman, getting to the Underworld isn’t as simple as just walking in, so Yara intends to bring the horn from a Hydra she defeated as an offering. That is until she’s confronted by Caipora, who appears to be some sort of magical entity dedicated to preventing poaching. Magical or not, Caipora is no match for Wonder Woman, who quickly convinces them to take her to the Underworld.
Future State: Wonder Woman #1 shows, not tells, the reader who Yara Flor is while maintaining some mystery about her past and her connection to the Amazons. Through Yara’s interactions with her moody Pegasus Jerry and the mischievous Caipora, her personality begins to unfold. She’s a fierce warrior, but she’s also impatient and has a short temper. And while Yara is very loyal to her friends and fellow warriors because she’s willing to go all the way to the Underworld to barter directly with Hades, she’s also somewhat impulsive, acting before she thinks through the entirety of her plan. Though this is only the first issue of Yara’s story, Jones has already created a very fleshed-out character.
Jones’ art in Future State: Wonder Woman #1 is incredible and conveys just how capable and powerful a warrior Yara is. Yara is equally competent with fighting with a sword as well as a bola, the cord of which glows golden in the same way that Diana Princes’ Lasso of Truth does. Giving Yara a weapon traditionally used in South America is a good way to tie Yara’s Brazilian identity to her identity as Wonder Woman.
In Future State: Wonder Woman #1, Jones gives Yara and Wonder Woman costume that both references that worn by Diana Prince while being something new and unique. With her beautiful golden armor pieces and tiara, Yara looks regal and powerful without her movement being encumbered. And one thing I noticed was the socks she wears under her knee-high boots; it’s a small detail but an important one in my opinion- you can’t fight bad guys if you have blisters on the back of your knees.
Yara Flor is not white. That might be a “no duh” kind of statement, but sometimes the skin color of BIPOC in comics is inconsistent not just from page to page but sometimes within different panels on the same page. Fortunately, Bellaire’s coloring of Yara’s skin tone is consistent, and nowhere does Yara randomly turn into a white girl.
Being able to correctly maintain the skin tone of BIPOC characters shouldn’t be something that’s surprising when it actually happens; it should just be the industry standard. Unfortunately, this is still a huge issue within comics and happens even with long-established characters such as X-Men’s Storm, as pointed out by Kwanza Osajyefo (creator of BLACK) in a tweet from October 2019.
While Future State: Wonder Woman is only a two-issue mini-series, Jones tweeted in November of 2020 that Yara Flor would be returning after the Future State event ends. And according to DC Comics’ own blog, the CW is developing a Wonder Girl live-action series that would star a younger Yara Flor, before she took the mantle of Wonder Woman. Jump into Future State: Wonder Woman #1 and get a head start on learning all about Yara Flor.
