Nubia & the Amazons #3 // Review
Medusa is loose on Themyscira, and its newly-crowned queen is going to have a hell of a time dealing with the ancient threat as it can move from body to body. Things are going to get complicated for the mystical island nation in Nubia & the Amazons #3. Writers Vita Ayala and Stephanie Williams juggle a huge ensemble in a story of action and intrigue that is conjured for the page by artists Alita Martinez, Domo Stanton, and Mark Morales. Romulo Fajardo Jr. handles the color. There’s a hell of a lot of story that is lovingly crammed into a single chapter of the series. Still, Ayala, Williams, and company do a pretty good job of directing the traffic flow in the mini-series second issue.
The newly minted Amazons are trying their best to deal with suddenly being thrust into paradise. Zina spears a positively immense fish that’s good enough for breakfast, dinner, and...the rest of the week. Meanwhile, Andromeda is accosted by the reflection of Medusa, who convinces the young Amazon to let her in...and possess her body. Meanwhile, Queen Nubia expresses her doubts in a moment of intimacy with Io in her workshop. It isn’t long before Medusa confronts Nubia in the body of Zina. There’s no question she could defeat Medusa, but what kind of damage might it do to Zina?
Ayala and Williams are trying to pack something like a full year’s worth of story into a six-issue mini-series. The writing team has done a really good job of putting together the ensemble. Any one of the characters in the book is interesting enough to carry her own series. It feels way too cramped to feel satisfying for any one end of the ensemble. Thankfully Nubia seems to be getting a lot more time in the third issue of six than she had for much of the other two. The rapport between Nubia and Io seems like it could rest pretty well at the heart of its own series. The central conflict lies between a queen who battles monsters and one of the most notorious entities in all of Greek legend. This conflict should come across much more intensely than it does, cluttered as it is by so much of the rest of what’s going on in Themyscira.
The art team is at its best when handling silent, little moments of wistful drama. This is quite an accomplishment, given how difficult it often is to bring across subtlety and nuance on the traditional comics page. The action, though...is overwhelmingly stiff. Some physical action looks ...stiff and awkward. It would be more interesting if the art team styled the visuals to look more like something from an ancient Greek vase. Drawn in the same style as the rest of the issue, it just looks awkward. Rather than appearing like explosions of aggression, it seems as though Nubia and Zina had to spend a few hours posing for each panel amid their battle.
There’s really no easy way to bring the vision of the entire island of Themyscira to the page. Perhaps a smaller ensemble with more time spent on central characters would have been more successful for the first half of a six-issue series. As it is, there’s just way too much going on in the first half to be fully engaging.
