Absolute Wonder Woman #1 // Review
There’s a giant inverted pyramid that’s suddenly appeared above the coast of Gateway City, California. It doesn’t appear to be doing anything. It’s just...hanging there in precisely the way a pyramid shouldn’t. Local police and military are evacuating the area. Initially it’s a precaution. Then the red dragons come flying out of it and all hell breaks loos in Absolute Wonder Woman #1. Writer Kelly Thompson opens the dark horror fantasy end of DC’s newly-spawn Absolute Universe with the aid of artist Hayden Sherman and colorist Jordie Bellaire. It’s a promising opening for a new take on one of the longest=lived comic book superheroes.
Just as everything looks particularly bleak, a helmed warrior appears on the back of a skeletal pegasus to save the day. The warrior in question is a princess who was raised in Hell. She was raised from an infant by the great sorceress Circe. The powerful wielder of magics had been sentenced to Hell. Then Apollo showed-up to sentence her to forced motherhood as well. It as a baby girl named Diana of Themyscira. Circe was forbidden from speaking the name of the child’s lost nation. She was forbidden from knowing her birthright as an Amazon of Themyscira. Diana is going to learn her hame. And she’s going to learn what she must do.
Thompson has taken the basic legend of Wonder Woman and moved it into a spectacularly mystic darkness. Wonder Woman from Hell might run the risk of veering a bit too far from those things that make Diana so appealing, but Thompson is wise to hold onto that which has made her so appealing over the better part of a century: her altruism. She’s not just a warrior from Hell...there are aspects of her nature that peer out from the bleakness even as a child. One issue-in Thompson gives this particular Wonder Woman a huge victory in her very first issue. It’s a victory that feels particularly powerful given the bleakness of the Absolute Universe.
Sherman does some gorgeous things with the layout of the issue that speak to a kind of visual poetry. There’s a haunting resonance about repeated images as they echo through the narrative. Sherman’s design for Diana feels suitably badass. The black skeletal pegasus with white bird wings feels a bit silly from the wrong angles at first, but the distinctive visual signature of Absolute Wonder Woman’s steed feels pretty iconic by the end of the first issue. Through it all, Diana manages to strike some very impressive heroic poses while standing-up to a monster of godlike stature.
Thompson is taking her tie with the amount of story covered in the first issue of the series. It would have been all too easy to rush through some of the basics of Diana’s origin and then dive straight into the fish-out-of-water story of a warrior from Hell in Southern California. Thompson clearly wants to ensure that she’s giving the idea room to breathe before it completely dives into the adventure that is going to be consuming Diana’s life. Very cool stuff.
