REVIEW: Wonder Woman #52 by Steve Orlando, Aco, David Lorenzo, Romulo Fajardo Jr., & Saida Temofonte

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Steve Orlando and Aco get the band back together from their character-defining run on Midnighter.

By Zack Quaintance — Two weeks ago, writer Steve Orlando and artist Laura Braga put out Wonder Woman #51, a stand-alone story about the depths of Diana Prince’s compassionate stubbornness to not give up on even her most dangerous enemies. That issue was—to me—the best standalone Wonder Woman story in years, a perfect comic that had me tearing up at the depths of our hero’s desire to help. As I wrote in my Wonder Woman #51 review, I loved it.

Wonder Woman #52 sees Orlando returning for a four-part adventure story with the character, this time joined by artist Aco, his collaborator on the 2015 Midnighter run that remains my favorite story about that character. In the intermittent time, both creators have progressed in their craft, and I'm happy to say that it very much shows.

There's just so much to like about this comic. It's confident, bold, and well-paced, but let’s look first at this issue’s plot. Whereas Wonder Woman #51 dove into the qualities and values that make Diana arguably DC’s most admirable hero, Wonder Woman #52 is a fast-paced adventure that makes fantastic use of the actual mythology inherent to the character. What results is, put simply, another great comic.

This is a tight story that expertly plays to Wonder Woman’s status as a figure within mythology to drive its narrative. Diana obviously knows this sector of the DCU well, and the book does a great job conveying this early, so that when something threatening or out of the ordinary comes later on, her reaction is telling and meaningful (and also badass).

The other thing this issue does especially well is incorporate additional characters, specifically Artemis and the new Aztek (fresh from Orlando’s run on Justice League of America, btw). Although Wonder Woman is undeniably the star, these other characters have separate priorities and desires that pull them into danger alongside her. Each having their own agency goes a long way toward engaging the reader in the holistic success of our erstwhile team, which ups the stakes.

In the end, Wonder Woman #52 is a real page-turner, a great start to a different type of Diana Prince Story. It's a confident and entertaining read that seems to set up some massive twists and fireworks to come. For a first issue from a new team, it's also remarkably polished, likely because Orlando and Aco had such a productive relationship in the past. The ultimate success of this arc, of course, remains to be seen, but Orlando once again displays a deep understanding of Diana. As such, it seems safe to assume this entire arc will be as rewarding as the standalone story that preceded it.

Overall: Whereas Wonder Woman #51 examined Diana Prince’s deep and stubborn capacity for compassion, Wonder Woman #52 utilizes her role as a living piece of mythology to launch a multi-part adventure. Orlando and Aco have clearly worked together in the past, and the result is a polished and fully-formed start. Fans of great superhero comics, take note. 9.5/10

For more comic book and movie reviews, check out our review archives here.

Zack Quaintance is a journalist who also writes fiction and makes comics. Find him on Twitter at @zackquaintance. He lives in Sacramento, California.

Celebrating an All-Time Great Green Arrow Run

A few years ago, I went to a writer’s conference in Portland, Oregon run by the literary magazine Tin House. It was great, both personally and creatively. I made writer friends who I’m still in touch with to this day, I learned too much to recount, and I met some of my favorite writers, including Green Arrow scribe Benjamin Percy, who was yet to start writing comics way back then.

Each night at Tin House, after we’d finished our morning workshops, lessons, and craft lectures, we all went down to an outdoor amphitheater along a river to listen to the accomplished writers read, and one of those evening readings featured Percy.

I remember so clearly how at the podium he told everyone in a gruff voice that he’d grown up obsessed with werewolves and that now, as an adult, he’d written a novel about them, a grisly epoch with shades of commentary on terrorism called Red Moon (which is a great read, btw). Then he read the first harrowing chapter.

This was eye-opening for me. To that point, I’d never seen a capital-A Author let their childhood fascinations bleed (werewolf pun, eh? okay, I’ll stop but you have to give me some time to be a better person) into the serious adult work of literature, certainly not so directly. It was refreshing and freeing and incredibly inspirational to see a writer I admired and respected do this, and it’s a lesson I’ve kept with me as I've given myself permission to re-indulge my lifelong love of comics.

It’s a lesson I’ve also been thinking a lot about in the past 24 hours since news broke that Percy’s last installment of Green Arrow would come in March. I've been on board since the start, since the New 52, and Percy’s run, quite simply, has been among the all-time best on the character, with each arc acting as a chapter in a rich novel, upping the stakes as it heads toward a climax. I can’t call it THE best ever yet because I haven't seen the end, but my guess is that it lands in the conversation.

I also think Green Arrow has been foundational to Rebirth’s success, arguably the book fans and critics point to most when praising the way the initiative rehabilitated characters and brought back core elements. Percy assures us another killer team is taking over after the April-May two-issue fill-in arc, and he’s cryptically hinted he’ll be on a new DC book soon, saying he’s headed to “the zip code where a dark sensibility like mine belongs,” which is totally Gotham, right? Right. So, we have that to look forward to.

Today though, following 24 hours of mourning a Green Arrow book I’ve loved for the past 3 years, I want to celebrate Benjamin Percy’s time on Green Arrow, and I also want to throw out a wild prediction for who takes over the book next, before ending with a literary reading list for comic book fans who also enjoy literary fiction.

Let's do it!!

Part 1: The All-Time Great Green Arrow Run

The Voice

One of my favorite things about Benjamin Percy’s Green Arrow is the staccato captions of its narration. Nowhere else in these comics is it more evident that Percy is a writer with vast experience in prose. His captions in Ollie’s voice are generally short, sometimes funny, sometimes beautiful, and always pitch perfect for what’s about to unfold, so subtle you might read through them without giving a second thought to the utter precision of the language guiding you. It’s a beautiful thing.

The Setting

Readers of Percy’s novels and short stories likely recognized the geographic fit right off. Percy is seemingly as fascinated with the Pacific Northwest as he is with werewolves, which says a lot. Few heroes in comics are as associated with a real world city (one that isn’t New York, anyway) as Green Arrow is with Seattle, and Percy just gets Seattle, the glimmering side of it as well as the rainy melancholia that lies beneath. This understanding of the setting really came through in his work on this book, especially in the recent Rise of Star City arc *SPOILER* that turned it into a post-capitalist hellscape known (perfectly!) as Star City (what a statement).

The Art

Right from the start, Percy worked with fantastic artists on this book, including the incredibly consistent and underrated Patrick Zircher during the New 52, plus guest pencils by the downright sinister Szymon Kudranski, whose work I've long admired. Then, in Rebirth Percy was joined by one of the best 1-2 punches of the entire line: Juan Ferreyra and Otto Schmidt, whose styles are as distinct as they are varied, yet somehow seemed to sync up around the stories. I'm excited to see the work they go on to do, hopefully with even bigger marquee books at DC, but I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t hurt to think I won’t get to regularly see Ferreyra's action work or Schmidt's all-time best depictions of Black Canary.

The Goatee

An alternate title for this section could be “The Love of the Character,” but I think that love is best summed up by The Goatee. Oliver Queen’s unabashed return to his trademark facial hair at the start of Rebirth was played for laughs in Percy’s script, but there was also serious truth behind it: somewhere along the way the essence of the character had been lost and Percy was hellbent on finding and restoring it, starting with the goatee and following close behind with the return of Ollie’s relationship with Black Canary, which Percy depicted better than any Green Arrow in quite some time (to be fair no other writer has even written the Canary-Arrow relationship in quite some time because in New 52 it never existed).

The Growth

Like Ta-Nehisi Coates in Marvel’s Black Panther, Benjamin Percy in Green Arrow was a writer you could see growing with his proficiency in the comics medium on the page. There were early missteps in the New 52 Green Arrow, to be sure, which is why I think this ended up being the Rebirth book that enjoyed the most successful resurgence. You could practically see Percy learning as he went, maturing into the skilled comic book writer many of us are sad to see moving on now.

Part II: What’s Next

I threw this out on Twitter after hearing the Percy news, but I'd like to once again call my shot: the next permanent Green Arrow writer will be Brian Michael Bendis. I had this hunch back when the Bendis news broke. Green Arrow is the exact sort of street level character Bendis has always written to great success at Marvel. He’s also a hero with a definite sense of humor who can alternate between gritty and witty. Plus Jessica Jones, who is arguably Bendis’ most famous creation, owes some of her look and attitude to Black Canary, now doesn’t she?

I’m calling it: BENDIS.

Part III: More Books Without Pictures

Comics and literature have always been linked for me. In high school, I got heavily into them both, reading as many comics each Wednesday as my part-time job allowed while going to the public library to discover work from Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem and Chuck Palahniuk. As I got older and went to college, my interest in comics waned (gah! I’m a cliche!), but nonetheless I found myself drawn to literary writers who loved or dabbled in the medium. If some or any of this sounds familiar (heck, even if it doesn’t), then you may enjoy some of the following books, none of which have pictures.

The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz: All of us are Oscar sometimes.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon: Especially recommend for those who love the Golden Age of Comics.

Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem: Growing up with comics and adversity.

The Broken Earth Novels by N.K. Jensen: Modern classics. 

Loving Day by Mat Johnson: This book has two characters who buy a big stack of new comics every Wednesday, possibly making it the most well-known book in literary fiction to have this.

The Changeling by Victor LaValle: LaValle wrote an excellent series for Boom! last year. Also, this was my favorite novel of 2017.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel: Don’t read this when you’re home sick like did, but read it literally any other time, it’s that good.

The Hannish Cycle Novels by Ursula K. Le Guin: Start with Rocannon’s World, which would make a brilliant comic book adaptation, but end with Left Hand of Darkness or The Dispossessed, a pair of masterpieces.

Red Moon by Benjamin Percy: You know this guy.

Voodoo Heart by Scott Snyder: You really know this guy.

Zack Quaintance is a career journalist who also writes fiction and makes comics. Find him on Twitter at @zackquaintance. He lives in Sacramento, California.

Top DC Rebirth Comic and Character Rebounds

Although the stories and good work of DC Rebirth are likely to continue, today’s release of Damage #1—the first book of DC’s fresher initiative, New Age of DC Heroes—marks a next phase for the publisher, similar to how the New 52 segued into DC You.  

There are plenty of questions about this new phase, including whether the books will last, whether the superstar artists will stay past the early issues, and whether the publisher is forgetting that Rebirth succeeded by paring down and simplifying its line. These discussions are likely to continue long into the coming weeks and months, but, in our opinion, what they boil down to is whether DC is risking throwing away what worked in Rebirth for the sake of newer books.

With that in mind, we think it’s important to look at what worked best in Rebirth. The New 52 was unwieldy and inconsistent, and by the end of its run it sold poorly and failed to generate even passing interest in some of the greatest characters in comics.

Part of why DC Rebirth became such a critical and commercial success was that it took a long view and went back to basics, rehabilitating the universe and the publisher. Our list today looks at which characters and books benefited most from this. You won’t find Batman or Justice League, or any of the handful of other books that were doing just fine at the end of the New 52. No, what we’re discussing is which heroes and titles went from dysfunctional and forgotten, to books we now look forward to each Wednesday.

Superman / Action Comics

Superman is a great place to start. I was enjoying some of the work being done with the character toward at the end of New 52 by creators like Greg Pak and Gene Luen Yang (whose excellent New Super Man would be on this list if it wasn’t entirely new), but a problem was that Superman had undergone too major of a reimagining at the start of the New 52. Basically, of all the characters in the DC Universe, it was easiest to think of New 52 Superman as something entirely separate from the character we’d known.

Perhaps most frustrating was the loss of his romance with Lois, foundational as it was to the mythology for so many fans, both in comics and the mainstream. Considering this alone, it’s no surprise to me that bringing back the pre-Flashpoint Superman, as well as his family, has been foundational for Rebirth. That move sums up the initiative’s back-to-basics approach, as well as its deliberate decisions to preserve old continuity that had seemingly been lost (ahem, like red-headed Wally West).

Lastly, while I know others have consistently cited differences in quality between Superman and Action Comics, I haven’t seen that. I think Superman opened stronger, and that Gleason and Tomasi are a great team, but Action has also done some interesting things under one of the best Superman writers of all time, Dan Jurgens. I don’t separate them much in my head, not the way I do Batman (solo book) and Detective Comics (team book), even though I know Superman generally focuses on Clark and his family. Don’t @ me, I like it all!

Super Sons

Super Sons being next gives us a natural transition, because half of this two-hero team didn’t even exist at the start of the New 52 (that half being the current iteration of Superboy, Jonathan Kent). To be blunt, I love all things Super Sons. This book takes the classic Batman-Superman dynamic and boils it down into volatile and childish pre-teen form (is Damian 13 now? hey! stop being a stickler, you’re losing sight of what matters). It does a great job with humor and the heart strings, and Jorge Jiménez’s art here is among the best in superhero books right now, if not THE best.

Super Sons pulls double duty, appealing to what I’ve long seen as the two sides of the comic fan coin: kids looking for escape, and adults looking for escape from the pressures of having kids, or, in my personal case, preparing to have kids. With this book, you get all the teen hijinx, and you get characters you grew up with, Batman and Superman, in the background learning to be dads. This is a really special book, and I’m far from the first to say this, but I hope Brian Michael Bendis taking over writing duties on Superman soon does not disturb this title.

Green Arrow

Green Arrow is an odd book when discussed in the context of Rebirth, as it kept the same writer from the New 52 and still seemed to undergo a significant increase in quality. My theory is that Benjamin Percy, a fantastic novelist and short story writer (who I actually was lucky enough to meet at a writer’s workshop several years ago and can attest that he’s also a nice guy), took over Green Arrow so late into the New 52 run, that Rebirth was practically on the horizon, about 18 months away, thus limiting what Percy was able to do at that time with the title. Also, when Percy came onto Green Arrow, the book was in a weird place, having been forced into a closer approximation of the CW show Arrow, which, love it or hate it, is a far cry from the Oliver Queen of the comics. My suspicion is that he wanted to go straight back to basics all along, but was told to save his ideas.

He’s said in interviews that he wanted to bring back Ollie’s relationship with Black Canary and was told to wait, which corroborates my theory. In the early days of Rebirth, Green Arrow was described by many as the biggest surprise, but I think if you read Percy’s very first (and best) New 52 arc, you see all the qualities that have made the new book such a success, ie the cultural commentary, the distinct sense of place, the top-notch villainy. The only thing that seems to have changed in Rebirth is the guidance and backing from editorial, which kudos to DC for recognizing what it had and not dumping Percy off the book just to stir up some hype.

Green Lanterns / Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps

The Green Lantern concept is almost tailor-made for today’s comic market, particularly the idea that holders of the ring are members of an ancient intergalactic police force, which allows DC to bring in new Lanterns without a major deal being made about honoring legacy or whatever. That concept, however, wasn’t being used effectively enough toward the end of New 52, with the Green Lantern corner of the universe being dominated almost exclusively by Hal Jordan.

Both of the Lantern books in Rebirth are among my absolute favorites in the line, and they take arguably the biggest risks in concept. Baz and Cruz as rookie Green Lanterns is certainly a new one, while Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps. Feels so grandiose and liberated, so creatively untethered that it at times reads like it was written by a bunch of comic fans sitting around saying, dude you know what would be awesome? And I mean that as a huge compliment. Both Sam Humphries and Robert Venditti have done awesome work with the Lanterns, and Tim Seeley’s stuff after trading Nightwing to Humphries for Green Lanterns has been promising as well, particularly his early characterizations of Simon and Jessica, the latter of whom has quickly become one of my favorite Lanterns.

Deathstroke

Deathstroke by Christopher Priest is one of those books that has been so good it’s hard for me to write about without sound like—excuse my language—a kiss ass. After a convoluted start (which paid off for careful readers, I can attest to that after revisiting it for this piece), Priest has elevated this book to a rare place for superhero fiction. Deathstroke feels at once accessible and complex, rooted in the new continuity of the character as well as his past with the Teen Titans while at the same time also pushing forward with fantastic new ideas, like Defiance.

I read an interview where Priest, who was essentially out of monthly comics when he got the call for Rebirth, said that for a long time he used to get calls from DC or Marvel asking him to write a character, one that was always a person of color, and he would refuse them. Priest told CBR that somehow overtime he’d gone from being a writer to being just a black writer. When DC called to ask him to right Deathstorke, he had to double check and ask them if the character was black. When they said no, he said keep talking.

And for us fans, it’s a great thing they did. Priest, who’d been out of monthly comics for almost a decade, is now writing Justice League, arguably DC’s biggest book behind Batman. This anecdote about Priest, and the incredible stories that have grown from it, is really encouraging as this new initiative moves forward. It suggests DC is determined to recognize and reward good work, and to also hold onto its talent. The rise of Priest’s stock within the company in lieu of one of the best solo Deathstroke stories of all-time shows that the publisher seems to have learned from some of its past snafus with talent, as well as from some of its stumbles with managing its books, and that it is now hyper aware of what it has to learn from past mistakes. It is indeed a new age at DC.