Written by Steve Orlando
Illustrated by Raul Allen
Published by DC Comics
“My world is bigger than theirs.”
Truth is hard. Particularly if you doing you’re very best to avoid it.
Unless, of course, you embrace it. Wear it as a mantle. Become its champion.
Make it your superpower.
Then it’s everything but truth that becomes hard. Even if you have to stand against everything and everyone to drag it from the darkness. Even if you must make your own path in the light, until others find their way.
The Enemy of Both Sides concludes this month with Steve Orlando’s final issue of Wonder Woman – at least for now.
It’s hard to imagine though, that he’ll never return to these pages again, or perhaps to others which feature Princess Diana as well. Very few writers have ever shown an understanding of the character that Mr. Orlando has demonstrated in just these few short issues.
If that’s gone without notice, it shouldn’t. If you’ve yet to read his run, I highly recommend you do so.
It’s not just that Wonder Woman is super. She’s mythic. Her presence and actions serve to bridge the space between the realities of human strife and conflict, and the ideals which might unite us above them. With Diana, the power of truth is more than a concept, more than a noble principle. It’s a living, breathing elemental gift from the gods, and the embodiment of a universal standard that undergirds every other aspect of her character and her mission here on earth.
Should we expect any less from a warrior who wears the Golden Lasso of Truth at her hip?
Steve Orlando understands all of this, and he’s written a story that treats it with all the seriousness, nuance and glorious, knock-down, superheroic myth-making chutzpah that makes reading comics so damn satisfying.
All the more so, given the events of the day. Even beyond the particular reflections of the Quraci storyline, Wonder Woman truly is a hero of modern proportion. One we need now, and one that deserves the treatment Orlando has given her. I’ll be truly sorry to see him go, but I trust G. Willow Wilson will be inspired to do the same in the months ahead.
Well, presuming Diana survives James Tynion IV’s Witching Hour, which begins next month in the pages of Justice League Dark, (which you should be reading), and picks up again here with issue #56.
The iconic style of artistic team Raul Allen and Patricia Martin lends an appropriate sense of high fantasy to an otherwise modern story. Elements of Moebius and Quitely set the tone, even if the action sequences end up looking a little flat. Small price to pay for a caliber piece of storytelling.
Does Wonder Woman save the day? Sure. Are there any real surprises about what goes down, after the set-up of last issue? A few, sort of, enough to make it fun – but really, we already know what’s going to happen.
But it’s not really what happens. It’s how it happens. That’s what makes this book so darn good. What makes Steve Orlando the master writer he’s proven himself to be.
And what makes Wonder Woman the hero she truly is.
Hola.
Next Issue: Witchy Woman
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