Series: Wonder Woman, Volume V #4
Audience: +16
Genre: Comic Book
Publisher: DC Comics
Release Date: November 21st 2017
My Rating: 4 cups
Source: Netgalley
Blurb (from Goodreads):
NEW YORK TIMES best-selling writer Greg Rucka continues his celebrated return to the Amazon Warrior in WONDER WOMAN VOL. 4: GODWATCH!*Disclaimer: I received an eARC of this book from Netgalley and DC Comics in exchange for an honest review. This does not influence my rating or the content of my review in any way.
Since the moment Wonder Woman arrived in our world, Godwatch has been waiting. But who are they, and what do they want? Diana’s journey to the truth that she’s been seeking since WONDER WOMAN VOL. 1 continues here, with the origin of what may prove to be her greatest enemies.
Teaming with up-and-coming artist Bilquis Evely, Greg Rucka’s critically acclaimed run on one of Rebirth’s most successful titles continues here in WONDER WOMAN VOL. 4: GODWATCH! Collects WONDER WOMAN #16, #18, #20, #22 and #24.
I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by this 4th volume of Wonder Woman. If the previous volumes that I read, 1 and 3, focused on Wonder Woman, here we get the other side of the story, Cale's story, which helped me understand her a little bit more.
I still believe it would have been better to have these volumes include the issues in order, but at the same time, having this last part told from a different POV altogether kind of made me like the story more. I got a few of the answers that I hoped I'd get, while at the same time some of the gaps I had are still there, like for instance what convinced Diana to fight the inner demons that kept her mind captive. But back to this volume.
We get to see how Cale, Doctor Cyber and Cheetah became who they were. The volume starts way back in the past, with Cale's daughter being a normal little girl, and we get to see doctor Cyber as a regular human, Cheetah as Barbara Ann. I believe this was a story that deserved a bit more page time, probably a bit more story development than it got, because there were a lot of elements that could have been explored more, but as a whole I liked the story. I would have wanted to see more of Cheetah, so I'm hoping there's a comic book out there that focuses on her a lot more than this one did.
Despite these missing details, I loved seeing the struggle of Victoria Cale and her transformation from regular woman to villain, her dehumanization in a way. At her core, Cale is just a mother trying to protect her daughter and willing to do anything in order to keep her safe. There's a wonderful scene halfway through this volume that shows just that, when she takes her now teenager daughter to see some specialists that might help figure out how to cure her. I liked that, because here you have a woman willing to do anything, from creating an inanimate AI version of her best friend to subduing the two gods who cursed her daughter, while at the same time you get the mother who is trying out everything medically possible to figure out how to cure her doctor. I loved that side of the story. Based on that alone, I kind of liked the idea of the story being split across the volumes, with this last one focused on the "villain's" side of the story.
The art was a bit confusing. While still pretty, it was strikingly different than what I was used to from the previous volumes. I felt like this was more similar to the older, 80s version of Wonder Woman. It kind of set the two versions of the story apart. This kind of made me realize that while everybody else was enamored with Wonder Woman, as shown in the previous volumes through the clean, almost poster-like art used there, here you have Cale who doesn't really care one way or the other, which for me seemed translated in the art. That's how I interpreted the choice made to have this big difference. It also made me think of how the insanity of Cale translated in the art. There's a sort of disturbing quality in the art, if it makes sense, which I loved seeing. It's not that the drawings are bad, on the contrary, but the lines, the colors used, everything about it made me think of how disturbing this version of the story was.
The volume has a few loose ends, and I hope that maybe they'll be picked up in the future and resolved, but if not, I thought this was a good way to end this run. I'll definitely read future installments if they come out, but if not, I just hope we'll get some connected stories, at least so we can see Barbara Ann get some form of happy ending. All in all, a good volume that I enjoyed a lot more than I anticipated.
