WONDER WOMAN #14 & #15

“FOR THE GLORY OF GAEA” | "SWAN SONG"
Plotter/Layouts: George Pérez | Script: Len Wein | Inker: Bruce D. Patterson
Letterer: John Costanza | Colorist: Carl Gafford | Editor: Karen Berger

The Plot: With the Millennium crisis at an end, Wonder Woman returns beneath Paradise Island to check on her mother, and finds Heracles bearing the entire island on his shoulders as Hippolyte lays beside him. Diana flies Hippolyte to the surface, then returns to Heracles. Zeus appears and declares the demigod’s punishment at an end, and the goddess Gaia takes over supporting the island.

In the days that follow, peace returns to Paradise Island. Hippolyte recovers from her injuries, and the Amazons destroy their weaponry, declaring they will practice peace from now on. Soon Heracles is accepted back onto Olympus by Zeus, while Hippolyte tells Diana to return to Man’s World as an ambassador and preach the ways of the Amazons.

Diana says her farewells and returns to Boston, where she reunites with Julia and Vanessa Kapatelis, and takes up residence in their home once more.

Sub-Plots & Continuity Notes: Heracles apologizes to the Amazons for his treatment of them, and they accept. Later, he shares a kiss with Hippolyte before returning to Olympus.

While going through the belongings of Steve’s late father, Steve and Etta declare their love for one another.

“SWAN SONG”
Story & Layouts: George Pérez | Script: Len Wein | Finishes: Bruce D. Patterson
Lettering: John Costanza | Coloring: Carl Gafford
Editing: Karen Berger

The Plot: Late at night, a mystery man steals computer files from an office building and escapes. Meanwhile, Myndi Mayer makes plans a “Wonder Woman Fair” to be held for charity. Later the mystery man saves a woman named Maxine Sterenbuch from an assassin. Maxine explains that she’s in town at the invitation of her childhood pen pal, Valerie Beaudry, who is now married to millionaire Henry Cobb Armbruster. The mystery man reveals his name to be Solomon Buchman, and says he intends to kill Valerie just as she murdered his father.

Buchman and Maxine wander the Wonder Woman fair the next day, looking for Valerie. Eventually the woman appears, calling herself Silver Swan, and threatens the crowd. Buchman goes for his gun, but a hitman working for Armbruster stops him. Meanwhile, Wonder Woman confronts Silver Swan, who uses her “Swan Song” to destroy an occupied ferris wheel nearby.

Sub-Plots & Continuity Notes: Julia Kapatelis is in Greece visiting her parents. Vanessa, meanwhile, is still in the U.S., apparently living at home with Diana. I mean, leaving your child in the care of Wonder Woman while travel overseas is probably a safe bet, but at the same time, Diana has a habit of being pulled away to do super-stuff all the time. I wonder if Julia has any neighbors or friends checking on Vanessa too?

Diana has a dream about Superman in the issue’s opening pages not unlike the one Clark Kent had about her in SUPERMAN #5, and the insight the dreams give into these two characters is faschinating: when Clark dreamed about Wonder Woman, it started with him fighting Darkseid’s war dogs solo before being joined by Wonder Woman. They defeated the creatures together, then shared a kiss. Diana’s dream, meanwhile, has her riding a horse through a placid nature scene before the heavens part and Superman descends to kiss her. Superman dreams of action alongside Wonder Woman as his equal, while Diana dreams of tranquility and views Superman as a god (she even thinks at one point that meeting him for the first time reminded her of her first encounter with a deity).

Myndi has hired a publicist named Skeeter LaRue, who rubs her other employees, Deni and Steve, the wrong way. The two also observe that lately, Myndi “isn’t making sense.”

Etta Candy is seen weighing in as part of an ongoing fitness regimen, while Steve Trevor attends the Wonder Woman fair. Vanessa is at the fair as well, accompanied by the boy she considers her boyfriend, Barry. But Vanessa’s other friend believes he’s only hanging out with her to get close to Wonder Woman. Barry also tells Steve that Diana considers him “like a father,” which seems to bum Steve out a bit.

We’re also informed that Steve has resigned his Air Force commission following his own father’s death.

Silver Swan makes her post-CRISIS debut here, a reinvention of the pre-CRISIS villainess. According to Solomon Buchmann, she was born horribly disfigured, but an experiment changed her into the beautiful woman Maxine knows. However, Soloman also believes that the experiment drove her to kill his father.

My Thoughts: The first of these stories is your old-fashioned “sub-plot issue following from a major epic”, though in this case it follows two epics — the “Challenge of the Gods” storyline and the ill-timed MILLENNIUM event. I know that linewide crossovers interrupting the flow of monthly titles feels unavoidable nowadays, and perhaps even seems like business as usual — but this has to be one of the earliest instances of something like this happening. MILLENNIUM literally inserted itself into a multi-part Wonder Woman storyline, forcing Pérez and Wein to send Diana off into another series between issues of her own title. We don’t even know how the Pan Manhunter died, since that development happened in MILLENNIUM rather than here.

Anyway, MILLENNIUM Is over now, and as of the conclusion to WONDER WOMAN 14, so is Diana’s latest dalliance with the Gods of Olympus. She returns to Boston in issue 15, and the more entertaining (for me, at least) standard superhero fare resumes, along with a some corporate espionage. Not exactly the sort of stuff one expects from Wonder Woman’s adventures, but after all that time spent on Olympus and Paradise Island, it’s nice to get back to some relatively grounded, relatable stuff in the real world.

Otherwise, there’s not much to say about the Silver Swan storyline yet. A lot is going on; perhaps too much in terms of revealing new characters and setting up a pseudo-mystery all in the span of a single issue. But we’ll wait until next time to see how it all turns out before judging the story as a whole. All I can say is that, at the moment, there’s a lot to keep track of in this story! I practically had to re-read the whole issue in order to get the summary and continuity notes above ironed out.

Next Week: Silver Banshee returns in SUPERMAN #17.