WONDER WOMAN #17

“TRACES”
Script & Pencils : George Pérez | Finishes: Dick Giordano
Letters: John Costanza | Colors: Carl Gafford
Edits: Karen Berger

The Plot: A carrier pigeon arrives for Diana just as Steve and Etta are about to drive her and Vanessa to the airport for a trip to Greece. Diana reads the pigeon’s letter to her friends in the car, then writes a response to her mother and sends it off before boarding her plane.

In Greece, Diana is given a massive public welcome, then spends some time in Athens before touring the country with Vanessa, Julia, and their family friend, Stavros. Eventually she collapses while the group is aboard a boat.

Sub-Plots & Continuity Notes: Vanessa is still pining over Barry, and her friend Eileen continues to insist that he’s only using her to get close to Wonder Woman. Eileen is also concerned Vanessa will stop being her friend when they have a brief argument on this topic.

The letter from Hippolyte details the Amazons’ recent sense that something is amiss on Olympus, which Diana chalks up to the battle she and Superman had with Darkseid. Hippolyte also says that a faction of Amazons wants to isolate Paradise Island from the outside world.

On Olympus, the gods note that most of them were away at a conference with Hades and Poseidon when Darkseid attacked Olympus. Heracles wants to attack Apokolips in retaliation, but Zeus stays his son’s hand and instead tells the gods that the “cosmic migration” will soon begin. Also, Aphrodite and Hephaestus observe that Hermes seems pretty bummed about something.

Olympus is damaged following the events of ACTION COMICS 600, with fire pits not unlike those on Apokolips. This seems to contradict the end of that prior story, where we saw Olympus returned to full glory immediately after Darkseid had apparently destroyed it.

Vanessa believes that Wonder Woman and Superman have become an item, but on the flight to Greece, Diana muses that she and the Man of Steel are too different — specifically, because she is an envoy of peace, while he is an enforcer (albeit for good).

In Boston, Myndi Mayer has turned to the bottle following the botched Wonder Woman fair. She berates her assistant, Chrissie (who is revealed as her former college roommate) when Chrissie suggests firing Skeeter LaRue.

Julia talks to Diana about her husband, an archaeologist, and the implication is that he died somehow.

A man attempts to deliver something to Diana when she lands in Greece, but he’s killed by a demonic crow. Later, in an estate on an isolated island, a mysterious woman converses with her aide about Wonder Woman, and it’s revealed that the man was killed at her order. At the story’s conclusion, another man is killed (this time by demon sheep) — and when the boat carrying Diana, the Kapatelises, and Stavros passes near the island, Stavros appears to fall under a similar demonic spell.

My Thoughts: Well, it’s a heavy sub-plot “quiet” issue, which I usually really enjoy, except… very few of the sub-plots in WONDER WOMAN have excited me. Myndi descending into alcoholism is fine, and Diana exploring the land of her ancestors is nice to see. But as I’ve noted before, the Greek God stuff (and by extension, the Amazon politics) bore me to tears every time they pop up. Whenever I turn the page to a scene of a bunch of gods blabbing at each other, I feel like I’ve stumbled into some other (super boring) comic.

All this has me wondering whether the Greek stuff was a major component of pre-CRISIS WONDER WOMAN. I know Paradise Island and the Amazons existed, of course, and I know she fought Ares and Circe in the original continuity, but was her series this painfully bound to Greek mythology? Did pre-CRISIS WONDER WOMAN feature page after page of Zeus and his brothers and sisters chattering on about stuff nobody cared about? Or is that all an invention of George Pérez for the post-CRISIS world?

And again, I generally like the original Greek myths! But for whatever reason, the stuff Pérez is doing with the pantheon in these pages leaves me absolutely, totally ice-cold.

Oh, and now that I've complained about him for a couple paragraphs, I should note that Perez has officially taken on scripting duties as of this issue. His prose is perhaps a bit more verbose than that of Len Wein, but for the most part he does a fine job. I actually didn't even realize Wein was gone until I went to type up this issue's credits!

Next Week: Superman fights Psi-Phon and the Dreadnaught in SUPERMAN #19 and ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #442!