A review by unrealpunk
Wonder Woman: Paradise Found by Brandon Badeaux, José Marzán Jr., Marlo Alquiza, Travis Moore, Lary Stucker, Andy Lanning, Phil Jimenez, Kevin Conrad
fast-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
2.0
Wonder Woman (2nd Series) #171-177
The art is pretty good, very similar to the George Pérez style. So if all you want from a WW comic is a sort of rehash of some of the more cosmological and crossover-heavy parts of the Pérez run, you may enjoy this. It is especially reminiscent of the War of the Gods arc, and while Paradise Found is more coherent than the absolute mess that is War of the Gods, it's also much less interesting. There's no interesting mythology or politics, hardly any development of characters or relationships, and the worldbuilding never manages to be as compelling as it is ambitious/ridiculous. The narrative never achieves a momentum capable of building stakes or distinguishing the importance of one story beat from another. There are zillions of story beats here, enough for three times the number of pages if they were developed into anything but the most superficial boilerplate melodrama; but for all the beats, there's only about one and a half real ideas. This writer can definitely do better; I went back and read issue #170 — the issue that immediately preceeds this collection — and it's a great issue that depicts a multidimensional, fully realized Wonder Woman, with moments of humor and poignance. I get that superhero comics are built on heavy doses of mindless action, but the hard shift in that direction in this collection is over-correction by a mile, and packaged together with a generic DC crossover, it really feels like the editors and corporate interests are yet again the main culprits behind this disappointment.
The art is pretty good, very similar to the George Pérez style. So if all you want from a WW comic is a sort of rehash of some of the more cosmological and crossover-heavy parts of the Pérez run, you may enjoy this. It is especially reminiscent of the War of the Gods arc, and while Paradise Found is more coherent than the absolute mess that is War of the Gods, it's also much less interesting. There's no interesting mythology or politics, hardly any development of characters or relationships, and the worldbuilding never manages to be as compelling as it is ambitious/ridiculous. The narrative never achieves a momentum capable of building stakes or distinguishing the importance of one story beat from another. There are zillions of story beats here, enough for three times the number of pages if they were developed into anything but the most superficial boilerplate melodrama; but for all the beats, there's only about one and a half real ideas. This writer can definitely do better; I went back and read issue #170 — the issue that immediately preceeds this collection — and it's a great issue that depicts a multidimensional, fully realized Wonder Woman, with moments of humor and poignance. I get that superhero comics are built on heavy doses of mindless action, but the hard shift in that direction in this collection is over-correction by a mile, and packaged together with a generic DC crossover, it really feels like the editors and corporate interests are yet again the main culprits behind this disappointment.