Wonder Woman: Agent of Peace #14 // Review
Wonder Woman’s silent invisible plane has been there for her on and off for the better part of a century. It rarely gets the center of any panel, though. The specifics of its origin aren’t a huge part of Diana’s backstory. Writer Amanda Deibert breaks with tradition and gives the pre-history of the first stealth plane a closer look in Wonder Woman: Agent of Peace #14. The story is rendered for the page by artist Aaron Lopresti and inker Matt Ryan. The simple application of history to the legend of Themyscira makes for a fun, little excursion into Diana’s childhood.
Carefully watching the radar Airman Maddenthorpe notices an incoming missile “scooch” out of a dangerous incoming trajectory. It’s a bit of a mystery to him, but not to Commander Etta Candy, who has seen this sort of thing before. The missile was steered away from its target by a golden lasso wielded by a woman named Diana standing atop a silent, invisible jet that doesn’t show up on radar. Diana takes the opportunity to talk of the origins of her love of flying when a mysterious aviator crashed onto Themyscira on July 2nd of 1937. Back then Diana was just a child and very, very curious about the world.
It really IS a very simple connection that Deibert is making here. History engages with the legend of the character in a bit of a clever way. There isn’t much of a central conflict going on, but it’s really REALLY satisfying to see one legend helping out another. Deibert makes it a fun, quick journey that fills the entire issue with plenty of space around the edges that engages the imagination. There’s not a whole lot going on here, but there doesn’t have to be. It’s just a fun, little coming-of-age drama about Wonder Woman as a girl.
The historical figure in question is one of the more recognizable faces of the 1930s. Rather than go for a total caricature, Lopresti and Ryan play with the basic iconography of the aviator. She goes unnamed for the entire issue, but there’s no questioning who it is. Lopresti and Ryan bring the legend down to earth without her name with visuals that follow tradition to draw Hippolyta to look exactly like her daughter Diana will when she’s all grown-up. Lopresti and Ryan grant the exuberance of the young Diana with careful attention to the character’s fearlessly empathic precociousness.
The standalone historical coming-of-age story is a novel look at an aspect of Diana’s childhood that is rarely given much time or space on the comics page. The simple single-story a perfect fit for the format of Agent of Peace. A story like this wouldn’t really have much of a place in a traditional Wonder Woman series. Once again, Agent of Peace proves to be a very enjoyable supplement to the character’s more continuity-heavy exploits that Mariko Tamaki is exploring in Diana’s main series.
