Wonder Woman: Agent of Peace #8 // Review
Diana Prince has been many things over the years: nurse, spy, fast-food employee, space pirate and so on. The latest issue of Wonder Woman: Agent of Peace has Prince in the role of archaeologist in an adventure that pits her against one of her longest-running rivals. Talented veteran writer Louise Simonson tells a story brought to the page by artist Paul Pelletier and inker Norm Rapmund. It’s a simple story that is well-told from beginning to end. It’s a pure adventure that reaches for precisely what it achieves without aspiring to a great deal more than it can achieve. Simonson’s story is a worthy addition to a series of standalone tales featuring one of the longest-run action heroines in pop cultural history.
Somewhere in the recent past, Wonder Woman is exploring an ancient temple in the Peruvian Mountains when she runs across a tomb of a pre-Colombian god whose tomb promises excellent power to anyone who will awaken the deity. A dutiful archaeologist, Wonder Woman, takes a few pictures and sends them out to her colleague Barbara Minerva. Quite unaware that Minerva is actually the alter ego of her nemesis, The Cheetah, Wonder Woman, is somewhat startled to see the villain appear at the tomb in search of the power offered up by the ancient god in exchange for its release from incarceration within the tomb.
With decades of experience directing page and panel, Louise Simonson cleverly constructs a very tight, little action drama that comfortably snuggles completely and coherently between a single pair of covers. The simple matter of a tomb, a supervillain, and an ancient god plays out with nearly perfect pacing in the span of fewer than 18 pages. Simonson is cleverly reserved with her approach to the one-shot. Given the opportunity to work with a character as iconic as Wonder Woman, any writer would have a tendency to want to reach for matters much larger than a single issue. Simonson keeps the conflict between hero, villain, and ancient deity without reaching too far in any one direction.
Pelletier competently brings a simple adventure story to the page without trying to over-embellish it. The classic Wonder Woman costume looks as good as it always has as Wonder Woman squares-off against The Cheetah one more time. Action and drama are manifest on the page in a very straightforward manner that gives both elements ample room to move around. The atmosphere of the ancient temple is never given quite enough detail to provide the intrepid adventure of the story enough room to feel genuinely exotic, but everything else comes across with a very vivid execution on the part of Pelletier and Rapmund.
Agent of Peace continues in the series’ tradition of casting light on a long-lived character from a variety of different directions. The classic character comes to the page comfortably in her classic look as she dives into an adventure that makes for a pleasantly uncluttered moment of heroism. Simonson offers one more glance at Diana from another perspective. Next week could go in any direction at all, anything could happen in a series like this.
