Sensational Wonder Woman #13 // Review
Nina is an influencer and missing. She's a new kind of mega-famous. For a brief flash of a second, she met someone who has been famous for far longer than she is. Now Nina has gone missing, and that woman has taken it upon herself to find the lost celebrity in Sensational Wonder Woman #13. Writer/artist Sanya Anwar brings a new Wonder Woman story to the weekly DC Digital series with colorist Eva de la Cruz's aid. The title character steps out of the center of the frame for a supporting role in her own series as Anwar explores the story of a complicated figure who has mysteriously disappeared.
Wonder Woman was visiting a pediatric care center when the wealthy head of the center popped by with his wife: noted internet star Natalia "Nina" Close. It was an encounter that took a fraction of a moment, but it was viewed by Close's followers all over the world. Now Nina is missing, and Wonder Woman has come into possession of a detailed handwritten journal by the celebrity. She's determined to find Nina in an investigation that will reveal a very complicated and tortured person beyond the glossy image posts viewed by a legion of followers.
Anwar uses Wonder Woman as a vehicle for telling the story of another character. In and of itself, the story being told isn't terribly interesting. It doesn't really explore the missing woman in a way that casts a whole lot of light on the title character. This would be okay if the character in question were interestingly complicated. The story of those fallen into the abyss of fame has been told so many times that it scarcely feels necessary to pull the spotlight away from the title character for an entire issue in order to focus on it.
The drama hits the page in a very straightforward fashion. Anwar doesn't capture the digitized glamor of internet celebrity with quite as much strength as the drama. She may not be a terribly original character, but Nina has a suitably haunted look about her on the page that's reasonably engaging. Wonder Woman's deep soul-searching while looking for the lost celebrity feels interesting enough to carry the story from cover to cover. Her rendering of the action that hits the page doesn't exactly feel all that compelling, but the title character DOES appear solidly heroic for those moments that she IS allowed to be active in the course of the issue.
Wonder Woman is set up for a fantastic show-down in the series's fourteenth issue, with events at the end of the chapter being what they are. The story as a whole COULD turn out to be much better than its first part, depending on how Anwar closes it out. Still, the first part of the story feels a bit weak as it isn't covering ground that hasn't already been covered pretty extensively in popular fiction over the years. The character of Nina shows some signs of serious drama. It will remain to be seen if she's going to finish the story stronger than she opened it.
