Wonder Woman #26 // Review
Mice have ears. Mouse Man knows. This has been firmly established in constant repetition by everyone all over the island. But HOW is it that Mouse Man knows? Dictatorships don’t come out of nowhere. There’s an origin for everything and it’s going to become clear in Wonder Woman #26. Writer Tom King continues a re-imagining of a very silly character as something terrifying and overwhelming. The chapter is brought to the page by artist Daniel Sampere and colorist Tomeu Morey. The background on the island of the Mouseman is brought vividly to life in an issue that slowly intensifies the conflict for Wonder Woman.
It was superheroes. There were people who didn’t want to have to be around superheroes anymore. It’s bad enough living on an Earth challenged with powerful magic and dramatic physics. Find a small island and maybe you’re far enough away from the danger to be free of the heroes and the danger they bring. Still...crime persists and there has to be SOME way of dealing with it. And so maybe Mouse Man know a better way. And maybe his way draws the attention of Wonder Woman...who might just find him to be a bit more of a threat than she had originally thought...
It’s easy enough to take a weak and absurd character from the early Silver Age and make him truly menacing. To do so in a way that really makes a statement about power and the nature of fascism? Thats taking it to a whole new level that goes well be beyond simple making a silly villain a badass. King makes Mouse Man seem all the more fascinating by giving him a motivation that seems clean and rational at the heart of it all. There’s a great degree of thematic strength in what King is building.
Sampere isn’t called-on to deliver a whole lot of subtlety for the 26th issue of the series. Though there IS some political and interpersonal drama making it to the page, the heart of the issues is a showdown between Wonder Woman and Mouse Man. So there’s a lot of physical aggression shooting across the page. The kinetics of the action feel quite dynamic. Sampere and Morey do a respectable job of delivering the mood with some particularly dark colors and shadow. It all hits the page with a great deal of impact as the story hits another major moment at issue’s end.
King’s story draws on some provocative ideas of heroism and villainy that seem to be circulating through the margins of the popular superhero genre. Wonder Woman remains a fascinating character with King’s characterization even if she’s not really the central focus of the issue. She is the selfless heroism against which Mouse Man’s own twisted behavior is contrasted. It’s a fun contrast that seems to work quite well throughout another satisfying issue that fits into a storyline that seems to be cleverly building on ideas and themes that King had bee exploring since the current series began just over two years ago.
