Wonder Woman #32 // Review
It’s 20 years from now. The Matriarch is being respectfully interviewed in the Oval Office. The interviewer is asking questions that positively adore the queen. The Matriarch is coming across as a serene leader with great humility. Still...there IS going to be something about it that she’s not going to like. It’s something that seems to be encroaching on her relentlessly pristine dominance in Wonder Woman #32. Writer Tom King continues a long and winding saga for Diana and her daughter Trinity. The action and drama are brought to the page by artist Daniel Sampere and artist Adriano Lucas.
Elsewhere, Wonder Woman and Trinity splashdown into the ocean. It starts an aggressive splash from no visible origin. Then the outline of the invisible just becomes apparent. Diana and Trinity are approaching the Queen’s Island of Paradise. It’s guarded by men dresses as Roman centurions. Diana and Trinity have a discussion as the guardians of the island rush at them. There are questions of fear and pleasure at the thought and sensation of combat. They are ridiculously outnumbered, but they’re not going to have any difficulty making it to the facility that they’re looking for. The real challenge is yet to be revealed.
King returns Wonder Woman’s comic book to...Wonder Woman. (Sorta. Last issue she only made a cameo appearance in her own title. Here she’s actually got a couple of pages in her own comic book. It’s just nice that King can allow her that much. Maybe he’ll even let Wonder Woman have the central focus in the next issue of her own comic. That would be nice.) King is spending a lot of time setting-up The Matriarch, who he’s clearly a lot more interested in than Wonder Woman. There’s real heart in the dialogue between Wonder Woman and Trinity as the ar rushed in combat. It’s an interesting relationship. Maybe he could focus a little bit more on the title character and her daughter next issue.
Sampere has a sharp sense of execution in the dramatic end of the story. Architectural renderings look particularly striking as The Matriarch is interviewed in a perfectly-rendered Oval Office. A meticulously-rendered fairy tale castle rests behind the White House on the title page. Sampere’s work makes like a weird and surreal fusion between Washington D.C. and the Magic Kingdom. The drama strikes some powerful notes on the page with atmospheric addition by Lucas’ colors that feel positively beautiful in places.
Tom King is clearly quite bored with the title character of the series here. It’s too bad. He actually does a pretty good job of writing her. For her part, the Matriarch is actually a pretty boring villain. This is a real shame as King has stated a desire to make a big, epic villain for Wonder Woman. He’s failing miserably at that. She’s really…she’s really just a cliche of a villain. People complain about Wonder Woman not having a respectable rogues gallery. Such criticism is largely missing the point. At her best...Wonder Woman has never really been about the villains. Her heroism is about the adversity that she has to overcome...not the villains she has to face. Let the pointy-eared millionaire from Gotham deal with theatric metropolitan criminal psychosis. Let the caped reporter from Kansas handle the megalomaniacs bent on global conquest. Wonder Woman is about so much more than that.
