Wonder Woman #17 Review

Over the course of this series, Azarello has created an amazing cast of characters. Here we see six of them come together in a bar and discuss how they’ll find Zola’s daughter, all of which Zola doesn’t have much of a say in. This is an interesting scene because it delves into humor and very tense situations all within a couple of pages. This is also where a very out of character moment happens when Orion slaps Wonder Woman on the ass. This came as a little awkward to me because the only other times we’ve seen Orion behave like this is when he’s referred to Wonder Woman as “legs” and this was only because he didn’t know her name. While it is meant to be a funny scene, it still seemed a weird jump in Orion’s character. I always gathered from his character that he was a straight forward “do the job and be done with it” type of guy, but, then again, if Azarello has done anything with this series it’s break down and rebuild many of these characters.

For three issues now I’ve been waiting for Orion to actually do something. The only thing the character has given us is a reason for being here. Aside from that, he has yet do deliver a reason to stay here. This issue Orion takes a back seat and is all but forgotten. It’s a bit disappointing considering I was so excited for his presence since the ending of issue #12.

The shining moments in this issue are two meetings. The First Born meets… well, not really meets, but is attacked by Poseidon. He sends shark monsters after him, it’s pretty amazing. And the second meeting is between War and Wonder Woman. This an exciting meeting, considering the last time these two characters met was in Wonder Woman #0. War was her mentor until she found him to be heartless. Their conversations, though brief, are a joy to read.

The art here is split between Tony Akins and Dan Green. While I hate it when there are artistic breaks between issues I will say that I’m pleased that DC managed to use artists with a somewhat similar art style to Cliff Chiang. Akins and Green have similar art styles themselves and I couldn’t even tell when they switched off. That being said, the art here suffers on the side of character expression. Quite often did we see a very over-exaggerated facial expression as well as far too many just plain awkward expressions from several characters.