By Mike Badilla
I like Wonder Woman, but I find myself not reading it very often, which is why I chose to do this book. I also chose this book because of the cover; I have never seen a Wonder Woman book look like this. The art is very different, dark and detailed and a little gross, which intrigued me. We start out on issue 7, which of course means there is story that I will have missed out on, so let's continue anyways. We find our heroine, along with some kind of Cheetara-esque woman, breaking some people out from a cell inside of a cave. Their captors appear to be werewolf types. We find WW asking if this is all the people that were missing, to which one of the captives replies that they are still missing about a dozen people and mentions someone named Cadulo must be kidnapping them from all over, using them to make some ancient named Urzkartaga a human form. WW tells the captives to get themselves out while she and the Cheetah woman deal with Cadulo and Urzkartaga. One of the captives questions Cheetara, which angers her, responding that WW has promised to free her from her 'curse' if she helps.
There is now some back and forth between MM and Barbara (the cheetah), and we get to the good part; the ritual. We see Cadulo offering some guy who is strapped to a table and the rest of the missing girls as sacrifices to Urzkartaga in order to awaken him and allow him freedom; however, Urz goes only for Cadulo and starts to attack him until WW comes bursting through Urz like one of those things from Alien. WW saves the man strapped to the table (Steven), and they have a nice hug. This nice moment is disrupted by Cadulo, who tries to get his animal-men warriors to attack the two, but not before Barbara gets in there and beats them all up. WW, Barbara, Steven and the girls aren't out of trouble yet...
Art; very different. I always have an idea of how I expect certain characters and I.P.'s to look, which doesn't make sense as there are so many different artists over the years, but this book really threw me for a loop. As I said with the cover, things just look so dark and detailed. The cave-like background is gloomy and dark, characters are more detailed when needed, but less detailed and more movement is added in other panels. Colors are fine and fitting throughout. One thing that interested me was the panel layout on a few pages, where the panel frames looked like overgrowth and skulls from inside this cave, and it looked really cool. The art was a little inconsistent here and there, but pretty good.
The story, however, was not all that interesting, and I don't think it was because I jumped in on issue 7. Everyone knows the story of sacrificing the virgins to an ancient god in order to awaken him and blah blah. This story seemed particularly 90's with the inclusion of the animal-men, which I thought was equally as corny then as now. I feel like if you're going to rehash a story that's so trope-y like this that you need to have a lot of tricks or surprises up your sleeve, which I don't get the impression this series has. If you're a big fan of WW or animal people, get this book. If you're not a fan, at least give it a flip through to see the art.
Score: 3/5
Wonder Woman #7
Writer: Greg Rucka
Artist: Liam Sharp
Publisher: DC Comics
Price: $2.99
Format: Ongoing; Print/Digital