Wonder Woman #44 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Meredith Finch
Art By: David Finch, Jonathan Glapion, Brad Anderson, Rob Leigh
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: September 16, 2015

Arrow In The Shoulder Blues

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Wonder Woman is one of the best looking books that DC is putting out and Meredith Finch has done a damn fine job in making this series her own while still incorporating elements of the previous run...... Yeah, I know, that's some pretty awesome shit right there.  As we've previous seen, Wonder Woman has her hands full with Donna Troy escaping her cell on Olympus and a new villain named Aegeus coming for her God of War hood........ Which would be cooler if the character wasn't a sniveling piece of shit, but I guess that will make it all the more worth it when he finally gets his.  Which hopefully will be soon because in the previous issue the Three Fates have been murdered and before Wonder Woman could find Donna Troy to see if she was responsible, Aegeus ambushed her and shot Diana with a mystical golden arrow....... then her eyes began to bleed and it was really awful.  Let's see if our hero can pull through and get to the bottom of the Fates' murder while taking out that asshole Aegues.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

We begin our issue with Wonder Woman waking up after she got shot with an arrow and passed out from all that bleeding from her eyes.  Which immediately feels a little off because as we'll learn later, this arrow was a "god killer" weapon and after having all that eye bleeding and collapsing last issue, you'd think that Diana would be a little more worse for wear than simply pulling the arrow out and flying home.  It's kind of anti-climactic.  After Wonder Woman is all healed up, we find out from Hera that the Fates being dead is sort of a big problem, since you know, they kept the gods..... well, gods.  Since folks stopped worshiping the deities, the Fates were the ones that kept them the way they were while they themselves aged and became decrepit.  With their deaths, well, the gods aren't what they used to be and if they strayed away from Olympus they might as well just call themselves human........ and nobody wants that.

Let's interrupt our regularly scheduled Wonder Woman story to take a peek in on Donna Troy, who after leaving the Fates......alive and well mind you, she's now walking the streets of London and thinking the same thing that all of us think........walking shoulder to shoulder with people down the street is awful.  After she ducks down a dark alley, which is never a good idea, Donna beats the hell out of pimp for beating on a girl we saw at the end of last issue's Wonder Woman and then the two decide to just stick together....... you know because of Donna's ability to whoop some ass and the other girl's ability to give Donna some decent clothes that aren't all Clash of the Titans-y..... I say other girl because her name isn't mentioned once here.  It's very odd.  Yeah, I could go back and see if her name was mentioned in the previous issue, but I don't recall it off hand and not having it here just seems really strange.  Especially since Donna and her just met and there's no formal introduction.

In the end, after learning that the golden arrow that shot Wonder Woman in the previous issue was created in Hephaestus's forge and that it indeed is a "god killer".......even though it did little more than make Diana pass out, Hephaestus is now on the hunt for it's creator as well as Diana.  So who does Diana know that would want her dead and has access to the forge?  That's right, our hero goes to Strife and holy shit, it looks like Strife isn't the one who's behind Aegeus.  Even though she admits to letting Donna out of her cell, she seems to be peeved that Diana would think she would send someone with a dumb name like Aegeus to kill her....... and speak of the devil, for this issue's cliffhanger, we have Aegeus come out of nowhere looking to continue the God of War's and his fight.

That's it for this issue of Wonder Woman and the story really takes a turn towards nowhere here.  There's a part in this book that I didn't "Explain It!" about Aegeus's backstory where we find out that on top of being whiny he's also a piece of shit who steals people's credit cards....... but really, Aegeus is so unlikable already, this part doesn't really feel like it's needed after we've already seen the events that followed it in a previous issue's flashback.  The characters here just really felt off, from the new girl taking Donna in, even though Donna rescuing her will lead to her getting the shit beat out of her again, to the fact that we never find out her name.  Speaking of things being off, what's up with that "god killer" arrow?  You can say that it didn't do anything because it didn't hit a vital organ, but after the bleeding from the eyes episode that we saw last issue, you'd think that there would be a little more lasting affect on our hero, but no, she simply pulled it out and healed in a very anti-climactic manner.  The book like always under the helm of this artistic team looks fantastic and even a lackluster story couldn't change the fact that his book is the best looking in DC's roster....... It's just too bad that the story didn't match it in excellence.

Bits and Pieces:

While I've been loving this Wonder Woman run, this issue is really lackluster.  From a new character not introducing herself , a willy nilly pick up that leaves us wanting more, to a backstory that doesn't do anything for the actual story.  It's just not all that interesting really, but luckily for all of us Wonder Woman fans, the art continues to be spectacular and at least you can find some sort of satisfaction from that.

5.5/10