Wonder Woman #49 Review and *SPOILERS*

Going Against The Family

Written By: Meredith Finch
Art By: David Finch, Scott Hanna, Brad Anderson, Rob Leigh
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: February 17, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Woman Woman is SICK!...... is something I would be saying if I was still rocking slang from the late 80's/early 90's........ which I still kind of do....... except for "sick" and that wouldn't be true if I did....... Anyway, I'd also be saying that if the character was indeed sick and actually, neither of these meanings would be accurate for this comic, I just wanted to use "sick" because that seems to be what we're dealing with in this story arc, from Dr. Poison doing her poisoning thing in the last issue and now us dealing with Baby Zeke having a mysterious illness.......... Yeah, that was a lot just to lay out what's been going down with Wonder Woman, but coming up with opening paragraphs is hard sometimes.  Yeah, Wonder Woman's been rough lately, but with every issue I go in with fresh eyes, hoping that the new issue that's out will be the turning point for this series.......... so with that, I just want you to know that those fresh eyes I have....... well, they're getting a bit sore.  Let's jump into this issue and see if Wonder Woman can find a cure for this mysterious illness afflicting baby Zeke.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with Zola, Hera and Diana just freaking out about baby Zeke being ill and not being able to wake up.  Now, I don't know if he ate a bad apple or something, but I'm pretty sure that the cure for this is to be kissed by a Prince........ or at least a half decent politician because they still kiss babies, right?  Anyway, the baby is sick with an unknown illness and Hera takes Diana aside to tell her that she thinks it's because of all the disarray that's been going on with Olympus, what with Apollo and Ares dying and coming back, Eirene going insane and even Wonder Woman becoming the God of War...... and this last comment seems to hurt Diana emotionally, but come on Wonder Woman, you know this shit isn't how it's supposed to be.  So with this single idea about what's making Zeke sick, Hera gets Diana to go ask the Titan Gaia for help, since Hera has always paid homage to her grandmother, she believes that she could use her powers of life itself to heal Zeke and that sets our hero on her quest.

Down in the hidden temple/tomb of Gaia, Diana finds that the old Titan isn't of much use and proceeds to have herself a temper tantrum until it's interrupted by Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft, who tells her that Gaia won't respond to a god of Olympus because of their betrayal, but Hecate seems to be all about using her witchy wonder to help baby Zeke out.  While I haven't been a fan of this series for awhile now, I have to say that the first bit of this story wasn't bad and that I was all about introducing Hecate into this mythos, but how our hero acts after this is just ridiculous.  Here we have this monstrous looking character, even though she actually makes the remark that Diana shouldn't dismiss her simply for how she looks, but in order for her to save baby Zeke she'll need three orbs that rest at the bottom of Hera's scrying pool.  Not only does Hecate tell Diana that she mustn't tell anyone about what's going on, but that this is only the first of the items that she will need to do her healing mumbo jumbo.  Right there is a bit of a clue in my mind that this goddess might not be on the up and up and all it takes for Wonder Woman to really get on the "I'm going to betray the other gods" trolley is for Hecate to show her a vision of Zola having a very innocuous talk with Hera about if other gods could help with this and Hera using some god powers on her to make her go to sleep.  Under the circumstances all of this seems fine to me because Zola is distraught about her baby being sick and Hera made her get some rest...... easy peasy.  For whatever reason though this puts Wonder Woman on her path to steal from Hera and we even have a replay of Hippolyta telling Diana about how gods don't overlook trespass, like we saw two issues ago in this title, but even with her mother's warnings, Diana just goes about her betrayal.

In the end, Wonder Woman goes back to Olympus, steals the orbs and overhears Apollo talking about a woman who is worthy enough for him to bed down...... until she conveniently finds a secret door that allows her to escape before her brother spots her with Hera's orbs.  It isn't a clean getaway though because after Diana descends a shit ton of stairs that she believes is a secret entrance to Hephaestus' forge, she's knocked out by a big ass cyclops that carriers her away, but in the final panel it looks like her bag of orbs are missing so who knows what happened to them.

That's it for this issue of Wonder Woman and man this issue went from interesting to infuriating quick.  I mean, what is up with Wonder Woman acting so naive in this issue?  She's not only a warrior queen of the Amazons, but a god as well and she's just played with this entire issue and she seems completely okay with all of this.......... Hell, she's opted to have all of Olympus come after her for the sake of Zeke's health and the reason behind this is because she believes that Zeke doesn't deserve this because he's just a baby and never asked for any of it, but with this baby being the reborn Zeus, it seems kind of like a moot point because the way I understand it, if Zeus' baby body dies, he'll simply get a new one.  So yeah, the motivations behind our God of War are really strange in this issue because it's like she's never encountered gods before and is willing to burn down her relationship with them for no good reason.  I just don't get it myself, but what I do get is awe inspired every time I look at this book because goddamn does David Finch draw one hell of a good looking book and couple that with Scott Hanna's inks and Brad Anderson's colors and you have yourself a superhero masterpiece. 

Bits and Pieces:

While the story is interesting enough, the ways we get to that story are ridiculous in that it all relies on Wonder Woman being a great big dummy.  Her characterizations and motivations just seem way off here and I spent the entire issue just yelling at Diana to smarten the hell up.  The art in this issue is excellent as always and even though I was infuriated at Diana throughout this issue, I was soothed a bit by the fantastic visuals. 

5.5/10