Wonder Woman #38 Review and *SPOILERS*

How To Make Villains and Influence People

Written By: James Robinson

Art By: Emanuela Lupacchino, Ray McCarthy, Romulo Fajardo Jr., Saida Temofonte

Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: January 10, 2018

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

While I waited for what felt like forever to get Jason into this book so that we could find out more about Wonder Woman's secret twin brother, I have to tell you that I left that arc feeling sadly underwhelmed.  Hopefully now, since it seems like Jason is going to be sticking around in this book we'll get a true look at the sibling who got the shaft, but first let's take a look at what this issue has to offer us in the form of the re-imagining of Silver Swan.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with Wonder Woman saving a young Vanessa Kapatelis from certain death when Major Disaster was on a rampage, but even though the girl's life was saved, it seems that she suffered injuries that would prevent her from walking again.  Even with that though, Vanessa saw the power and strength in Wonder Woman, which she then emulated to get through her struggles and it didn't hurt either that Diana would visit often and the two would talk and Wonder Woman would pose for pictures that Vanessa would draw.  So yeah, even though Vanessa's life had changed drastically, it seems that Wonder Woman had a great effect on her and got her to the point where the doctors said that Vanessa was a one in a billion patient, who was able to undergo a unique procedure involving nanites, which could possibly give her the ability to walk again.

So yeah, While Wonder Woman was initially spending a lot of time with Vanessa, her duties made it so she saw the girl less and less, which Vanessa didn't mind because she knew that Wonder Woman was out saving other young girls and families, but on the day that her mother would die in a car accident, no one was there to save her or comfort Vanessa afterwards.  Eventually, Vanessa grew to hate Wonder Woman for abandoning her and all her fantasies of becoming a hero alongside Wonder Woman would become skewed, where Vanessa no longer wanted to be the hero known as Silver Swan, she wanted that name to become known as being a villain.

In the end, after Vanessa weaves her tail of disappointment and abandonment, we move over to Virginia in the present day, where Jason has moved into Wonder Woman's house and has become an annoying house mate, who parties way too much.  After having a long drawn out discussion with Jason about who he wants to be, hero or party animal, Wonder Woman gets a call to check in on a family she recently saved.  Too bad that when she gets there she sees their lifeless bodies and Vanessa over top of them in full Silver Swan garb.

That's it for this issue of Wonder Woman and I have to tell you I wasn't looking forward to this issue dealing with Silver Swan, but by the time we got through Vanessa's recollection of the events that made her into the villain that she would become........ Well, that's all I wanted and was actually pissed off that we had to stop that to go back to Jason.  Yeah, it's crazy for as much as I pleaded to get Jason in this book, now that we got him he's the least interesting character.  James Robinson just writes the hell out of Vanessa Kapatelis and has made her character compelling as hell and my biggest gripe about this issue...... besides Jason is that we didn't get enough of Vanessa's backstory because as is, it seems like it just kind of happened out of nowhere, where she took her villainous turn.  Hopefully we get more about that in the next issue because after reading this, that's a story I need to know more about.  As for the art... Well, it's beautiful and I loved every page of it and at this point....... it's crazy, but if Jason were written out, this could just be a downright amazing book...... and I hate to say that. 

Bits and Pieces:

This issue is beautifully drawn and written and the biggest problems with it are that we don't get enough.  Yeah, that's a silly problem, but seriously though, the pacing was a bit off from the past to present day stuff in that we don't really know the amount of time and I hope that this is rectified in following issues, where I hope to get more backstory on our villain.  Besides that though, the biggest problem is Jason being in this title, which is crazy because I wanted him here for almost two years and now that I've got him, he's the worst part of this book.

8/10