The War Rages On
It's time to head on back down into the Dark Multiverse, where Tempus Fuginaut will put on his best Rod Serling impersonation and tell us a beloved story and show us where it went wrong in that particular dark Universe. This time around we're dealing with the Pantheon slugfest that was the War of the Gods and while this is a big story that doesn't get mentioned as much, even though it was a Crisis level story, it was a bit bloated with twenty-one tie-in issues and ultimately felt a like DC at the time just tried to cram too many things into this story, leaving it a bit convoluted and a bit over-written. That being said, the basis for the story is still interesting and led to some big things for our heroes. Let's jump into this issue and see how things go wrong for Wonder Woman in her fight against Circe and Hecate. Let's check it out.
In this dark, twisted version of War of the Gods, Wonder Woman isn't able to snare the power of Hecate and force it down into the tomb of Cronus but instead, the prophecy of Hecate taking over Wonder Woman is fulfilled, which is a cool enough story, but like the actual War of the Gods event, Vita Ayala tries to cram too much into this over-sized issue. The idea of Hecate taking over Wonder Woman and going after the Super-Heroes, who she believes are the new gods that people worship and therefore wants to absorb their power is a really cool story, but when you combine the US Military being taken over by Ares' son Phobos and bombing Themyscira, the Amazons then going and taking over the US while still going with the Super-Hero worship angle I just talked about....... Well yeah, that's a bit much and the story like the original event ends up feeling a bit bloated.
While there is a lot thrown into this issue, if you're a fan of the War of the Gods book you can totally appreciate the way that this tale continues as a What If by the end of it even with what I consider a few flubs in the continuity, like making Phobos General Yedziniak, having the Greek Gods be on New Olympus...... or just having our heroes wait so long to confront Diana after she's essentially taken control of the United States. In the end though, like most stories from the Dark Multiverse we get an ending to this story that sees this world spiral into darkness all because of that one change in the story, and while it's dark and sad, it leaves me wanting to see more Tales From The Dark Multiverse.
All in all, I love the art in this issue and think that the dialog and situations feel reminiscent of that era of DC Comics and the War of the Gods story, which I appreciate and even the initial setup to this story was done in a way that I enjoy these Tales From the Dark Multiverse stories to be told in that they actually appear to make small changes to beloved stories instead of just calling them that and doing nothing reminiscent of what the thing is you're basing your dark tale off of....... which we've seen a bunch already and it drives me nuts. You get a total dark continuation of the War of the Gods here and it's interesting and sad at times but I just wish it focused on one aspect of the story instead of trying to cram as much in as it could because in my opinion this suffered for it or showed us what happened to the Greek and Roman Gods after Hecate's power wasn't channeled into Cronus because it would seem like they would still be battling over New Olympus if War of the Gods didn't originally conclude the way it did. This is a decent addition to this series though and I'm happy I read it, I just wish it was a little more focused on one aspect of this story.
Bits and Pieces:
While some of the continuity doesn't quite add up to what we got from the original War of the Gods event, this is a well done dark continuation to that story and tries more than most in this series to make it feel like it is a part of the era of DC Comics. The art is great and the dialog feels like it's pulled right out of the early '90s, I just wish that the story didn't feel like it needed to tackle so much because much like the original event, this one-shot came off a bit long-winded and bloated. It's still enjoyable though in the long run.
Wonder Woman gets to shine in the sinister spotlight of her own Tales from the Dark Multiverse special, with this storyline both a nightmarish duck life
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