Wonder Woman #769 Review

 

One Way or Another

Writer: Mariko Tamaki

Artist: Steve Pugh

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: December 23, 2020

It's time to put Mariko Tamaki's run on Wonder Woman to bed as she goes off to write Detective Comics in 2021.  I don't know how Detective will turn out, but I hope it's better than this Liar Liar / Maxwell Lord nonsense!  Tamaki seemed like she couldn't decide who was the real big bad in this book, so she skimped on the details and changed stuff we did know many times.  Oh well, at least it's over after this!

This issue all comes down to Wonder Woman versus Emma/Liar Liar.  The problem is, that after Tamaki decided that she wasn't going to do much at all with Maxwell Lord, she only had Emma to fall back on.  That wouldn't have been so bad since Tamaki set her up to be pretty damn bad.  Remember, she killed her mother because she lied to her about Maxwell being her father and even sent a nuke to blow up Washington DC!  She would have succeeded if Wonder Woman hadn't stopped it, though that was off-panel and between issues!

It seemed Tamaki ran into a bit of a problem along the way, though.  It seems that Tamaki didn't want Wonder Woman fighting a teen girl.  So, out of nowhere, she sprung the information on the reader that Emma had schizophrenia.  We never saw this before, but that was explained away by saying she was taking her medication.  It was pretty obvious after the last issue (I said it on the podcast, and I'm a dummy) that the finale would be Wonder Woman helping Emma instead of fighting her.  

There are a couple of problems here.  Tamaki tells us that Emma's medicine was paid for by Maxwell Lord because he was a bad guy and wanted to keep her from having her powers.  But, the drug is also for her schizophrenia?  So is Maxwell also good?  Also, earlier in the series, Emma used her powers but was not delusional like she is now.  How is that explained?  She must not have been taking her pills, so why wasn't she in her make-believe fantasy land?  It doesn't add up at all.

Tamaki tries to convince us it does make sense or at least was always going on by having Emma yell at Wonder Woman (calling her the Ice Queen now, though it was just the Evil Queen last issue), attack her and then stop because Wonder Woman wants to help her.  Diana tries again to convince her they both have the same kind of issues (they don't) and then takes her to the new Amazonian Embassy for treatment.  I don't mind the last part, but we have to end with an open-ended Maxwell Lord is still in Emma's head cliffhanger that made my eyes roll something fierce.

This issue was pretty much what I expected, and I think it won't change your opinion of the series either way.  If you have liked this nonsense up until now, you will probably like this.  I have been disappointed with this entire run, and this finale is no exception.  Maybe we will get a good Wonder Woman book in 2021 because this one stunk!

Bits and Pieces:

Mariko Tamaki finishes up her disappointing run on Wonder Woman with a generic issue that doesn't make sense with what we've gotten earlier in the series.  I can only hope that this is the last we ever see of Liar Liar and Tamaki near a Wonder Woman book ever again.

4.0/10