Art By: Joëlle Jones
Colors By: Jordie Bellaire
Letters By: Clayton Cowles
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: February 2, 2021
Future State: Wonder Woman #2 continues Yara Flor/Wonder Woman's journey through the underworld to bring back her fallen sister, Potira. Along the way, she faces off against giant, three-headed hounds and death demons with a colorful imagination for torture methods. When Hades gives her a chance to earn her wish, Yara must learn to fight with her heart instead of her fists. In the end, Yara learns the very painful lesson that you can't always get what you want, but you get what you need. It's deeply impactful. It's heartbreaking in all the right ways. It's (the best so far) Future State.
Was It Good?
Wowee Wow Wow.
Imaginative art. Soulful (and sometimes heartbreaking) storytelling. The most I could criticize is minor nitpicks. This is the best Future State book out right now. Just go buy it already.
Short Story Long
Continuing immediately from the events of issue #1, Yara is chased down by Cerberus for disrupting the line to cross the River Styx. Unfortunately for the skeletal Ferryman, Yara figures out she can distract the big doggie by throwing him a borrowed bone.
Caipora hurry's Yara along to get on the boat while explaining this is the end of the journey for Caipora. Yara arrives at the Underworld's equivalent of the Pearly Gates and is confronted by three demons in charge of judging where newly-arrived souls go. Sensing Yara is not actually dead, they comically spout different ideas about how to torture her for her intrusion.
Hades arrives to confront Yara over her insolence at the trespass. Before he can banish her to a bottomless pit, Persephone arrives and appeals to Hades to grant Yara's wish. He agrees but only if she can find her sister in an ocean of souls before the sands of an hourglass run out.
Yara dives into the ocean and is quickly overcome by millions of souls reaching out to touch life again. Heeding a previous warning from Caipora, Yara opens her heart to remember the pain and loss of her sister's death during a flashback scene. The memory is filled with intertwined scenes of grief and love for several pages.
At the most painful point in her memory of Potira's death, Yara pulls Potira from the ocean of souls. Hades is none too pleased and the sisters run for it. They race through the tunnels of the Underworld, chased by a herd of Hades' shadow spiders. As they run, the tunnels begin to collapse behind them.
Almost at the end with daylight in sight, Potira is caught by falling rubble, and the sisters have to say goodbye in a scene filled with pure heartbreak. Yara's living sisters pull her free from the collapsing tunnel, and Yara is left to deal with her failure, her loss, and the lesson that not all heroic journeys have a happy ending.
This is the hero's journey absent from DC Comics for so long. If they can keep up this level of storytelling, everyone on the creative team of this book should be immensely proud.
Bits and Pieces:
Future State: Wonder Woman #2 takes the promising start from issue #1 and sticks the landing with an extra backflip just to show off. The art is excellent, the emotional impact is turned up to 11, and this comic introducing a new character does exactly what it's supposed to do - leave me wanting more.
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