Art by: Alitha Marinez, Mark Morales, John Livesay
Colors by: Alex Guimaraes
Letters by: Becca Carey
Cover art by: Khary Randolph, Emilio Lopez
Cover price $3.99
Release date: August 9, 2022
Nubia: Queen of the Amazons #3 continues the devastating battle between Zillah and Nubia on the streets of Brazil as the story of their shared history unfolds. Will the hurts of the past destroy hope for the future?
Is It Good?
Nubia: Queen of the Amazons #3 is a clunky, frustrating reading experience. Comics are a visual medium meaning the words and the pictures have to work together to present a whole story greater than the sum of its parts.
Here, readers get a decent amount of battle action for visual interest, but swaths of information about the main villain, Zillah, are explained in exposition dialog that comes out nowhere. You get the feeling this min-series was cut short, so Williams had no choice but to explain the plot in prose to cut to the chase.
The best part of this issue is the decent amount of action executed by the art team. The fights are hard-hitting, kinetic, and impactful. Ideally, the action should tell part of the story rather than the combatants narrating the story while the action is taking place, but this issue is at least a step in the right direction.
The plot revolves around Nubia's past memory of Zillah as the two lived in the same village with Nubia acting as a surrogate older sister and warrior idol to a young and impressionable Zillah. We see Nubia dies in battle, and what follows is a cascade of problems that puts Zillah on a path to revenge in Sekhmet's name.
More accurately, we're told about Zillah's troubles in a convoluted hodgepodge of random motivations ranging from unrequited love to malignant kings to regicide. Again, you never see any of it happen, but at least two issues worth of story are simply told to you, and it's about as enthralling as watching paint dry.
Also, this issue keeps reminding readers of questions nobody at DC is willing to answer. The Well of Souls resurrects women who have been harmed or killed by men for a new life as an Amazon. How does Nubia remember who she was when the Well removes all memories? How does Nubia still have the locket she wore when she died that attracted Zillah's attention? Why was Nubia selected for resurrection when she was a proud, happy warrior who died in an honored battle? All good questions left unanswered for nearly a year as of this writing.
So, is this a good issue? By any normal measure, not really, but this is as good as it will get.
About The Reviewer: Gabriel Hernandez is the Publisher & EIC of ComicalOpinions.com, a comics review site dedicated to indie, small, and mid-sized publishers.
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Nubia: Queen of the Amazons #3 unveils the mystery behind Zillah's origin, Nubia's death in a former life, and the kinship that binds them. The art is decent enough, and this issue has a fair bit of action, but the backstory elements are relegated to little more than boring exposition that introduces just as many questions as it answers.
6/10
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