After being sidetracked by the Absolute Power event Tom King can return to his baby of a Wonder Woman story involving Sovereign. For better or worse it looks like Sovereign is here to stay for the long-term. At least for however long Tom King’s run on this series will go. With how badly developed the big storyline around Sovereign was before Absolute Power there is a lot of work King needs to do to build the villain’s credibility. Let’s see if that can happen starting with Wonder Woman #14.
CREATIVE TEAM
Writer: Tom King
Artist: Daniel Sampere
Colorist: Tomeu Morey
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
WONDER WOMAN #14 SOLICITATION
“STEVE TREVOR’S LAST STAND AND THE BIRTH OF A HERO! With the tide of the war against the Sovereign turning, Wonder Woman’s greatest love takes matters into his own hands with deadly consequences. Could Steve’s end be the beginning of Diana’s greatest adventure yet? Behold the birth of Trinity!” – DC Comics
REVIEW
There may never be a more fitting title for a comic book story than Wonder Woman #14’s “What is the point of Steve Trevor?” The first four words of the title for this issue specifically summarizes this entire comic book. There is such disappointment from beginning to end of the story Tom King writes that it is just a good thing we at least have Daniel Sampere artwork to look at.
The biggest failure of Wonder Woman #14 isn’t how unceremoniously it kills off Steve Trevor, the way Wonder Woman reacts, or how poorly the Wonder Girls are creatively treated. All of those would make this a bad comic book. But what ultimately makes this such a big dropping of the ball was the story structure by Tom King.
As with previous issues, King attempts to create a sense of a journey with how we shift back-and-forth between a 50-day period. That framing device is simply a mask to make up for what appears to be King decided to take the two issues he was “forced” to tie into Absolute Power. The entire structure felt like King meant this to be a three-issue storyline about Steve Trevor’s death and Diana Prince’s grieving process. But since he couldn’t do that, he told the entire story in one issue to keep to a comic book issue timeline he created for himself when he made when creating his series direction bible.
The structure certainly has a lot of problems but what causes this direction for Wonder Woman #14 is King continuing to inject himself into the story. At no point in this issue does the narrator’s voice not come across as King speaking directly to the reader. There is no point that it comes across as it is Sovereign or other intended character speaking as the narrator. It is all King speaking directly to the reader because that is the only way he thinks he can get his story across.
By doing this Wonder Woman #14 ends up reading like someone who turned dissertation paper about Diana Prince into a comic book. This storytelling device is something King has fallen back on way to many times during his run. It is a poor attempt to convince those reading this comic book that he understands Wonder Woman and her world.
The structure causes to the story about Steve Trevor’s death to be nothing more to get to the punchline of the story. That punchline is how Steve Trevor is the one that gives Wonder Woman’s daughter her name, making them both Elizabeth Marston Prince’s parents. This punchline just exemplifies how forced everything about this comic book is.
Because of the punchline element of the ending it further hurts how Diana is shown grieving Steve’s death. The story being all over the place with its timeline makes it tough to connect with the emotional turmoil Diana goes through. The structure is more disrespectful to how one grieves the death of their loved one. That disrespect comes from how much King as the narrator beats us over the head with how Diana is processing Steve’s death. The lack of trust in the artwork even though Sampere once again provides such great artwork is what the true heartbreak comes from.
Not helping matters was how King decides to use this story to show why Donna Troy, Cassandra Sandsmark, and Yara Flor will never matter in his run. The way he treats how Donna, Cassie, and Yara talk about here makes you never want to see Diana interact with any of these three characters. Yara in particular comes across as a cruel character with what she says about Diana and then immediately challenges Batma and Superman to a fight when she knows they are looking for their friend. It is a real disappointment that at every turn he has to make Donna, Cassie, Yara, and other Amazons a key part of his creative run King decides to just treat them this poorly.
All of this drives home how Sovereign is a terrible character to base an entire creative run around. And its not terrible because Sovereign is a villain you are investing in because of how much you hate him for his evil actions. Sovereign is character that you never buy into his credibility as a villain because King can’t mask forcing all the storytelling around him. There is no masking the attempts to give Sovereign credibility as Wonder Woman’s archnemesis. Killing Steve Trevor the way he did with this story structure just drove home that King should withdraw the investment in putting over Sovereign.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The story in Wonder Woman #14 drops the ball on every level of writing. The only saving grace is the artwork that even then can’t avoid being brought down by the narrative decisions for the story direction. The only thing this issue succeeds in is making this the final issue of this Wonder Woman run I’ll be reading. Thankfully we got Absolute Wonder Woman to look forward to.
Story Rating: 1 Night Girls out of 10
Art Rating: 7 Night Girls out of 10
Overall Rating: 4 Night Girls out of 10
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