Wonder Woman #1-5 + Annual #1
Originally released in 2006
Written by Allan Heinberg (#1-4 + Annual), Will Pfeifer (#5)
Art by Terry Dodson (#1-4 + Annual), Geraldo Borjes and Jean Diaz (#5)
I realize that most of my Wonder Woman reading has been focused on the George Perez run so far. That run is great, but my concern is that if I focus exclusively on that run, then there will likely be some major moments or key bits of characterization that I'll miss out on. I picked a run somewhat randomly; I went with the 2006 run, which is set around the time where Diana was forced to kill Maxwell Lord and DC had its "One Year Later" event where its comics skipped ahead a year.
In this time, Diana quit being Wonder Woman, with Donna Troy taking up the mantle until Diana returned. Diana has been keeping an eye on Donna and the current Wonder Girl, Cassie Sandsmark, from a distance. Batman and Superman helped Diana to get a new identity for herself; post-Crisis, Wonder Woman has been a public figure since the point where she set foot in the outside world, but this story establishes the Diana Prince identity, placing her as an agent of the Department of Metahuman Affairs after Batman gives her a background that includes time as the head of security at Wayne Enterprises.
As much as she wants to stop being Wonder Woman (both in the wake of having committed murder on live television and to get an idea of who she is outside of being Wonder Woman), circumstances naturally force her back into action. A group of anti-Themysciran terrorists have taken Steve Trevor hostage and will kill him unless the original Wonder Woman is brought before them. Donna goes to his rescue, only to be attacked by a cheetah.
At first, I thought that Cheetah's transformation had worsened, making her less humanoid and now nothing more than a superpowered animal. The next page proved me wrong, as Barbara Minerva is revealed, maintaining her superpowers while having a human body.
Giganta, another Wonder Woman rogue, is backing her up. From what I knew, her backstory was odd (she was a gorilla who was turned into a human and gained growth powers in the process) - this version of the character does away with that (instead, she's a scientist who had a fatal disease and took drastic measures to save her life), though the new backstory is still unusual. (those drastic measures involved switching bodies with a circus strongwoman, which somehow gave her the ability to change her size) Normally, her intelligence decreases as she grows in size, but that's no longer the case.
At this point, Wonder Woman intervenes, though her manner of speaking makes it clear that something is not right. It's quickly revealed to be a ruse by the third and final member of these anti-Themysciran terrorists, Doctor Psycho. All of these villains have gotten a significant boost in power, though it's unclear how they did it.
At this point, the real Diana steps in, and between the two Wonder Women, Wonder Girl, and Hercules (who's jokingly referred to as Wonder Man; that name's definitely not going to stick), they force the villains to retreat. Hercules seems bitter with Diana; despite leaving off on good terms with her during Perez's run, Diana seemingly abandoned her mission from the Greek gods, which is why Hercules is here. (though he's not doing a good job with it, as the public views him as being arrogant)
The culprit for the villains' boosted strength is quickly revealed to be Circe, who used it as a way to lure Diana, Donna, and Cassie into a trap. She feels that none of them have been using their powers to help women - they save the world on a regular basis, sure, but they don't seem to do anything to stop abusive spouses, human trafficking, and any number of other ways that women suffer on a regular basis.
It's a sympathetic motivation, and understandable given her backstory, though naturally, Circe goes about it in a way that makes it so she has to be stopped - she steals the power of all three women (when her normal power would suffice) and uses it to murder people around the world. It seems like the sort of plot point that would get dismissed with the justification that small steps need to be taken by individuals, and they can't interfere with free will or impose their will on the world, though I'm hoping it does have an impact on Diana.
Even though Diana could single-handedly reunite the Justice League and get a team-up with the Justice Society at the same time, she chooses to handle this on her own. (possibly out of concern that Circe would have planned for this and prepared to steal everyone else's powers as well) This causes friction with her proteges, who view Diana's choice to abandon her duties as abandoning the two of them as well. Cassie takes it harder than Donna; it doesn't help that her boyfriend Superboy died around the same time that Diana quit, meaning that she lost a lot of people who were close to her all at once.
Circe is difficult to track, so Wonder Woman and Hercules (who was also depowered by Circe) travel to Circe's home island to hold her spellbooks hostage until she undoes the spell. Circe does arrive back home, and Diana manages to get her Lasso of Truth from the witch, though she discovers the truth about what's going on.
Hercules had been supposedly working with Circe the whole time, planning to become a god to be worshipped, though both of them had plans to betray each other. It's an unfortunate step back in characterization for Hercules (he even threatens to rape Diana at one point); I'm not sure if it's later explained that Circe had warped his mind to make him like this, or if it sticks and he remains villainous going forward, though I suppose there's no good way to address Hercules' history with the Amazons. (the total forgiveness that he got in Perez's run was justified by how compassionate the Amazons are, but it felt like a step too far in the opposite direction)
With Circe bound in the Lasso of Truth, Hercules tries to force Circe to say a spell that will transfer his power back to him along with giving him Wonder Woman's, Donna's, and Cassie's powers, but what Donna realizes (and Hercules doesn't) is that the spell has to be undone first, giving Diana, Donna, Cassie, and Hercules their original powers back. A massive amount of Wonder Woman's rogues show up, ranging from the trio who appeared before to incredibly obscure villains (seemingly the only noteworthy one who's missing is Ares), which leads to the Annual issue, a big battle royale on Circe's island.
Diana gets back-up in the form of that big JLA/JSA reunion that had been tossed around earlier, and the various villains are swiftly defeated, leaving Diana to take on Circe and Hercules. After Hercules is overpowered and chained up, Circe and Diana come to an understanding; Diana's grown to appreciate mortals more while posing as one of them, while Circe finds her immortality to be a curse. Circe gives Diana something that some see as a curse but Diana sees as a gift; while posing as Diana Prince, she's an ordinary human, just as vulnerable as most people, but upon transforming to Wonder Woman, she regains her immortality.
I suppose it's one way to address the concern that she'd outlive everyone that she knows. Donna speculates that Circe wants to attack and kill Diana when she's mortal, though Diana figures that if Circe had intended to do that, then she already would have done so. However, it seems like something that would almost immediately backfire on Diana, given that her civilian line of work still puts her under fire from superpowered beings.
While issue five is a stand-alone story, it does address Circe's point from the previous issues. Sargent Steel, Wonder Woman's boss at the Department of Metahuman Affairs (who constantly seems to be trying to arrest Wonder Woman from what I've seen in this and other books, usually for legally questionable reasons), sends her to investigate Athenian Women's Help Shelters, a grassroots movement inspired by Wonder Woman.
While the shelters have no direct connection to Wonder Woman herself, Diana learns about how her actions inspired people to leave abusive relationships or stop making bad decisions when it came to their love lives. She intervenes to stop an abusive boyfriend that he hears about when a woman calls one of these shelters, but for the most part, this story shows how Wonder Woman makes a difference in the lives of many women through her example.
I enjoyed these issues, though there were some details in the writing that felt off to me, and I'm glad I chose to read a wider variety of Wonder Woman comics rather than just sticking to the Perez run. It looks like the team behind the book switches in every major arc (the next arc is written by Jodi Picoult), so I'm interested to see how that pans out with a serialized story. (since usually, at least in my experience, a creative team usually sticks around for longer than five issues)
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