Wonder Woman: Agent of Peace #19 // Review
It’s been kind of a rough couple of weeks for Wonder Woman. In the last issue of her main title, she had to finally confront a defiant Maxwell Lord in a conflict in Vlatavia, which took a hell of a lot out of her. That was at the end of December. Only a few days later, in Wonder Woman: Agent of Peace #19, she’s forced to protect Lex Luthor from a magician assassin in Tokyo. Writer Bryan Hill develops a script that’s as smart as it is witty. The conflict between Diana, Lex, and the assassin is brought to the page by artist Andrea Broccardo.
Lex Luthor developed a computer virus. That’s not a huge surprise. That virus infected the complex security protocols of 25 different nuclear power plants. Also: not a huge surprise. What IS a surprise is the fact that Luthor wasn’t the one responsible for infecting all those power plants. Luthor can offer-up the codes that can shut down the virus, but his life is in danger. He needs protection. He asks for Wonder Woman to act as his bodyguard. In the interest of saving the world, she’s going to have to protect one of the most vile geniuses in the DC universe.
The head-to-head conflict renders both Diana and Lex in a way that respects the complexity of both characters. This can be exceedingly difficult for any writer to manage. In Hill’s hands, hero and villain are so evenly matched that they seem like they’ve been battling for decades. Her formidable understanding of magic matches his knowledge of science in a story that feels as fascinating in drama as it is in action—the composition of the plot’s fun too. There’s an action sequence in the beginning and another in the end. Hill takes some time out in the middle, in which Diana and Lex have a conversation on the run. Two pages of the two of them talking in a car might have run the risk of stalling the narrative a bit, but Hill and Broccardo make the intellectually dramatic interlude work beautifully.
Much of the success of Hill’s alternation between action and drama comes courtesy of Broccardo’s strong sense of intensity in both physical aggression and emotional nuance. The interaction between Diana and Lex is very intricate. If Broccardo wasn’t as good as she is at delivering that nuance to the page, at least half of what’s being presented would have fallen painfully flat. There’s a tremendous amount that can be read in her face...even in the middle of the action. It’s also pretty rare that specific moments of action carry as much dramatic weight as they do here. The intensity of those moments is brought to the page with great flare by Broccardo’s deft pen.
The balance between Lex and Diana...the balance between magical bravery and the cold, hard tactical genius of science plays-out in a fun, little 16-page story which delivers on a rarely-used dynamic between two of DC’s most popular characters. Once again, Agent of Peace shows that there’s real life in the idea of a series of one-shot stories that play in the seemingly infinite sandbox of the DC universe.
