Wonder Woman: Agent of Peace #5 // Review
The weekly adventures of Diana of Themyscira continue in the fifth issue of the DC digital series Wonder Woman: Agent of Peace. After four issues written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner, the series shifts into a fifth outing with two different stories by two entirely different writers. In the issue-opening “Sure Shot,” writer Van Jensen pits Wonder Woman against the assassin Deadshot. The story is brought to the page beautifully by artist Jeremy Raapack. The second story in the issue features a sidekick-centric Steve Trevor story by writer/artist Scott Kolins. There’s real potential in framing a story about Wonder Woman from a skewed angle in her shadow, but Kolins chooses to focus the story entirely on Trevor in a way that’s still kind of fun.
The issue opens on an interrogation. A man is being questioned about an assassin he hired. The Lasso of Hestia makes for a breezy one-page/five-panel interrogation that finds Wonder Woman heading off to stop super-assassin Killshot from hitting his mark, but there’s some question as to who the true target is. The second story has Steve Trevor running into the heart of danger to try to aid Wonder Woman. He knows that she can take care of herself in the midst of armed terrorists, but he wants to help out in whatever way he can.
Jensen wraps a very tight script around a story that manages to include a plot twist or two while delivering action AND tension at a very quick pace. As quickly as everything moves along, every plot point feels almost perfectly on target at just the right time. There isn’t a whole lot of thematic or emotional depth to the story, but there doesn’t need to be. It’s just fun. Kolins’ story in the second half of the issue follows a Wonder Woman story framing convention that goes back to George Perez’s run on the series decades ago. Wonder Woman is the center of the story, but it focusses on the plight of someone closest to her. It’s always fun to see that style of story told in more of an action-based format than Perez traditionally orchestrated, but Kolins’ work feels like an echo of something that could have been more intricate.
Raapack is given a fast-moving script to bring to the page. He renders the story with a smartly restless eye that moves with the story from interrogation to pursuit to showdown and resolution without ever feeling overwhelming. Raapack’s execution of the action flows across the page quite deftly. In the second story, Kolins’ overall sense of composition over the course of the story feels well-realized. The big reveal of the heroine at the end of the story carries its impact, but all the action that led to that point feels a bit nondescript even as it should be providing a new perspective on an old character who is offered a rare opportunity to rest in the center of the panel.
Wonder Woman’s enduring appeal brings another couple of stories into the digital in a series which has by this time presented six different stories in five weeks as the comic book industry deals with its biggest hit since the interregnum period between the Golden Age and the Silver Age. Just as in those dark days of the 1950s, Wonder Woman is one of the few major heroes making it to page and panel to carry the torch until everything returns to some sense of normalcy.
