Sensational Wonder Woman #10 // Review
Diana has made many friends over many decades and many adventures. Not all of those friends are particularly well-documented. Writer Amy Chu explores a distant acquaintance of Paradise Island's Princess in the second part of her two-part story for Sensational Wonder Woman. Artist Maria Laura Sanapo helps Chu bring the story to a close with a warm emotional connection. There's nothing particularly deep or complex in the story, but it's compelling enough on an emotional level to serve as a charming addition to Wonder Woman's legacy. The delicate interpersonal drama is a nice contrast from the usual type of action that has served Wonder Woman so well for the better part of a century.
Katie has been a resident of the St. Charles Home for the Elderly for quite some time, but her generally sketchy mental state and her tendency to emulate Wonder Woman have caused some concern for those in charge of the home. She's being cast out of the home. Still, she doesn't seem to realize her situation's full reality as she tells her favorite nursing home employee the story of her decades' long relationship with one of the world's longest-lived superheroes.
There are people around the edge of every panel in a superhero comic book. Chu explores that space a bit more. Chu plays around the edges of Wonder Woman's legacy for a fun, little exploration into the life of someone who has known her for many decades. There is a tendency to discard people who have retired while society continues to hold onto the towering heroes who would be nothing without them. Without diving too deeply into the heroes' complexity, Chu provides a charmingly skewed perspective on immortal super-heroism as seen from the margins of the panel.
This issue is all drama. Minimal action of the type one might expect from a superhero comic. The drama isn't terribly heavy, though. It's a heartwarming drama about an old woman who has been friends with a superhero. Sanapo's art finds just the right mixture of drama, comedy, light, and shadow to make it engaging from beginning to end even though Chu's story is overwhelmingly predictable. Given the charming, emotional nature of the story, here's no question how the two-parter will end. Sanapo makes it a fun journey anyway. There's a rich emotional warmth to the art that propels the story forward.
This sort of story HAS been explored in a far better way elsewhere. The extended cast in the Perez era for the Wonder Woman title cast an exhaustive glance at the hero's effect on others. It might have been explored pretty extensively before, but Chu and Sanapo make this particular glance around the edges of "super-heroing" quite endearing. The real challenge for this type of story might be an extended series contrasting the life of a hero and the life of a casual civilian friend over many, many decades.
