Wonder Woman Evolution #4 // Review
Diana is being tested, but that doesn't mean that her trials aren't very real. But that doesn't mean that they ARE real either. Things are very complicated, but they don't need to be that way as Diana finds her own ideals drawn against those of an iteration of the Justice League in Wonder Woman - Evolution #4. Writer Stephanie Phillips finds some nuance in a conflict brought to the page with a cool harshness by artist Mike Hawthorne and inker Adriano DiBenedetto. It's not often that a conflict between established superhero icons feels justified. For a one-shot story, Philips formulates a believable JLA disagreement that becomes a battle between Wonder Woman and the rest of the team.
Diana is on some alien world digging a grave for Vanessa Kapatelis. She doesn't know for certain if the woman's corpse is genuinely who she seems to be or is merely a construct by some alien race that is judging humanity. Diana soon meets a construct of her own childhood self. It's not easy to explain things to her. Still, it's going to be a lot more difficult to explain anything at all once she finds herself at the Hall of Justice debating with the rest of the team over a possibly heroic fugitive of an extraterrestrial race with the capability of bringing war to the earth.
A powerful alien race that is judging all of the human race through the actions of a single champion. Phillips finds a unique entry into a weird sub-sub-genre of science fiction story as Diana jumps into a conflict with constructs of her colleagues who are all-too-eager to hand her over to a possibly draconian government from another world. The heroes don't exactly act like heroes, but they aren't...they are an alien intelligence trying to understand heroism on earth. It's a fascinating echo into the conflicts of superheroes that packs a bit of a punch.
The physical end of the action is a bit more powerful than the dramatic end of it, thanks to solidly-executed fight sequences brought to the page by Hawthorne and DiBenedetto. Many of the finer points of Phillips' drama continue to feel a bit stiff at the beginning of the issue, but the art team does a beautiful job of initiating and resolving combat between. Diana, Superman, Batman, Hawkwoman, the Flash, and Martian Manhunter. Phillips doesn't give the artists a lot of room to move around. The artists do a really good job of making everything feel resolved in a very brief series of pages.
Phillips and company are reaching a conclusion to the trial, though it scarcely feels like there's much of a chance of the story feeling truly satisfying by the end of the series. There are far too many unanswered questions about the alien judges themselves. A deep glance into Wonder Woman's psyche is admirable. Still, it's cast against a shadowy extraterrestrial intelligence that clouds the image of Wonder Woman by placing her in a test that she KNOWS is a simulation. In the end, she is only acting the way that she would in a test with fabricated NPCs. So, in the end, it doesn't really feel like much of a true picture of Diana's inner psyche. Time will tell if Phillips can develop greater depth as the series enters its second half next month.
