Dark Crisis: Worlds Without a Justice League - Wonder Woman #1 // Review
The mad Pariah has collected the Justice League and sent them all into their own utopias. Diana’s personal heaven is a mix of perfection with shadows of something altogether darker in Dark Crisis: Worlds Without a Justice League - Wonder Woman #1. Writer Tini Howard does an admirable job bringing together an entire world that is brought into the visual by artist Leila Del Duca and colorist Jordie Bellaire. Writer Dan Watters leans a bit heavier into dialogue-heavy world-building to render Martian Manhunter’s personal paradise in a back-up story that is beautifully brought to the page by artist Brandon Peterson and colorist Michael Atiyeh.
Diana’s vision of a perfect world involves Etta Candy’s Presidential Inauguration. She takes President Candy away from the celebration for a quick jaunt to an idyllic Themyscira. Everything seems to be well. (Even Artemis seems a bit pleasant.) So why is she wearing the gold plate mail armor that she’s only ever worn in battle against a powerful foe? And what is the secret that her mother seems to be keeping from her? And why is Dr. Psycho lurking about? Meanwhile, J’onn J’onzz is distinctly formed out of old detective noir movies mixed with extra-terrestrial visions of a different aesthetic in “Martian Squidhunter.”
Howard is given only the smallest stretch of pages in which to envision Diana in her own kind of heaven. She manages to do so without sacrificing the pacing of a story that has to play out quickly. Rendering paradise, using that as insight into the title character’s psyche AND bringing about a conflict that can satisfactorily be at least partially resolved inside 20 pages? It sounds more like solving an equation than telling a story, but Howard does a brilliant job of making it captivating. Watters is a little bit more high-concept with Martian Manhunter’s vision, which ends up feeling A LOT more clunky than it should. The concept for J’onn J’onzz’s personal heaven is every bit as exotic as it SHOULD be, but Watters just doesn’t have enough space to make it work.
Leila Del Duca is given her own challenge with a story that is meant to look beautiful while still managing some kind of visual foreshadowing. Wonder Woman’s gold armor is a perfect symbol of this that Del Duca embraces in a story largely set in the serenity of Themyscira. Bellaire’s breathtakingly detailed work on the armor and contrast between golds and pinks make for a very cleverly unique chromatic voice for Diana’s dream. Peterson and Atiyeh’s execution of visuals for J’onzz’s paradise gorgeously slash out in black-and-white with splashes of red. Visions of Bogart in black-and-white mix with popular images of a certain tendrilly Lovecraftian entity. Chtulhu-looking detective noir works quite well under the influence of Peterson and Atiyeh.
This sort of thing is far from new. Heroes have been thrust into paradise to throw them off their quests since Odysseus set foot on the Island of the Lotus-Eaters...and possibly on back to the dawn of storytelling itself. The distinctive visions of utopia offered up to the heroes will continue to be interesting as Green Arrow is offered his heaven next to Black Canary next month. To truly make for a novel exploration into this sort of thing, the stories would really need more space to sprawl out. An issue like this makes the exercise seem too rushed.
