By Cat Wyatt

In Wonder Woman #40 we saw a lot of events occur, along with the defeat of Silver Swan, we saw something happen to Jason, Darkseid making a move, and Steve unintentionally getting in the way of said move. Issue #41 picks up all those loose threads and continues to weave them together.

In the last issue, we saw Darkseid’s Female Furies (love the alliteration there) take on Steve and his crew in an attempt to gain access to the relic inside the Topkapi Palace. His team won (go Steve!), and they even managed to capture two of the furies while they were at it. Darkseid is very displeased with their failure, a fact he’s currently making clear.

While Darkseid’s minions may assume that he wants to rule Earth, it’s clear he has other plans. Granted, I don’t fully know or understand those plans, but there’s no way somebody like him would setting for something as trivial as controlling Earth (no offense to those of us who live there, I’m just being blunt about how he’d see it).

Meanwhile, our favorite couple finally managed to find a few moments together to catch up on the crazy times they’ve been facing. At first, I thought they had been referring to Wonder Woman’s battle with Silver Swan, and the disappearance of Jason, but apparently Diana has been even busier than I realized (which is saying something).

I think Steve would have preferred to talk about the emotional side of things for Diana (like her brother and the fact that her step-siblings had recently faced a slaughter), but Diana obviously disagrees. It’s easier for her not to think about those things too much, not until she’s had time to process. So instead she’ll deflect and talk about her other concerns.

First she got herself caught up in a fight against Zara, a pyrokinetic who can fly on her fire (I’ll admit, that’s pretty cool…okay I could have chosen a better descriptor there). Normally a pyro like that probably wouldn’t be an issue for Diana (I don’t think normal fires can hurt her), but this lady could create fires strong enough to melt concrete, so even if it wouldn’t hurt Diana directly, there was plenty of potential for indirect damage (not to mention the risk to civilians around). So Diana took her down hard and fast. She’s still unconscious, so they don’t know her motives as of yet.

The next fight she got herself into was unofficially named Blue Snowman (no, Diana didn’t pick the name, nor did the villain). Which is ironic, since it was a woman wearing a giant suit of armor. The suit could control the temperatures and moisture levels around it, hence the snow reference. Diana destroyed the suit, unaware that the woman had literally wired her brain into the thing. Who knows what sort of damage that did, but it can’t be good. We won’t know for sure until she regains consciousness (assuming she ever does). Sensing a pattern yet?

And finally Wonder Woman went up against Anglette (a rip off from Angleman, as far as Diana can tell). This one ended up getting away, after she destroyed some very precious and historical structures. On a somewhat bright side, at least this one didn’t get knocked unconscious until the next century (slight exaggeration on my part.

I know the Wonder Woman series does a great job of keeping a balance; since we have a female superhero we tend to see more female villains, but three female villains in one day? That’s got to be more than a coincidence, right? It’s almost like they’re going out of their way to attack Wonder Woman…mostly because they probably are.

Steve has also been busy lately, though his stories don’t get quite as much attention or detail as Diana’s. We already knew he was tracking down the artifacts Darkseid is after, and that in the process he got tangled up with the Female Furies. From there he went to Paris and got into a fight with Parademons, which he says oh so casually, mind you.

This issue mostly felt like it was there to set the groundwork for Diana’s emotional state. She’s tired, worried about Jason, and upset about the loss of her step siblings she never met. She’s incapable of dealing with all of that at once, so she chooses to look the other way. That makes me think we’re being set up for a huge emotional blow again. But I could be wrong. The plot itself was mostly filler, but since it wasn’t really the focus that’s okay.

The artwork was pretty standard for a Wonder Woman comic. The cover for this Wonder Woman issue is more complex and busy than is typical, but in a way it does a good job of showing the impending chaos. The fight scenes inside the issue itself were short (remember, she took down most of her enemies quickly) but still interesting to look at.

Score: 3/5

Wonder Woman #41
DC Comics