A gushy review of Tom King's 14th WW issue

Comic Book Club Live wrote a fawning review of Tom King's take on Wonder Woman, which resorts to an awful cliche, along with Diana doing something that's hardly new at all:

I’m going to get into those spoilers here, so fair warning. Yes, Steve Trevor, the love of Wonder Woman’s life is killed by The Sovereign, the King of America, who WW has been fighting since issue one of this volume. And yes, Trinity, the daughter of Wonder Woman, is born by the end of this issue. But the point of the comic, pointedly titled “What Is The Point Of Steve Trevor?” is to prove why the two characters mean so much to each other, and why characters like Steve Trevor are important to the DC Universe as a whole.

Sure, there’s a fair bit of trolling here, and at times it can seem like Tom King is writing this purposefully to poke the bear on internet message boards. And the eventual conclusion about Steve Trevor will likely be as hotly debated as some of the choices here (don’t worry, there are plenty of surprises in between those two major plot points). [...]

What’s most laudable though is the idea King plays with that grief, the loss of a loved one, is a universal feeling. This is not about knocking Wonder Woman down to a human level… For the past 13 issues, The Sovereign has been aiming to do that, and failing at every turn. Diana is not human, Steve Trevor is, and there’s still very much a contrast there. But even gods can rage and cry, and that’s what we see as Wonder Woman goes through every possible stage of grief in a mystical way that only a descendant of Greek Gods can.

The other laudable part of this? Despite having the same team on the book, and continuing a story that began over a year ago, this DC All In issue really does feel like a fresh start. It’s deeply tied to continuity, both in terms of the greater DC Universe and the Wonder Woman title. But it’s impressive how accessible it is, despite all that. The Sovereign story will continue, but at times this feels like a tour of the DCU post-Absolute Power. You get plenty of cameos and Easter eggs, and it’s setting up big things going forward.

Gee, this is just so somnambulent. As if WW and other deities were never depicted crying or written feeling miserable about anything before. The idea of Steve dying isn't new either; if memory serves, there was a similar story way back in 1968, and shortly after, Denny O'Neil and Mike Sekovsky, who may have originated that plot point, took WW in the direction of all but losing her powers and becoming a martial arts practicing secret agent in plainclothes until about 1973. Steve would eventually be resurrected, and that'll probably be the case here too, though if they intend to do something truly awful with Steve later, that's why one can validly wonder if he'd be better off in comics limbo till the closure of DC.

And IIRC, wasn't the Sovereign penned as a metaphor for right-wingers? So why must we care about a story that's a political allegory the reviewer doesn't even have the courage to acknowledge or address? I'm sorry, but all that aside, King has been writing these dreadful allusions to "emotion" far too often, and there's no point in financing a story that's bound to be yet another form of contempt for the fanbases, something the reviewer gallingly downplays, and doesn't have the courage to admit is wrong, and has long gone way too far. With that kind of disrespect from the writers and artists, there's no point giving this story an audience. The Amazon princess deserves far better.