Let's Talk About WONDER WOMAN VOL. 1: THE JUST WAR
Today, Wonder Woman Vol. 1: The Just War was released. This collection features Wonder Woman #58-65 and it is a trip. There’s quite a bit to go over, but long story short, this is the start of some interesting stories. Also, there are mythical creatures trying to enter human society and it’s hilarious.
“A new era of Wonder Woman begins as best-selling, Hugo Award-winning and Ms Marvel writer G. Willow Wilson makes her return to DC!
A NEW BATTLE BEGINS!
War. For humankind, it is the oldest and deadliest enemy there is. And for Diana of Themyscira, the same is true...almost.
Because to the Amazon Princess, war is not just an impersonal force of destruction. War is a god—a god named Ares.
And Ares is back.
Resurrected after years of oblivion, this young god has emerged once more to shake the world to its very foundations. But Ares is still impressionable, still able to be molded into something less cruel and more just...if he has the right mentor.
He has chosen Wonder Woman. And now Wonder Woman must make a choice of her own.
Can Diana reform Ares’s wicked ways? Or will she and everyone she cares about learn the hard way that there’s no such thing as a just war?”
The Just War is written by G. Willow Wilson with art by Cary Nord and guest art from Xermanico, Emanuela Lupacchino, and Jesus Merino. If you don’t want any spoilers, please stop reading this article and go read the book.
Now, before we go any further, I do want to note that this is the first DC comic I have ever read. There, I said it. For a first read, this was pretty cool. There are some minor pieces that I think I may have missed because of my lack of familiarity with all the characters, but I did not feel like that was a big problem. As this is a first volume, it’s pretty self-contained and easy to pick up for people new to the world like me.
We start off over in Themyscira where Ares is a prisoner alongside someone who we later learn is related to Darkseid (this is one of those areas where my lack of DC knowledge failed me). She ends up killing Ares who thinks he has learned his lesson in that war is not what makes one immortal, but rather justice. The death of Ares causes something crazy to happen and then it cuts to Diana and Steve without showing us the results.
Cut over to a war zone where a kid is guiding a satyr, a Pegasus, and a minotaur to safety. That sounds like the start to a bad joke, but I assure you that happens. We don’t see much about them until much later, so I’ll get back to Wonder Woman.
Eventually, we see Diana confront Ares who has ended up in the mortal realm and this time, he wants to be a good guy. He wants to fight tyranny and injustice. The problem is that he overcorrects too much and uses a missile fired by the corrupt leaders to decimate a small village that was said to support the ruler. Diana understandably is not happy about this and yells at him. They actually have some interesting back and forth that gets you thinking about who is guilty and such in bad times, so I’d recommend you go back and read that if you haven’t yet. The arguments that Ares pose are actually decent enough to have Diana questioning a few things about herself. In the end though, Aphrodite joins Diana and Steve and they’re able to get Ares to calm down and the warring factions are able to sign a peace treaty. Aphrodite at one point whispers something in Ares’ ear and I hate that we’re not privy to it.
I’m going to do a lot of skipping now. Eventually, we learn that something has caused the gods to basically be thrown into the mortal realm, and it looks like Veronica Cale may have some understanding of what resulted from it such as the destruction of Themyscira and the whole plane of existence for the gods. Of course, Diana’s able to figure out that Ares’ death was probably the catalyst, but she’s holding out hope that not everyone died. There’s also some fighting with Nemesis that’s pretty cool. Although, in one shot she has like a spider body and the next panel she has humanoid legs. Did Diana pull her out of the spider legs? That was a little confusing. Veronica is being used by Nemesis to attack Diana, but Diana is able to convince Veronica to hold off on suing her so that Diana can look for Veronica’s daughter and the rest of the Amazons. At the very end, Aphrodite and Diana head out to adventure together.
Let’s go back to the kid and mythical creatures. These guys do not play a big role, but eventually the kid (I have no idea who this kid is) leads these creatures to a few other creatures and Steve Trevor. They are all then taken to Aphrodite! This ties Aphrodite into the story, but then I want to go to “The New World” which is an issue all about these three trying to join the human world. Apparently, the United States has set up a special system to handle mythical creatures, but these three don’t like the red tape going on and bust out. After being scolded by Diana, they then go to get food and some patrons at the restaurant are not pleased because they’re stuffed up snobs. However, we then meet Maggie who is very nice to them and wants to be their server. She becomes their first friend and is a lot of fun. I am not going to lie I’d love a little miniseries with these guys. It’s fun, but it’s also not necessary. It does tie into the main story since these creatures were misplaced by whatever happened to bring gods to Earth, but it does nothing to move Diana’s story along, so I guess you could skip it and maybe it’s best if you do and then go back and read it later.
I really enjoyed The Just War and am excited to see the story continue and get some questions answered. I thought it was very interesting to have Ares go through such a strong overcorrection. I think this is a solid collection of comics to pick up if you enjoy Wonder Woman or maybe just want to give her comics a try.