Wonder Woman: War of the Gods TPB
by George Perez
George Perez’s run on Wonder Woman reaches its climax in his “War of the Gods”, an event that is partly as gimmicky as one would expect with comic events – with an adversary conveniently selected to a specific hero that is conveniently tied to their power set – Flash vs Mercury, Aquaman vs the Sumerian ocean Gods Kingu and Tiamat for example – and so forth (see Fear Itself, Dark Knights: Metal, Secret Invasion and Forever Evil among others) with a personal story about a confrontation about one’s idea about divinity between Wonder Woman and Circe.
Circe, I find, is a very underrated Wonder Woman villain; here we find her pitting pantheon against pantheon in order to destroy them and gain their power, in retribution for having “abandoned” her to the wills of the world all those years ago for being a daughter of Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft. The gods, she claims, are more interested in their petty differences than the suffering of their creation; so what she does here is accelerate those differences in order to assure mutual destruction while humanity hangs in the balance.
Diana, on the other hand, and presumably, finds herself on the other end of the idea. Hot on the heels of having to deal with having her people being framed for massacre after massacre after opening up to the world, Diana is forced to deal with this reality – aware of the pettiness and indifference of the Gods firsthand, and yet still hopeful of their magnanimity.
While the story has a lot of ideology spattered all over it, I cannot say it is a dull read, but certainly a long one. It gets repetitive at times, sure, as is expected with the patterns of battles stated, but it ultimately, weaves a good story that builds upon everything that came before. I do believe that if there ever had been a third Wonder Woman movie, taking pointers from this would have made sense especially as Circe makes for a formidable for both in terms of powers as well as simply her philosophy being a diametric opposite to Wonder Woman’s hopefulness in others – especially the Big Others, in this case. It builds to a fittingly operatic crescendo that encapsulates the whole DC universe, and with artwork like Perez’s – who is phenomenal in large, sprawling group shots – is something to be experienced.
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