Wonder Woman: A Piece of You



Cover by Adam Hughes
Something about this cover
intrinsically pisses me off.



Wonder Woman: A Piece of You

Writer: Brian K. Vaughan

Penciller: Scott Kolins

Inker: Dan Panosian

Colorist: Pamela Rambo

Letterer: John Costanza

I stumbled upon this Wonder Woman comic in a volume entitled Batman: False Faces. There were four comics in this volume, all of which were written by Brian K. Vaughan, author of Y: The Last Man, a work that several people have insisted I read. I will one of this days.

So due to the overwhelming praise I have heard for Y: The Last Man, I was expecting the stories to be well-written and smart. For the most part, I wasn’t terribly disappointed. Each comic had a clear and well-defined narrative and I liked that Vaughan, who is clearly talented at fleshing out a very long graphic novel-length work, didn’t try to bombard the reader with a ton of subplots or character overload. While each story was not exactly memorable (except for maybe Close Before Striking but that could just be because there was hot Nightwing and Oracle scene in it), none of them were very weak either.

A Piece of You focused entirely on Wonder Woman, a character that I love mostly for history’s sake and because she’s Wonder Woman. I wish there were more strong writers for her and I’m hoping that the DC relaunch this September will not disappoint, though I am side-eyeing the fact that Brian Azzarello (the guy who loves to make everything overwhelmingly “gritty”) is writing it. But I’ll reserve judgment until I actually read it.

Anyway, A Piece of You has Wonder Woman battling Clayface, a Batman villain so inherently stupid that when I first encountered him in comics, I could not believe he was real character in the DC Universe. It’s just… he’s made of clay. And somehow, clay has the ability to change shape so he can convincingly disguise himself as Superman. Just… no. NO.

Then because Wonder Woman was in fact formed out of the sacred clay on Paradise Island, Clayface is able to ingest Wonder Woman and take her powers. Great. It barely makes sense but I was willing to go with it because I wanted to see the interaction between Wonder Woman/Diana and her younger sister Wonder Girl/Donna (the DC Universe is not always the most creative when it comes to names), which was actually refreshing. It was great to see a female centered comic in which the women worked together through their differences, depended upon each other and succeeded in the end. Though they did succeed the help of a very silly comic book creation: a mystical centrifuge. Alright then.

The art was very bright and clean; very Americana because you know, she’s Wonder Woman. She rocks the red, white and blue just as hard as Superman does, if not more so. Some people may think that’s inherently corny but I have a soft spot for bright, feel good, ta-DAH art when it comes to certain good guys like Wonder Woman. Whenever I read a comic that tries to take a character like her to the dark side, it always rings false with me. Maybe Azzarello will do a good job of it come September, but until then, I like my Wonder Woman bright and cheerful.