gail simone is really writing two comics under the title of “wonder woman.”

one involves diana’s developing relationship and courtship with tom; the other involves bizarre adventures and fighting.

one is utter joy, fantastic, beautiful, and compelling. the other is baffling, uninteresting, and headache-inducing.

after the past four headache-inducing issues of WW, i was so happy to read the first 2/3 or so of this book, which dealt with tom meeting wonder woman’s mom. it was emotionally powerful, filled with great character, touched with great, really funny humor, and fantastic. i was in comic book bliss land – finally, the good stuff was back on tap!

then wonder woman went to visit a studio that wanted to make a movie about her – a novel premise, and one which was handled pretty well. there was some great ape-related humor which actually made me laugh out loud – a real rarity.

but by the end of this book, the bad parts reared their inexplicable heads again. i don’t know if what happens is a reference to earlier WW story or not. and i’m not sure which is worse – gail making up this twist, or reading it previously and thinking it needed to come back.

nothing quite so frustrating as having something so wonderful combined with something so awful. this could be one of my favorite books, if it was able to focus on its strengths and purge the weaknesses.