Wonder Woman #40

War-Torn Chapter 5

Writer: Meredith Finch
Penciller: David Finch
Inker: Jonathan Glapion
Colorist: Aspen MLT's Peter Steigerwald
Letterer: Rob Leigh
Cover: Finch, Glapion & Sonia Oback
Assistant Editor: David Piña
Group Editor: Matt Idelson
Wonder Woman created by William Moulton Marston.
Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.
By special arrangement with the Jerry Siegel family.

The cover is fairly well-done. It's a bit symbolic, showing Wonder Woman slowly being consumed by what I suppose is the main villain of this story arc. But the Flash has only been in a few issues of Wonder Woman, so I really don't know what's going on.

Our story begins with lots of drama with the Amazons that doesn't concern the Flash at all. So I'm going to skip ahead to the part where Wonder Woman meets up with the Justice League. Apparently, most of the members of the team have continued to help Wonder Woman try to solve the problem of the vanishing villages, except for the Flash who has only showed up here at the end.

Turns out a race of insectoid people have been responsible for the vanishing villages, and Cyborg was able to locate their main nest. He, Flash, Batman, Superman, Aquaman and Wonder Woman have all gathered to stop this once and for all, and Flash is especially eager to prevent the world from being overrun by more "bug boys." As the Justice League heads into the cave, passing tons of giant bugs, Flash asks Superman, "What did you say these guys ate again?" Superman says, "You don't want to know," and Flash answers with, "I was afraid you were going to say something like that."

Soon, the team reaches the queen, who we saw on the cover. Wonder Woman confront the queen about claiming the lives of thousands of people, but the queen says she and her people were just doing that which is in their nature. The queen then shifts the blame to Wonder Woman, saying that her race of insectoid people were awaken when Wonder Woman threw her former villain, the First Born, into the heart of the earth.

And then we see more drama going on with the Amazons and Donna Troy. At the end of the issue, there's a note saying the epic conclusion will come in Wonder Woman Annual #1, but I highly suspect that issue will not be printed under the New 52 label, and will therefore fall out of the jurisdiction of this blog. So, for all intents and purposes, this is the final issue of Wonder Woman I'll be covering.

The Good:

This was a pretty solid comic book. The art was good, and the story was interesting enough. I do like the idea of having Wonder Woman face consequences for burying some ultimate evil in the earth. If I were a regular reader of the series, I'd probably quite enjoy this issue.

The Bad:

Well, Flash really didn't do too much here, and I am a bit bummed out that he only showed up at the beginning and the end of this storyline. But he wasn't relegated to the background here. Flash made his presence felt, injecting a bit of comedy without going over the top, and, most importantly, helping fill in new readers like me by asking questions. So, in a way, it was good for the Flash to be absent for the bulk of this story.

Final score: 5 out of 10

Next time, we'll take a quick look at a passive Flash appearance in Earth 2: World's End #18.