If you’re reading this when it gets posted, I am on the road heading to pick up the physical copies of Gamer Girl & Vixen Vol. 2! My new comic! I can’t wait to see how it turned out.

Comic Book of the Week goes to Absolute Wonder Woman #5 for some truly awesome storytelling and creative moments.

Meanwhile, I was busy buying a new car last weekend, so I missed a lot of comics that came out last week. My bad. And while I had the time to read more comics this week, most of what I read was just really good and enjoyable, and I didn’t have a lot of thoughts about them. Then the days just got away from me. So sorry for the lack of more reviews…

I’m still playing Dragon Age: Veilguard, though I hope to beat it in time to pick up Kingdom Come: Deliverance II ahead of my upcoming week vacation. And I finally watched Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man this past week and it was excellent! A very well-made Spider-Man cartoon, with a great use of a wider Marvel Universe and Spidey’s whole world. Loved it!

Comic Reviews: Absolute Wonder Woman #5.

Absolute Wonder Woman #5
Writer: Kelly Thompson
Artist: Hayden Sherman
Colorist: Jordie Bellaire
Letterer: Becca Carey

And so the first storyline comes to an end in epic fashion, as should be expected for this comic.

We learn the origin of Wonder Woman’s new lasso in this issue. It doesn’t compel people to tell the truth, instead it transmogrifies them into something else! Diana doesn’t like how cruel that is, and learns some important lessons about her mom. In the present, she uses the lasso to transform herself into Medusa to turn the giant monster to stone! Then we get a nice moment when Steve Trevor reminds her who she is so that she can de-transform back into Diana.

Comic Rating: 9/10 – Great.

Awesome finale, awesome action, great character moments, fantastic artwork; Absolute Wonder Woman remains a real knockout comic by any metric. Half introduction to a new, alternate Wonder Woman and half giant monster battle, it all works splendidly. This issue, like I said, introduces the new version of the lasso and does so with the same skill and heart as previous flashbacks. There’s so much still to learn about Diana’s childhood, and I really liked the lesson she had to learn that, while Diana has known nothing but love, Circe was still forged in cruelty. It was an important lesson for Diana to learn about her mother, and it works wonderfully as the thought process behind the new lasso. We’ll have to see in the long run how a transmogrification lasso works out. I’m sure it’ll be fun. It’s definitely put to great use in this issue.

I thought killing the monster with a big sword cleave was a bit too easy last issue, and I was right. So to finally put it down, a Medusa appearance is quite excellent! I did find it a little funny that Barbara had to explain to Etta who Medusa is, and that she did it in the most roundabout way possible, but that’s just what needed to be done to get in all the important exposition. It drew a parallel between Circe and Athena, and I liked that. Then, suffice to say, the artwork remains amazing. Very unique, easily able to capture the scope of all the insanity that’s happening. Truly career-making work.

TL;DR: Epic opening story comes to an epic conclusion, maintaining the quality in artwork and writing that we’ve seen all along. They make this look easy!

The comics I review in my Hench-Sized reviews are just the usual comics I grab from Comixology any given week, along with a few impulse buys I might try on a whim. So if there are any comics or series you’d like me to review each week, let me know in the comments.

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