Wonder Woman #4: A Long Day's Journey Into Fright! Review
Medium: Comic
Release date: 5/1/1987
Review date: 10/14/2024
Score: 7/10
A solid issue, though our big fight scene didn’t, uh, didn’t last very long. Diana and Decay throw down in the streets of Boston, with Decay’s toxic aura literally decaying the ground and buildings around them after blowing up Julia’s house. The art is fantastic, as always, though I particularly want to shout out Olympus’s design - it's a really cool mix of Greek architecture and MC Escher aesthetics. On Olympus we also get a little more details on the DC Greek Gods backstory, with Aphrodite revealing that not only is she the ex-wife of Ares, but the father of his evil children like Deimos and Photos too. Diana defeats Decay very publicly with her golden lasso, but not after engaging in some smack talk, which was fun; I was a little worried the series might only portray Diana as a serious straight woman. This is the issue that Diana also gets her moniker of Wonder Woman, as the reporter Carole Bennet over at the Boston Globe-Leader comes up with a headline to describe their super being bash up (I do really like the detail where Carole and the other Globe-Leader reporters openly talk about how much circulation for the Daily Planet exploded after Superman came to Metropolis and how they hope this new “Wonder Woman” in Boston can do they same for them; as much as I like comics usually emphasizing the importance and actual real world purpose and utility of journalism, it's nice to see some acknowledgement of the more commercial realities of the field as well). Vanessa (Julia's daughter) is still under some sort of curse from Decay’s attack, so Diana and Julia go to Julia’s winter home (sure, whatever) where Julia continues to research Diana’s magic amulet. Major Trevor recognizes Diana from a TV news report as the lady who saved him from his plane crash on Themyscira, and goes with Lt. Candy to find Diana and make some sense of what’s happening. Diana and Trevor finally meet at the end of the issue, but said meeting is cut short when the two find Trevor’s military friend Michaelis standing over what appears to be Lt. Candy’s corpse. I enjoyed the issue, quite a lot happened plot wise, but I did feel the fight with Decay was a bit lacking; it kind of felt like it was over before it really got started. It's nice to see Diana become a little more situated in Boston, and I’m glad her and Trevor’s plotlines have finally converged by the end of the issue, as I feel like the plot stuff with Ares and the US and Soviet military is currently the weakest and least explained element of the series.