Wonder Woman #5: The Ares Assault Review
Medium: Comic
Release date: 6/1/1987
Review date: 11/3/2024
Score: 6/10
I’m not sure if I just wasn’t paying the closest attention to the plot or it just wasn’t communicated the clearest, but in response to whatever Ares’ plans are on Earth, the gods of Olympus are preparing to board a sick-ass bone ship on the river Styx to sail away, to uh… somewhere? It's all very “elves leaving Middle Earth in ‘The Lord of the Rings’” coded, but I’m just not where they’re going or why they have to leave in response to Ares’ scheming - maybe through his great nuclear war plans all humans will end up dying and no one will be around to worship the gods so they too will fade from existence? Maybe? I don’t know, like I said, it's a bit unclear. Anyways, Issue #5 opens on the gods preparing to depart on the Styx, only for them to hold off just a bit longer in hope that Diana will be able to defeat Ares and save the world. It's then revealed that Colonel Michaelis didn’t shoot Lieutenant Candy last issue, just accidently knocked her out, allowing him to join the good guy brainstorming session at Julia’s winter home with the secret files Lt. Candy took from General Tolliver’s office. The group is able to deduce that the markings on Diana’s amulet form the picture of a vulture when combined with its other half, and that those markings are identical to the markings on General Tolliver’s stolen map, so Ares’ plan must involve taking over nuclear arsenals and bombing the world into war. But at just that very moment General Tolliver goes rogue and takes over a Midwest nuclear missile base (my guess is somebody left the backdoor unlocked), with Team Wonder Woman correctly deducing that something similar is also happening over in Russia with the Soviet’s nuclear bases. Diana, determined to find the other half of the amulet and stop all of this, then uses her half of the amulet to travel through a mirror in Julia’s house (sure, whatever) to Ares’ realm where Deimos is currently using his half of the amulet to manipulate the minds of American and Soviet soldiers. Diana initially tries to take this journey alone but Trevor, Julia, Lt. Candy, and Col. Michaelis all tell her to shove it and that they’re going with her, so the whole team arrives in Hades’ mystical magical realm where the group manages to stop and kill Deimos. Diana then combines the amulet pieces which results in teleporting the gang to the missile base General Tolliver had commandeered, where they are confronted by the general and then an apparition of Ares himself.
Things just kind of happen this issue, like the reveal that Colonel Michaelis is fine and just surprised Lt. Candy feels completely unnecessary - what was the point of having the readers think he was possibly mind controlled by Ares at the end of issue #4 other than to just stick them with a cliffhanger while they waited in between issues? Likewise, the Wonder Woman gang teleporting to Ares’ Magical Realm (which, while we’re complaining, seems to exist in its own space and time separate from the rest of the world) and then the Midwest missile base felt like it just sort of happened to keep the plot moving; I appreciate the series not getting caught up trying to paper over plot holes, but maybe the team could have worked out the sequence of events a little more clearly if the they’d taken a couple more drafts at it. And finally, while the series definitely has felt like its been building towards it so far, to have Ares’ master plan and confrontation happen this quickly feels a tad jarring, narratively - it's hard for me to think this is an all powerful deity’s grand scheme decades in the making to finally overthrown their rival (and also all powerful) gods when Diana can come and just unravel it all in about five issues. But oh well, that’s just standard comic book storytelling for you, hard for me to crucify the series for the entire medium’s sins. But I do think the storytelling felt a bit rushed this issue compared to previous releases, so hopefully that’s just a symptom of the series’ creators wanting to get “Wonder Woman’s” introduction issues out of the way and get into the real meat of her narrative rather than just weak storytelling chops.