Meanwhile...

Hey kids! Comics!

Last week was the debut of the print version of DC's new Sensation Comics, their digital-first Wonder Woman book, in the style of Adventures of Superman. If you were at all worried that it might make a genuine effort of courting new readers from beyond DC's existing fanbase, worry not; the first two-thirds of the issue are written by Gail Simone, drawn by Ethan Van Sciver and deals with Wonder Woman fighting Batman's villains. Also, there's little chance of it filling the void of Wonder Woman comics appropriate for children, as it does include the above page.

But she doesn't really kill all of Batman's enemies! She's just imagining doing so. That was maybe the second-weirdest part of the Simone-written story, which I reviewed at some length for Robot 6 today. The weirdest part is page 18, drawn by someone else entirely. Given what came immediately before and immediately after, I wonder if page 18 reflected a last-minute editorial change to the story, that Van Sciver either didn't want to draw or didn't have time to draw.

On page 16, Wonder Woman's Amazon reinforcements show up. On page 17, we see Poison Ivy's vines take some of them out, and the Penguin pushing a button, triggering an explosion. And then, on page 18, we see Wonder Woman telling her Amazon army that it is now a rescue mission, and shows them saving civilians from a burning building. I suspect in the original version, the bomb was meant to kill the Amazons, and someone said it was either too extreme, or that the Amazons are pretty much constantly being killed in every story they appear in, and they decided to change that.

Or I don't know, maybe EVS drew the book out of order, and ran out of time before drawing 18. Anyway, weird book. I've added it to my pull-list though; this first issue isn't very good, but I'm looking forward to those to come based on the announced creative teams.

Wait, maybe that's the third weirdest part. Her "Wondarangs" were pretty damn weird, too.

It's not like part of her costume is also a razor-sharp projectile that returns to her hand when thrown.

Also! I wrote about Fantagraphics' latest Peanuts gift book, Waiting For The Great Pumpkin, for Good Comics For Kids. It's Charles Schulz's Peanuts, so obviously it's good. What I found particularly interesting about it though was that it featured the strips in which Schulz introduced the Great Pumpkin concept; most of those strips are new to me, despite being so familiar with the concept from that Halloween animated special I used to watch annually as a child.