Wonder Woman #69: Love Comes to Town

Love Is a Battlefield: This starts a new arc and a new quest much different than the last one, but still part of the larger arc of Themyscira’s destruction. My question of Aphrodite’s role in things seems to get its answer this issue, validating my trust in the storyline. The story itself centers around a town that claims it is living honestly giving in to their desires. And it’s no surprise that it’s all due to a new god on the scene. 

The theme of this story is shaping up to be choices and desires, which possibly will feed into both Aphrodite’s recent ennui and Diana’s building frustration. It’s always tricky to depict these things without tripping over your own morality, so stories about induced hedonism make me a bit uncomfortable. The story manages to stay on the narrative side between a good story and judgmental commentary fairly well, though it’s going to have to walk that line for a while. 

With the new arc we also have a new artist, continuing the streak of high quality on the book. And so far one thing I can tell you is he draws a pretty scary angry flying baby (brrrrrrr). He also does some interesting exploration of the panel layouts that are beautifully executed and mesh well into the story leading into this arc’s antagonist. It’s well worth breaking out of the narrative flow just to appreciate the multiple layers of the design. Or perhaps even better to read the story first and then go back and take a look look at the larger panel displays. Really well done.