Wonder Woman, Volume 1: Afterworlds Review (Becky Cloonan, Michael W. Conrad)

Spinning out of Dark Nights: Death Metal, Wonder Woman finds herself in the afterlife - though not in Olympus as she expects but Asgard for some reason! Yggdrasil the World Tree is dying and a mysterious villain has laid waste to Olympus. Teaming up with a generic hunk and a talking squirrel, Diana’s gotta save the blah blah blah.

Becky Cloonan’s written some fine comics, which is the only reason I picked this one up, however, like her other Big 2 books, Wonder Woman, Volume 1: Afterworlds is not good at all - in fact, I’d say it’s her worst work-for-hire yet. That’s probably in part because her co-writer is Michael Conrad, the author of the godawful Comixology Originals Tremor Dose and Double Walker - anything with the Comixology Originals stamp on it is utter drek.

Worse still, this book is ten issues long, about twice as long as the average collection, and you really feel its length here. It is so, so boring. All that happens is that Wonder Woman travels across the Multiverse fighting a dark version of herself with a giant sickle until she doesn’t. The story and baddie are so childishly written that I wasn’t the least bit engaged with the book. I don’t think they even resolved the Yggdrasil storyline, despite the page count - it’s that shoddy a story.

I’m also not a big fan of mythology retellings, or maybe it’s the case that the ones doing the retellings just aren’t very good at doing so, so delving into Norse (obviously this isn’t Marvel’s Thor/Asgard but the more traditional version) and Greek mythology didn’t do anything for me.

But nothing about this book was the least bit compelling. It’s a rambling, arbitrary journey through the Multiverse, the changing scenery being the only thing to make it seem like the story is progressing when really it’s only going round in circles. They’re in Earth-11, then the Phantom Zone, then Gemworld, etc. etc. - any point to all this? Nope! Just filling time. Oh look, a Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice parody with Bat-Mite and Mr Mxyzptlk aka more filler!

Wonder Woman, Volume 1: Afterworlds is a very long, unsatisfying and tedious comic with a badly-told and never interesting story that only bores. Pointless rubbish, don’t bother.