Jodi Picoult Makes Her Comic Book Debut

Won­der Woman: Love and Mur­der is writ­ten by nov­el­ist Jodi Picoult and illus­trated by Terry Dod­son, Drew John­son and Paco Diaz and pub­lished Novem­ber 2007 in hard­cover by DC Comics, retail price $19.99. New York Times best­selling author, Jodi Picoult makes her comic book debut and it’s a pretty decent effort. I requested this title for review because I wanted to see what Ms. Picoult would con­tribute to the series of one of the most pop­u­lar Amer­i­can icons of the DC Comic Uni­verse. For full dis­clo­sure, I haven’t read any of the Won­der Woman comic books. No, I grew up watch­ing the tele­vi­sion series reruns with Linda Carter. How­ever, Ms. Picoult brings us new­bies some­what up to speed so I wasn’t com­pletely lost since sup­pos­edly this hard­cover col­lects issues #6 to 10.

A brief his­tory: Princess Diana is a descen­dant of the Ama­zons who goes by the alter ego of Won­der Woman. She has many super­hu­man strengths along with her trade­mark lasso of truth and her inde­struc­tible bracelets. When we meet up with Princess Diana, we learn that she is now a Fed­eral Agent for the Depart­ment of Metahu­man Affairs work­ing under the guise of Diana Prince. She is part­nered with Tom Stresser aka “Neme­sis” and their first assign­ment of the day is to “babysit” a real­ity TV show win­ner at a theme park. Mean­while, Diana starts to real­ize rather quickly that Won­der Woman is no longer a favorite with the public. At the theme park she notices that her Won­der Woman mer­chan­dise is on clear­ance and that the “Won­der Woman Milk­shake” has been dis­con­tin­ued. Besides being unpopular, Diana has prob­lems blend­ing into soci­ety and relat­ing to her human coun­ter­parts. Her secret iden­tity of being “human” is often a chal­lenge for her.

At head­quar­ters, their boss informs them that Won­der Woman is now a fugi­tive and their assign­ment is to bring her in for ques­tion­ing.  Spe­cial Agent Diana Prince faces a dilemma: how can she do this with­out reveal­ing her secret iden­tity? Also, Diana spends much of the story in self-doubt which is sup­posed to make her appear more human. Mean­while, trou­ble is brew­ing on the hori­zon. Ms. Picoult decides to bring back vil­lain­ess Circe and Queen Hip­polyta, leader of the Ama­zon War­riors to stir up trou­ble and end the story arc on a cliffhanger.

While the story is read­able, it is forgettable. I found myself under­whelmed when I reached the end. The cliffhanger at the end doesn’t even make me want to con­tinue read­ing the series, sorry to say. For fun, the author throws in some bits of pop cul­ture along with a bit of tongue in cheek type of humor that raised my grade from a C to an less than enthu­si­as­tic B. There’s some fight­ing with a bit of flirt­ing between our two superheroes. The art­work didn’t exactly blow me away but then again I can’t draw two stick fig­ures to save my life. Other super­heroes in the DC Uni­verse make token appear­ances whose pur­pose seemed to serve more for comic relief than plot. The under­ly­ing themes that the author was going for like self-doubt, self-identity and con­fronting past beliefs was mostly repet­i­tive and par­tially achieved because the author decides to leave the cli­max unre­solved until the next issue. I’m afraid that I won’t be con­tin­u­ing forth for the highly antic­i­pated dénoue­ment. It was a quick and fun read while it lasted. My grade, B–.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Won­der Woman: Love and Mur­der, Graphic Novel Review, DC Comics