Restoring Wonder Woman Makes For An Unremarkable Book With Wonder Woman: The Twelve Labors!

The Good: Wonder Woman is remarkably efficient in the book!
The Bad: Mediocre artwork (comic strip style), Repetitive, No real character development.
The Basics: Eleven men and one woman decide the fate of Wonder Woman rejoining the Justice League after a creative reboot of Wonder Woman from the 1970s.


When there is a creative reboot of a popular character, it can be a tough sell to the loyal fans who made that character into an icon. In the case of DC Comics, periodically, they attempt to reboot sagging franchises in different ways. Green Lanterns get replaced (only to come back, forcing entire reworks of the premise for the book), Flashes return from the Speed Force, and others are simply resurrected directly. In the case of Wonder Woman, a heroine who has spent remarkably little time in the pantheon of the DC storytelling universe dead, long before she was killed off (albeit temporarily to assume a godly position), she was reworked as a superspy in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Almost unrecognizable to the fans and absent from the ongoing stories in the Justice League, that incarnation of Diana Prince, Wonder Woman, led to an eventual reset of the character in more familiar and popular context.

Wonder Woman: The Twelve Labors is the story that restores the post-Diana Prince (only) character to Wonder Woman and pretty much writes off the Diana Prince phase as mental tampering from her mother. So undermined, Wonder Woman gives herself a challenge before she feels comfortable rejoining the Justice League of America. The concept is not an inherently bad one (though it is a bit self-punishing), but the execution is problematic. First and foremost, the book has twelve stories that are both repetitive and unremarkable. Wonder Woman gets herself out of the dangerous situations in virtually the same way each and every time, making for a plodding book. Second, there is something troubling about the book having an overt feminist message (which is wonderful!), but having eleven men (to be fair, one is a robot and one is an ethereal spirit) and only one woman (the painfully uncertain Black Canary) make a life-altering career decision for a woman. That seems pretty backwards.

Not making a clean cut with the Diana Prince saga, by day Diana Prince is working at the U.N. for Morgan Tracy. She writes reports for him and monitors crises that pop up around the world. In the process, she is tailed by a member of the Justice League (supposedly unbeknownst to her) and reverts to Wonder Woman to thwart whatever the villain of the moment is. The labors Wonder Woman has to overcome all involve a “villain of the issue.” Wonder Woman goes after Cavalier (a flat-out misogynist), a Peace-making alien machine, a man who wishes to be king of the world (and almost incites nuclear war as a result), the god Mars, Diogenes Diamandopoiulos (a rich man who wants to see and set foot on Paradise Island), the Duke Of Deception, Celestris, Felix Faust, an alternate universe where women are subservient to Mchsm the High Consul of Xro, Chronos The Time Thief, Dr. Cyber (who duplicates Wonder Woman), and Unca Wade (Wade Dazzle) at Dazzleland.

Wonder Woman is usually shot at, relies upon her lasso to get truth out of people, and her invisible plane. Each of the members of the Justice League presents a compelling case for why Wonder Woman should be readmitted into the Justice League and that reason is pretty much “she defeated this villain.” It’s the same with all of them, “This is the story of this incident and, hey, because Wonder Woman was there and took care of the problem, she should be readmitted into the Justice League.” In other words, none of these incidents truly makes Wonder Woman shine from any sense of skill, ability or savvy. She’s just the super hero in New York City when the bad stuff goes down.

Lacking any real intense moments of character, Wonder Woman: The Twelve Labors also flops on the art front. Simply colored, Wonder Woman: The Twelve Labors looks more like an extended comic strip than a sophisticated graphic novel. While this is a sign of the times (the issues put together for this trade paperback anthology were all from the 1970s), it does not look or feel good in this day in age when graphic novels can be genuinely sophisticated.

Ultimately, Wonder Woman: The Twelve Labors is not terrible, it is just subpar and fans are likely to enjoy it much more as a historical document than a thrilling new story.

For other Wonder Woman volumes, please check out my reviews of:
Gods And Mortals by George Perez
Wonder Woman: Challenge Of The Gods by George Perez
Beauty And The Beasts By George Perez
Destiny Calling By George Perez
The Contest By William Messner-Loebs
Wonder Woman: Lifelines By John Byrne
Paradise Lost By Phil Jimenez
Paradise Found By Phil Jimenez
Down To Earth By Greg Rucka
Eyes Of The Gorgon By Greg Rucka
Land Of The Dead By Greg Rucka
Mission's End By Greg Rucka
The Hiketeia

3/10

For other book reviews, please check out my Book Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Outside The Lack Of Color And The Corny Dialect, The Trial Of The Flash Is Worthwhile!

The Good: Moments of engaging character, Decent enough plot
The Bad: Lack of color, Repetitive plot, Corny, antiquated dialect, Missing chapter
The Basics: The Trial Of The Flash tells the story of the demise of the Flash when he is forced to take the life of a killer to save Barry Allen’s bride-to-be and the fall-out of that split-second decision.


The Trial Of The Flash is a vital story in the life cycle of Barry Allen as the Flash. Immediately before the Crisis On Infinite Earths (reviewed here!) that saw the death of Barry Allen as the Flash, in attempting to save the DC multiverse, Barry Allen’s incarnation of the Flash was largely discredited when the hero did the unheroic in killing the Reverse Flash. Of course, the story is nowhere near as simple as that; the death of Eobard Thawne is in the defense of Barry Allen’s new bride-to-be, Fiona Webb and is, arguably, an oversight as Barry Allen is distracted after being goaded at super speeds.

This story, it bears noting, is only the second complete story I have read where Barry Allen is the protagonist. Outside the vignettes that pitted Barry against each of his adversaries that form the Rogues Gallery, I had not read any of the Barry Allen stories, save the very latest ones that began with Rebirth. Unfortunately, the Showcase presentation that is encapsulated in The Trial Of The Flash is both underwhelming and incomplete. Despite including a number of chapters that are distracting, but include necessary serialized elements (like the divergence near the beginning of the book that includes Gorilla Grodd), the book does not include issues 337 – 339 and, apparently, there are some vital plot points included in them that would make the end of the book much more believable.

On the day of his wedding to Fiona Webb, Barry Allen is called into service as the Flash to stop the Reverse Flash. Eobard Thawne appears to menace Webb, reminding Allen that he killed Allen’s first wife, Iris Allen. After a chase around the world and into outer space, the Flash chases Thawne to the wedding sight and in the very instant before the Reverse Flash is to put his hand through Webb’s skull the way he did Iris Allen’s, the Flash catches him and inadvertently kills the Reverse Flash.

Willingly arrested, the Flash prepares to stand trial. Calling his old friend, Peter Farley, to defend him, the Flash prepares for trial while the Central City Police Department begins searching in earnest for Barry Allen, who has gone missing. Waiting two years to go to trial, the Flash is beset by all manner of villains. A young friend of his becomes a pawn for Grodd, which leads Barry to Gorilla City. When Farley is almost killed, he is replaced on the case by Cecile Horton, a woman with an apparent vendetta against the Flash. As the Flash’s allies turn against him, compliments of the Pied Piper, Barry wrestles with guilt over Fiona Webb having a breakdown due to him abandoning her at the altar. As the Rogues exploit the absence of the Flash, the Flash fights to keep Horton alive and get a fair trial.

But, as such things are, the trial of the Flash itself is manipulated by powers much bigger than Barry Allen. The Trial Of The Flash sees Barry Allen as a pawn in a temporal war that finds his alter ego discredited and his life put in danger now and in the future!

The Showcase collection The Trial Of The Flash captures the strength and weaknesses of the serialized comic book. As a graphic novel, The Trial Of The Flash includes editorial notes and repetitious aspects that reference character or plot events, often in the prior chapter! Editorial notes refer to the prior issues for events, many that readers will have just read, which comes across in this form as utterly ridiculous. Conversely, some of the editor’s notes problematically reference the missing chapters, most notably 338, which seems much more important than the Showcase editors assumed it was.

Another weakness comes in the storytelling itself. Writer Cary Bates, occasionally with John Broom, seems contractually obligated to have the Flash do a heroic act in each chapter. As a result, stories like the meandering story of Angelo, the local street punk, seems more distracting than enlightening. The Flash, as a result, saves police officers, the mayor, and his own lawyer with a frequency that makes him hardly seem like a man released on his own recognizance. Ultimately, The Trial Of The Flash is hardly a solid, direct story. There is a long build-up to a very brief trial that is interrupted by more vignettes that involve Rogue attacks, attacks on the Rogues, and the entire backstory of Kid Flash.

Cary Bates also seems to be writing with an antiquated vernacular that is cringeworthy. I grew up in the 1980s, same as Angelo, and there are a number of phrases he uses (“Cripes!” being the least of them) that sound utterly unreal for the time and place he exists. Maybe we were just raised in completely different places, but there are enough places where Angelo’s lines (and several of the police officers’) do not read as right, making one think that they were reading a story much, much older than one from 1985.

The strength of The Trial Of The Flash is that it can tell a more in-depth story and focus more on the character. There are moments of intricacy – the subplot involving Goldface and the Flash’s lawyer, for example – that realistically flesh out the larger story of the Flash make the giant tome worthwhile. Despite that, there is a sensibility that is very much alien to me. As one who fell in love with graphic novels largely after reading some of the darker books, like The OMAC Project (reviewed here!) where Wonder Woman takes a life, the plodding moralizing of whether or not Barry Allen was justified in his accidental killing of Eobard Thawne seems philosophically dull.

The Trial Of The Flash is problematically presented as in black and white. While Green Lantern books are much more dependent upon color, so many aspects of The Trial Of The Flash feature the Flash (in red) and the Reverse Flash (virtually identical costume in yellow) that are lost in the black and white presentation. The Trial Of The Flash lacks a sense of artistic robustness and given that there are colorists credited in the unedited credits, it seems odd that Showcase did not present it that way.

As it is, The Trial Of The Flash is Barry Allen at the end of his career and the end of his rope. Given how little reaction he has to Fiona Webb’s breakdown, the character never truly pops for me and when the verdict is delivered and contested, the Rogues actually are presented in a far more interesting way. While The Trial Of The Flash might lead into the final main story featuring Barry Allen’s main character arc, it rambles far too much to be a compelling, highly-recommended trade paperback anthology.

For other Flash graphic novels, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
The Flash Vs. The Rogues
Born To Run
The Return Of Barry Allen
Terminal Velocity
Dead Heat
Race Against Time
Emergency Stop
The Human Race
Wonderland
Blood Will Run
Rogues
Crossfire
Blitz
Ignition
The Secret Of Barry Allen
Full Throttle
Lightning In A Bottle
Flash: Rebirth
The Dastardly Death Of The Rogues
The Life Story Of The Flash

4/10

For other graphic novel reviews, be sure to check out my Graphic Novel Review Index Page!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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