Finally for this week, we have the relaunch of Wonder Woman under Allan Heinberg and Terry Dodson.

It's good to see that Allan Heinberg has found time to fit this book into his busy schedule.  God knows he couldn't manage it with Young Avengers, a title that is now running horrendously late and is about to go on hiatus in order to allow Heinberg to fulfil his other commitments.  Such as writing books like this one, which only came along later.

It is hardly an original observation that writers from TV and film who come to comics seem to have... well, scheduling issues.  The issue is that they don't stick to the schedule.  Take Ultimate Wolverine vs Hulk, for example.  It wasn't even on a monthly schedule to start with, but issue #3 has just been rescheduled for July - almost three months late. 

No doubt their editors must find this all quietly exasperating, but the official line from publishers tends to deny any such concern.  Now, god knows I don't want to turn into John Byrne and start grumbling about outsiders entering our little fiefdom.  If they can write - and in fairness, most of them can - then let them come.  Fine by me.

But the idea that it is some sort of achievement for comics to attract these writers rings increasingly hollow as the months go by and comics fail to appear.  Look how the medium is growing!, people say.  Look how we're attracting writers from the real world!  People who work in proper media and actually have a choice.  And there's some truth to this.  It certainly holds some water with novelists working in mainstream fiction, who have entered comics in some numbers, and have dutifully produced the work that they promised.

Writers from the world of TV and movies, on the other hand, seem to consider it an optional extra to actually do the work.  For them, in the majority of cases, the word "monthly" is a polite suggestion, not a fixed schedule.  Now, you might argue that having them here at all shows that comics are being taken seriously.  But you could argue much more convincingly that if they really took comics seriously, they'd actually write them.  The endemic attitude seems to be that comics work comes far down the chain behind TV and movie commitments. 

No doubt there are good reasons for that attitude, but it scarcely shows that they take comics seriously.  On the contrary, it shows that they treat it as a hobby where they don't even feel particularly compelled to fulfil their professional commitments.  When did you last tune in to watch a TV show, only to get a caption saying that the series was delayed for three months because the writer was dreadfully busy?  That's how seriously they take comics - second-class work for second-class companies.  And this attitude is supposed to be good for comics?

Allan Heinberg is hardly the worst offender, but he's got a comic out this week, and I don't need to save this sort of material for Article 10 any more.

Young Avengers is a good comic, but a horrendously late one.  The fact that Heinberg seems to believe he has time to start a second monthly title when he can't even keep up with the one is slightly mindboggling.  Wonder Woman is also a fairly good comic, albeit caught up in post-Infinite Crisis plots. 

Wonder Woman is missing, and she's been replaced by Donna Troy, The Continuity Error That Walks Like A Woman.  Given that the Dodsons are providing art, the cheesecake levels are relatively light.  The new Wonder Woman costume immediately gets on my good side by getting rid of all traces of the American flag.  This isn't anti-Americanism, but simple consistency.  The central idea of Wonder Woman is that she's come from the foreign culture of Paradise Island to teach us where we're going wrong.  Not only is she not American, but she doesn't even stand for American values.  For a character like that, any use of the American flag is garbled iconography which should be ruthlessly purged.  I'm sure it won't stick, but the vaguely Greco-Roman style of this costume is a massive improvement, since at least that's the established look of Paradise Island itself.

Established villains are efficiently introduced, and a decent mystery is set up about who the new Wonder Woman is going to be and what exactly Diana is up to.  Given that Heinberg's Young Avengers swiftly degenerated into continuity-heavy references, it's nice to see this book aiming for accessibility.  It's a decent start, all told.

And yet... do I have any faith that this book will actually come out on anything close to the advertised schedule?  The answer can only be no.  How on earth could I?  I'm actually quite curious to see where this goes, but honestly, I imagine it drifting off the face of the earth and suspect I'll have forgotten all about it long before the storyline resolves.  I'm wavering.  If Heinberg had a track record of punctuality I'd have no hesitation coming back, but... it's Heinberg.

Postscript, 12 June 2006: Allan Heinberg has been in touch to say that none of his comics have been late because the artist was waiting on a script.  I'm happy to take him at his word on that.

While I could rewrite the above piece, I still think the point is valid in a more general sense - even though it shouldn't be in this particular review because it doesn't apply to Heinberg.

Rating: B

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