Both Power Girl and Veronica Cale project their own pride onto Wonder Woman and try to use it against her. The issue of rivalry between powerful women cropped up in Gail Simone’s run too, when Power Girl’s underlying resentment made it all too easy to trick her into attacking Wonder Woman. They should care, and you’re allowed to care that they don’t care. You know what, Veronica Cale? As much as I love Wonder Woman, I’d be pissed off too. Veronica is smart, rich and powerful, she works hard and does a lot of good, and she feels like that deserves to be acknowledged. But mostly it’s because, although she’s not exactly lovable, I couldn’t hate her. Part of it is the fact that she’s motivated by attention rather than power seems like a gendered choice with some unfortunate implications. It took me a while to figure out what it was about Cale that bugged me, exactly. The main plotline involves the media flurry around Diana’s first book, which turns out to be secretly manipulated by genius billionaire Dr Veronica Cale, who believes Wonder Woman is stealing the spotlight she deserves. There’s also a lot here about the demands and risks of being a public figure, perhaps because she has no secret civilian identity to hide behind. She works damn hard to balance bureaucracy with the straightforward superhero life, which is tough even for a born diplomat.

This Diana will ring true if you’ve ever worked for a really stellar boss. She’s a little homesick, having lost a few loved ones, and you can tell they’ve come to feel oddly protective of her. We see a lot of her day-to-day as the Themysciran ambassador, living with the embassy staff who see her in all her roles they know her better than just about anybody. Whack-a-Bat aside, the main thing I enjoyed about this volume was the domestic moments in Diana’s life. His appearances in this volume have a saving sense of humour, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t take great joy in seeing Wonder Woman lay the smackdown on him. The dark and edgy thing has never done it for me and yet they keep making movies about this grumpy dude and his city full of terrible people. I have to confess here that I harbour a little petty bitterness towards Batman. You might recognise it by its very excellent cover. It throws up all kinds of moral questions but, Greek tragedy-like, you know there can eventually only be one resolution. Volume 1 starts off with Hiketeia, which has Diana bound by sacred tradition to protect someone Batman is hunting. Rucka is also writing Wonder Woman right now and the current stuff will be appearing here soon! Volume 2 of this is only now about to come out…why, I don’t know. My next reading assignment is from the distant past of 2002-2004: Volume 1 of Greg Rucka’s first run on Wonder Woman, another writer who I’d heard great things about.

Wonder woman greg rucka run