“I was a protector of this Earth.”
“Looks like you failed.”
DC’s new(ish) “Black Label” imprint is one tailor made for horror fans, dedicated to standalone, prestige-format tales that allow for iconic characters to get a little bit darker. Criminal Sanity, for example, takes an NBC’s “Hannibal”-esque approach to the story of Harley Quinn and the Joker, with Quinn as a profiler tracking a serial killer with a flair for displaying his victims as art pieces. It’s a grounded tale that exists in the real world rather than the fantasy world of comic books, but that doesn’t mean “Black Label” tales are all cut from that same cloth.
Daniel Warren Johnson‘s four-issue Wonder Woman: Dead Earth, which has received one issue so far with another on the way this month, exists in a world quite unlike our own; precisely, a post-apocalyptic wasteland that’s ravaged by mutated monsters. Diana awakens into this world from a centuries-long sleep, and in the debut issue she finds new hope as the protector of the last remaining city – and the last remaining humans – in the world.
Yes, Dead Earth is all about a grizzled Wonder Woman fighting massive monsters, and you only have to read a few pages into issue one to see Diana literally ripping a creature’s throat out with her bare hands. The comic may take place within an otherwise drab post-apocalyptic landscape but the bursts of color from Mike Spicer add a whole lot of life and excitement to those battle scenes in particular, of which there are a few big ones in the first issue alone.
The aforementioned first fight sees Wonder Woman saving a group of survivors from a purple/blue monster with a big belly, long arms and two big ole fangs that hang over its hungry mouth, and the monster’s arrival ushers in a pop of neon highlighting that’s later present in the other battles as well. The visual aesthetic is more Rage 2 than it is Mad Max, with bright yellows, blues, pinks and purples lending a fun style to what is ultimately a dark tale.
With only four issues in total to work with, writer/artist Daniel Warren Johnson clearly isn’t wasting any time here, and the reveal of Batman’s skeletal corpse on page thirteen lets us know that Wonder Woman may very well be the only remaining member of the Justice League alive on Earth. And she’s only alive because she’s been asleep for centuries, waking up in a world where nobody who’s left is even aware of the team’s former existence. Furthermore, nobody even seems to know precisely why and how the world even ended at all.
One of the most striking pieces of art in the first issue sees Wonder Woman looking out upon the ravaged world from a massive hole in the side of the Batcave, with Batman’s corpse propped up on a couch just to the left of her. But she doesn’t have time to mourn. She’s only got time to save Man’s World. The world she left home to save in the first place. After saying her goodbyes to her old friend, she pries Batman’s iconic utility belt off his skeleton, suits up in one of her old outfits, and throws on a red cape for good measure. A sword strapped to her back, Wonder Woman is ready for battle, decorated like one badass tribute to her past.
The back half of issue one sees the survivors taking Diana to Camp New Hope, where she encounters a barbaric leader and an old foe with a monstrously nasty new look. Without spoiling too much, the issue ends with an epic, bloody battle between humans and monsters, and an insanely cool final piece of art teases where Wonder Woman is headed in the next issue. With wild hair and battle damaged flesh, our last look at Wonder Woman makes it clear that she’s fast become the Goddess of the Wasteland you would expect her to be.
Smartly, Wonder Woman: Dead Earth also has some brief backstory bits that serve to brush readers up on her past, which help to remind us that she was once the protector of Earth and therefore feels an obligation to protect, well, what little is now left. Her full powers have been drained – she remarks that she can no longer fly – and Diana feels responsible for failing to save Earth in the first place, adding a layer of emotion to an otherwise fun tale of a superhero fighting supernatural monsters. She still has hope for humanity even as humanity is on the brink of complete annihilation; a superhero standing amid the rubble of our world.
Can she save the world before it burns out completely? I can’t wait to see her try.
Wonder Woman: Dead Earth – Book Two is set for release on February 19, 2020.
