Warning! Spoilers for Wonder Woman #764 by Mariko Tamaki, Steve Pugh, Romulo Fajardo Jr., and Pat Brosseau
Issue #764 presents Wonder Woman with the rare opportunity to snag one of the greatest missions of her entire career. She gets to hit up Miami, a vacation spot she obviously did not want to miss out on. (For she later describes the city as a “state of mind.”) Sure, the mission involves the tedious task of overseeing Maxwell Lord, an ostensible former supervillain whom she still does not trust despite his recent reform (and for good reason, what with him being her arch-nemesis and all), but she will have the chance to visit Miami’s hotspots later – which she researched the night before. Despite this perk and the wonderful saltwater air she obviously enjoys, this routine mission soon escalates to the point where Diana is forced to utilize a trick she steals from Aquaman.
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Before the event takes place that will undoubtedly lead to Aquaman suing Wonder Woman for trademark infringement, the main dilemma the unlikely duo face is finding their contact who intends to trade stolen tech that has been used to attack military bases in return for political asylum. Meanwhile, Lord’s own personal struggle is that tourists keep mistaking him for Darren Hondor (unfortunate cases of mistaken identity that cause Lord to lose his cool on more than one occasion). The only clue for finding their contact is that he will have a blue and white towel, which complicates things a bit when you take into account that the hotel they agreed to meet him at provides towels with the same color scheme to its guests.
While they do find an old man who claims he has a top-secret plan to destroy the planet, he is not their lead, though Lord and Diana do eventually find him (who calls himself the Shadow Brain Master). Unfortunately, the master of brains who apparently dwells in the shadows does not come to cooperate. His goal is to use this moment as his official, grand entrance into the gig economy as a freelance superhero killer. With the click of a button (on a smartphone that has a cartoonish Einstein sticker), the freelancer unleashes an army of marine robots that ascend from the waves towards Wonder Woman and Lord.
As Lord shoots the robotic minions with a pistol, Wonder Woman first tries kicking and then slinging her enemies with the Lasso of Truth, but to no avail. And then she does it. She calls for backup … the backup being a massive shark or, as Lord calls it, “a giant angry fish.”And, no, she does not have aquatic telepathy like Aquaman. She summons the shark by whistling, and it works. The shark devours and then either digests or pukes up the entire robot army. Lord refers to this as Diana’s “little dolphin ride for justice.”
With the Shadow Brain Master secured, Wonder Woman finally enjoys Miami and can later be found staring at a setting sun as she sits peacefully on a surfboard. But there’s still much to do. All of the stolen tech is still not fully accounted for. And can Diana really trust Lord? He claims he changed his ways. After all, he did receive a vision where Wonder Woman snaps the neck of another version of himself. But if Lord does return to his old ways, marine telepathy probably won’t stop him, that’s for sure.