Wonder Woman, Vol. 4: Revenge of the Gods

Wonder Woman (2016)

by Becky Cloonan, Michael Conrad, Amancay Nahuelpan (Illustrator)

As trouble continues to mount in Olympus, Wonder Woman begins to understand that the gods have taken a particular interest in mortals for the first time in centuries...

Now, with her new partner, Wonder Girl Yara Flor, she hopes to defend Man's World from whatever the immortal beings are preparing…but will these Wonder Women be enough?

And when Eros returns, will Wonder Girl's ex-boyfriend make things personal as he battles two of the most powerful women in the DCU? 

Collects Wonder Woman #795-800!

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Wonder Woman, Dc Comics, Superheroes, Fantasy, Adventure

176 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2023

About the author

Becky Cloonan is an American comic book creator, known for work published by Tokyopop and Vertigo. In 2012 she became the first female artist to draw the main Batman title for DC Comics.

Reviews

[Khurram · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would have given this four stars, but this is only half the story. A lot of this book happens alongside Lazarus Planet: Revenge of the Gods. If it is just something in between, I could live with that, but the main event/fight? Is in another book that the next two issues are the aftermath of the fight. This is really annoying and expensive. I need to buy an extra book for the completion of the story.

The "Gods" have declared war on the mortal world, including all the tribes of the Amazons. Can even a "Dimi-goddess" like Diana/Wonder Woman stand against their combined might? Who will stand with her, and what are the prices and consequences of victory? I don't know because that is in the other book. Grrrrr.

This was shaping up to be my favourite volume of the Wonder Woman books. There were actual fights. Then, just as things are getting great it is "to be concluded in Lazarus Planet: Revenge of the Gods", what am I supposed to do not read the next two chapter till I buy the next book? The book finishes with a varient cover gallery, with full page and thumbnail versions.

[Nikki · Rating 2 out of 5]

There’s some really good stuff in here completely overshadowed by the “book” itself.

Opening halfway through a story is a strong choice for trade format, it’s been six months I don’t remember the first half well enough. The middle of the book goes with an event that is not included in the volume. Everything is set to end the run at issue 800. Good. We did that. I’m ready to get another writer on this character and see what they can do.

[Adam Fisher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonder Woman is making a play again for great DC books.... and it is working. This Volume brought back the essence of the character while also propelling her forward towards the "Dawn of DC" reboot.
Highlights:
- Continuing the "Before the Storm" story started at the end of the last Volume, we see three major events happen: 1) Eros continues his war on humanity in the hopes of getting back Yara Flor. 2) Steve Trevor and Siegfried (definitely giving off relationship vibes) are able to defeat Hyperion, a Titan of old, and 3) Hera kills Zeus, with the help of the Wizard Shazam, and becomes Queen of Olympus.
- "The Reckoning" deals with Diana's escape from the clutches of Hera, a one on one against the new Queen, and Ares stepping in to unite Wonder Woman with the abilities of Mary Marvel, creating Wonder Woman, God of Thunder! (Please can she face off against Thor?)
- Our last two parts story (Issues 799 and 800) really gives a full picture of Wonder Woman as well as Diana as a person. Love when comic companies celebrate anniversaries of characters reminding us of their highlights as well as giving them a strong future as a character.

Can't wait to see what is next for our Amazon and hero of all.
Recommend.

[Christopher M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hera's evil plan that has been stewing for nearly two years finally comes to fruition - mainly in crossover/spin off titles that aren't included here for some reason, which at least made me nostalgic for the days of my Grandad buying random issues from the newsagent when I was little and my accepting I'd never read episode 3. The two part 800th issue extravaganza that neatly breaks the fourth wall to wink at the convoluted, rebooted history of Diana's relationships with Steve, Etta and various Wonder Girls is a lovely celebration and good ending for this run, though, and the art is gorgeous throughout.

[MK · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book collects the end of the Cloonan/Conrad run. The front half continues on from the last book, where it's Diana vs the gods. I do tire of the Greek gods in WW books, but at least Cloonan livens it up by bringing in Wonder Girl, who has a very personal bone to pick with the god chosen as the messenger, Eros. A titan gets dragged in and that lets us get to see the wonder team of Steve Trevor, Siegfried, Etta Candy, and - Cheetah? (I do love that she was brought over to Diana's side in the last book.) Then there's a bunch of nonsense that has Diana accidentally turned immortal, but that sets up the goodness of the rest of the book.

It intially starts with Atlantiades saving Steve because of his purity of his love for Diana. I do love his devotion to her and it seems that with the run coming to an end, they could finally play that relationship. (I heard the brass isn't too keen on it, so I suspect the writing team was constrained in that respect.) From there, the final two books has Diana exploring her relationships via dreams as a way to stay anchored to her humanity. The second of the books is #800, so it appears a bunch of artists took turns drawing the dreams.

We start with Etta and to my extreme happiness she's the Etta of her origins with her Holliday Girls. They look stunning in their 50s style. Cheetah is there too and she's won over by the power of inclusion. The art gives her a round monkey-like face which renders her adorable. Then it's Siggy's dream where the art is in gorgeous pastels and blues. Next up is Steve. I hated the artwork but loved the writing, full of their usual banter and ending on a kiss that Diana initiates.

From there it's Nubia and we discover she is being watched over by oracles as she goes through this journey. Then it's her Wonder sisters - Yara Flor, Cassie, and Donna Troy. After that she has a touching moment bring Bruce Wayne out of his nightly nightmare about his parents' death. That takes her to Clark Kent and it's obvious the artist ships them based on how their body language is drawn but again the dialogue really underlies how those two are really the best of friends and get each other.

She finally meets up with her mother and after their tearful reunion, she wakes up ready to take on her next challenge as we see the people she visited through the night. A beautiful ending that sums up who she is and why I love her.

[Marsha · Rating 3 out of 5]

This fourth volume in a series didn’t really clear up things for me. After rescuing the gods from Tartarus, you’d expect a little gratitude. No, wait, gratitude isn’t something for which gods are known. Being rescued by an immortal heroine wouldn’t really smooth out their rough edges.

It does pick up the storyline from an oversized Eros avatar working for Hera. The queen of the Greek goddesses is once again on a rampage, this time to make herself ruler over all mankind. She’s a battling goddess, all right, taking on Diana head to toe in an epic raging battle that would seem to have no clear winner. The scenes between them are filled with powerful dynamics, rage-filled verbiage on Hera’s part and the usual attempts at amelioration on Diana’s.

Diana claims that Hera is wounded, a charge the goddess vehemently denies. Yet those who have followed Greek mythology know of her jealousy over Zeus’s philandering ways and her constant punishments of his mortal lovers. From what does that stem except wounded love? If she claims love is a lie, that must be because Zeus had lied to her about their affection…or so she sees it.

The graphic abruptly switches gears as we move from an outer battle to an inner struggle. As in Wonder Woman: Evolution, Diana is undergoing a mental search. This time, it’s one of her own choosing and it shunts her from one person’s dreamscape to another. We see her moving through the minds of Etta Candy, Siegfried, Steve Trevor and a few surprise guests. The tones range from comedic to tragic, the illustrative scenes from a brightly colored Holliday Girls picnic to the dark, sepia-toned misery of Bruce Wayne’s memory of his parents’s deaths.

While the tonal shift from a war-torn earth was jarring, I did like Diana’s mental trips through Memory Lane (the bit with a Cheetah in her 1940s incarnation was especially amusing). Perhaps reading future volumes will bring this story into focus.

[Chris Lemmerman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This final volume of Becky Cloonan and Michael Conrad's Wonder Woman is...all over the place.

We open with the remaining two issues of the previous volume's final story, because it was collected weird. This sees Washington under attack by the Gods, and it's up to Wonder Woman, Wonder Girl, and Checkmate to sort them out. This is fine, but we've seen this story done many times before in many different ways, and this one isn't particularly original, which I think has been a common complaint of this run overall.

Then the next two issues are tie-ins to Revenge Of The Gods, which won't make any sense without reading the Revenge Of The Gods mini-series, which actually helps wrap up Cloonan and Conrad's big Hera story. But of course, let's collect random tie-ins without any context, because that's clever.

And then finally we get Whatever Happened To The Warrior Of Truth? in the last two issues of the volume, including the oversized #800. For a story that's meant to go side-by-side with Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader? and Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow? I literally cannot remember what happened, which cannot be a good sign.

The art's nice, at least. Amancay Nahuelpan pencils the first four issues, while the final two are jam sessions between a multitude of artists too long to list.

This series ends in much the same way it's gone before. Things we've seen before, executed in ways that don't quite measure up. It's not bad, but if you've read literally any other Wonder Woman run, you've seen this stuff done better somewhere else.

There have been bright spots during the run - the opening Afterworlds arc was neat, and Trial Of The Amazons was fun, but most of this is just okay, and Wonder Woman deserves better than that. Thankfully, Tom King's run is on the horizon, so that should be something different at least.

[Jamie Revell · Rating 3 out of 5]

The biggest problem with this collection is the disjointed nature of the narrative. It starts with the second issue in the story arc (the first being included at the end of the previous volume) and from then on, continues in much the same manner, including only the even-numbered parts of the narrative. The other sections - parts 3, 5, and 7 - were in a different series, so we don't get them here, with the result that we're only getting half the story, leaping over events and resulting in, at best, confusion. Did this story work for somebody who was reading all the issues in the alternating series? I dunno... maybe, but it's no way to put together a collection and while it's unlikely to be Cloonan's fault, it's all one giant mess.

Who at DC thought this was a good idea?

In fact, you might wonder why I'm even giving it three stars and, if all we were getting was the first four parts, I wouldn't have. Fortunately, the final two sections (issues #799 and #800 of the original) are quite a bit better, and just about nudge the overall collection up to "middling". They're kind of disjointed too, but for a reason, since they consist of a number of dream sequences as Diana experiences how her friends see her and how she touches their lives. The artwork is variable, with the framing device in the waking world having the weakest, but it's a valiant effort to produce a celebration of the character, with a mixture of humour, action, and heart.

Whether it's worth putting up with the repeatedly interrupted half-narrative of the first two-thirds of the collection is, however, a matter of taste. A veritable plethora of variant covers round it out.

[Sesana · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disjointed. That's mostly on the DC editors who decided to collect the series this way. The first four issues are all related to the Revenge of the Gods storyline, which started in the previous volume and has huge chunks collected in the standalone Lazarus Planet: Revenge of the Gods. There's so much missing from this collection that you'd be hard pressed to make sense of it if you only read this. That aside, it isn't a very good story. Hera is an evil bitch, what else is new? I've said before, about this exact storyline, that it's a boring and overused drivel that has no mythological basis, so I won't go into detail to rehash it here.

The last two issues are sort of meant to be a companion piece to Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, but the writing just doesn't have the same charm. It may be because it's an unending list of people in Diana's life telling her she's the greatest thing since sliced bread. Which is true, but it feels really contrived and dull to get two issues of nothing but. Over her entire run, I think Cloonan has largely gotten Diana's personality right, but the plots have felt overly long and derivative. I'm ready to see what the next writer has in store.

[Kyle Still · Rating 4 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed this collection (with one small caveat below). I thought it was a compelling ending to the Cloonan/Conrad run, and the scope of the story was fittingly epic in scope. I especially liked the last two issues (#799-800), which was a two part story recalling similar stories for Superman (Whatever happened to the Man of Tomorrow) and Batman (Whatever happened to the Caped Crusader). Note that this book should be read in tandem with the Lazarus Planet: Revenge of the Gods book by Willow Wilson, which also was quite good. My only caveat to the review is that I did not care for the first two issues involving Eros - they were blander (and, as others have noted, this collection did not include the first issue of that story). I'd recommend skimming through those stories - once you arrive upon the conflict with Hera (and resulting aftermath), the enjoyment level really kicks up.

[Ross · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow. How do you find a story in a disjointed narrative? This collection NEEDS 'Lazarus Planet' and its tie-ins to make sense. Without them, we're getting a severally abridged version. It follows the usual Wonder Woman tropes. (i.e. you won't be getting any cutting edge or new spins on things)

They continue to hit the same notes until the end of the run.
*Cheetah is snarky
*Steve and his Norse friend Siegfried are one panel away from a bromance
*Etta believes in the power of friendship
*Just about everyone believes that they aren't good enough to have Wonder Woman as a friend
*Wonder Woman is many things to many people. Leader, Listener, Loyal Companion...

The only thing that saves this from the dreaded ONE STAR OF DOOM is the Tom King prequel story at the end of issue #800. The future Trinity could be awesome. It's a Tom King story...we have high hopes.

[Anthony Rizzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

My main issue is not with the WW story or content here but rather DC's perplexing choice to collect it (or not, really). The last issue of vol 3 was Part 1 of 3 with this book opening on Part 2. Odd choice for sure but possibly forgivable. Then we have 2 issues related to Lazarus Planet, and at the end when it is heating up, we get "Continued in Lazarus Planet: Revenge of the Gods." ...what? The first two issues should have made the previous book thicker and then this one should have contained, at least, Revenge of the Gods 1-4. Oof. Issues 799-800 wrap it up well, but if you missed RotG, there's definitely some aspects missing. Story and art were great, collection not so much.

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

an absolutely amazing run hampered at the end by an event comic. i really wish they had included the events that are needed for this story to actually wrap up. DC and marvel and their event obsession is one of the reasons I've been reading more indie books and less of the big 2

without the last 2 issues this would have been a 3 star for me because of the disjointed feeling it has due to the event issue tie ins that I didn't read and have no desire to read BUT the last 2 issues downright made me cry and i had already read issue 800 as a stand alone.

[Chad · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good lord, this book is an exercise in frustration. It's starts with part 2 of the story started in the last volume with more of Hera's nonsense. Then we get two Revenge of the Gods tie ins which make zero sense without reading that miniseries. The last two issues are jam issues having to do with everyone dreaming. Everything about this is crap. It's fitting that Cloonan and Conrad's lackluster Wonder woman run ends in the worst volume of their entire run. You can't bring in Tom King soon enough.

[Walter · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit of a fair warning, if you’re looking for the full Revenge of the Gods story, you will need to get “Lazarus Planet Revenge of the Gods”.

While this story does feel like it’s missing important parts between issues, the author does a great job illustrating Diana’s relationships with the Greek pantheon and other heros. The final two issues are a sweet handoff as the book is given to a new creative team.

[Grande Re Nikochan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nice work Dc, reading this volume felt like reading only half the chapters of a book, it's basically useless without the Lazarus planet miniseries and frankly nobody asked for yet another event. I'm a huge fan of Wondie but my god, events, spinoffs, miniseries, following this series has became a nightmare.

[Kris Ritchie · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 rounded down.

Cloonan is definitely going down as one of my personal least favorite Wonder Woman writer's. Everything, even the big crossover stuff, just feels too out-of-touch with the rest of DC's line that it feels more like an elseworlds title.

[Carly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just based on that final section the the last issue it gets five stars

[Courts · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have really enjoyed Becky Cloonan and Michael Conrad's run.

[Giuseppe · Rating 5 out of 5]

For Greek myth lovers. Includes many characters from the Wonder Woman stories including a few friends within the DC Universe.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Conflict with the Gods. Unexpected allies. Dream journey. Growing into divinity.

[Kurt Lorenz · Rating 4 out of 5]

795-796, Before the Storm, ☆☆☆
797-798, The Reckoning, ☆☆☆☆
799-800, Whatever Happened to the Warrior of Truth, ☆☆☆☆☆