Wonder Woman by Tom King vol. 3: Fury

She spent most of the previous volume as a prisoner of the Sovereign, the secret King of America, but then she escaped with the help of her friends (and then tied in to “Absolute Power”).  Now Wonder Woman is free and she’s ready to make her adversary pay. It’s not just for the business of being the wielder of the Lasso of Lies and the whole imprisonment thing.  There’s also something that happens at the start of this volume which makes this business even more personal.  To the point where Diana is going to have to take her revenge all the way to the lawn of the White House to see a secret king be publicly deposed.

While I did like vol. 2, vol. 1 was just so great in presenting a threat for Wonder Woman to struggle against yet also showing off how capable and badass she was at the same time.  We get more of that here after an effective first issue of formalist experimentation as the Wonder Girls – and Detective Chimp doing his best “Columbo” –  work to dismantle the Sovereign’s power base.  Diana doesn’t actually do much here, as she’s busy with a rather significant development from the first issue, but this actually works in the story’s favor as it makes the point when she does decide to get involved feel like a big deal.

This is all expertly rendered by Daniel Sampere, with additional quality work from Bruno Redondo and Khary Randolph, who hasn’t lost any of the detail and intensity from his work over the previous two volumes.  It all makes for a very satisfying conclusion to what looks to be the end of the first act of King’s run on this title.  Which is all the more impressive when you consider how he flips the script in the final issue to illustrate that her victory isn’t quite complete and there appears to be a great deal of tragedy ahead for her.  Still, what we get here is more than enough to make me want to see what happens next, and how the Mouseman figures into it all.