An interesting aspect of DC Comics' Absolute Universe debuts will be how do the different writers go about doing the same thing — how do you go about reintroducing Batman versus how do you go about reintroducing Wonder Woman?

Scott Snyder’s Absolute Batman Vol. 1: The Zoo took place over many days, the rise and fall of a crime wave with the characters advancing and retreating against it. Kelly Thompson and Hayden Sherman’s Absolute Wonder Woman Vol. 1: The Last Amazon, in contrast, takes place mostly in the span of an afternoon, the first five issues enmeshed in a single conflict (with plenty of room for flashbacks).

Thus we have decompressed and compressed, Batman spending some time bopping around Gotham as Bruce Wayne, while Diana is still Diana, and so perhaps needs less of the larger scene-setting given she’s just arriving on the scene herself. Not that everyone you’d expect isn’t here, too, Thompson lining up Wonder Woman’s supporting cast almost directly from the Greg Rucka et al. playbook.

Between previews and the general tenets of mainstream superhero comics honed over almost 100 years, the very greatest thing a comic can do these days is surprise us. In the third chapter, I did not see that coming, and that much might be worth the series' Eisner as much as anything. Otherwise, sometimes Thompson’s Wonder Woman is excellently deepened, delivering on some promise where other writers have struggled; sometimes, not unlike Snyder’s Batman, she’s pretty much the same as we’ve ever known.

But it’s Sherman who really sells it — mystical creatures rendered with techno-future precision. The mythical here is neither George Perez' Greco-Roman classic nor Cliff Chiang’s post-modern, but instead Sherman finds something in the middle, credibly ancient but impressively fresh. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Sherman’s art is truly what makes Absolute Wonder Woman different than all the other Wonder Woman takes we’ve experienced previously.

[Review contains spoilers]

Among the reigning conceits in Last Amazon is that when Diana arrives on the shores of Gateway City, as she does, she’s just escaped the bowels of Hell, where she’s lived since infancy. I’d heard that before, and I admit I was expecting a Diana who was a bit more … demonic, someone raised among the flames and pitchforks, more Big Barda perhaps than Snow White. But in this, Thompson hews to character, the loving warrior we’ve always known, a Diana who swiftly takes fire-breathing lizards as pets and monsters as playthings. Those scenes are precious, don’t get me wrong, but much as the back of the book wants to proclaim that this Diana is “without the island paradise,” the story proves the adage that you can take the girl out of Themyscira but you can’t take the Themyscira out of the girl.¹

What is different — welcome, and which Thompson handles exceptionally well — is that this Diana is not just “the last Amazon,” but also “witch of the Wild Isle.” In contrast to Superman and Batman’s varying levels of sci-fi, Wonder Woman’s origins are rooted in fantasy, a genre that doesn’t get much play among the DC Universe. There are plenty compatriots for the supernatural, however, and James Tynion’s placing of Diana among the Justice League Dark made an awful lot of sense, even if it still seemed a square peg in a round hole.

But here, not only is Thompson’s Wonder Woman wholly recognizable in the shape of “our” Wonder Woman, but she’s also reasonably a Wonder Woman-esque witch, gathering ingredients to perform ceremonies, weaponizing potions from a never-ending bag of trinkets, transforming even her own self into a mythological beast. We answered affirmatively before whether Diana ought share the stage with Zatanna, John Constantine, and the like, but I don’t think anyone conceived of the form that should take quite as well as Thompson has.

Last Amazon is a perfectly serviceable Wonder Woman story across the first two issues; again, Sherman helps drive most of it, Silver Age monsters with grotesque modern flair, conference rooms with soldiers crowding the panels, the three-page sequence of Diana’s home life. Steve Trevor is here, and he and his demeanor and his origin with Diana are in large part unchanged. But it is in that third chapter, as Diana takes on the responsibility for Steve that her adoptive mother Circe took on for her, that Thompson delivers the book’s biggest surprise, that Diana chops off her own arm to return him to his home.

The book only elevates from there. First, that though Diana bears a normal-seeming arm by magic, she carries with her and wears a prosthetic (we can only hope the inevitable action figure comes with both). I’m only two Absolute books in, but this is the first time I’ve seen DC “dare” a real modern take on their characters; it ought not be “daring” for one of DC’s Big Three to be differently abled, but it is and it’s good that they’ve done so. At some point when the “surprise” has disseminated far enough, I hope DC’s willing to show less magic arm, more mechanical arm, even so far as in their marketing materials.

Second, that scene proceeds very quickly to a meet-cute with Barbara Minerva, still a mythology scholar a la Greg Rucka’s Wonder Woman: Year One and then Thompson brings Etta Candy and her sister Gia into the story. Again, there is not much here that’s new — Etta’s a friend of Steve’s and works in law enforcement — but I’m not above a smile on my face when the band gets back together. Then there’s giant swords, fantastic art, Veronica Cale(!), Diana saves everyone and Steve saves Diana, and on into “The Lady or the Tiger,” and indeed it all just comes together very well.

Speaking of giant swords — it occurred to me to think, amidst images of the gargantuan Absolute Batman and then again here with Wonder Woman, her gigantic sword, and her skeletal horse, that the Absolute characters were “made for variant covers.” I don’t know if that’ll hold up reading Absolute Superman or not, but paging through the book, there’s Chuma Hill’s and Jessica Fong’s artsy, painterly takes; Stephanie Hans with the sword running off the page; Jim Lee too with the sword before the story even gets started; Homare with Diana manga-inspired. We see an outrageousness to the (two) designs of the Absolute Universe characters that goes to Scott Snyder’s Absolute Batman “more” mission statement, but that I also wonder if not coincidentally lends itself to artists doing a lot of snazzy things that sell single issues.

Absolute Wonder Woman Vol. 1: The Last Amazon is my second taste of what DC is and isn’t willing to do with their Absolute Universe. Circe’s a hero here, but Diana still is, too; Diana comes from Hell, but she’s still driven by a want to save humanity. By virtue of most of Amazon’s forward momentum being in the past, not the present, it’s less clear than in Batman where Kelly Thompson plans to go and what she plans to do with this. This one bears watching, not the least because Hayden Sherman makes it worth doing so.

[Includes original and variant covers, variant cover thumbnail gallery, character designs]