Adventures of Superbro: Superman loves Wonder Woman

Morrison rebooting Superman in Action comics was obviously a big thing in New 52. But arguably bigger impact was made in the pages of Justice League when Superman and Wonder Woman started their romance. As often happens with such thing writer of JL (Johns) did very little with it asides of setting it up and alluding that it is a big problem in JLI Annual #1. He left it for other writers to develop, but neither Superman nor WW writers did anything with it till we got Superman/Wonder Woman ongoing. So lets talk about it.

Charles Soule has been a hit and miss writer for me. I really like his Swamp Thing and dislike his Red Lanterns. His brief run on Superman/Wonder Woman sits somewhere in the middle and Daniel's art on certainly doesn't hurt.

First arc, #1-7, is strongest one since it does mostly its own thing and slowly moves towards Doomed crossover. It doesn't sell the relationship, but I'd argue that it is only time (and #12 with Swamp Thing appearance) where it looks like something that could work. Unfortunately Soule doesn't stay for long and almost half of his run is consumed by Doomed. 

As I already mentioned in the earlier post Doomed is my guilty pleasure so while I'm ok with most of Supes/WW issues in it I'm not going to pretend that they are better than initial arc or of high quality in general. With one exception, epilogue issue #12 is, I'd argue, very good and works even as a standalone story.

Unfortunately there are also two Futures End one-shots by Soule that, in my opinion, diminish his short run significantly. One of the problems is art, it is very jarring to go from Rags Morales to Bart Sears. Another problem is that Soule, as many modern comics writers, has some weird understanding about what war is and the whole story makes little sense.

So yeah, one solid arc, crossover with ups and downs and bad two-parter to wrap it all up. Not a very strong record, but unfortunately we get Tomasi after Soule and he, in my opinion, consistently stays below even the lows of Soule's run.

During New 52 many fans and "fans" complained about various changes made to the characters. Some writers tried to fix these "problems", some tried to ignore them. And there is Tomasi who basically thought that problem with WW in opening JL arc was that she wasn't extreme enough. There was also an attempt to make Magog happen again that failed just like every other attempt to make him happen. 

Maybe I'm reading too much into this now knowing how it will all end, but it does feel like Tomasi didn't like WW, didn't like New 52 Superman and didn't like their relationship. Probably not a coincidence that he later ended up writing the death of Superbro. Most frustrating bit for me is that I enjoy Mahnke's art and it is unfortunate to see it wasted on this dreadful run.

I'll briefly cover issues related to Truth, Savage Dawn and Final Days in other posts, but there is also second Supes/WW annual that is worth mentioning. Fisch, as usual, does a solid short story and other two stories are mediocre, but overall okay. Highlight of the annual is story by Tomasi about how Superman wanted to propose to WW, but never found time for it. It is a decent idea so it is not surprising that Tomasi used it. Problem is that their relationship was never shown as being anything close to that and it is not like Tomashi himself tried to make it looks like something that could work. So it looks ridiculous and out of touch.

So in the end not much was done with the relationship and maybe thats for the better. But if you want to check it out then the best options are Power Couple collection and issue #12.

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