Absolute Wonder Woman #3 was released the day after Christmas, December 26, 2024. It is the last comic from the Absolute Universe to release this year. If you missed my reviews of the previous two issues or just want to know what happened, you can find issue 1 here and issue 2 here.
SPOILERS for Absolute Wonder Woman #3 below.
Right away, we are introduced to a new character in this series who is a woman named Barbara. Her name, red hair, and presence in a Wonder Woman comic immediately gave way to her full identity: Barbara Minerva aka Cheetah. We are given only one page of time with this character before moving on, but she is the first person to call Diana Wonder Woman.
The concept of the Tetracide is intriguing, terrifying, and explained well in a situation that doesn’t make me feel as if the explanation was shoehorned into the story just for the reader to have it. The Tetracide kills its victims in four ways: death of fear, death of mind, death of body, and death of soul. The Tetracide emits a sound that causes anyone who hears it to stop fearing the Tetracide and be drawn to it instead. This is visually demonstrated through a painted Greek vase, showing that people who hear it will do anything to be with the Tetracide. It creates a mob of people that will clamber over and crush each other. When I read that, I was excited to see how Sherman would draw such a horde.
When Diana confronts the Tetracide, I noticed something that flew under my radar in the past two issues: Diana’s eyes alternate between red and blue. However, I can find no discernable pattern as to when they should be red and when they should be blue. It seems like Sherman’s intention is to have them be red when she is in combat, but, during the fight with the Tetracide, her eyes start red before she begins to fight, then are suddenly blue on the next page. I went back into previous issues to see if her eyes were consistently red when fighting and blue when not fighting only to find the same inconsistency. If there is a reason for her eyes changing color, I don’t know what it is.
During Diana’s fight with the Tetracide, we learn that her lasso can grow as long as she needs it to and Diana has a magic satchel that seems to be chock full of weapons. She pulls a very large axe from it when her sword is knocked in the water before we switch to the past and see Steve Trevor wielding the same axe as he and Diana fight a hydra. On the next page, Diana explains to Steve that, like her eyes changing color, her ability to talk to and understand creatures is inconsistent and even she can’t describe when it will or won’t work.
The dialogue in this issue relates more closely to the first than the second issue. It has returned to feeling much less organic and unnatural. Steve talks about how the sunset over the ocean reminds him of his mother’s laugh, calling both the light on the water and his mother’s laugh, “consistent and yet surprising”. It’s a comparison no real person would actually make. It’s a line that sounds good when you come up with it in your head, but reads outlandishly.
A big upside to this issue is learning how Steve was sent home. Diana finds a spell in an old book that describes an intense sacrifice. She argues with Circe about it, but eventually starts the spell by removing her own arm then sends Steve home. My prediction was that this would serve as an explanation as to why only one arm is armored: that arm is mechanical. The opposite proved to be the case. When we are taken back to the present, the Tetracide is gripping her by her unarmored arm and she casts a spell making the arm simply disappear. Then, back at the military base, she puts a mechanical arm on it that looks incredibly low tech for a comic book with an uninspired design. Why Sherman chose for it to be so boring looking, I do not know.
We see Barbara once again and learn that she is indeed Barbara Minerva and that she has studied the Amazons for some time. There’s a brief conversation, but Diana is pulled away by the impending threat of the Tetracide.
As we approach the end of the comic, Diana posits that her efforts will be completely futile and she will die fighting the Tetracide. But wait! She actually happens to have a magical item that happens to be exactly what she will need for this scenario. It’s some kind of spell that makes everyone within its radius deaf. It is literally the exact thing that will save everyone. The spell felt random. It could have at least tied back to something Circe taught her or an experience she had in Hell.
Before casting it, Diana gives a speech in front of a news camera that is perfectly on par with the character of Wonder Woman. The speech is about having kindness and passion in the face of chaos. It’s a very well written speech, and I wish I could say that for the rest of the comic.
The strange inconsistencies in this issue echo the inconsistent quality of the series as a whole thus far. There’s a few positives like the way the Tetracide kills and how that’s explained, how Steve was sent home, and Diana’s speech at the end, but the are overshadowed by Diana’s unexplainable changing eye color, the unnatural dialogue, Diana’s underwhelming new arm, and the poorly written deafening spell.
Overall, I give this comic an okay 5/10.