This week the Future State line brings us Immortal Wonder Woman 1. It starts out as a tale of loss, but from there it crosses over with a villain and a couple of superheroes that go underutilized. We also come across the same problem other titles are causing. This title contradicts other titles because in the others Diana Prince is dead. A second Wonder Woman story comes attached that ends up feeling like a tag along that does not belong.

Immortal Wonder Woman 1 – Switching Deaths

In the rest of DC Comics‘ Future State titles, Diana Prince no longer walks the Earth. In this issue Diana does live and Bruce Wayne no longer exists. I’d say this contradicts other titles, but currently Bruce Wayne suffers from four different fates. Immortal Wonder Woman opens with Diana walking through the forsaken caverns of the batcave.

She encounters the ghost of Batman as she mourns his loss. The discussion the two have does a great job showing why these two are part of DC’s holy trinity (with Superman). Bruce’ loss would shake Diana to the core, but their conversation does another thing. Batman talks about how Wonder Woman always represented the love and hope of the group. While in the end it serves no purpose, it’s touching that Diana grabs the batbelt and wears it from that point on.

Immortal Wonder Woman 1 – Adding Faces, Losing Focus

From her on, however, this title adds some big names, but loses its overall focus. Someone who seems more at home in the Superman titles appears in the form of Darkseid. I do not know why they included him here, but we get typical Darkseid. His home, Apokolips, disintegrates against the wave of the ‘Undoing’. He doesn’t care. His kids and followers are sucked into nothing. He doesn’t care, or at least about that. The fact this wave feels like the anti-life equation intrigues him.

Then we flash over to Diana again, but this time she returns to Themyscira. Hidden on the island to protect him as the last living vestige of Earth’s life force is Swamp Thing. Why might be covered in the Swamp Thing title from week 1, but I do not know. Diana tried to talk her fellow Amazons into fleeing the dying Earth and find a new home, but the Amazons refuse to budge. They wish to fight, but what they fight never really surfaces.

Finally, the last piece of the puzzle drops into place. Darkseid reaches Earth and discovers a very gray (or white) Superman laying on the ground. We get no explanation into who this is or why he lays there. Did he fight with Darkseid and they not show us? This part of the story feels very incomplete.

Diana and the Amazons try to fight Darkseid, but Diana gets her butt kicked and the Amazons get disintegrated. As Darkseid chokes out Superman, Swamp Thing gives Diana a gift, but again this gets confusing. We assume its his life force, but the images are vague and nothing visibly changes hands. Then the Story ends. What starts out as a touching story ends vague, confused and incomplete.

Immortal Wonder Woman 1 – The Other Story

Nubia
Nubia

Then comes the second story. This one follows the black Amazon, Nubia. Nubia takes on Grail in an attempt to stop her from stealing an artifact called Khali’s Wrath. She gets her butt whooped and then looks for answers from her Aunt Nancy. Nubia then gets sucked through a portal and Aunt Nancy’s response is ‘well, hell…’.

This story feels more like an add on to check an ethnic box than to make something meaningful. It does not connect to future state in any way so far. The story is too short to show any meaning to the character, artifact or overall story. Perhaps if the story was in its own comic where the characters and story meant more it would mean something, but here it feels pointless and out of place.

Keep the story of Diana in the Batcave. Trash the rest.

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