Absolute Wonder Woman #24 Review: Fear Comes Looking for Diana

Absolute Wonder Woman #24 comes in with “Heretic” Part 2 and Kelly Thompson is not easing Diana into this one. The sky over Gateway City has turned into a giant eye, the city is under shelter-in-place orders, and Diana takes one look at the whole impossible mess and basically says, yeah, I know whose nonsense this is. Phobos and Deimos are back in the conversation, and that immediately changes the temperature because these two do not just hit hard. They get inside fear, bend perception and make everybody question what they are seeing. For a Wonder Woman who has spent this run learning how to carry rage without letting it carry her, that is a nasty matchup.

What I liked right away is that Thompson does not reset Diana after the previous issue. The anger is still there. The urgency around Barbara Minerva is still there. Diana is moving fast because she knows somebody is manipulating the board, but she is not written like an idiot just because emotions are involved. She recognizes the giant eye as an illusion, clocks the energy signatures and goes straight to Pegasus because she knows exactly what kind of old-fashioned mess she may be flying into. That balance has been one of this book’s strengths from jump. Diana can be furious, compassionate, tactical and weird as hell all in the same scene, and none of those qualities cancel the others out.

Then Hayden Sherman starts cooking with the page layouts. Fam, this book refuses to sit still. The early pages use huge circular forms, hard diagonals and negative space to make Gateway City feel like it is being watched by something much bigger than the people underneath it. When Diana moves, the panels move with her. When the story slips into memory, fear or supernatural perception, Sherman changes the visual grammar instead of just changing the background. One of the strongest sequences uses a chessboard and curling red shapes to frame a younger Diana learning about Phobos and Deimos. It is information, character history and foreshadowing at the same time, but visually it feels like somebody opened Diana’s memory and let us walk around inside it.

That flashback with Circe is where Thompson quietly puts the knife in. We learn how Diana was taught to think about fear when she was younger, and it gives the present-day threat more weight without turning the issue into a mythology lecture. Fear is not treated as some generic superhero weakness where you see a scary thing and scream. It is power. It is manipulation. It is the thing that can make somebody hurt themselves before the enemy ever has to touch them. That idea fits Diana especially well because this version of Wonder Woman has already had to build herself out of isolation, pain and things she was never supposed to survive. You want to attack her through fear? Good luck. But Thompson is smart enough to show that resistance does not mean immunity.

Jordie Bellaire’s colors are doing ridiculous work here. The issue opens in burnt orange and black, then slides into Diana’s red armor against these sick greens before the flashback detonates into pinks, reds, bone whites and electric supernatural blues. Later, the palette around Steve Trevor shifts again, letting the quieter human scenes breathe before the horror creeps back into frame. None of it feels random. Bellaire is helping tell you where you are emotionally before the dialogue catches up, and paired with Sherman’s layouts, the book has this controlled psychedelic quality without becoming impossible to read. That is a hard line to walk. They make it look easy.

Steve is back in the mix, and thank God Thompson lets the man be Steve instead of reducing him to “Wonder Woman’s boyfriend.” Their reunion has warmth, awkwardness and urgency all bouncing around at once. Diana is genuinely relieved to see him alive and well, Steve is trying to process the giant eye that just appeared over the city, and within seconds they are moving because there is no time for a Hallmark moment. Their chemistry works because the affection is obvious without stopping the story cold. Steve also notices what Diana is not saying, which matters. He knows her well enough to see when something is sitting heavy, even if he does not yet have the whole picture.

The issue gets even better once Phobos and Deimos start showing how they operate. Thompson gives them personalities instead of treating them like interchangeable spooky gods, and Sherman makes their presence feel invasive. They move through scenes like contamination. Their dialogue balloons, colors and surrounding shapes separate them from ordinary reality, and when the final threat reveals itself, the page does not need a giant explanation box. Your eyes already know something has gone very wrong. That last image is exactly the kind of cliffhanger this arc needs because it connects Diana’s current search, the fear mythology and Barbara Minerva without dumping the whole answer in our lap.

Becca Carey’s lettering deserves its flowers too because this issue is juggling normal conversation, Diana’s narration, supernatural voices, flashbacks, broadcast dialogue and some genuinely wild page construction. It stays readable. More importantly, it stays expressive. The lettering changes texture when the story needs it, but never starts fighting Sherman’s art for attention. In a comic this visually aggressive, that restraint matters. Everybody on this creative team understands that the page has to work as one thing, not four departments showing off separately.

My one little gripe with Absolute Wonder Woman #24 is that you can definitely feel this is Part 2 of a five-part story. Thompson is moving the pieces, giving us some answers, opening up Diana emotionally and making the whole Phobos and Deimos situation nastier, but if you came through the door expecting Diana to start wrecking shop and handing out divine ass-whippings for twenty pages, nah, we ain’t there yet. And I’m cool with that because the issue is actually building toward something instead of blowing everything early just to give us a flashy moment. Thompson is still holding a few cards, Sherman is making every new wrinkle look crazier than the last, and there is enough going on here that I never felt like I paid five bucks for a damn commercial telling me to come back next month.

CRUSADERS SCORE:
4.5/5

Writer: Kelly Thompson
Artist: Hayden Sherman
Colorist: Jordie Bellaire
Letterer: Becca Carey
Covers: Hayden Sherman & Jordie Bellaire, Terry Dodson & Rachel Dodson, Chris Burnham & Brian Reber, Carmine Di Giandomenico
Assistant Editor: Ash Padilla
Editor: Chris Conroy
Publisher: DC Comics