Absolute Wonder Woman #23 Review: Diana Comes Back From Hell Ready to Break Something

WEPAAAA! Absolute Wonder Woman #23 comes back from the Underworld already looking like Diana had enough of everybody’s nonsense about three realms ago. Kelly Thompson and Hayden Sherman kick off “Heretic,” Part 1 of 5, with Diana carrying anger, grief, purpose, and that little voice in the back of her head telling her not to become the exact kind of monster she keeps fighting. I dig that. She is powerful as hell, obviously, but the issue is not just interested in showing us how many walls she can smash through. Thompson keeps pulling us back to the woman inside all that power, the one trying to stay in control while every clue seems designed to make her lose it.

Her hunt for Barbara Minerva makes all of that feel personal too. Diana rolls into Area 41 expecting answers and gets basically nothing but more reasons to be pissed off. You can feel that frustration building with every step, every busted door, every dead end. Thompson lets Diana question herself without turning the book into therapy hour either, which is the right move. She knows she is angry. She knows violence comes easy when you are built like a myth with a sword in your hand. The real fight is making sure anger does not start driving the damn car. We already know Diana can tear the place apart, fam. Watching her decide how far she is willing to go is where the story gets interesting.

The Veronica Cale showdown got some real seasoning on it because Thompson does not turn the scene into two powerful women standing around measuring who got the bigger threat package. Cale comes in arrogant, dangerous, slick with it, but Diana sees past the smoke. She does not forgive her, hell no, but she recognizes pain when it walks into the room wearing expensive shoes. Their back-and-forth got venom, history, tension, and just enough heart to keep it from becoming generic villain interrogation. Cale is still shady. Diana is still ready to handle business. Everybody keeps their edge. Good. That is how you do it.

The Gotham stop with Barbara Gordon and Etta Candy slows the hunt a little, but it earns the detour by showing how Diana’s return is hitting the wider world. Still, fam, this issue got more stamps on the passport than my cousins flying standby. Olympus. Wild Isle. Area 41. Gotham. Gateway City. WEPAAA, pick a borough! Sherman and Bellaire keep the jumps clean, but you can feel the book laying pipe for the bigger arc instead of letting every scene sit and marinate.

And Hayden Sherman? Man is drawing like somebody disrespected his whole bloodline. Panels bend, smash, overlap, break apart, then somehow still read clean. Diana tearing through Area 41 feels heavy because Sherman lets the impact control the page instead of trapping everything inside boring little boxes. Then the Cale scene flips the vibe with silhouettes, broken glass, nasty reds, tight close-ups, and enough visual tension to make the conversation feel like a fight before anybody swings. THAT is comic book storytelling, papi. The page got attitude.

Sherman knows exactly when to wild out and when to shut the hell up and let a face carry the scene. Diana’s expressions bounce from rage to suspicion to straight-up exhaustion without Thompson having to spoon-feed us every feeling. Cale gets the same treatment. You can see when the confidence is holding, when it starts cracking, and when fear slides in like, “Oh damn, we hit a nerve.” Even the quiet panels got juice. No dead space. No waiting around for the next big splash page to save the day. Sherman keeps every damn beat alive.

Jordie Bellaire comes in and cooks with the colors too. The Underworld gets those nasty toxic greens, Area 41 runs cold with steel blues and shadows, then Gateway City starts heating up with pinks, oranges, and angry reds as Diana closes in on Cale. That palette is not just there to look pretty, fam. It tells you exactly how the scene feels before anybody says a word. By the time those reds start taking over, you already know Diana is one bad sentence away from somebody catching hands. WEPA.

And Becca Carey? Give her the flowers. Sherman is throwing crazy layouts, internal narration, tech voices, magic, sound effects, combat noise, all kinds of madness onto these pages, and Carey keeps everything clean and readable without killing the energy. Diana sounds like Diana, Ceda Six sounds mechanical, the supernatural stuff feels appropriately weird, and the sound effects actually belong inside the art instead of looking pasted on top. A few scenes get a little wordy, sure, but Carey keeps the traffic moving. No jam-up. No headache. Just organized chaos, kiddos.

The truth behind Cale’s moves lands with some real weight because Thompson never uses the reveal as a get-out-of-jail-free card. Cale still made her choices. She still crossed lines. What changes is how we understand the pain underneath all that madness, and papi, that makes the whole thing hit different. Thompson starts stirring together mothers, daughters, old wounds, desperate decisions, rage, guilt, and that dangerous place where love gets twisted so damn tight it starts looking like obsession. Diana sees all of it, but she does not suddenly go soft or forget who she is dealing with. She can be pissed off, suspicious, compassionate, threatening, and still recognize when somebody needs saving. Yo, THAT is Wonder Woman. Not just swinging steel and looking majestic while buildings explode behind her. Diana’s greatest weapon has always been knowing when to fight and when somebody standing across from her is hurting just as badly as they are dangerous. The Absolute Universe keeps cooking because these characters are allowed to carry contradictions instead of getting stuffed into neat little hero-and-villain boxes.

Once the book starts heading into the final stretch, Thompson and Sherman open the doors wider and you can feel “Heretic” getting ready to become a whole different animal. The ending does not erase the personal drama that got us there either. It builds on it. My one real gripe is that the issue is juggling a lot of plates at once, with different locations, character threads, mysteries, and future trouble all fighting for page space. A couple of scenes feel like the crew moving furniture around before the real party starts. Still, Absolute Wonder Woman #23 comes out swinging with emotional meat on the bone, fearless layouts, gorgeous color work, crisp lettering, and a Diana who feels larger than life without ever becoming some untouchable marble statue. Thompson remembers there is a woman underneath all that armor, while Sherman draws her like the gods themselves might want to reconsider pulling up. WEPA! Diana is angry, the divine nonsense is getting louder, and if this is only the opening round of “Heretic,” Gateway City better check the fine print on that insurance policy because god-level property damage probably ain’t covered.

Score:
4.5/5

Writer: Kelly Thompson
Artist: Hayden Sherman
Colorist: Jordie Bellaire
Letterer: Becca Carey
Assistant Editor: Ash Padilla
Editor: Chris Conroy
Cover: Hayden Sherman & Jordie Bellaire
Publisher: DC Comics

Looking for more DC books from the same release week? Check out What’s on the Shelf,September 2ND: The Big 2.