Wonder Woman #38 Review: The Wonder War Gets Personal!

Yo, somebody needs to tell these people that family therapy is cheaper than starting a damn war! Wonder Woman #38 drops us right back into “The Wonder War,” and Tom King has Diana dealing with the kind of madness you can’t fix by wrapping somebody in the Lasso of Truth and telling them to behave. We’ve got mothers protecting children, powerful women throwing down over their beliefs, and enough betrayal floating around to ruin every holiday gathering from here to Themyscira. Fam, when Wonder Woman has to choose between doing what’s right and protecting the people she loves, you already know things are about to get ugly.

King opens with the Matriarch holding a child close, promising a better future while looking like somebody who’d burn down half the planet to make that promise happen. That’s a hell of an introduction to the issue’s central conflict. The Matriarch doesn’t see herself as some cartoon villain. In her mind, she’s protecting what’s hers and correcting a world that’s gone wrong. Meanwhile, Diana and her allies are staring at the consequences of that thinking. I love a villain who genuinely believes she’s the hero of her own story, because those are usually the most dangerous people in the room. Give somebody absolute certainty and enough power, and suddenly everybody else becomes an obstacle.

The early pages bring Diana face-to-face with the Matriarch while Steve Trevor’s fate hangs over the confrontation. There’s some seriously uncomfortable tension in those exchanges. King doesn’t rush straight into a punching contest, either. He lets the characters talk, threaten, and challenge each other before things explode. The dialogue has that sharp, deliberate rhythm he likes, with characters speaking like every sentence is supposed to leave a bruise. Sometimes it works beautifully. Other times, bro, you wanna grab somebody by the shoulders and say, “Can we stop delivering speeches and get to the damn point?” Still, the emotional friction keeps the pages moving.

Now let’s talk about Daniel Sampere, because this dude is putting on a SHOW! His Wonder Woman looks powerful without losing the compassion that makes Diana special. The expressions are doing serious work, especially when she’s trying to keep her emotions under control while everything around her goes sideways. Sampere also understands how to stage a fight. When the action kicks off, the page layouts open up, the bodies have weight, and the blows actually look like they hurt. There’s a sequence where the violence erupts across the page in a blast of green and orange, and fam, that’s the kind of superhero artwork that makes me remember why I fell in love with comics in the first place. WEPA! Let the pictures do some talking!

Alejandro Sánchez deserves his flowers, too. The color work is gorgeous, with those icy blues surrounding the Matriarch contrasting against the warmth and gold of the Amazon scenes. When the action shifts from shadowy confrontation to an open, sunlit battlefield, the entire mood changes. You can feel the difference before anybody says a word. Clayton Cowles keeps the lettering sharp through all the arguing, threats, and battle cries. King packs plenty of dialogue into these pages, so maintaining that visual flow is no small job. Sampere, Sánchez, and Cowles make sure this comic still feels like a COMIC, not an illustrated script somebody forgot to trim.

Then Queen Nubia enters the picture, and BRO, she’s not here to negotiate! The confrontation between Nubia and the Matriarch is one of the issue’s strongest stretches because it turns the whole conflict into something personal. Nubia stands there representing Amazon authority and responsibility, while the Matriarch refuses to recognize anybody’s right to tell her what to do. Two powerful women, two completely different ideas about justice, and neither one is interested in backing down. That’s good drama, baby. The fight that follows has genuine energy, with Nubia using her strength and experience while the Matriarch answers with power that can turn a battlefield into a disaster zone.

I gotta bust King’s chops about the pacing, though. The issue moves from intimate conversations to massive action and then into another confrontation so quickly that some emotional moments don’t get the breathing room they deserve. There’s a lot happening with Diana, the Matriarch, Nubia, Steve, and the larger war, and occasionally the story feels like it’s trying to squeeze two issues into one. I appreciate ambition, especially when the stakes are this personal, but sometimes you gotta let a scene sit with the reader. Not every emotional beat needs to be followed immediately by somebody getting blasted into next Tuesday.

The final pages pull the camera back and remind us that this war has consequences far beyond Diana’s immediate fight. Familiar faces are scattered across the aftermath, alliances are shifting, and the Sovereign is still lurking in the background like the world’s creepiest uncle who refuses to leave the party. That last image is a nasty little reminder that King has been playing a longer game with this character. I also dig how the story keeps circling back to family, legacy, and the damage people cause when they decide their version of the future is the only acceptable one. That’s the kind of material Wonder Woman should be wrestling with, even when the execution gets a little crowded.

Wonder Woman #38 brings the emotional drama, the Amazonian fury, and some absolutely beautiful artwork. Tom King gives Diana and Nubia plenty to fight for, while Daniel Sampere, Alejandro Sánchez, and Clayton Cowles deliver pages that deserve to be appreciated beyond a quick flip-through. Yeah, the pacing could use a little more room, and some of the dialogue gets a bit theatrical, but I was invested. The Wonder War is turning into one nasty family affair, and I wanna see who survives the fallout. Fam, when everybody thinks they’re saving the world, somebody usually ends up destroying a piece of it.

Crusaders Score:
4/5

Writer: Tom King
Artist: Daniel Sampere
Colorist: Alejandro Sánchez
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Cover Artists: Daniel Sampere and Tomeu Morey
Variant Cover Artists: David Nakayama, Karen S. Darboe, Arif Prianto, and Dan Quintana
Associate Editor: Marquis Draper
Senior Editor: Brittany Holzherr
Publisher: DC Comics
Wonder Woman Created By: William Moulton Marston