I Think Tom King’s Wonder Woman May Be One of DC’s Weakest Stories (And Here’s Why)

It’s no stretch to call Tom King a legend. The writer has been a prolific figure in DC for years, penning some of the publisher’s most popular and significant runs — Mister Miracle, Strange Adventures, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, and Batman, just to name a few. But while King may be one of comics’ most well-known and widely read creators, he’s also divisive, with readers either loving his work or hating it, and the details of some of his runs continue to be debated in fan forums well after they’ve ended. One of King’s current runs, Wonder Woman, is among those dividing fans, and while the ongoing series continues to be popular as it takes readers on a journey of grief and joy with the titular heroine as she loses the love of her life, becomes a mother, and faces what is presented as one of her most challenging foes to date, I don’t think it’s one of King’s best works. More than that, I think it might just be one of the weakest stories in DC’s current lineup, too.

Back in 2023, DC announced that Wonder Woman would be getting a new creative team at the end of Becky Cloonan and Michael W. Conrad’s run with King and artist Daniel Sampere kicking off a new run in September of that year and it’s a run that started with an intriguing premise: a mysterious Amazonian accused of mass murder, the U.S. government barring all Amazons from American soil in response, and even creating a new task force to remove those who don’t comply willingly. But while the premise was promising — even exciting — the first issue revealed something larger and more sinister at play: a shadowy secret king of America, the Sovereign, was actually behind all this anti-Amazonian sentiment and it’s all because he hates Wonder Woman. And despite the potential, this is where things start to come apart, making this Wonder Woman one of DC’s weakest.

The Sovereign Is a Lackluster Villain

Straight out of the gate, King’s Wonder Woman is held down by its villain. While the Sovereign is supposed to be some secret monarch of America, not only is that concept not especially fleshed out — there are a lot of questions about how exactly the United States would have a secret monarch who has allegedly been around for generations — but when we do get some sort of explanation for what this guy is and why he’s a threat, he really isn’t anything. The Sovereign is just an old man in a fancy house that serves as the embodiment of a bunch of the weakest conspiracy theories you can think of. That’s it. He has no real powers, isn’t especially intelligent, and he’s written alternately as a mustache-twirling character or as a petulant man-child. The idea that he’d be a threat to Wonder Woman for more than an issue at all is laughable, though the whole run to date has been set around him.

Wonder Woman Is Relegated to Being a Supporting Character in Her Own Story

When you pick up a comic book that bears the title of a character, you would expect the story to be about that character, but that really isn’t the case with King’s Wonder Woman run. Instead, the story is centered around the Sovereign. While Wonder Woman appears and readers see her and what she’s doing, we’re actually getting the Sovereign telling his story to Trinity. Instead of this being Diana’s story, it’s a mansplaining version of things that were told to her daughter by one of her foes and, with that being the perspective, we’re actually getting a skewed version of events. 

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I recognize that there could be utility to this approach; shifting the perspective so it’s coming from that of the villain — and a man — does force the reader to examine Wonder Woman’s actions a bit differently. It also allows for the art to tell a story of its own that helps create a bit of depth between the two versions of events. I also recognize that the idea of framing a Wonder Woman story around a man isn’t exactly new; James Robinson did the same thing several years ago, but it was similarly not quite that successful. There’s also the idea that, with comics being a largely male-character-dominated medium, there’s just something fundamentally off about one of the very few female characters to headline her own title being made bit player to a weak male villain.

It’s a Poorly Executed Concept

Generally speaking, King has intriguing ideas and this current run of Wonder Woman is no exception. While the Sovereign isn’t necessarily presented as a strong villain and King making this story more about his whining than making it about Wonder Woman are weaknesses, the idea of a villain who has such an axe to grind against Wonder Woman that they use political machinations to turn the U.S. against her is pretty interesting. The problem develops when you realize that King isn’t really paying off on any of it. Instead, the story is full of narration (much of it completely detached from the actual action in the story), uneven and inconsistent characterizations of just about every possible character, and long stretches of the story where the reader is left to count on the art to carry things. That generally isn’t a huge issue; after all, a key component of any comic book is the art and its narrative efforts. But in the case of King’s Wonder Woman, this is less a case of the art contributing to the story and more of it carrying the story when King seems to either have not enough to say or just needs to fill space. There are also more than a few moments where the story feels like it’s lost its focus. Diana being tortured, for example, ends up feeling more like a side quest than an important part of the story and doesn’t really seem to add anything other than to bring the character to kneel under the guise of showing her strength. The result is something that feels like King knows where he wants things to go but has absolutely no idea how to get there, so we’ll wander through numerous issues in an attempt to get there.

What makes this especially problematic is that it more or less makes King a metaphorical outfit repeater. This is what he does: he comes in with a big idea, loses his way through the middle, fills up a lot of space and pages with characters saying nothing or staring out of windows being sad, and then tries to tie it all together as if it had some great meaning to begin with. 

King’s Attempts at a Political Statement Have Been Done Before and Done Better

What might be the most frustrating thing about King’s Wonder Woman run, however, is that while King’s high concept is set on making a statement, it’s one we’ve seen done before — and not all that long ago. There are still some promising elements of King’s story. There are those who hate Wonder Woman because she’s a woman — they are threatened by her strength and, in general, the strength and power of all women, but Wonder Woman is just a very visible symbol for that to center around. In the case of The Sovereign, this hatred of women is centered in his own history, as his father thought Henry (his real name) would be a bad king so he decided he would break centuries of tradition and give the crown to his sister Claire instead. This upset Henry so much that he killed his father, took the crown, and exiled his sister — and deeply ingrained his overall hatred of women. Generally speaking, the Sovereign is the biggest incel you can imagine. 

This would be a clever story except for the fact that we’ve already seen Wonder Woman deal with misogynistic villains, and we’ve seen it recently. Back in 2022, Conrad and Cloonan’s run saw Wonder Woman deal with rising anti-Wonder Woman sentiment from a group calling themselves Milk Men. Specifically, they were a group of men claiming that the U.S. was under attack from Wonder Woman, claiming she hated men and boys, and that she had no place in the Justice League. They were all big fans of something called “Milk X-tra,” a drink for “real men,” which was marketed to them by Dr. Cizko, who himself had a Stepford Wife-style mirror duplicate of Wonder Woman that he used and abused and manipulated to spread public hatred about Wonder Woman. While one can competently argue that the storyline was as much about immigration as it was about misogyny — that’s one of the great things about comics; the stories are often metaphors for many big societal issues — that these two stories are taking place in relative proximity to one another and both feature anti-Amazonian sentiments and an overt hatred of Wonder Woman just feels like a repeat, when there are arguably better stories that can be told.

At this point, we don’t know how long King’s run on Wonder Woman is going to last, nor do we know what he has planned for the character in total. This story featuring the Sovereign is set to conclude in March and we know that a big part of this story was really just to set up the introduction of a new character — Wonder Woman’s daughter, Trinity. It is possible that a few arcs down the line, this current story will make more sense and be that much better. But as it stands now, King’s Wonder Woman is missing the mark. By de-centering its titular character, focusing on a weak villain, repeating themes that have already been done, and repeating the same worn mechanisms and tropes he applies to pretty much all of his superhero stories, King has delivered a Wonder Woman story that leaves so much to be desired — and the character deserves so much more.