No thread for this issue yet? Did it come out earlier in Australia?

Well anyway, we kick off with Steve meeting Aphrodite and having quite a long conversation - apparently not far from the War Zone. We then cut back to the city being bombed, where Diana is busy saving two children who are, coincidentally, the grand kids of the countries Prime Minister [neither he nor they get actual names in the book].

As Diana talks to him about Ares, and he wonders what they can do if even the gods have turned against them, Steve shows up with Aphrodite. When an offer to make a peace treaty arrives, Wonder Woman, Steve and the Goddess escort the Prime Minister through the embattled city. Etta and the air force turn up to make sure they get to the meeting place in time, only to discover it was apparently a ruse of Ares to bring them to him for judgement [with his axe].

Okay. I'll start the less impressive.

First, as I said the supporting characters are rather generic, not even having names.

Wonder Woman seems to struggle a bit with even regular army weapons. She flies the kids to safety, but for some reason insists of running along the ground to get the PM to his meeting with the rebels. Also, the fact that the note for the meeting says where its going to be held but does not promise safe passage seemed weird right from the get go. In today's age of modern communication it couldn't be THAT hard to order a cease fire.

It also seemed very odd that the PM seemed to know a lot about the gods, whereas Diana does not even recognize Aphrodite when she shows up and has to be told by Steve.

On the good side, it felt like we got more dialogue between Steve and Aphrodite in the first six pages than we saw in the whole of the last two issues. Aphrodite does make some rather good comments about the downside of being goddess of love, and Steve gets some depth to him as well. Also, the art in this issue is a big improvement.

Overall? For me its largely a set up issue, and sadly Wonder Woman herself is the least impressive part of it. The Dodson cover is impressive, but the "Power of Aphrodite" [which seems to manifest itself via MY LITTLE PONY style energy butterflies] is not much evidence.

Two stars.