Wonder woman #25 spoilers

[Largo161]

It's a pretty good issue. Bullet points:

Diana takes down Shaggy Man, unequivocally demonstrating her heavy-hitter status, but the rest of the JL notices she's angry about something. Kal and Bruce try to have a private talk with her but she tells them it's between her and her patrons.

The Picket is back up and running. Sasha gets advice from Etta on how to go forward after her ordeal. Cheetah has escaped custody and Etta wants to find her without Diana's involvement.

The FBI are trying to make a case against Cale but they've got nothing.

Diana confronts Cale to ask her to remove the curse on Barbara and she refuses.

In a sequence that readers may interpret in several ways, Diana gets the lasso back from the patrons. Athena (I think) tells her that the gods could never change the truth of who she really is--a hero.

Diana and Steve have a date night in her new house on the Virginia coast that Steve and his fellas have set up and moved her into.

Is there a definitive postmortem on what is the Truth and what were Lies? No, there isn't.

[CRaymond]

Is there a definitive postmortem on what is the Truth and what were Lies? No, there isn't.

Year One seems to be the only salvageable bits of excellence in this run of Rucka's. I wonder if one day he'll cop to editorial hamstrings or some other reason for why the plotting and pacing felt plodding and pissed.

[DragonPiece]

I really enjoyed this issue as a conclusion to Rucka's run, and I think it will be a outstanding run to look back at...THAT SAID, Rucka still didn't make any clear intentions on what happened with the truth and lies, nor did he really address Themyscira. I thought we would at least some sort of scene with Diana and her mother finally reuniting, but nope..

Next storyline will be Etta focus, which is sorta interesting, but I doubt will anything good. Only for some continuity answers will come from James Robinson's run.

[Dr. Poison]

I think it's safe to say that Year One was truth for sure and that every visit back to Theymyscira was a lie meaning Diana was sculpted from Clay, grew up around noble, enlightened Amazons, and her mother did not partake in an adulterous affair with Zeus. The sex-pirate Amazons, Chiang Olympians, First Born, Cassandra, Finch remixed Dr. Poison & Aegeus, and killer Donna Troy were all part of the lies even though some of those things didn't happen on the faux-island. Perhaps when Diana would leave the faux-island, some it's reality-altering effects lasted for a short time afterwards which would explain the Finch version of Dr. Poison, etc.

That being said, I think DC changed course with Rucka once they saw how successful the Wonder Woman movie has been and asked him not to flat out reveal what was the truth and what was a lie in this issue as I think they want to reinstate the Zeus-daddy origin in James Robinson's upcoming run. My guess is that all of the other Azzarello-aspects will still be null and void.

[Outside_85]

A definite 'epilogue' issue to the rest of Rucka's story since just about everything could be tagged with 'to be continued' though we have no idea if any of it will be.

The biggest 'ehh...' moment for me was the whole business with the Gods part, it just didn't give any of the answers we might have wanted. And I don't know but, considering Diana starts the issue off with being quite grumpy and looking for answers... I find it kinda odd she lets the whole thing slide simply because she gets her lasso back. The other biggie for me was the Picket, great they are back online... could we have gotten somekind of idea who they are and what they do? Apparently not.

Also not quite sure what the point of the new house is, she was perfectly fine in London and Paris, yet Steve talks about her as if she was either homeless or sleeping in her office.

So with this being the last Rucka issue, it's perhaps time to tally up whats lost, gained and changed:
-Lost: The Amazons, not just the New 52 ones, but the Rebirth Amazons are sealed off from Diana for the time being.
-Changed: The Gods, going from fairly unique interpretations to something rather more bland and mostly silent when not perplexingly irritating.
-Lost: Zola, Milan, Siracca... since Zola was last seen on the New 52 Themyscira you may wonder if she vanished with it. I don't expect the others to be revisited.
-Gained: Steve, Etta, Ferdinand and i guess Sasha. Etta and Steve were great, Sasha might as well have been fanservice, and Ferdinand had a history that wasn't touched.
-Gained: Lots of old villains, Cheetah and Cyber were a hit, Cale was 'eh', Circe and Poison were 'bah'.
-Lost: along with the Gods it appears Strife has vanished as well... since this would be the sort of thing she'd have loved to poke around with.
-Changed: Diana's time on Themyscira now reverted to a more classical version.

Overall I give the run a score of B+ for being competent, pretty to look at, but not very exciting and an end that didn't really resolve the big mystery it opened with.

[BFF]

After the first date, Diana? Slut.

I keed, I keed.

Year One seems to be the only salvageable bits of excellence in this run of Rucka's. I wonder if one day he'll cop to editorial hamstrings or some other reason for why the plotting and pacing felt plodding and pissed.

I think GodWatch was very good, too.

The run was pretty good. I think even if re-read, people will find that the stories set in the past (Year One, GodWatch) are much better than the stories set in the present (The Lies, The Truth).

It'd be nice to get Rucka back on in a couple of years to see what he could produce past the setup stage.

[Rakzo]

Boy, this is a perfect summary of the whole run.

Rucka tries to make his story come full circle but it doesn't really work that well since he doesn't bring appropriate resolutions for some of the plot-points and it just seems like Diana is still the same from the beginning while her relationship with the rest of the world remains intact (which makes me wonder what was the point of retconning Azzarello's work to begin with aside from pure spite).

I guess this makes the appearance of Batman and Superman in the last Annual more logical but also shows poor plannification because this would have worked better if they would have been integrated into plot much earlier instead of making a single appearance painfully telegraphing this. Speaking of things that should have worked better, Cheetah doesn't even make an appearance, she's just mentioned here and there's not even a decent resolution for her. God, this run treated her terribly, better luck for the next writers.

Sharp's art was decent and Evely's was great. Other than that, this simply a run that failed to meet expectations.

[Nyssane]

I felt a little disappointed with this issue, but I probably was going to be disappointed regardless of what had happened since it's the end of probably my favorite run thus far.

I did like that Diana finally got a moment of happiness with Steve at the end (get it, gurl). Steve shaving also made me happy superficially, even though I didn't hate the beard.

Etta is still quite meh in this run. I'm sure she has a lot of resentment towards Diana for "allowing" Barb Ann to become Cheetah again, but Etta/Barb's relationship wasn't focused on enough for it to truly matter.

Also too much time spent on Veronica in this issue. For a conclusion, I thought we'd see what the other characters were up to, but it was mainly just her. No Ferdinand even? He was such a large image on the cover, you'd think he'd get some page time too rather than just being a random minotaur that Diana knew (which I suspect many who haven't read Rucka's first run felt).

I'm assuming it was Athena that returned Diana's lasso, but boy did she look just like Hippolyta.

I love that the artists were able to swap out during the issue, too.

[Natamaxxx]

I think it's safe to say that Year One was truth for sure and that every visit back to Theymyscira was a lie meaning Diana was sculpted from Clay, grew up around noble, enlightened Amazons, and her mother did not partake in an adulterous affair with Zeus. The sex-pirate Amazons, Chiang Olympians, First Born, Cassandra, Finch remixed Dr. Poison & Aegeus, and killer Donna Troy were all part of the lies even though some of those things didn't happen on the faux-island. Perhaps when Diana would leave the faux-island, some it's reality-altering effects lasted for a short time afterwards which would explain the Finch version of Dr. Poison, etc.

That being said, I think DC changed course with Rucka once they saw how successful the Wonder Woman movie has been and asked him not to flat out reveal what was the truth and what was a lie in this issue as I think they want to reinstate the Zeus-daddy origin in James Robinson's upcoming run. My guess is that all of the other Azzarello-aspects will still be null and void.

I think it's safe to say that Year One was truth for sure and that every visit back to Theymyscira was a lie - and that's it. There was nothing to indicate conclusively that the rest is null and void. In fact, there was ZERO explanation as to why the Gods gave her a fake island with fake Amazons, plus a fake olympus, with a fake Zeus that was her fake dad and a fake Ares that wanted her to inherit his fake godhood while meeting her fake siblings and protecting a fake baby - all to keep the real islands whereabouts a secret??

I'm sorry, but this just doesn't make any sense. The two origins don't "sing together" as Ruka once put it. Not even a little bit. And it's piss poor storytelling when one has to retroactively fill in some blanks like this "Perhaps when Diana would leave the faux-island, some it's reality-altering effects lasted for a short time afterwards which would explain the Finch version of Dr. Poison, etc.". So Diana hallucinated everything that happened during Finch? C'mon...

Better elements aside (Cheetah, Etta, Steve, Dr. Cyber), the whole endeavor was a sloppy and petty fail, and I'm pretty disappointed with Ruka for this jumbled mess only because it doesn't even come close to hitting the bar set by himself during his previous run.

[SiegePerilous02]

Is there a definitive postmortem on what is the Truth and what were Lies? No, there isn't.

Does there need to be one? I would think being shown the early years allows the Truth to speak for itself. Anyconfusion left over is people over thinking things, IMO.

[Largo161]

Does there need to be one? I would think being shown the early years allows the Truth to speak for itself. Anyconfusion left over is people over thinking things, IMO.

"Over thinking"? Tell that to Natamaxx (see above), who I think makes very good points.

ETA: I found loads to enjoy with this run, but the Truth arc just doesn't seem to add up or pay off.

[Fenix]

So, Rebirth started with Diana trying to find the "truth"...well did she find it? That never got resolved?

[Outside_85]

Does there need to be one? I would think being shown the early years allows the Truth to speak for itself. Anyconfusion left over is people over thinking things, IMO.

There does when you make huge changes like this. If Diana had been the only one who had ever seen or interacted with the fake Themyscira, then you could simply mark it down to the Gods playing headgames with her. But she wasn't the Fake Themyscira was there hundreds of years before Diana was even born, other people have since ventured there without Diana. Even Batman in his borrowed hoverchair went there without Diana... nothing about that place was fake, until it never existed at all.

Like this could go on and in the very next issue Steve wakes up and is suddenly chinese and if noone bats an eye then it's all fine and white Steve never existed.

[borntohula]

She spends the issue flying around angry and confused, and then needs to get told by Athena: "Cheer up. Appreciate that you done cool stuff, and made people happy.". She then get's her golden lasso back and lays Steve, with a smile.

After reading it, I almost wondered if the the moral of the story was that if you're an angry and confused woman, all you need is jewelry and a good shag?

I'm thinking Rucka wanted to write something in line with Morrison's Batman run. An all continuity story, with a bit of commentary to top it off: "no matter what origin/story, she never changed." and then leaving things vague to the next writer or writers which take on the origin that stands as well as "did he, or did he not" close the doors to Paradise island and the greek gods. Not sure why he didn't toy around with the Multiversity, instead of putting Diana in a straightjacket...

Instead of a fun meta story and celebration of a rich and diverse set of stories she was instead -dun dun dun duuuuun- given another origin story, once again tricked by the gods, again angry and then got herself mansplained by Athena.

Oh well. My fav WW stories aren't going anywhere. Hope the next writings teams are more to my liking.

[BFF]

Rucka did push his own creation, Veronica, over the classic archenemy Cheetah. We'll have to see what the next writer does and what the movie does.