I won this book in a raffle at a conference for female business leaders and the youth of tomorrow (aka a feminist conference) and was surprisingly let down by how problematic this book was (though I was not entirely surprised given the history of the Wonder Woman comics). However, I figured that because this was a newer volume that was given at a conference about feminism it would be better. It was and it wasn’t.

I can appreciate the small bits of diversity they did include but I still think they weren’t handled well. Just because you have a black character or a fat character doesn’t automatically make that good representation. There is more to writing divers characters than just having them exist. And of course there was the age old over sexualization of most of the female characters and yes more Wonder Woman bondage.

Here’s the thing. I feel like this book tried to utilize those things (over sexualization, the history of bondage, etc.) as a commentary on the history of Wonder Woman but it was so poorly done that it became just as problematic. **spoiler ahead**

Spoiler

An example is the scene where Diana tries to get Steve to pledge his loyalty through bondage. That was definitely a swing and a miss for me.

(Spoiler over)

In edition, I thought that the plot was weak and that the character development was somewhere between non existent and just plain bad.

Because of all these things, I just couldn’t get on board. But it’s Wonder Woman so I had to like it, at least a little bit, because she holds a dear place in my heart.