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Wonder Woman's Costume… Is Not A Costume (Justice League #35 Spoilers)

There's a scene in Hot Fuzz where you see the police, at the end of the film, doing the "considerable amount of paperwork" that had been alluded to earlier in the movie. Not only is it a great call back, it underlines the fact that this is the kind of thing you never see in a cop movie. The reality of the consequences of shooting people, driving cars into other cars, blowing stuff up and then arresting the guy in charge. That they are then saved from doing all that paperwork by an unexploded mine – which then explodes – is neither here nor there. Indeed you realise that there will be even more paperwork around that as well.

Today's Justice League #35 by Priest and Pete Woods is a heady antidote to the silliness, the nonsense and the frippery taking place in today's Batman and Metal. If that kind of frivolity is not your bag, Justice League is the comic that will take your superheroics seriously by subjecting them to the rigours of procedural society.

So after last issue's clash between a Justice League and an FBI operation, that left a nun killed by a terrorist using Wonder Woman's sword, we get Wonder Woman subjected to the same kind of interrogation that might occur is someone had been shot and killed by a terrorist who had taken a policeman's gun. And for her sword to be seized, to go into official police evidence.

Of course, the Justice League don't play by the rules, they cheat. They set themselves above the law, they are gods, and they come the closest to the critique of the Justice League, and superheroics in general, in Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch's The Authority.

A couple of issues in, this has the making of an all-time classic Justice League story that will last the decades. But that's not enoiugh for Priest and Woods, they give Wonder Woman two moments that outclass those in her own title.

First the statement that Wonder Woman's costume, though that is the word everyone uses, is not a costume.

It's a religious garment. She is, after all, a demi-god. No one tell DC licensing though, okay? Oh and she's not Diana Prince. That's not her name and never was…

And she doubts her own role in this world again. While these issues were in her recent Rebirth run, superheroics became an answer, the Justice League a way to channel her mission. Now?

Not so much.

A few short moments from an issue full of them.

Remember "The People Vs Justice League", it should be everywhere. And a much better name for this than "Lost"…

JUSTICE LEAGUE #35

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