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Bombshells: United by Marguerite Bennett
3.0

Female DC Superheroes set in the 1940s. Sounds like a PERFECT comic book novel to me. I was instantly hooked from the first page with the gorgeous illustrations and the story. The Japanese American internment camps and dislocating Native Americans from their land was a beautiful core to tie the whole story together, and it easily fits into our contemporary time today as we question our privilege as inheritors of places that were taken with ignorance and violence. Using Wonder Woman and her allies as a conduit for this type of message was beautiful and fitting, but over the course of the first issue, my enthusiasm gradually declined. As much as I loved the diverse group of heroes, I didn't grasp a sense of who the girls were in this alternative timeline, how they work together, etc. except in their idolatry towards Wonder Woman. It started to come across as a group of DC heroes in groups collecting on the page blurring together with a lot of repetitive exposition. Every few pages or so, the illustrations morphed into a modern "cartoon" style, which became very distracting. Though its cliffhanger is typical of comic books, the story ultimately felt like it unraveled and left me questioning to check out the next issue.