It is Diana's twelfth birthday but like all Amazons, the Princess must present her Queen with a suitable gift so that the day can be acknowledged. Many a young Amazon has been known to fail this task.
Diana braves a harpy's aerie and takes an egg. She is celebrated for it. Later in the evening there is more celebration and showing off martial skill!
Aleka requests to spar with Diana and after she loses, she sends Diana into a rage by calling her Clay. It takes the Queen to get Diana to stop pounding on her. Diana feels hurt and dismayed at being different from everyone around her.
She gets a new teacher who sees her potential. Brian Azzarello himself. The new version of Ares, War. Athena watches quietly.
War teaches his new protege and they forge a close bond unbeknown to her mother. On her thirteeth birthday Diana must again get her mother a gift and War sees this as a test for her. He sends her out to the labyrinth of the Minotaur.
Diana defeats the minotaur but she cannot deal the striking blow.
War leaves her because she fails him but Diana is left questioning whether she learned mercy from him or her mother. One even wonders if he knew how she would react.
This issue adopted that tone of fun and adventure when comics were written for a more innocent time. The focus is Diana and War's relationship. He is, ironically, the closest thing she ever had to a father figure. The relationship was not explored for long (that is simply the limitation of the medium) to feel any great emotion over their relationship. But one can see War softened up quite a bit due to this child. He could not even kill her. Twice he let her go after she raised her sword to him.
It was refreshing seeing Diana as girl. We see she can be full of mischief, curiosity, be impulsive, rash, kind, disciplined, sensitive...she's very lovable in this. Cliff Chiang's rendering of her is wonderful. Whenever Diana was in tears, I felt her emotions.
I give this 4 out of 5 stars.
Best Panel: The first page. The art of Diana and the intro. Kiss my Azz...haha.
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