Bombshells United #1

Writer: Marguerite Bennett

Artist: Marguerite Sauvage

Publisher: DC Comics

I will first come out and admit: I have never read any of DC Comics Bombshells before. I have been aware of the concept since its inception and find it to be a pretty cool take on the DC Heroines, but reading the comic: first time.

And as my first Bombshells comic, United does a good job of introducing me to the characters, it gives just enough backstory that I wasn’t too lost but also propels this new narrative forward, and I got a great sense of what to expect while reading this comic.

Bennett begins United by giving the readers a small guide to the setting of this book as well as some of the principal actors we will see going forward. We are in the middle World War II and amid the chaos that has sprung up, the heroines of the DC Universe in Bombshell form, have risen up to fight back all led by Wonder Woman herself, Diana of the Amazons. However, not all “evil” was being done in Europe during the Nazis reign: in the United States another type of stain marked the Second World War: the internment of Japanese American citizens. And this, from what I gather from the first chapter, becomes the crux of this particular story.

Bennett does a good job of right away introducing a few new characters specific to this story: two other members of Wonder Woman’s cast: Donna Troy and Cassie Sandsmark (Wonder Girls #1 and 2) as well as two female motorcycle riders Yuri and Yuki, who help Cassie with her “heist” of the train carrying Japanese Americans to the internment camps, and finally Dawnstar as Wonder Woman’s right hand woman.

Sauvage on art continues to be the perfect choice. Since she gets the only art credit in the comic, this leads me to believe that she has done it all and it shows. Everything is clean and precise. I want to point out her use of imprecise lines when drawing hair - she doesn’t use flat lines, but more of a crayon look. The colour pallet also gets high marks from me. She clearly distinguishes between the heroes from the villains by using bright, vibrant colours for the former and dark, reddish colours for the latter.  

For a first chapter, Bombshells United #1 does an excellent job of making you want to read and see more. Bennett and Sauvage continue a partnership that clearly works and are also tackling a subject matter not always widely talked about today.