Wonder Woman #37 | A Battle in the Philippines

01.14.2018 – Wonder Woman was a beacon of success for Warner Bros in 2017 outshining its contemporaries to the box office with Gal Gadot in the role directed by Patty Jenkins. The character’s popularity was the best parts of the not-so box office returns with Justice League, but not comparable to its comic book counterpart. Recently Philippine mass media has chimed and hyped Wonder Woman #37 that has spilled all over social media since late December 2017. This just because the setting was in the Philippines?! This wasn’t the first time American published comic books have put the country as its background for a major beat down. It’s kind of overblown that talked about this particular issue just because it was set in the Philippines. Besides that Darkseid has ‘boom tube’ his way to Metro Manila while battling Wonder Woman’s father Zeus, the Justice League showed up at last minute like how Filipino films do when Police arrive when the battle has ended and was there to clean up and help repair the damage after a major fight. The issue is the last story arc for “Children of the Gods” which was written by James Robinson with artists representing the country are Carlo Pagulayan, Stephen Segovia, Jason Paz, and Romulo Fajardo Jr. obviously make the setting in the comic book authentic with its Filipino elements down to the flying jeepney being thrown by Darkseid in the fisticuffs with Zeus.

Honestly, I haven’t read the previous issues that started with the story arc I just tried to look for a digital copy to find out what’s the hype behind it. Because it was the discussion by some of the people I knew on social media. But finding out the narrative it felt flat though I highly regard James Robinson for his excellent take on writing the Transformers books for IDW. For this issue was an afterthought it’s entirely for aesthetic due to the artworks were done by Filipino artists.

There’s nothing wrong about supporting fellow countrymen who represent and being part of this project. But the hype behind it just because the major third act of the story is set in the Philippines nothing more than a hype book like any Filipino would pick this up not because of the story, but as a novelty that Wonder Woman’s adventure brought her to this country. The typical culture of Filipinos supporting their own when you slap it into something that had to do with the Philippines they’ll buy it even if the actual content lacks quality. There’s nothing wrong about that kind of support though it’s like the mentality usually is “Oh Look it’s in the Philippines?!” that the book’s titular character was forgotten for this issue just for the setting of the story.

This was not the first comic book to feature anything related to the Philippines there were other comic books that has Filipino related Easter Eggs incorporated into the narrative dating back to the late 1980s to early 1990s. If you I enumerate some of the books I know we’ll probably run out of time. I’d rather write and talk about original comic books created by Filipinos that the media should be chiming and putting hype about. I’m not against Wonder Woman or the creative team involve its how Philippine local media had made it kind of overblown.



We should rather promote the local comic books in the Philippines that deserved recognition like the recently released “Bakokak” by Gerry Alanguilan and Kevin Ray Valentino or the DoorKeeper published by Summit Media featuring nine artists. Yes, NINE artists and the two writers that were underrated in the general populace that needs to be in the discussion as the local media have over-shared Wonder Woman #37.

But in reality that’s not going to happen anytime soon like the culture in the Philippines would rather discuss something that the local media would like to dictate to the masses rather than promoting original creations done by Filipinos.

There’s nothing wrong about Wonder Woman #37 the story still felt flat, but it was drawn, inked and colored by a contingency of Filipinos representing the country that was sort of icing the cake that made this issue a sell out back in the Philippines. Overall I would I appreciate this book if it had a good story behind it, but nothing more than a story set in an Asian country that featured the Philippines’ finest artistry and nothing more.