Some things you can’t take back.

Wonder Woman #18
Writer: Greg Rucka
Artist: Bilquis Evely & Scott Hanna
Colors: Romulo Fajardo Jr.
Letters: Jodi Wynne
Covers: Evely and Fajardo Jr.; Jenny Frison
Editors: Rebecca Taylor & Mark Doyle
$2.99
Publisher: DC Comics

Veronica Cale is hurting. In less than a year, despite the leaps her company has made publicly, she’s lost everyone that is truly important to her. No, they’re not physically gone, but in some ways, that’s worse: having the ghosts of the people you care for haunting you, day to day, where you can touch them and hear them, but the things that make them fundamentally them are gone without a trace. So, because of her pain, and the vague promises of psychotic twin gods Deimos and Phobos, Veronica makes a decision. She betrays not only people who could’ve, should’ve, been her closest allies but she does something even more destructive: she betrays herself.

Greg Rucka continues the trend he’s started in the previous issues of Wonder Woman with Barbara Ann (a.k.a. Cheetah) by making Veronica Cale more than a one-note villain. Every step down the path of destruction that Veronica is on is believable, more importantly, it’s understandable. This is a woman who is at her wit’s end, torn between doing what is right and desperation to get even a semblance of her family back. The writing is brutal, honest and makes you wonder what you would do if you were in her shoes.

Bilquis Evely, Scott Hanna and Romulo Fajardo Jr. continue their gorgeous work from their previous issue, giving us more classic pin-up style while at the same time making everyone’s facial expressions and physicality tell a story even when no words are written.

This issue sets all the pieces on the board and ends on a devastating note for all involved that will (better) have consequences for years to come within the DC Rebirth universe as a whole.

Five out of Five GPS Trackers.