Warning: Spoilers for Surprise Girl #18 forward!It is uncommon to discover a comedian e book that really speaks to your soul, however Wonder Woman has accomplished simply that. In a single highly effective second, Surprise Girl’s battle with The Sovereign involves a head – and in so doing, deeply moved me by re-establishing Diana in her position as DC’s best icon of compassion and reality.
In an completed sequence already, the newest Surprise Girl #18 by Tom King, Daniel Sampere, and Tomeu Morey incorporates maybe probably the most highly effective picture of the staff’s total run on Surprise Girl to this point. After exposing The Sovereign of America’s existence to the world and reducing him off from his fortune, Surprise Girl prepares to confront the person on the final secure haven he has left: the White Home.
The web page is highly effective in its simplicity: Surprise Girl is seen from behind, lifeless middle on the web page, as she slowly and implacably approaches the best seat of energy within the nation, a transparent metaphor for reality confronting corruption.
Surprise Girl Reminds Us: She Is THE Image for Confronting Injustice
Surprise Girl #19 Cowl by Daniel Sampere and Tomeu Morey
It has been a turbulent yr in American politics, to say the least. No matter one’s stance could also be on Donald Trump’s return to the Presidency, his adminstration’s willingness to snort off accusations of dictatorship, and even monarchy, is properly past ‘politics as regular.’ Coming from a Jewish household, it has grow to be more and more clear that “it could not occur right here” is a fable. So after I witnessed Sampere and Morey’s artwork of Surprise Girl striding throughout the White Home garden, the scene took my breath away.

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To see an American icon of truth and compassion boldly confronting a dictator within the White Home with such confidence, even in fiction, made me ache. I strongly really feel this picture will grow to be the defining second of the 2023 Surprise Girl run, and, to me, is the second when DC completely captured the zeitgeist of 2025. Moments like this are why superheroes, modern America’s myths and legends, are vital symbols of the place America’s values really lie.
The Sovereign is The Good Villain For The 12 months 2025
I doubt that The Sovereign was ever meant to be a comic book e book pastiche of Donald Trump, however it’s tough to disclaim that the comparability has grown ever extra apt as 2025 has taken form. The character’s roots will be traced again to the legacy of “Emperor” Norton I, a San Francisco man who spontaneously declared himself the primary Emperor of america in 1859. Norton lived his life as an area superstar, and other people have typically turned to his story for inspiration; Norton even appeared in DC’s universe earlier than, in Neil Gaiman and Shawn McManus’s The Sandman #31 (1989).
However this new villain twists Norton’s legacy into one thing way more foreboding. The Sovereign and his Lasso of Lies symbolize a legacy of secret dictators who’ve guided America to their whims since earlier than the nation’s founding. In some ways, The Sovereign is the proper boogeyman of American politics, capturing each the left-wing concern of people gaining complete management over the levers of energy, and the right-wing concern of suppression by the hands of entrenched political insiders. But Donald Trump’s consolation with bending the American political system for extra private features makes The Sovereign an ideal modern caricature.
As An American, Surprise Girl Has By no means Meant Extra To Me
Diana has been an American icon of reality, love, compassion, and power since Wonder Woman‘s debut in 1941. As a cultural touchstone, Surprise Girl is extra vital now than ever, particularly in scenes like these: scenes that declare reality, love, compassion, and power are prepared to confront injustice wherever it sits, even within the White Home. Surprise Girl does this in broad daylight, with out subterfuge or pretext. In a yr like 2025, we should bear in mind the heroes who encourage the braveness and compassion to do proper by each other. We want Surprise Girl now greater than ever earlier than.
The motion following this White Home march turns into an all-out brawl between Surprise Girl, Cheetah, Grail, and Normal Glory, however to me, that is simply window dressing for the true superheroic act of daring to march down the White Home garden. In my eyes, nothing this problem can do would eclipse the second Surprise Girl stared down an enemy to freedom, even when they sit throughout the White Home. A powerful reminder that in any political local weather, regardless of how tumultous, talking reality to energy is a heroic act.
King, Sampere, and Morey’s imaginative and prescient of Surprise Girl continues to awe me problem after problem, however this may occasionally very properly be the second that cements this Surprise Girl run in DC historical past.