Tom King’s Wonder Woman Vol. 4: The Island of Mice and Men is a seven-part epic among a nine-issue collection, yet another masterpiece from King.

Knowing that King has his fans but also his detractors,¹ I wonder if that word “masterpiece” seems overblown. I recently read Jeremy Adams' Green Lantern Vol. 5: Fractured Spectrum and I thought it was excellent, fast-paced and putting unlikely characters in unexpected situations. But it did not offer the same all-encompassing world-building that King accomplishes here in a relatively small space; it did not feel as urgently of-the-societal-moment as King’s story (perhaps unfortunately) does; and that Green Lantern book was not controversial like this Wonder Woman volume is — controversial in the sense that good guy Diana here is not always right, I didn’t always agree with her choices, and I don’t even think King means for the audience to always agree with her choices.

Comics can be good, comics can be engaging, comics can be surprising, but King’s Wonder Woman has been consistently operating on another level.

[Review contains spoilers]

Diana’s going to violate the borders of Moray Island, a nation populated by people who left the U.S. so as to be free from superhero interference. She’s been as content as the rest of the Justice League to leave Moray alone all this time, but with word from Etta Candy that there’s trouble on the island (related to the missing Amazon Emelie), Diana barely hesitates before breaking the treaty. “We’re the good guys,” Mr. Terrific protests. “We follow the rules.”

This is a valid approach to Diana, a character who, at least in some iterations, has hewed more to following the rule of American government even than Superman — works for the military, dating a soldier, wears a costume patterned on the American flag. But in the very name of King’s Wonder Woman: Outlaw saga is the idea of schism between Diana and the government, even that Diana has learned the government she thought she served is just a front for the Sovereign, shadow king of the United States. Wonder Woman is a character of contradictions — the “peaceful warrior,” arbiter of a culture of “loving submission” — and here we find another in Mr. Terrific’s words: “We are the good guys,” yes, but “we follow the rules” — in this case, no.

Moray, Diana comes to find, has become a totalitarian state ruled by Mouse Man, a former and seemingly harmless enemy. Even then, Diana tries to keep this just a reconnaissance mission, promising to report later what she’s seen, but eventually helps lead a revolution. In the midst of the process of making that inevitable decision, Diana says to a group of attacking mouse soldiers, “This was … unwise,” though it’s a fair question whether Diana is talking to the attackers or to herself.

Because as Diana admits later, she is herself “unmoored,” still mourning the death of Steve Trevor in Wonder Woman Vol. 3: Fury, and on what is an increasingly ill-conceived mission, she has brought her infant daughter Lizzie strapped to her back. It’s a fair expectation of Themyscirian child-rearing techniques (such as they are; there’s only been but one child till now) that they would involve bringing a child along into battle, but at the point in which Lizzie is shot at, nearly drowned, and (maybe also inevitably) taken hostage, one begins to think Diana has undertaken all of this too hastily, all the exterior things clouding her judgment.

Again, there is a depth in Island that one’s not finding across most mainstream DC books, in which Diana’s making the obviously heroic choices but with an increasingly sharper edge. In Fury, that included a fraught scene where Diana forced the Sovereign to maim himself as punishment; here, it seems for an issue that Diana goads Mouse Man to shoot her, killing himself in the process (only later do we learn he survives). It’s altogether shocking, horrifyingly and wonderfully so, a series where the audience can be no more sure of the antagonists than we can the protagonists.

I read part one of Archie Goodwin’s Armageddon 2001 before I was even of age to read 1984; though tame by modern standards, Goodwin’s vision of a despotic ruler who policed what people could read or think made a big impression on a young mind. King’s vision of Moray Island feels equally adroit, though here King has parlayed his own penchant for repetition into just six words the residents are allowed to say on threat of imprisonment or death, hewing even closer to Orwell’s “thoughtcrimes” than Goodwin did.

Though Mouse Man is a reimagining of a Silver Age villain and this book is clearly part of the larger Sovereign storyline, I was impressed with how little one needs to know to read this book. We watch a young girl’s world fall apart just as consequence of a joke, a swift demonstration of Moray Island’s dire conditions (with great costume design on a variety of spike-laden toughs by Daniel Sampere); later King offers a graphic depiction of how Mouse Man rose to power. There’s little to impede someone coming to this fourth volume fresh and still being able to enjoy a gripping seven-part Wonder Woman story — deserving, even, of a DC Compact collection?

Probably the discontented on both sides of the current political aisle can find themselves in the metaphor of a government that they feel doesn’t let them say things they want to say, so in that way Island might be considered bipartisan. Neither is what follows strictly political; the people who seek to found Moray Island don’t do so for political reasons, but for reasonable fear of superheroes — one man’s late wife was collateral damage in a battle of Crisis on Infinite Earths. But King’s story does appear a thought experiment of sorts, an answer to the question of what would happen if this or that group “went off and found an island of their own.” In King’s estimation, human nature wins out, crime is inevitable, and the battling of that crime leads to the rise of a dictator.

At the same time, it’s awfully hard not to view this Wonder Woman comic through a politically liberal lens (if ever Wonder Woman comics could be interpreted otherwise) when Mouse Man starts by storming the Capitol and holding court in the Senate Chamber. Not only does Mouse Man end up controlling what his subjects can say, but also he has built around him a certain cult of personality, which King takes to a near satirical degree. As one minion says, not only is Mouse Man “so handsome, probably the handsomest man in history” and also “caring and brave so brave,” he’s also “like a lion with a beautiful mane sitting in the grasslands as the timid lionesses come and lap at his ravishing fur” (to which a prisoner replies, “You are … weird”).

In this way, again, the “Island of Mice and Men” story succeeds on all levels, a suspenseful, relevant comic book tale as accessible to new readers as existing ones. To that end, the inclusion of Stephanie Williams' two-part “The Village,” bringing the collection from seven issues to nine, is utterly mystifying. The issues were published so they ought be included, but that the same series editors who’ve managed to shepherd here such a fantastic Tom King story couldn’t find any way to get something better out of Williams' story boggles the mind.

“Village” sees Williams return to writing Diana’s Amazonian supporting cast, which she’s written well before — Nubia; past and present Wonder Girls Donna Troy, Cassie Sandsmark, and Yara Flor; and others babysit Lizzie while Diana recovers. It’s not so much that a bit of sparring ends up with the Wonder Girls attacking one another (though “Eris causes trouble” is a Wonder Woman plot done to death) as that Williams spends four pages on the Wonder Girls fighting each other and then another nine pages(!) with Nubia and company reiterating it: “I saw … golden threads of malice”; “I sense something terrible”; “Something is greatly amiss.”

That’s followed in the second part by six pages of the characters battling their individual demons and still more where they spout self-affirming platitudes: “I define myself through my choices, what I decide to do with my gifts”; “We question ourselves because we care about doing what’s best!”; and on and on. Artist Jeff Spokes is technically fine, but between he and Williams, somehow we end up with pages with, for instance, four panels and four word balloons, a choppy and clearly thin reading experience.

It’s an unfortunate blemish on Wonder Woman Vol. 4: The Island of Mice and Men. Inasmuch as I’ve extolled this book’s virtues, it means the book isn’t totally seamless; it means you couldn’t just give this otherwise-solid Wonder Woman story to an uninitiated reader without having to explain, “This has a different writer than that and that’s why the quality is so different.” Tom King comports himself characteristically well here, but I’m taken aback that this is what Stephanie Williams produced and what the editors let into the book. A run like this one can’t abide by fill-ins that aren’t up to the same quality.

[Includes original and variant covers, character sketches]