Absolute Wonder Woman Vol. 2: As My Mothers Made Me is another fine entry in this award-winning series from Kelly Thompson and Hayden Sherman.

As with Absolute Batman Vol. 2: Abomination, my main concern is simply that there’s so much, so fast — we’re just so quickly approaching normalcy — that I wonder at how long what makes the Absolute titles special can continue to make them special.

Maybe this is just the intentional reader engagement, that the point of the Absolute titles is for them to draw closer to the normal DC Universe status quo and then pull back in unexpected aways, though so far the second volumes of Absolute Batman and Absolute Wonder Woman have been all approach, no retreat.

If this is where we already are at Vol. 2, what possible difference can there be between the DCU and the Absolute Universe in the Vols. 10? Does DC even want these collections to get to a tenth volume (collections in double digits are few and far between) and could they even get there with the current creative teams? What, in essence, is the plan?

Notably, this Absolute Wonder Woman entry also seems the most self-aware of the books so far. If it doesn’t say the word “Darkseid” outright, then it at least acknowledges the events are taking place in a world that is specifically darker than its parallel. That, too, is fascinating, but also portends a “before” and “after,” what the characters don’t know about their world now and how things will change once they inevitably do. The formula for Absolute Batman and Wonder Woman in particular is so good; how much change can that formula withstand?

[Review contains spoilers]

There’s parallel stories in “As My Mothers Made Me,” both Diana trying to free the denizens of a proto-mythological labrynth, and, in flashback, young Diana’s trials with the goddess Artemis. The “mothers” in the title are surely Diana’s adoptive mother Circe and also the Amazon Hippolyta, who cameos in the end, but increasingly it seems to refer to the gods that shaped Diana for a specific purpose. “Everything we do is to fashion her into a weapon,” Hecate tells Circe. “We love the child as we love few things, but … the very point of her is to place an undefeatable weapon into the heart of a system that must be disrupted, if not destroyed.”

That there is a specific “point” to Diana is interesting, speaking to a larger conspiracy as to why Diana has arrived at Gateway City and what her purpose is (she referenced in Absolute Wonder Woman Vol. 1 the plans for the Hieron base that she builds here). A “purpose” is not without precedent (if I’m not mistaken, George Perez had Diana come to “Man’s World” due to the threat of Ares) but increasingly it seems that purpose is defeating Darkseid — that is, Diana’s mission is not Absolute Wonder Woman-centric, but goes to the fabric of the whole of the Absolute Universe.

Indeed, to the extent that the final two-parter, “The Price,” feels a bit like filler, there’s some frank talk between Diana and the Candy sisters about how their world is “messed up” and that the gods often note to Diana that “the world is out of sync … Darker than it is supposed to be.” Diana is able to gain the help of the god Gaia by convincing her, as Gaia says, that “something is wrong with the world. And has been for a very long time. Maybe since the very beginning.”

These are basic applause lines, of course, same as the very sparse glimpse of the Absolute planet in Ram V’s The New Gods Vol. 2 — we’re meant to get excited about something that we already understand just because the characters too are starting to understand it — though, sure, I was also applauding.

At the same time, I’m not convinced DC has sufficiently made their case for the “darker” Absolute Universe. The tyranny on Moray Island in Tom King’s Wonder Woman Vol. 4 is “dark” and living under Superman’s despotic rulership in Injustice is “dark,” but in the Absolute Universe Barbara Minerva can still study ancient history and Gia Candy can still run a head shop and no one is breaking down their doors necessarily.

When Etta says that “bad people are, for the most part, in charge of the world … Billionaires with their boots on the necks of the vulnerable … corporations that poison unchecked … tech companies surveilling everything and everyone,” that just kind of sounds like … us? Not great, but also not quite to the level of dystopic? Perhaps things will get worse (sorry, Absolute Universe!), but when Diana describes their world as “more hopeless … justice too rare, too fleeting,” after she’s defeated the tetracide and brought Veronica Cale’s Area 41 to its knees, it’s hard to quite square that hopelessness with the evidence.

As always, what really sells Thompson’s Absolute Wonder Woman is her Diana, especially her young Diana, something akin to a kind-hearted Calvin (sans Hobbes). A fearful young Diana awakens Circe to tell her about a dream involving Artemis, but when Circe tells her to dress and gather her weapons, Diana is wonderfully, immediately elated at the opportunity for adventure, in the best way of children. Artemis gives Diana a tough task that should involve killing a hydra and instead Diana makes a deal with it. “You said choose the right weapon. The right weapon was bargain,” Diana retorts off panel, verily the soul of Dennis the Menace in the body of the last Amazon.

That’s why, for me, “The Price” didn’t quite land, even if with fine guest art by Matías Bergara. We’re meant to understand Diana is fighting essentially a Bizarro version of herself, one that she says reflects “my pride, my stubbornness, my desire.” But similar to the Absolute world’s supposed hopelessness, Thompson hasn’t demonstrated any of those negative attributes within Diana — rather Thompson does a stellar job showing how Diana is, as Hecate says, “the kindest human being we could possibly conceive” — and so the idea that Diana might have to die to defeat her shadow self feels contrived rather than true.

Plenty more familiar faces this time around — Ferdinand (the Kithotaur), Io, plus villains from across Wonder Woman’s many eras. But again, here we are in the second volume, and despite that Hippolyta is “Absolute Universe coded” (as the ancillary sketchbook says) in black and gold, we still see a Themyscira, “now,” that’s not substantially different from Perez' on down. We’re only about 10 years out from Greg Rucka’s Rebirth Wonder Woman, which too was a “Diana without Themyscira” take, and which DC eventually reversed. That wasn’t immediate — it took about four years till G. Willow Wilson’s Wonder Woman Vol. 3: Loveless for the full reunion — but still, barely did Rucka start the concept before visions of Themyscira emerged.

That is, to offer a different take on Wonder Woman is to commit to offering a different take (see also Batman). Arguably the differences in the Absolute Wonder Woman’s upbringing create differences in the character, but on the page, the character is hardly unrecognizable as Wonder Woman “classic.” We’ve seen Themyscira now and eventually Diana will too; again, one has to wonder, just how different will this Absolute title be when it reaches Vol. 10?

But I’m certainly in to keep reading and find out. Absolute Wonder Woman Vol. 2: As My Mothers Made Me is, again, drawn impeccably by Hayden Sherman, and Kelly Thompson nails a unique, consistent voice for the Absolute Diana.

[Includes original and variant covers, character sketches]