Helenaween #5 - Wonder Woman #271

September 1980
12th June 1980

Wonder Woman #271
Into Darkness Once More

Since we last saw Helena, as well as the turn of the decade, the JSA has come to an end in Adventure Comics. Now she gets, as the comic tells us, eight extra pages in Wonder Woman.

We start with a full page summing up Earth-2 and showing her standing before the graves ot Bruce and Selena. Because brooding at the grave is a cross-dimensional family tradition! She was brooding as set up the story as she saw beauty die...

We flash back to the offices of Cranston, Grayson and Wayne, where a bollicking is used to give important exposition about the company and its values. This is interrupted by the arrival of a very moustachioed Wilson Pitt, an artist. It seems he had an exhibition planned at the Gotham Museum, but all the paintings have been damaged.

Not even waiting for him to leave the office, Helena swings off to examine the museum, showing that indeed the paintings have been damaged. She then goes to talk to Sidney,


a fence who deals in stolen paintings, and for the first time (in her solo series), we get her using her crossbow, pinning him to the wall. Though he seems pretty useless in the investigation. She throws a knife, just missing his hand as we finish the flashback!

She returns to the apartment at three in the morning, in costume, where she finds Harry Sims, who has a problem and needs Helena's help! Who is Harry? Well, apparently, he's the new District Attorney, because we're still setting up subplots as we go along! Oh, and Roger, well, he's gone now, apparently not even worth an entry in the DC wiki!

I would be remiss if I didn't point out that we have a nibble of cheesecake, what with Helena in her unmentionables talking to a strange (to us at least) man at stupid o'clock in the morning!

This meeting makes Helena realise that the signatures on the damaged paintings were faked and the whole thing is probably a scam! She says she's not going to not get some rest, but it's dawn as she approaches the Museum, so I guess a quick nap was at least in order.

Arriving at the museum, she goes down to the vault, just in time for Solomon Grundy to turn up! A suitable place for a cliffhanger!

This is a pretty tight story told in fewer pages than she had previously, though obviously we get a few cuts just to keep the story ticking along.

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