WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Wonder Woman #83 by Steve Orlando, Miguel Mendonca, Jheremy Raapack, Norm Rapmund, Marc Deering, Gabe Eltaeb and Pat Brosseau, on sale now.
The last few Wonder Woman issues have been very Cheetah-oriented as Barbara Minerva, outside of being a soldier for Lex Luthor in the Doom War, also wants to bring Themysicra to its knees. She was powered up by Lex and given the Godkiller sword, but her mission ended in failure as Cheetah was imprisoned on Themyscira. Diana wanted her to repent rather than face death but it's now turning out to be a questionable decision due to all the blood Cheetah's spilling
That's because the villain has escaped, as predicted, and is going on a murder spree on Paradise Island using Diana's own weapons. However, before heading home Diana gets some upgrades of her own, with Wonder Woman getting an arsenal overhaul like never before.
Diana doesn't have her lasso as she left Cheetah bound with it. She needed a new armor in their last fight and it's even worse as Cheetah's stolen the Golden Perfect as well. She's rocking Diana's tiara and a new Godkiller sword to boot, with the latter given to her by the Fates on the promise she'd find them a path to escape the island so they could conquer Earth. As their avatar, Cheetah's as powerful as ever, rampaging on Themyscira and now taking prisoners as bait.
Wonder Woman gets a secret communique of all this but she's short of ammunition. Luckily, she has friends in high places and Natasha Irons, rather than giving Diana a Steel suit, uses a piece of the invisible jet Leviathan blew up to engineer a faster cloaked vessel for her. Diana touches down on Themyscira, eager to protect the island as she only just rediscovered it, but Cheetah's stunned to see the other weapons she's wielding.
Diana has a shield just as powerful as her old one, borrowed from the Chinese Wonder-Woman Peng Deilan (introduced in Gene Luen Yang and Viktor Bogdanovic's New Super-Man in 2016). She offers Diana a guandao (a bladed-staff) as well as magical lasso which Diana can control telepathically, effectively arming her with the tools she's accustomed to using. Wonder Woman's a one-woman army once more and when she battles Cheetah, she finds this Godkiller sword to be even stronger than the old one. However, she's still convinced she can talk Cheetah back into the light, but the villain makes it clear once the gods and Amazons are killed, she'll be removing a poison from Diana's life. It's a warped way of offering her former friend salvation and what she thinks is liberation from the burden of the gods.
Diana doesn't believe the pantheon is detrimental to the planet and as she voice-commands her jet to pick Cheetah up and fly off, they end up in a Boston carnival brawling again. However, Silencer's there as well, and the assassin goes after both Diana and Cheetah, as she believes these two weapons of mass destruction have to be stopped.
Wonder Woman gets her lasso back and subdues both opponents, but by that time Hera has arrived to chastise Cheetah for hunting her worshippers. Still, this feels like part of Cheetah's game as all she's wanted is Hera's head, so one has to think the Fates are now going to be unleashed in the real world. And once this happens, Diana won't have an armory at her disposal that could combat this threat, even with the massive arsenal makeover.
Wonder Woman #83 is on sale now.