SUBSCRIBE
SUBSCRIBE
SLJ Blog Network +
  • 100 Scope Notes
  • A Fuse #8 Production
  • Good Comics for Kids
  • Heavy Medal: A Mock Newbery Blog
  • Teen Librarian Toolbox
  • The Classroom Bookshelf
  • The Yarn
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • About/Contact
  • Previews
  • Reviews
  • Manga
  • All Ages
  • Young Adult
  • Interviews
  • News

July 19, 2017 by J. Caleb Mozzocco

Review: ‘DC Super Hero Girls: Summer Olympus’

July 19, 2017 by J. Caleb Mozzocco   1 comments

DC Superhero Girls Header

DC Super Hero Girls: Summer Olympus
Writer: Shea Fontana
Artist: Yancey Labat
DC Comics; $9.99

How are you spending your summer vacation? Perhaps you would like to spend it reading about how Wonder Woman, Supergirl and the other kids at Super Hero High in Metropolis are spending their summer vacation? That’s the premise of Shea Fontana and Yancey Labat’s third original graphic novel based on the DC Comics and Mattel’s DC Super Hero Girls toy line.

DC Superhero Girls Summer OlympusAs the school year is winding down and the kids are all planning how they will spend their summers, Wonder Woman gets an invitation to spend hers with her dad’s side of the family…on Mount Olympus. This teenage version of Wonder Woman, like the one in the movie and in the current DC comics line, is a demigod, born of Amazon Queen Hippolyta and Greek god Zeus.

SCROLL TO KEEP READING THIS POST

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

While she wants to get to know the divine side of her family better, Wondy is reluctant to spend so much time away from all of her friends, and so she rather desperately tries to find some to accompany her. They all have other plans though, ranging from spending time on the Kent farm in Smallville with Supergirl to backpacking across Europe with Batgirl, from theater camp to a summer job at Steve Trevor’s coffee shop. Only Bumblebee is free, and she takes Wondy up on her offer.

Fontana and Labat envision Zeus as a jovial patriarch and purveyor of dad jokes, and they fill his Olympus with his children, each imagined as a sort of immortal teenager and drawn to match the designs of Wonder Woman and her friends. (They stick to Wonder Woman’s “generation” of Olympians, and then only to those with a role to play in the story as Zeus’ children and Wondy’s half-siblings.)

Like all families, Zeus’s has some black sheep, including the war god Ares, also summering on Olympus, and Strife, who is committing a series of Earth-bound heists that draw the attention of Batgirl and her travelling companions Beast Boy and Katana. The bad gods’ machinations mean Wonder Woman won’t have to wait too long to see all her friends after all, as all the super heroes of Super Hero High must rally in Metropolis to save the city from Ares and Strife.

But since fighting only increases the strength of the personifications of war and strife, Wonder Woman will need to employ the one force capable of weakening them to truly save the day: Philia, or “the love of friendship.”

It is, quite honestly, exactly as cheesy as it sounds, but conveyed sincerely and, within the confines of a super-comic full of the classic personifications of elements of the human condition, organically enough to be effective…and even rather engaging.

This being the summer of Wonder Woman, she and her backstory are particularly well-chosen as the engine for this latest adventure set in the weird but winning “What if DC’s super heroes were all high school kids together?” world of DC Super Hero Girls. Fontana, who has just started writing the “real” Wonder Woman in the pages of DC’s ongoing Wonder Woman monthly comic book series, certainly has the recurring cast-members down at this point, and both she and Labat seem to have a great deal of fun mixing in the mythological characters as well. Their collaboration in this particular milieu continues to be rather rewarding, whether a reader is squarely within the target audience or well outside of it.

Filed under: All Ages, Graphic Novels, Reviews

SHARE:

Read or Leave Comments
DC Super Hero GirlsDC Super Hero Girls: Summer OlympusShea FontanaWonder WomanYancey Labat

About J. Caleb Mozzocco

J. Caleb Mozzocco is a way-too-busy freelance writer who has written about comics for online and print venues for a rather long time now. He currently contributes to Comic Book Resources' Robot 6 blog and ComicsAlliance, and maintains his own daily-ish blog at EveryDayIsLikeWednesday.blogspot.com. He lives in northeast Ohio, where he works as a circulation clerk at a public library by day.

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Posts

January 2023

Andy Warner's Oddball Histories: Pests and Pets | Review

by J. Caleb Mozzocco

January 2023

My Sister, the Cat, vol. 1 | Review

by J. Caleb Mozzocco

January 2023

History Comics: Rosa Parks & Claudette Colvin | Review

by J. Caleb Mozzocco

September 2022

History Comics: The Roanoke Colony | Review

by J. Caleb Mozzocco

September 2022

Batman's Mystery Casebook | Review

by J. Caleb Mozzocco

ADVERTISEMENT

SLJ Blog Network

100 Scope Notes

Strega Nona Stamps Are Coming

by Travis Jonker

A Fuse #8 Production

Creating a Collective Black Ancestry: Researcher Kimberly Annece Henderson Discusses Dear Yesteryear

by Betsy Bird

Good Comics for Kids

Review: Victory! Stand!

by Esther Keller

Heavy Medal

March suggestions: early Mock Newbery possibilities

by Emily Mroczek-Bayci

Teen Librarian Toolbox

Book Review: Julia and the Shark by Kiran Millwood Hargrave with illustrations by Tom de Freston

by Amanda MacGregor

The Classroom Bookshelf

The Classroom Bookshelf is Moving

by Erika Thulin Dawes

The Yarn

Newbery Medalist Amina Luqman-Dawson visits The Yarn

by Colby Sharp

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Articles on SLJ

SLJ Debuts New Column “Mondo Manga”

First-Person Graphic Memoirs Bring Events to Life for Students

Q&A: Harmony Becker, Creator of "Himawari House"

10 Manga Titles for Teens Who Watch Anime

A Starter Manga Set: 15 Titles for Children and Tweens

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Zoe says

    January 20, 2018 at 4:57 pm

    This book has a good storyline but the actual characters are incorrect. Starting with Tyche, her parents in Greek mythology are Hermes and Aphrodite. Talk about awkward!!!! Also Apollo’s twin sister is not included. Artimes, Apollo’s twin sis, is a strong feminist and it’s wrong to disinclude her. Siracca or should I say fake, is completely made up. That’s fine, but she took the place of four wind brothers. Boreas, the north wind, Eurus, the east wind, Notus, the south wind, and Zephyrus, the west wind deserve some recognition too!!! Janus’s heads are supposed to be representing them looking into the future and past. Hermes is a loyal friend of Zeus, NOT his offspring!!! And Aphrodite was born from sea foam!!! Also the biggest problem is an Amozon would NEVER marry. The reason is they are strong fearless worriers who dispise men. I feel as if they didn’t respect Greek mythology, and as a fellow mythology person, I couldn’t stand it!!! I hope they do their research because this is injustice. I mean no harm to this book, but the errors are unexeptable!!! So please check because I don’t want to see my favorite superhero comic book to pain me and others with mistakes so I hope the author or team of book makers separate fact from fiction.

    Book review- by me

ADVERTISEMENT

Archives

Follow This Blog

Enter your email address below to receive notifications of new blog posts by email.

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

Primary Sidebar

  • News & Features
  • Reviews+
  • Technology
  • School Libraries
  • Public Libraries
  • Age Level
  • Ideas
  • Blogs
  • Classroom
  • Diversity
  • People
  • Job Zone

Reviews+

  • Book Lists
  • Best Books
  • Media
  • Reference
  • Series Made Simple
  • Tech
  • Review for SLJ
  • Review Submissions

SLJ Blog Network

  • 100 Scope Notes
  • A Fuse #8 Production
  • Good Comics for Kids
  • Heavy Medal
  • Neverending Search
  • Teen Librarian Toolbox
  • The Classroom Bookshelf
  • The Yarn

Resources

  • 2022 Youth Media Awards
  • The Newbery at 100: SLJ Celebrates the 100th Anniversary of the Award
  • Special Report | School Libraries 2021
  • Summer Reading 2021
  • Series Made Simple Spring 2021
  • SLJ Diverse Books Survey
  • Summer Programming Survey
  • Research
  • White Papers / Case Studies
  • School Librarian of the Year
  • Mathical Book Prize Collection Development Awards
  • Librarian/Teacher Collaboration Award

Events & PD

  • In-Person Events
  • Online Courses
  • Virtual Events
  • Webcasts
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe
  • Media Inquiries
  • Newsletter Sign Up
  • Content Submissions
  • Data Privacy
  • Terms of Use
  • Terms of Sale
  • FAQs
  • Diversity Policy
  • Careers at MSI


COPYRIGHT © 2023


COPYRIGHT © 2023