Okay, first I have to admit that I've never read one of Jodi Picoult's novels. There are a few reasons for this: 1.) She doesn't tend to write the kind of novels where there are vampires or things exploding 2.)She is everything that I, as a writer, am not, which is to say, female, a bestselling success, and critically respected. (I have had a modicum of success with one of my novels, and I've gotten some good reviews, but I don't pull the kind of numbers Jodi does and I don't get the volume of critical praise that she does. Basically I find myself in the odd position of being a writer of popular fiction that isn't all that popular. I'm working on a theory as to why this is, which I'll share soon. (hint: the world doesn't appreciate my genius!) (Well, that's true, but that's not actually my theory.)
But I digress. Anyway, I like to hate on other writers who are more successful than me because I'm petty like that. And one way I do this is by thinking that novelists just don't make very good comic book writers. (I should state for the record that I'm also jealous of the fact that these people get to write comics.) So, for example, while I worship Charlie Huston's novels (really. He's insanely talented. Go buy several today. You'll be glad you did.), his work on Moon Knight has been, to my way of thinking, dull and repetitive. Neil Gaiman has, in my opininion, lost his comic book mojo since he turned most of his attention to writing novels. I loved Neverwhere, and Coraline is simply one of the best books ever, but 1602 was an overly-complicated and surprisingly uninteresting execution of a really cool idea, and the Eternals was an overly-complicated and surprisingly uninteresting execution of an overly complicated, uninteresting idea.
And so we come to Jodi Picoult's work on Wonder Woman. Even though she was hobbled by having to participate in some crossover thing and the fact that the issues before her arrival were kind of messy, plot-wise, she managed to put together a witty, fun, and ultimately kind of affecting story. In issue ten 
, she manged to work a lot of interesting stuff about mothers and daughters and how to become your own person in, and after reading it, I actually felt like I had read something with a little bit of weight to it. And yeah, I know that there are probably hundreds of novels on my local bookstore's shelf about mothers and daughters and how to become your own person, but this stuff is just a lot easier for me to take if it's coming from a raven-haired beauty weilding a sword and spilling out of her top. What can I say, I'm male.
So there you have it. Jodi Picoult, critically-acclaimed bestselling author also wrote a good comic under bad circumstances. Darn her!
