Wonder Woman #30 – “To Live By the Sword” – George Perez/Chris Marrinan/Will Blyberg
Last issue, Wonder Woman went to Egypt in pursuit of Barbara (Cheetah) Minerva, who had stolen her magic lasso. Getting lost in a sandstorm, Wonder Woman ended up in a hidden city full of Amazons (Bana-Mighdall), but not the Amazons she’s familiar with. She stumbled on the bodies of two Amazons (killed by the Cheetah) and the other Amazons assumed she killed their sisters, so they attacked her. Diana tries talking to them, but the Queen (Anahid) won’t listen and orders
her sisters to continue the attack. Diana pounds them, but is careful not to kill anyone, which makes the Queen’s vizier (Nehebka) think that she probably didn’t kill the other warriors. Anahid pretends to want to talk, but blows a poison dart into Diana’s neck. In the nearby village of Syene Kesh, Chuma goes to a seedy hotel to find Minerva and hears that she’s been drinking to dull her pain. After running off a crass Brit who thought he was going to get lucky, Chuma finds Minerva almost immobile and in terrible pain. Wonder Woman wakes up in a dungeon full of chained men (kept as breeding stock), 
but the poison has dulled her movements and rendered her mute. The High Priestess (Kadesha Banu) comes in to check on Diana, telling her she believes she really is an Amazon, but since Anahid has ordered her death, Banu is there to carry out that sentence … after she gets some information. Elsewhere in Bana-Mighdall, we see the Amazons have been manufacturing modern weapons for sale to a local warlord. Apparently, these Amazons are missing a holy treasure and figure Wonder Woman has an accomplice who stole it. In Syene Kesh, Minerva gives Chuma shit, saying he must’ve prepared the bloodwine nectar wrong for her to be in such pain. But the pain started
when she acquired Diana’s lasso and she tells Chuma how the lasso seemed to pull her into Bana-Mighdall, where she stole a treasure from the Amazons, but ended up puking blood. When Chuma checks on the plant-god Uzkartaga, he finds it wilting, and the last dose of bloodwine has turned to powder. Out in the desert, the Amazons deliver weapons to Colonel Hadal and his troops in exchange for info about Minerva, promising to send some Amazons to help him later. But they’ve changed the terms of the deal and some of Hadal’s men don’t like it. After making an example of one, the Amazons decide to take others for breeding 
stock. When the soldiers try to run, they’re cut down like dogs. In Bana-Mighdall, Banu has tired of talking to Diana and plans to kill her, but Diana busts out and confronts the priestess. When Banu tries to spit a poison dart at her, she ends up swallowing it and dying herself. Diana goes to see Nehebka to check out the scribe’s record. She reads a tablet and realizes that there’s a full moon tonight, which means Minerva can become Cheetah again.
Firestorm #85 – “Soul of Fire” – John Ostrander/Tom Grindberg/Sam De La Rosa
This one starts with Svarozhich zipping around the world and seeing what terrible shape it’s in. He’s disappointed in humanity and decides to “cleanse” the planet … by burning it. In Moscow, Rasputin elaborates on his startling statement last issue, that everything Ronnie knows about Firestorm is wrong. Serafina links Ronnie and Mikhail’s minds with Rasputin’s and they delve into Ronnie’s memories to go back to Firestorm’s creation. This time, Ronnie senses another presence there, something that attached itself to him and Professor Stein the
moment Firestorm was born. Rasputin points out that since Ronnie’s mind took precedence (because he was awake at the time), Firestorm was modelled on his own worldview, becoming a costumed superhero. Ronnie wants to know what the entity was that attached itself to him and Stein and Rasputin explains that it’s basically a god (like Prometheus or Surtur), an elemental force of nature representing fire (the same way Red Tornado represents air and Swamp Thing is an elemental of the earth). But as an elemental, Svarozhich has no humanity in him; he’s more like Surtur than 
Prometheus, willing to destroy the world with fire instead of using it to nurture. They go to confront Svarozhich and Ronnie and Mikhail manage to pull back what he took from them and form Firestorm. Svarozhich tries to take that part of himself back, saying he’ll kill them this time. Rasputin tells Firestorm the only way to win is to surrender … not to Svarozhich, but to the fire elemental itself. That will mean giving up their own humanity and individuality, but they both agree, since it’s the only way to stop Svarozhich’s rampage. The two (or three, depending on how you look at it) beings merge into a new version of Firestorm, who says he’s Firestorm as he was meant to be: the
Fire Elemental but with his humanity intact, meaning he can act as humanity’s saviour or its scourge, depending on the circumstances. Serafina is freaked out because she can no longer find any trace of Mikhail in Firestorm, but there must be some part of him left, because Firestorm goes to heal Mikhail’s children and tell his wife that Mikhail still loves her even though he’s gone.