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Wonder Woman: from Perez to Rucka

Cliché as it may sound, Wonder Woman was most likely the series that hooked me up to US comicbooks. But, then, of course, I was lucky: the very first issue I put my hands on was Wonder Woman #1, new series, by George Perez. Perez completely rewrote the character and gave her a solid base, with nice references to classic greek mythology and his usual amazing art, only more so.



The series started with the origin of the amazons, apparently, women who had died because of the brutality of men and who were revived by the goddesses of Olympus. However, they had apparently not learnt the lesson the first time, as Heracles and his men -who had to get Hyppolita's belt as one of his jobs- drugged them, enslaved them and took by force what they could have obtained gently. Ashamed and burning with fury, Hyppolita made a promise to the goddesses: if they freed her so she could get revenge, the amazons would retire to a lost island and guard the doors to Tartarus for eternity. Centuries later, the queen would learn that she had been pregnant with a child when she was murdered and she received the ability of creating life from clay so she could give birth to her baby. So, Diana was born in Themyscira. She would most likely have stayed there happily if Ares, god of war, had not developed a plan to bring nuclear world war and involved the amazons in it. After winning a contest, against her mother's will, Diana became champion of the amazons and travelled to our world, Patriarch, to stop Ares. After her first public appearance, the newspapers nicked her Wonder Woman and that was that.



As usual in Perez’s books, secondary characters were of key importance in the original series and everyday life made solid plots in the book. He did an excellent profile of a woman who has never left an isolated island were everyone lives in harmony and arrives to modern US. Diana was pretty naïve and relied on her friends in Patriarch: professor Julia Kapatelis and Steve Trevor, no longer her eternal boyfriend, but an elderly US pilot. She also developed a sister-like relationship with Nessie, Julia’s daughter, the first teenager she had ever seen. Perez also brought back old villains like the Silver Swan and Cheetah under a new light. And, finally, they managed to explain why a greek woman would wear the US flag colors!
After Perez left the book, though, it followed no particular direction and soon lost interest. Diana’s character was no longer solid and oscillated depending on the writer. Not even Brian Bolland’s superb covers could save the series. They even did the “costume change” trick. Heck, we even got Diana working at Taco Bell!! And even though Lee Moder did okay, I’ve never liked Deodato much. However, the worst was still to come … John Byrne decided to completely rewrite the series after issue #100 in his own way!!!



I’ll make myself clear. I used to like Byrne a lot when he did the X Men, Alpha Flight … he even did backgrounds back then. However, if something works, don’t fix it! Wonder Woman was not going well, but it had a solid origin and Perez’s was the best approach to the character we had seen so far. But, of course, he had to change that. So let’s see how original he was. In his first issue, Diana arrives to Gateway City, whereas in Perez’s she arrived to Boston. In Boston, she found Julia Kapatelis in Harvard library, archaeology professor and widowed mother of teen Nessie. In Gateway, she goes to the Museum of Cultural Antiquities to look for Helena Sandmarks, curator and single mother of … teen Cassie!!. During their first meeting, Nessie awoke a greek statue that Diana had to defeat. Cassie did the same thing with a … you’d never guess … yep, a greek statue. Perez’s second arc confronted Diana with god Zeus and took her to Tartarus. Byrne’s confronted her with … god Darkseid and took her to Apokolips. Next, Perez introduced witch Circe, who wanted to take Wonder Woman’s body for herself and had a very short personal aidee. Byrne decided to be original and introduced witch Morgana –plus short aidee, of course- who wanted … nah, better figure it yourself. Byrne’s only contribution was probably to make Diana goddess of truth. Congratulations, John. Fortunately, they managed to remove that.



After Byrne left, again no directions and again cool covers: Adam Hughes this time. And, finally, we got lucky again: Phil Jimenez took the series as writer and artist. And he most likely was fond of Perez, because he tried to go back to Diana’s beginnings. In plots and arts. He was not as outstanding as Perez, but, hey, he tried hard! My only criticism was the appearance of insufferable Trevor Barnes, the politically correct, Mr Perfect boyfriend who had no flaw at all (and got himself killed!). And, then, finally, Greg Rucka. I’m particularly fond of Rucka and Brubaker, even though I did not like much some of Greg’s choices in Gotham Central. He was great, though, in Batman, I like Queen and Country a lot and Whiteout was very good. In Wonder Woman, he does not exactly follow Perez’s guidelines. Diana is not naïve anymore and she can not have much of a private life as JLA member and Themyscira ambassador. But that is the logical evolution of the character. Olympus is back. Themyscira is important once more. He has introduced new villains and recovered old ones with ability and, after a slow start, things are starting to fit again. Plus his first TP has cool xtras :)



Images linked from Wonderland, the Ultimate Wonder Woman site

Referenced in USA Today

So last week the CCDB made it to the web guide of USA Today, how cool is that? :)
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