I recently purchased the Perez run of Wonder Woman from comixology (had a sweet sale) and thought to read it again. Perez's run of Wonder Woman was my first exposure to the character when I was young, but I hadn't touched it since. So it was good to go back and read it. Despite my misgivings of certain aspects, it is probably my favorite run of the character and it did hurdle the character into the modern context better than the predecessors (barring Marston of course). I decided to do a small review of the run just for kicks.

Pros:

-The beginning of this run is probably the most intense beginning I have ever read. In reality the entire run is exciting but the first few issues were incredibly engaging.

-The characters were wonderfully crafted with few exceptions. Even the gods felt like they had incredible personalities to them. The only downside is that for the first few issues I felt that every character EXCEPT Wonder Woman was interesting, but after she gained her footing into the series, she grew into a more deep and concrete character.

- The artwork is incredible. It is very 80s and there is no hiding it, but the bold colors and the sheer amount of acid-trip compositions in some of the panels make the art feel more ageless, rather than behind-the-times when looking at it from a more modern lens. Wonder Woman benefits from having a more artistic approach rather than a straight up comic approach (read Finch's artwork).

- The world building is phenomenal. It makes every location look and feel unique. You can tell the transition from the modern world to Olympus, to Tartus, to Themyscira and so on. Even more impressive is the that everything seems to run seamlessly from realm to realm

- The villains were probably some of the best here. Its a combination of character development, artistry, and the sheer epicness that Perez introduces with the villains that make them feel scary. Plus...Ares crying. Never saw that coming.

Cons:

-Oh the mythology. Perhaps in the 80s and 90s, Greek Pantheons were interesting enough, but for modern times they are overdone and continue to be overdone in Wonder Woman's stories that do little to separate her from Xena, Thor and all the other mythology based heroes out there. I understand that the Greek myth is important to her origin and character, but it wasn't ALL that she is. That said, Perez (I believe, not certain atm) was the first to heavily incorporate the Greek pantheon into Wonder Woman's tales and he did so flawlessly. So I have little issue with his rendition of the pantheon heavy Wonder Woman. My issue more or less lies with how it continued and still continues to this day, that its starting to become a rather unimaginative trend with her.

-Etta Candy is a shell of what was lovable about her. She looked like an original Etta Candy (at least for a short while), but nothing about her resembled what audiences loved about her. It's like Perez mashed a bit of her original rendition with the Diana Prince alter ego role from the original runs.That said I didn't dislike Etta Candy's character---it's just not quite what I would like out of that character.

Otherwise, I have little minor gripes about Perez's run and I don't regret rereading it.

What do you all think of Perez's Wonder Woman? What did you like about it? What did you think could've been better? Anything about it you hated? Hummas....thoughts?

I don't like the info dump that happens just after Gods and Mortals

So, you liked his run better than anything that came before?

Perez was very creative in his many variety of stories for the character. I can't really say that his run was different from my taste entirely, but, the problem with his run was that he gave Wonder Woman too easy victories. While Perez had a good idea to make Wonder Woman naive and new to Man's World, he had a lot of PIS in relation to the behavior of a naive character; in most instances, she behaved far wiser than her origins. Thus, I couldn't seriously believe that she was naive. It was more in the plots as to whether we could tell if she was naive. I didn't like his using Hermes, as he appeared, as Wonder Woman's guide. Wonder Woman, although naive, behaved out of character from the other Amazons as women created from the souls of tragic loss in their choice in men, to than develop a blanket view of all men; every writer since, with a couple of known exceptions have portrayed Wonder Woman strangely out of character from someone expected to have grown up with such opinion of men. I didn't like how he reinvented Dr. Psycho with no known origin, just as a spiteful nut (e.g. the only thing carried over was a presumed dislike for women, but, this time, with no apparent or real motivation); however, he at least brought Dr. Psycho into the post-crisis era where so many other Wonder Woman villains were left languishing in the pre-crisis era, even back to Marston's run.

There are lots of things I would change about Perez's run; but, there's not really much I could add to his creativity. Whether than the Greek/Roman characters, I would have first spent about the first 20 issues developing Wonder Woman's character, from how she should have been acting as an Amazon to acclimating her into Man's World by showing her inability to get along with men, causing her isolation. She would be a belligerent for woman's rights, however. I would than have used the next 15 issues showing her getting lots of male villains, leading up to Dr. Psycho. The next 30 issues would be of her many battles with Dr. Psycho, as she developed a more sensitive attitude towards the idea that not all men are the same. Occasionally, there would be one shot issues introducing some of her other familiar villains like Cheetah, Giganta, Angle Man, Duke of Deception, along with various monsters, mutants, and demons. By the end of the run, she go from where she was to have a Red Sonja like personality. By the end, she have a Hunchback of Notre Dame dynamic with a Quasimodo character and have compassion for men like Dr. Psycho. I'd bring all of the weaknesses back and update/modernize the bondage stories from Marston's run, but, frequently featuring Dr. Psycho. And, her victories would be very hard fought and she'd nearly be a nervous, bruised wreck by the start of Messner-Loebs run.

I purchased Gods and Monsters a few weeks ago during the Comixology sale as well. I usually am hesitant on buying comics that are older than 1995 because I have difficulty enjoying the art but I'm glad I did with WW because I really loved the story.

I'm hoping to get the WW by Perez Omnibus in a few weeks as it'll give me something to read in between waiting WW Rebirth and WW by Greg Rucka vol. 1. Its feels way too hard to find good WW stories...

Nice review, interesting to hear your thoughts and I pretty much agree.

The Perez run is certainly excellent and he does a great job in bringing her and her mythos into the Post-Crisis world. Several of his arcs are among my all-time favourite WW stories.

However, the run does generally drop in quality as it goes on. Marrinan and Thompson's art work is certainly not up to the standard set by Perez and that hurts the book at times. Furthermore, I personally found some of the arcs in the second half of the run dragged a little; they just weren't that interesting.

Overall, Perez's run is rightly seen as one of the finest the title has ever seen

My thing with the mythology is it isn't like Thor's. Thor has the 9 realms, frost giants, Surtur, dark elves, light elves, dwarves, Hela, the Enchantress, the Destroyer, the Warriors 3, Ragnarok, etc. There's a rich universe from which to derive epic stories, that's full of ominous enemies and old friends. We don't get that with Wonder Woman. Her mythos are far more run of the mill and basic. And that's a problem when there's so much focus on it. Perez cracked the door and no one but Rucka and Azzarello have adequately walked through it. For instance I finally got a reprint of The Mighty Thor #1 and it was everything we should be getting in Wonder Woman but aren't.

You have to go big or go home, but when Wonder Woman writers attempt to broaden the scope of her stories there's an inevitable fan backlash that returns us to the status quo. I'm talking about stuff like the Wonder Dome, Jimenez's floating Themyscira, or his tech savy Amazons that rode invisible chariots and fired machine guns or Rucka's PDR and Diana's "unity with beasts" powers or the mythological animals that populated Themyscira after AA. We can't have anything nice for very long, without fans lamenting it's not realistic enough. If you want realism, why read comic books?

@purpleperson: Yes I noticed that near the end some of the plotlines fell by the wayside/seemed a bit repetitive, but they tended to pick up from time to time. Still, Perez really burst through the gates with this one and its hard to top the first couple of issues.

@scorpio_cassadine : I was more referring to mythology based characters when mentioning Thor rather than the stories or world themselves, but yes of course I understand your point and that's why I mentioned the gods in my cons list. There's so much focus on Greek mythology that after a while it becomes uninspired. I think what Perez's work (and Marston's to a greater degree) taught me is that Wonder Woman could be and should be fantastical, the skies limit with her. So it begs the question of why authors tend to focus on the more mundane and repetitive aspects of her stories. It may be to your point fan backlash, but that has hardly stopped Superman and Batman from continuing to have some modicum of consistency and imagination.

@alsummers:

Yeah, I know I went off on a tangent, sorry.

More so than the fans it's really on DC. They allow the book to have no consistency and inadequate world building. For years the next writer undid what came before and started over again. Characters and concepts didn't have a chance to catch on and there was rarely any continuity.

im still getting through his run and i like it well enough but i think he did the character a lot of disservice esp with incorporating the greek mythology and the intra amazonian conflict he put too many elements into the character that kinda makes the entire story a bit much to handle esp for writers after him, it made a bit of a mess imo. I liked his writing but sometimes its a bit convoluted and sometimes it felt too preachy, too much like wgss essay than a comic. Ofc being a woman is integral to the character but that doesnt mean it needs to be as drawn out as he made it tbh