Did George Perez help or hinder the WW mythos?..

[greymoon]

I was looking back on George Perez’ run on WW and I have to say, I feel like he subtracted a lot from WW lore and simplified and complicated things at the same time. He’s the one who pretty much solidified the whole ‘blessings’ things with the Amazons, made them more primitive, aged up Steve and Etta and didn’t do much with them beyond that, etc. I know WW needed “updating” at that time but I think she also needs an update now. What do you guys think?

[AmiMizuno]

He did both. Cheetah was amazing but the Amazons did get harmed with that. He thought Diana could do without a relationship. He did however, give us great characters. So he did hinder some of her mythos but did also great things with given her news characters and some other great villains.

[Vordan]

Perez was a shot in the arm for WW similar to Byrne for Supes or Miller for Bats, but the franchises have moved on past those interpretations in the case of Supes and Bats. Just like how Supes eventually got a bunch of Pre-Crisis material returned to him, I don’t see the problem with more Pre-Crisis Wondy stuff returning. At least bring the kangaroos back.

[WonderScott]

I'm about 60/40 in favor of helped over hindered.

Diana finally reached levels of power that were her birthright and the natural progression of her character as the most important superheroine in all of comicdom and the mythology elements were so epic that it was exciting. The reinterpretations Doctor Psycho and Cheetah and Circe were the best and most horrific they've ever been.

Unfortunately, it came at the cost of drastically stunting her love, romantic, and sex life and in some ways the start of avoiding most of her villains who were not mythologically based. (Not letting the Amazons be technologically advanced, scientists, etc., limited the genres she could operate in until much later in her Post-Crisis run too. It was way too narrow.)

Another con is that it changed her history and prominence in the founding of the Justice League... although I don't blame him for that. DC made some mistakes in not letting her initial stories, or something like Hawkworld, be Year One, Two, or Three story arcs for those characters.

Of course hindsight is 20/20. I loved the stories at the time and felt it was a breath of fresh air for the Amazing Amazon.

[Doctor Bifrost]

In my opinion he did the best version of the Wonder Woman mythos - overall. He really put a lot of thought into the Amazons and why they were there. He understood the value of the intrinsically female-centric nature of Diana''s narrative - the origin, the relationships, everything else that stood out in contrast to the mainly male-centric focus of most mainstream superhero comics - and he incorporated it well, but without the overly pedantic "women are superior to men!" attitude of Marston in the original.

(There's a difference between saying "this story is going to be primarily about women because we have so few examples of such stories" and "this story is going to be about women because we want to show that women are better than men." He went with the former and did it well.)

As I've mentioned, I am not a power-monger when it comes to finding favorite characters, so it didn't bother me that the Amazons were not technologically advanced, and that the average Amazon wasn't near-Diana-level in power. I felt they were advanced over Man's World in some other areas, such as having access to some magic, and having a focus on both self-improvement and community that, over centuries, created a strong, thoughtful, supportive culture for themselves. (I like it when "hidden societies" are better in some ways and not better in others.) And I liked the relationship between the Amazons and their patron deities.

I also thought it was all very well-written and very well-drawn.

But I did say "overall." Things I did not like:

- Wonder Woman coming to Man's World and starting her career as a superhero years after Superman, Batman, the JLA, and the Teen Titans had been around. (Personally, I do not think this was Perez's decision, but I don't know the actual details.) It made her seem younger and less experienced than them, which I do not think serves her character and her place in the world. It meant she wasn't a founding member of the JLA; I like Black Canary quite a bit, but I thought the switch read like "hey, any two female characters are interchangeable."

And, of course, it completely blew Donna Troy's origin (such as it was), and her relationship with Diana, Hippolyta, and the Amazons, out of the water. This didn't happen to any of the other (male) Original Five Teen Titans. Donna was, in some ways, already running behind the other four, because she didn't have a decades-long publication history as a teenage hero in Man's World (or an actual on-page history with her mentor, Wonder Woman) that the others did. Instead of taking the opportunity of Crisis on Infinite Earths to solidify Donna's history, the completely changed it in a way that moved her further from the Wonder Woman mythos, and she has never recovered. I don't think this has been good for anyone.

- He aged Steve Trevor and Etta Candy and married them to each other. This completely changed the nature of her supporting cast. This opened up the way for new ideas, of course, but nothing has ever really stuck. When was the last time we saw Julia Kapatellis or Trevor Barnes? I think keeping Steve and Etta more the way that they had been, and then building on that with some new ideas, would have been a better way to go.

But in general? My favorite version of the Wonder Woman mythos, and one that could have been built on in much better ways than it was.

But that's just me.

[SiegePerilous02]

As is the case with these reboots, he gave her some short term help that contributed to some long term problems. There is little doubt that his run was the shot in the arm she needed at the time, because her property had been mostly terrible since Marston's death and he saved us from some far worse proposals (like the infamous "she gets raped in Man's World" one). He wrote some good stories and some great stories, along with some "meh" ones. He invented a lot of new Amazon faces, Philippus especially was a great contribution. His Man's World cast was ok too, and ditching the Diana Prince identity was a good idea, as was giving her full blown Superman-style flight.

The problem? A lot of these things could have been done without rebooting continuity and messing up her history. She could have just decided to not hide behind a fake ID anymore. They could have advanced the Diana/Steve romance in a new direction like the Super books were doing with Lois and Clark, or they could have had her move on from the relationship. The new characters like the Kapatelis women, Ed Indelicato and Myndi could have lived in Washington D.C just as easily as Boston, it's not as if the latter location was in any way important. It's always easy to introduce new Amazon characters and revamp villains within the confines of an existing continuity. And while some may view her getting flight right out of the gate as a long overdue improvement, the Amazons technological advancements went away because the Invisible Plane was exiled from canon. YMMV, but I don't think that trade off was worth it. Better to give her flight after years of using the plane. And of course, Perez being unable to set his origin revamp in the past ROYALLY screwed up the JL's history with her as a founder and Donna's origin. Wonder Woman should not be a rookie emerging on the scene only when Batman is already on his second Robin and Barry Allen is dead.

Much like similar complaints with Byrne on Superman, I wish Perez had been brought in to do his overhaul of the mythos without rebooting the history. A lot of dead weight was lost, but so was most of the good stuff, even if we're just talking about Donna. It cannot be denied that his run is one of the major runs of the character and a fan favorite, but IMO it's also hard to deny that it contributed to her inconsistency problems. He pretty much ditched almost as much as Azzarello did: Hippolyta is the only constant supporting character in both reboots, Steve and Etta may as well have been new characters, her new cast was otherwise completely new and different, and some new characters got the names some old villains used. His individual changes are obviously not as noteworthy as the Zeus daddy reveal and the sex pirate Amazons, but they are still drastic compared to what came before.

[brettc1]

Helped. Definitely.

According to Comichron ( http://blog.comichron.com/2017/06/th...of-wonder.html ) his first year on the book had average sales of almost 120, 000 copies per month.

[Largo161]

Helped. Definitely.

According to Comichron ( http://blog.comichron.com/2017/06/th...of-wonder.html ) his first year on the book had average sales of almost 120, 000 copies per month.

End of thread right there. Ha!

[kjn]

Doctor Bifrost and SiegePerilous02 have already summed up a lot of my own thinking here, but in a lot of ways the issue was not so much with Pérez as with those who came after. (Granted, the way Pérez handled Steve Trevor and Etta Candy made it rather hard to retcon.) You could still do space and science adventures with Wonder Woman's revamped origin, and work in some of the older elements worth keeping (like how Wilson set out to regain Diana's connection with Themyscira).

Instead we got Messner-Loebs and Byrne.

[Agent Z]

I'd say helped. Most of the issues are either inconsequential (lack of secret identity, Steve and Etta dating) or weren't the fault of Perez himself (Donna's continuity).

[Jcogginsa]

Taking away the technologically advanced nature of the Amazons was one of the worst things to ever happen to Wonder Woman

[hkgkindaichi]

Steve's Mother's relationship with Amazon is amazing.
Diana was even named after her. It made Steve so special to Diana.
However Perez decided not to remain lover relationship between Diana and Steve is just wasted the idea of Steve's mother

[Fuzzy Mittens]

Its a bit of a mixed bag overall.
On one hand he was trying to ground Wonder Woman more and make her more narrowly focused. This was more of a thing across the board though as you look at Batman at the time and his villains are a heck of alot less over the top for that era than had been previously. Likewise, Superman gets heavily depowered and they push the idea that he was the sole Kryptonian. So the focus on making her narrowly focused around something specific was a trend happening in other places as well at the time.

Also alot of elements he was credited for coming up with were not really original ideas on his part like some people assume. The whole gate of hades under the island, the rival band of Amazons thing. Those and other elements of his run are elements from the decade before the reboot, as he was borrowing alot of ideas from that period and to a lesser extent elements from the Marston run. That said, his presentation and writing of these things were stellar, even if things like his Bana were pretty iffy.

If I had to voice my biggest complaints about Perez's run, it would have to be the total reboot nature of it. I know this is not the first of these, as pre crisis had essentially rebooted her two other times before crisis even happened. But this was certainly the most notable example of it. In large part I suppose to how interconnected DC was getting at this point, and the fact that other books ignored what happened in her own title.

The other issue is the rogues gallery. Its one thing to not use a certain chunk of the rogues gallery. Which is something alot of writers do, as people have their favorites. I certainly don't mind Perez doing this. (And I can hardly blame other writers for not picking up the slack) What gets me is his weird need to make new versions of so many of Dianas rogues. A third Cheetah? A second Silver Swan? A complete reinvention of Doctor Psychos into a telepath?

It had alot of good elements to. Though the removal of Steve and Etta from Dianas supporting cast hurt things, she did gain a new strong supporting cast. And Perez did do some interesting things like made a redemption arc for Hercules, established Ares, one of Wonder Womans greatest foes had turned over a new leaf. And gave us the liked of the Kaptelis women and some new Amazons which made for nice additions.

That said, alot of people took Perez's run as a template of what to do to make a good Wonder Woman run without actually pausing a moment to figure out exactly what that was. Thus we ended up with more new takes on Silver Swan and Cheetah. A doubling down on the mythology take which was fine for one run but not for a twenty year period. The interesting things Perez did like these new supporting characters would quickly be forgotten and efforts to redeem Ares and Hercules would come for naught and they would once again become villains.

So overall I would say Perez's run was a good run with alot of elements of its own merit. How it approached the Amazons and depowered them was a huge minus on it, but at least he got their characterization better than most any other writer has ever managed. The real problem with Perez's run is that nobody who cites the run for inspiration quite understand what made it good, and instead grab a half dozen of its basest elements without any real thought.

[Jim Kelly]

What made the George Perez Wonder Woman great was the artwork. If DC wanted to bump sales, George could have been put on WONDER WOMAN in 1983, when Gene Colan left. If Perez was the co-plotter, as well, like on NEW TEEN TITANS, then I'm sure he could have worked within the established continuity of the time to make it a solid title and a fan favourite.

Ever since the 1960s, WW has had retcons and reboots galore. Unlike other DC characters, writers haven't waited for a Crisis to overhaul the Amazing Amazon. And eversince COIE, they've been doing the same thing. I don't think these work or else they'd stick. The reboot that Perez was involved with didn't stop this from happening.

The introduction of new characters and new situations shouldn't need a reboot. The only big universe-changing retcons for WW in 1986 were the timeline shift (Diana not being a JLA founder, which wasn't George's idea) and the Amazons' mythology--and I could have done without both these changes.

[AmiMizuno]

If we had to take the best of Prez’s run what should be kept and what should go? I would say kept cheetah’s origin, I did like how Diana got her name. The idea of Myndi. I did like the Nessie and her family. However, I do think Many of the character suffer because of how aged if they are. Most runs Diana is young enough to be a fish out of water. What would be wrong if Nessie and Diana were around the same age?