Hi guys,
I want to buy Wonder Woman comics. Never read any. Please suggest the best Wonder Woman Comics among TPB/HC/Omni format. You can share the list with some rankings.
Cheers
Hi guys,
I want to buy Wonder Woman comics. Never read any. Please suggest the best Wonder Woman Comics among TPB/HC/Omni format. You can share the list with some rankings.
Cheers
The Legend of Wonder Woman is my favorite Wonder Woman story so far that I've read. It isn't in continuity, but if your desire is just a really good Wonder Woman story I can't think of one better.
The most that are generally regarded as the important ones:
Wonder Woman: the Golden Age Omnibuses Volumes 1-4 (massive hardcovers). There are smaller paperback ones that don't collect as much. I think the first paperback collects roughly half the content of the first hardcover, but they continue sequentially. Great for historical value and the most "pure" iteration of Wonder Woman for better or worse. Very dated, but also very interesting if you like old comics.
Wonder Woman by George Perez. Available in a couple hardcovers and paperbacks
Wonder Woman by Phil Jimenez HC
Wonder Woman by Greg Rucka Vol. 1-3 paperbacks- his first run
Wonder Woman New 52 Vol. 1-6 (Blood, Guts, Iron, War, Flesh, Bones) by Brian Azzarello- very divisive run, but in case you want to check it out...
Wonder Woman: Rebirth Vol. 1-4 (the Lies, Year One, the Truth, Godwatch) by Greg Rucka
The Legend of Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman Earth One Volumes 1 & 2 by Grant Morrison.
Keep in mind half of these have different takes of her origin because DC is all over the map with her lol, and the latter two are self contained elseworlds.
Note that Wonder Woman Earth One is nearly as divisive as Azzarello's run…
Two Wonder Woman stories that certainly should not be missed are JLA: A League of One by Christopher Moeller and Rucka's first Wonder Woman story Hiketeia. Both leave nearly everything written in-continuity in the dust.
«Speaking generally, it is because of the desire of the tragic poets for the marvellous that so varied and inconsistent an account of Medea has been given out» (Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History [4.56.1])
Deleted a few posts.
The nice OP has asked for recommendations, not for yet another debate on Azzarello's run so let's not go there again guys. Plenty of threads elsewhere to do this.
I'd recommend Gail Simone's 'The Circle' for an interesting take on Diana's origin and the Amazons.
I'd like to add Paul Dini and Alex Ross' Spirit of Truth.
Keep in mind that you have about as much chance of changing my mind as I do of changing yours.
Another sampler trade to consider is Wonder Woman: Her Greatest Battles. This trade features issues from her entire print history. Some of the issues are from the middle/end of story arcs, but give a taste of that creative teams' effort.
Both George Perez and Azzarello's first volumes are good. They're just different. I personally prefer the Perez one because I like the mythology and art better.
I read the first Perez Omni and loved that, and I started the Jimenez book. What's the consensus on the Gail Simone run?
There isn't one! LOL
Gail did some interesting things and definitely brought the book back on track after the soft relaunch they did with the new number one issue over a year prior. This was, of course, part of a DC event called One Year Later where for no reason they pushed all the narratives of all of their books a year into the future and then had to explain what happened during that year. Spoiler alert: Donna took over the role of Wonder Woman while Wonder Woman navel-gazed or something.
Simone had some interesting ideas but one of the biggest chunks of her storyline is focused on a villain named Genocide whose identity was rewritten because of behind-the-scenes changes. And the design was terrible. So as much as Gail was trying to give Wonder Woman a big Doomsday-like foe and storyline, it pretty much tired everyone out and has been forgotten since. Then she did another big storyline with Achilles, but that didn't really pan out fully because she ended up leaving the book I think before that really got underway.
The most important thing to say about her run is that DC had screwed up Wonder Woman's status quo so much that Gail's vision helped reset things a bit. And she made a point of highlighting different aspects of Diana during her tenure, so there is a little bit of everything - sword & sorcery, sci-fi, romance, humour, new and old supporting characters, and even a bit of personal evolution on Diana's part.
...but does it feel like a natural extension of what had come before? Ehhhh, not really.
There was just a lack of stability with the book from that point basically until present day really. The One Year Later reboot saw a lot of characters redesigned visually after the Rucka run had tried to keep continuity with what Jimenez and Perez had done...and then after Gail left the book, they did Issue 600 which started The Journey storyline by J Michael Straczynski, which was a very alternative take on Wonder Woman that he left partway through and was finished by another writer...which was then followed by Flashpoint, which was another kind of alternative take, and then finally the New 52 saw Brian Azzarello step in with a coherent vision and the creative license to follow it through for more than a year. So the book was pretty stable then, but all the focus was on the gods, who were completely redesigned and fans who wanted to see Etta Candy or Diana in other kinds of adventures had to basically read the Justice League book, even though the Justice League version of Wonder Woman seemed different from the version in her own book. DC was also pushing her and Superman together as a couple then, so then there was the version of her in the Superman and Wonder Woman book....and then after all of that they reset things again with Rebirth and Year One by Rucka, Sharp and Scott.
And somewhere in the midst of all that they did a Wonder Woman book based on the Lynda Carter show that wasn't always in step with what would have hypothetically happened on the Carter show if they had been more true to the comics...and also a title called Sensation Comics, where every issue had two or three stories by different artists and writers with different interpretations of Wonder Woman.
...that's what's so frustrating - there are so many reboots and reinventions of the character that if you want good stories of her that interconnect and make sense with each other, you're basically left with whichever writers managed to keep things consistent for a decent period of time. Thankfully Perez, Jimenez and Rucka built between them a pretty consistent vision and world and cast list.
Maybe if Gail hadn't had to contend with cleaning up after the OYL partial reboot, she could have had an easier time of it. One thing she did do that was pretty distinct was give Diana her own narration throughout the stories. Some people liked the voice she gave Diana in this narration and others didn't.
So yeah...all that to say, there is no consensus. It seems like everybody really liked her first story, The Circle, but after that opinions varied. What can't be debated is her love of the character, though, and her place as one of the few female writers to contribute to Wonder Woman consistently over the years. Gail also did some work on the animated Wonder Woman movie from about 10 years ago, and she seems like a total sweetheart. I think these forums were originally moderated by her! She's definitely a big fan and it's a shame everything didn't line up for her during her run on the book. She definitely didn't screw Diana up though.
Last edited by DisneyBoy; 03-01-2020 at 03:14 PM.
Okay that sounds like a MMV moment for sure. I loved the Azarello run as well! The above sounds like it happens to so many characters when they are searching for a definitive team.
Well there are the big runs that most already mentionned:
- Wonder Woman by George Perez
- Wonder Woman by Greg Rucka
- Wonder Woman by Brian Azzarello
Lest mention the story co-written by Len Wein during George Perez's run
- Wonder Woman: Gods and Mortals
Alongside his run, Greg Rucak wrote a very magnificent story:
- Wonder Woman: The Hiketeia
And not mentioned yet, I would include the fabulous mini série:
- The Brave and The Bold: Wonder Woman / Batman
-> Story in which the forgotten land off celtic gods and legends need WW's help and she calls for Batman to help because he is the greatest detective. Written and Drawn by the great Liam Sharp:
And of course all the storie that are in the WW 75 years compilation:
- All-Star Comics #8 - "Introducing Wonder Woman" - William Moulton Marston & Harry G. Peter
- Sensation Comics #1 - "Wonder Woman Comes to America" - William Moulton Marston & Harry G. Peter
- Wonder Woman #7 - "America's Wonder Women of Tomorrow!" - William Moulton Marston & Harry G. Peter
- Wonder Woman #28 - "Villainy Incorporated" - William Moulton Marston & Harry G. Peter
- Wonder Woman #99 - "Top Secret" - Robert Kanigher & Ross Andru
- Wonder Woman #107 - "Wonder Woman Amazon Teenager" - Robert Kanigher & Ross Andru
- Wonder Woman #179 - "Wonder Woman's Last Battle" - Dennis O'Neil & Mike Sekowsky
- Wonder Woman #204 - "The Second Life of the Original Wonder Woman" - Robert Kanigher & Don Heck
- Wonder Woman #288 - "Swan Song!" - Roy Thomas & Gene Colan
- Wonder Woman (Volume 2) #1 - "The Princess and the Power!" - Greg Potter & George Pérez
- Wonder Woman (Volume 2) #64 - "The Heart of the City" - William Messner-Loebs & Jill Thompson
- Wonder Woman (Volume 2) #93 - "Violent Beginnings" - William Messner-Loebs & Mike Deodato, Jr.
- Wonder Woman (Volume 2) #142 - "The Bearing of the Soul" - Eric Luke & Yanick Paquette
- Wonder Woman (Volume 2) #195 - "The Mission" - Greg Rucka & Drew Johnson
- Justice League: The New Frontier Special #1 - "The Mother of the Movement" - Darwyn Cooke
- Wonder Woman (Volume 4) #0 - "The Lair of the Minotaur" - Brian Azzarello & Cliff Chiang
- Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman #1 - "Gothamazon" - Gail Simone & Ethan Van Sciver
- Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman #7 - "Rescue Angel" - Alex de Campi & Neil Googe
Last edited by jb681131; 03-08-2020 at 11:44 AM.
I always liked the mod Diana Prince, but I only had a few of those comics in my collection and they were hard to find for sale by dealers. But I was determined to get every single issue (including crossovers in other titles) and spent a couple of years on eBay until I had got them all. And then DC turned around and reprinted the whole run in TPBs. It always seems to work that way. Still, because I put so much time and energy into collecting those issues, I prize them over most other WW comics I have. And I guess having the original back issues is worth something--the TPBs didn't reprint the teaser pages that appeared at the end of those stories in a lot of the issues--nor did they reprint her team-up with Jerry Lewis.