Which telling of Diana's origin is best?

[SecretWarrior]

[Gaius]

Gods and Mortals

Runners-up: Year One, LOWW, and the movie.

[Frontier]

Year One gets my vote.

LOWW for WWII Diana.

[SiegePerilous02]

Year One. I still really like Gods and Mortals, but Year One is more streamlined (like Diana winning the Contest and in the process of leaving to become Wonder Woman, and then Steve crashes, which seems pointless; glad Rucka fixed this) and modern.

LoWW is also enjoyable, wish we had a follow up volume.

[Nyssane]

Year One, all the way.

[Gaius]

Year One. I still really like Gods and Mortals, but Year One is more streamlined (like Diana winning the Contest and in the process of leaving to become Wonder Woman, and then Steve crashes, which seems pointless; glad Rucka fixed this) and modern.

LoWW is also enjoyable, wish we had a follow up volume.

That was an odd change, yes.

I liked she also got the powers after the contest. Splits the difference between Marston and Perez.

[Psy-lock]

Gods and Mortals by far. Year One would've been a close second if not for the lame choice of keeping the daddy Zeus origin and having Phobos/Deimos pose as Ares. Are you kidding me? Diana never even gets to face off against one of her greatest villains?

[Frontier]

Gods and Mortals by far. Year One would've been a close second if not for the lame choice of keeping the daddy Zeus origin and having Phobos/Deimos pose as Ares. Are you kidding me? Diana never even gets to face off against one of her greatest villains?

As a standalone story, the Zeus origin doesn't come up at all in Year One, and we don't find out she didn't fight the real Ares until way later in the actual run.

[Psy-lock]

As a standalone story, the Zeus origin doesn't come up at all in Year One, and we don't find out she didn't fight the real Ares until way later in the actual run.

Sure, but just because these things don't come up doesn't mean they don't exist. Especially the thing with Ares since it's such a big plot point in the run as a whole.

[Primal Slayer]

1. Gods and Mortals

2. Legend of Wonder Woman. Especially liked the Amazons being broken up into different groups of who worship different gods.

[Gaius]

Sure, but just because these things don't come up doesn't mean they don't exist. Especially the thing with Ares since it's such a big plot point in the run as a whole.

I like the eventual revelation with Ares but this also why I went with Gods and Mortals, I think the ending’s stronger while I didn’t get a real appreciation for Year One until the whole run was done.

[Stanlos]

Gods and Mortals by far. Year One would've been a close second if not for the lame choice of keeping the daddy Zeus origin and having Phobos/Deimos pose as Ares. Are you kidding me? Diana never even gets to face off against one of her greatest villains?

I share Psy-lock's position on this matter. The modified classic origin presented by Gods and Mortals and beautifully cliffs noted by Mark Waid and Adam Hughes is my favorite telling. An additional criticism for Year One is how it fell apart in the issue with the faux Ares confrontation thanks to the suddenly stilted and unnatural dialogue and WW needing to be saved by Bambi & Friends

[Koriand'r]

This is it, Year One is a close second

PEREZ 1.jpg

[Agent Z]

A tie between Gods and Mortals and Year One with Legend of Wonder Woman being a close runner-up.

[Artemisfanboy]

I'll go with Perez's Gods and Mortals. Partly out of nostalgia though I can acknowledge it's faults. As I've said before, the biggest mistakes of the Perez Origin are the choice to set Diana's debut in the then present day of the DCU instead of in the past at the same time as Man of Steel and Batman Year One were set, and divorcing Donna from her relation to Diana instead of keeping her as Diana's younger adopted sister. Whatever small benefit Diana got from being completely new and naive really doesn't cancel out the above long term damage. But otherwise I don't really don't have any complaints with Perez's origin and I feel with a few minor changes to accommodate the above points it be pretty near perfect.

As for Year one, while I really didn't end up liking it and being very disappointed, I'll also admit my problems with it are less about it as a self contained origin story but about other things related to Rucka's second run and how other things relate to it.

My first problem is that it kind of screwed Donna out of being returned to her proper origin as Diana's adopted sister at the begining of Rebirth, which is admittedly something Perez's Gods and Mortals is equally guilty of. I really don't see why taking Donna and keeping her as Diana's adopted sister into account when making a new telling of Diana's origin is so hard. I also can't help but feel that there was a lack of communication between the Wonder Woman and Titans books which may have screwed things up since early on in Titans it was looking good and on track to fixing Donna's origin before things got derailed. Things didn't get straightened out for Donna until Orlando came on the book and took advantage of them retconning Diana's origin and history post-Doomsday Clock in order to return Donna to being Diana's younger sister. And now I'm worried that work Orlando did might get thrown out if they're backing out of changing Diana's origin and Donna's origin will be screwed up again.

The second is the whole "Diana never been back to Themyscira ever" which invalidated the flashbacks to the Pre-Flashpoint continuity Diana was having and made them pointless. Instead of bringing back any of the Pre-Flashpoint continuity like I felt had been promised, he effectively rebooted Diana again and left her with ten years of completely blank history. And part of me felt like he was calling the Pre-flashpoint continuity a lie just as much as the Azzarello continuity which I find insulting. Technically, I realize this problem is less to do with Year One and more to do with Lie/Truth, but the Arc's of Rucka's second run are so intertwined it's hard to separate and compartmentalize them. Another element I liked Orlando throwing out by showing Diana having brought Donna back to Themyscira and helping train her there.