Diana and Steve

[Largo161]

That seems kind of needless and not being considerate to future authors. It should have at least always been an option even if he didn't want to write it himself.

The parade of duds we got after Perez left and turning Nemesis in discount Steve because they couldn't use the real deal may not have happened.

All of this. All of this right here. :-)

[I'm a Fish]

I wouldn't say they got a love saga, at least not to the detriment of other areas and relationships. I'd say Barbara Ann and Veronica have bigger parts to play than Steve, or they were at least balanced out well compared to how the movies treat that relationship vs. her other dynamics. It's not like Perez gave her a romantic interest of any sort aside from ship teasing with Superman (*gag*)

Perez bogged it down with having her leave in too many stages (Contest, Harmonia's amulet, Steve finally showed up, ok now we can finally leave) that the more streamlined take in Year One is easier to read and more to the point. In addition to just using Steve's gun as opposed to Diana Trevor's.

Steve basically disappeared from the even # chapters after Year One. And they don’t even become a couple until like, 10 years after they met. (I think the time between Year One and the present day chapters were 10 years).

So yeah, their relationships in terms of being a couple was not at the forefront at all.

That seems kind of needless and not being considerate to future authors. It should have at least always been an option even if he didn't want to write it himself.

The parade of duds we got after Perez left and turning Nemesis in discount Steve because they couldn't use the real deal may not have happened.

Even when New 52 rebooted everything, Steve got sidelined hard for the Superman x Wonder Woman ship. So honestly, Steve being Diana’s age would have been a non-issue. No one during Post-Crisis even tried to have her go into a serious relationship until Jimenez, and I’m not sure Steve’s age would have changed that since Steve and Etta weren’t used so much after Perez left.

[SiegePerilous02]

Yeah, Perez's revamp of Steve didn't really fix him as an interesting character, it was just basically a shallow nod to his older incarnations before leading to him getting shoved out of the way. Worse yet he brought Etta with him; she's never been well served being so linked to him, because it means if he goes then the WW book doesn't have any use for her either.

[John Venus]

I wouldn't say they got a love saga, at least not to the detriment of other areas and relationships. I'd say Barbara Ann and Veronica have bigger parts to play than Steve, or they were at least balanced out well compared to how the movies treat that relationship vs. her other dynamics. It's not like Perez gave her a romantic interest of any sort aside from ship teasing with Superman (*gag*)

Perez bogged it down with having her leave in too many stages (Contest, Harmonia's amulet, Steve finally showed up, ok now we can finally leave) that the more streamlined take in Year One is easier to read and more to the point. In addition to just using Steve's gun as opposed to Diana Trevor's.

Her relationship with Barbara and Veronica were mostly antagonistic in contrast to the more positive relationship with Steve. Etta also felt secondary compared to the drama going on between Diana/Steve/Barabra/Veronica (which yes, was an issue with Perez's run as well).

While Perez has his faults (the Amazons coming across like puppets of the Gods, Hippolyta kissing Heracles), he did the drama between Diana and Hippolyta really well, he drove home that Diana left out of a sense of duty mixed with curiosity, the Gods felt like Gods and the stakes of Diana's first adventure was high and it ends with her literally humbling a god. In contrast to that, the poison gas or whatever in WW YO (which I think was unleashed by Phobos and Deimos pretending to be Ares) felt really benign and unmemorable.

It sounds like I'm hating on Rucka, I'm not. There are cool parts in his run but there are also parts that I'm not keen on. The problem is more the 'if you leave the island you can never return' element which bugged me. Marston had enough stuff in his run that helped off set that and Diana returns to Themyscira anyway. Maybe if Rucka's major arc actually ended up with Diana reuniting with Hippolyta after defeating Deimos and Phobos I would have been okay with it.

IMO, Gods and Mortals is still the gold standard WW run.

That seems kind of needless and not being considerate to future authors. It should have at least always been an option even if he didn't want to write it himself.

The parade of duds we got after Perez left and turning Nemesis in discount Steve because they couldn't use the real deal may not have happened.

That's not unique to Perez. Lots of writers do it in order to ensure the continuation of what they established. Nobody will try that today but at least back then there was expectation for writers to work with continuity. Can't blame him for not seeing 20 years into the future. The main intention was to undo the notion that Diana left Paradise Island for a man and to prevent her from being defined by one.

Especially in Diana's case, a character whose meant to be subversive could easily be turned into something else. There is a reason why DC has the deal with the Marston Estate. Marston didn't want his creation to disappear nor stray from the themes she's mean to represent.

Plus, I would rather Diana had a rotating cast of love interests rather than be tied down to a specific one. Steve would be her first boyfriend. The romance fizzles out eventually and they both go on to date other people. That would be my ideal preference. Not every superhero has to be a 'Lois & Clark'.

[Gaius]

I think my ideal WW origin would be the best parts of Gods and Mortals and Year One.

G&M has a lot of trappings of 80s comics that make it dated but it stands on it's own a bit better as a standalone piece and the ending with Ares is still probably my favorite moment in a WW comic. Year One works well in the confines of Rucka's whole second run and brings back a lot of stuff for the better but on it's own it's a little underwhelming once Diana gets to Man's World.

[SiegePerilous02]

Her relationship with Barbara and Veronica were mostly antagonistic in contrast to the more positive relationship with Steve. Etta also felt secondary compared to the drama going on between Diana/Steve/Barabra/Veronica (which yes, was an issue with Perez's run as well).

While Perez has his faults (the Amazons coming across like puppets of the Gods, Hippolyta kissing Heracles), he did the drama between Diana and Hippolyta really well, he drove home that Diana left out of a sense of duty mixed with curiosity, the Gods felt like Gods and the stakes of Diana's first adventure was high and it ends with her literally humbling a god. In contrast to that, the poison gas or whatever in WW YO (which I think was unleashed by Phobos and Deimos pretending to be Ares) felt really benign and unmemorable.

It sounds like I'm hating on Rucka, I'm not. There are cool parts in his run but there are also parts that I'm not keen on. The problem is more the 'if you leave the island you can never return' element which bugged me. Marston had enough stuff in his run that helped off set that and Diana returns to Themyscira anyway. Maybe if Rucka's major arc actually ended up with Diana reuniting with Hippolyta after defeating Deimos and Phobos I would have been okay with it.

IMO, Gods and Mortals is still the gold standard WW run.

I still feel like Year One did enough justice for Diana and Hippolyta's relationship. It was especially cathartic after the New 52 era to see them like that again, and the first two chapters of Year One were devoted to their relationship. I think what needs to be reiterated is that Year One wasn't just pulling from Perez/Gods and Mortals as an inspiration. So looking at it as a Perez rehash, I can see why someone would think Steve gets too much focus. But I also see a lot of pre-Crisis Bronze Age and Marston in Rucka's second run. So Steve is a love interest again, Hippolyta is a big presence in the early chapters before sending her daughter on her way, they live in Washington D.C. (I think Etta's apartment is the one that she shared with Diana back in the Bronze Age), Cheetah is a composite character of Barbara, Priscilla and even a bit of Deborah, and Veronica has elements of Paula von Gunther folded into her. And the Gods still felt like Gods, just in a different way. Them having a strong presence and moving events from behind the scenes without physically appearing much makes them feel like Gods. And the fact that Athena and Aphrodite are the patrons that get the most focus is another Pre-Crisis element, as the latter especially got sidelined hard in the Perez days.

I wasn't bothered by not being able to get home to Themyscira. All that mattered to me was that the real Amazons were back in continuity, even if Diana temporarily couldn't get to them. Which was undone anyway in Wilson's run, so it's not like we had to wait that long, and I doubt Rucka expected it to be permanent when he set it up.

Similar to you, it may sound like I'm bashing Perez. I like Gods and Mortals a lot, but it's very much a comic of its time (even though it holds up far better than, say, Byrne's MOS) where the jam packed narrative can be a slog as well as a strength. Outside of the artwork, I think Perez's run had much better arcs as it went on. Plus his discarding of a lot of pre-Crisis elements rubs me the wrong way, so Rucka folding those back in and mixing it with Perez works better for me. I don't think Perez is the final word on what the WW mythos should look like, so honoring Marston and other earlier authors in addition to Perez worked for me.

That's not unique to Perez. Lots of writers do it in order to ensure the continuation of what they established. Nobody will try that today but at least back then there was expectation for writers to work with continuity. Can't blame him for not seeing 20 years into the future. The main intention was to undo the notion that Diana left Paradise Island for a man and to prevent her from being defined by one.

Especially in Diana's case, a character whose meant to be subversive could easily be turned into something else. There is a reason why DC has the deal with the Marston Estate. Marston didn't want his creation to disappear nor stray from the themes she's mean to represent.

Plus, I would rather Diana had a rotating cast of love interests rather than be tied down to a specific one. Steve would be her first boyfriend. The romance fizzles out eventually and they both go on to date other people. That would be my ideal preference. Not every superhero has to be a 'Lois & Clark'.

I can see why Perez made the decision at the time considering how many bad/underwhelming stories the Diana/Steve stories were the focus of shortly before that time. But now that we have two examples of her origin where Steve is a love interest but doesn't define her or is her prime motivation for leaving, his take falls short as going needlessly overboard. He maybe couldn't see 20 years into the future, but I have that issue with COIE and its fallout in general: certain authors at the time didn't see value in certain things so not only phased them out, but made them impossible to use without altering continuity further, thus tying the hands of any future author. They nuked continuity to get rid of Supergirl and Krypto, and it was the dumbest thing ever. I regard writing decisions like that to be kind of selfish, at least back then before it became the free for all it is now. It did lead to the clusterf**k we have now.

Steve could be her first boyfriend who dies or they part ways, the first movie at least did an excellent job with his arc in Diana's life, and it wouldn't bother me too much if . But Perez's take didn't even afford him that. He was made utterly superfluous to the mythos, as was Etta, and it was dumb because we had all those old comics with them in it. The rotating love interests would be good if they had the balls to hook her up with Artemis, but the examples they gave us (Trinity shipping, Nemesis, Champion, Mike Schorr, Trevor Barnes)? Yawn. I can see why they default back to Steve because building a new iconic love interest isn't easy and the post-Crisis authors were not producing any results that readers were gaga over, even among those who also disliked/were neutral on Steve.