New WW Creative Team: Tom King and Daniel Sampere

[Gaius]

There's many fair critiques one can lob at Azzarello's WW but how was she personally characterized wasn't one of them. How she was portrayed in JL is on Johns, not Azz.

[Dr. Poison]

There's many fair critiques one can lob at Azzarello's WW but how was she personally characterized wasn't one of them. How she was portrayed in JL is on Johns, not Azz.

I strongly disagree. Do you think that Perez, Jimenez, Rucka, Cloonrad, or King's Diana would have stabbed someone in the hand that was not being actively violent? Grab someone's genitals and threaten to castrate them? Kill her mentor(Ares) instead of the active threat(First Born)?

[kcekada]

I'm right there with you. I don't think Diana and Cheetah should be former friends at all. Cheetah should be the irredeemable nemesis. I keep going back to how Perez wrote her. She was power-hungry. That's what drove her. Diana got in her way and then it became personal. Even if you go back to Priscilla Rich, she was never friends with Diana. She hated her from the beginning. I love the version of Priscilla that Alex Ross and Jim Krueger did in their "Justice" series.

Yeah. I still think the Golden Age version is the best. I liked the Bronze Age version for her ferocity, but she was a sympathetic villain. Despite having no apparent abilities, the original Cheetah was a formidable foe. I wouldn't mind if Barbara lost her Cheetah abilities -- she's always looked too much like a rip-off of Tigra.

[Koriand'r]

I strongly disagree. Do you think that Perez, Jimenez, Rucka, Cloonrad, or King's Diana would have stabbed someone in the hand that was not being actively violent? Grab someone's genitals and threaten to castrate them? Kill her mentor(Ares) instead of the active threat(First Born)?

Thank you! Azzarello's Diana was far from a peach. My problem though was that she was so dumb. She constantly got the wool pulled over her eyes by everyone, starting with Hippolyta.

[Koriand'r]

Yeah. I still think the Golden Age version is the best. I liked the Bronze Age version for her ferocity, but she was a sympathetic villain. Despite having no apparent abilities, the original Cheetah was a formidable foe. I wouldn't mind if Barbara lost her Cheetah abilities -- she's always looked too much like a rip-off of Tigra.

I think that's why they shaved her head for Rebirth. Rucka added a lot but it wasn't enough to keep her interesting beyond her third or fourth flip-flop with the Cheetah curse.

[WonderScott]

I’m in the Barbara as a villain camp. There’s too much delicious devilry within Barbara Minerva that we haven’t experienced yet. Her profile needs to raised and her character needs added depth. My take on Barbara is that she can hold her own, in her own way, against Diana, the gods, Superman and Lex Luthor. The right writer, who can get creative with all that Barbara can be could deliver on her potential.

[Gaius]

I strongly disagree. Do you think that Perez, Jimenez, Rucka, Cloonrad, or King's Diana would have stabbed someone in the hand that was not being actively violent? Grab someone's genitals and threaten to castrate them? Kill her mentor(Ares) instead of the active threat(First Born)?

I mean Cloonan/Conrad's Diana was weirdly okay with torture...

But none of these scenes below would be out of place in a well-written WW run and there's no reason to pin everything wrong with WW at the time on him.

The New 52 Amazons were crap, blond Hippolyta is a sin, Daddy Zeus is a misogynistic middle finger to her entire character, Ares being her mentor completely upends their entire relationship (and making him look like Azz is kind of cringe), the God designs were 50/50 hit or ****. All of which Azz shares at least some blame for.

[Skytten]

I loved Johns' revamp of the Cheetah in the New 52. She was Priscilla, Debbie, Sebastian/Sabrina, and Barbara all rolled into one, she was quite cunning, and powerful enough to take on the Justice League all by herself. The were-Cheetah bites were a pretty cool addition to her powers.

I also liked Johns' Diana after Forever Evil. I really think his early JL portrayal of her was due in part to Azzarello's set up and advertising his WW book as a "horror title".

Johns has actually said the reason why he wrote her so bad is simply because he was unfamiliar with her and it wasn't until he started doing research for Darkseid War he began reading old Wonder Woman books such as Perez and "got" her character.

[Guy_McNichts]

I don't believe Azzarello or Johns's respective portrayals of Wonder Woman in the New 52 owe anything to each other or were an attempt at consistency.

Diana in Johns's Justice League was a continuation of how he always wrote her. There is a definite straight line from ordering Cassie to quit the Teen Titans and fighting Starfire over it, to getting offended when Superman tells her not to chop Mongul's head off, to "When I deal with them, I deal with them."
Even Flashpoint was just Johns's usual approach to Wonder Woman, only cranked to eleven.

And if Darkseid War was him finally "getting" her...congratulations, only took you over a decade, and I'm still not impressed.

Azzarello, for better or worse, just did his own thing. For all his butchering of Diana's lore, origin and backstory, sometimes he got her actual voice and motives right.
And sometimes he didn't.

[Skytten]

Yeah. Wonder Woman used to struggle to be on the Top 150 before King's run. It's a great result lol.

Obviously a great result and she didn't sell good before King, but she also didn't have a new number one since 2016. New teams of course raise the sales, but it isn't comparable to a new number 1.

[Frontier]

Thinking about the Johns, I remember Jason Fabok started the transition to the battle skirt as Diana's main costume, though the movie probably had more to do with it.

[The I.A.D.C.]

Yeah. I still think the Golden Age version is the best. I liked the Bronze Age version for her ferocity, but she was a sympathetic villain. Despite having no apparent abilities, the original Cheetah was a formidable foe. I wouldn't mind if Barbara lost her Cheetah abilities -- she's always looked too much like a rip-off of Tigra.

One of the things I liked about the version of Priscilla Rich that was used in the "Justice" series was that she was so psychotic that her costume was made out of the skins of her pet cheetahs that SHE KILLED AND SKINNED! It was creepy as hell but very effective!

Reading the big battle with all the villains in this last issue, especially the scene with Giganta at the Washington monument, reminded me of her battle with the Debbie Domain Cheetah at the end of "Justice League of America" #195. It was a brief two-page battle, but it was memorable. I can still see that George Perez art with the Cheetah descending down to pounce on a semi-conscious WW with the word balloons, "Scream, Amazon, SCREAM!" Funny what digs its way into our psyches when we're kids! LOL

[Dr. Poison]

I mean Cloonan/Conrad's Diana was weirdly okay with torture...

But none of these scenes below would be out of place in a well-written WW run and there's no reason to pin everything wrong with WW at the time on him.

The New 52 Amazons were crap, blond Hippolyta is a sin, Daddy Zeus is a misogynistic middle finger to her entire character, Ares being her mentor completely upends their entire relationship (and making him look like Azz is kind of cringe), the God designs were 50/50 hit or ****. All of which Azz shares at least some blame for.

I'll admit that Azzarello wrote some good moments for Diana like the ones pictured above but they paled in comparison to how much he ransacked her (and her supporting characters) character in other moments. For argument's sake and not wanting to derail this thread, we can just agree to disagree about Azz's Diana.

[hareluyafan1]

If he was to try Wonder Woman full time, in-continuity, I suspect he'd either lean hard into the "paradox" angle by making a big deal about how she's a WARRIOR who also wants peace...and how that doesn't make sense for some reason.

I apologise for going off-topic but does anyone else find this "paradox" thing baffling? A warrior who wants peace makes perfect sense. I've said this before but if you'll forgive me repeating myself, a "warrior" by definition is someone who fights. That doesn't necessarily mean that they want to fight. Many warriors consider fighting to be a necessary evil. For example, take Billy and Jimmy Lee in the Double Dragon cartoon. Part of their code states "Do not battle if you can avoid it." Some outright hate fighting and only do it out of a sense of duty.

So I really don't get why anyone would think WW being a warrior who also wants peace doesn't make sense. It does.

[Gaius]

I apologise for going off-topic but does anyone else find this "paradox" thing baffling? A warrior who wants peace makes perfect sense. I've said this before but if you'll forgive me repeating myself, a "warrior" by definition is someone who fights. That doesn't necessarily mean that they want to fight. Many warriors consider fighting to be a necessary evil. For example, take Billy and Jimmy Lee in the Double Dragon cartoon. Part of their code states "Do not battle if you can avoid it." Some outright hate fighting and only do it out of a sense of duty.

So I really don't get why anyone would think WW being a warrior who also wants peace doesn't make sense. It does.

It's a paradox if you think "Superman is the light and Batman is the dark!" is the deepest, most profound, statement possible.

It's entirely a self-defeating statement from folks who've continually dropped the ball on WW and need an easy out to soothe their egos, rather than admitting they just can't write her/don't like her.

Jimenez broke down this false dichotomy fairly simply. It actually involves reading WW comics, something most comic writers would jump off a bridge before doing.

"I’ve long been of the belief—and this is from reading, as well as creating—that the “contradiction” of Wonder Woman as a warrior/pacifist doesn’t really hold up if you examine her actual history. Except for a few bumps in the road here and there, Diana was raised in a pretty idyllic paradise, sheltered from all manner of horror, and raised by an island of women who upheld love, peace, and strength through training as their greatest virtues (it was called Paradise Island for a reason). I think Hippolyta raised the Amazons’ perfect ambassador by rearing her in a world of unrestrained beauty, love, wisdom and (certainly pre-Crisis) intellectual curiosity. She doesn’t see the world as the other Amazons do—her upbringing, power and experience mark her as unique among them—and I think of her as feeling very differently about Man’s World than her sisters (the “300” version of Wonder Woman and the Amazons may be the most commercially viable version of them, but it’s mired more in modern tastes and trends than in an actual reading of the original texts, IMHO)."