Your feelings about Azzarello's Wonder Woman in an of itself

[thanatoskun]

I love this run. It's definitely my favorite. I really like the focus on Greek mythology. This run also shows that the greek goddesses are not entirely compassionate, on the contrary, it shows them as they were described in mythology.

[AlexLyo]

It's hard to think about this run purely in isolation.

I had been reading Wonder Woman pretty consistently my whole life, and while I was building out my back issue collection of the Perez run, I had probably been reading along monthly since the Messner-Loebs era ish, with a little break during Byrne.

So by the time Azzarello rolled around, it arrived after what felt like a particularly long period of change in the title. Straczynski had kicked off a 14 issue run that started with a complete reimagining of Diana as a leather-jacket-wearing rage machine, and it wasn't until the end of that run that the status quo was briefly returned, only for the title to be cancelled and Flashpoint to begin. Again with Flashpoint we were given a bloodthirsty iteration of Diana in an alt timeline.

Then we get the Nu52 and Azzarello. It's hard to state how, at the time, issue by issue, reading that comic was an exercise in balancing a lot of cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, it was clearly a good quality comic to me. The artwork was beautiful, the writing was rich, and the design work was lovely. Even Diana's voice felt familiar, after what had been a long time without her.

And yet here she was surrounded by all these other elements that were not just unfamiliar, but in places really unwelcome reimaginings. I'd just be repeating other posters to touch on all the issues I had with the portrayal of the Amazons, the changes to Diana's origin etc. It felt like I had waited a long time to get back to a Diana that felt like the Diana I enjoyed, and in some ways she was that Diana, but she came with all these unwelcome changes.

As time I went on I'd say I enjoyed the run as a sort of "Elseworlds" story, but it definitely left me feeling much more detached as a fan. It wasn't till Rucka's return that I really re-engaged.

I'm not really someone who feels comfortable yucking anyone else's yum when it comes to their favourite iterations of Wonder Woman, so I kind of love reading how this run brought people to the character, because there's so much to explore. At the same time, I think for me personally this run definitely holds a sort of symbolic place as coming in at a moment where it felt like my personal "era" of Wonder Woman comics was closed.

And then, of course, the Finches put the nail in the coffin and tried to get me never to return, but that's another post altogether.

[Agent Z]

I love this run. It's definitely my favorite. I really like the focus on Greek mythology. This run also shows that the greek goddesses are not entirely compassionate, on the contrary, it shows them as they were described in mythology.

Azzarello's take on the gods isn't as accurate as people think.

[BiteTheBullet]

I have been re-reading the Azz series and I can still see why I quit the weekly trip to the comic book store. I quit at about issue 25 but read the rest in the book stores when they printed out the graphic novels. No reason to spend more money on this awfulness!

The series was just bad! It seemed Azz wanted to make sure about all the awful puns he could cram in the already decompressed nature of the comic. I think each issue takes roughly 5 minutes to read. And I know it is blasphemous to people here on this board, but I really don't like Cliff Chiang's art. I will take someone like Aaron Lopresti any day of the week.

Pro's: Overall Diana seemed to have a good voice.

Con's: - Almost all of the designs of the Olympus gods
- Orion-why the hell was he even in here? To overshadow Diana or to somehow shoehorn him as a love interest?
- Lack of good action sequences.
- Fighting grunts like centaurs doesn't really impress me
- Induced coma fighting the First Born, but Orion is just fine after the same fight. The fight doesn't convey the sense that Diana would need this 'induced
coma'
- Zola--why?????
- Sex pirate raids!!!
- Zeus as daddy, while not as bad as I originally thought, still makes our beloved Diana another one of his bastard children
- Apparently if you can push the First Born hard enough, and there is a hole nearby, you can defeat him. Hopefully the Batman has written down this
weakness
- The hazy undefined powers of the Gods. Can Strife just grow really big and stymie Diana like she did with the lasso around her neck like it was nothing?
- Diana, who has the power of Zeus flowing through her veins, needs Hermes feather to fly and it takes 12 issues for it to happen
- And how does Diana know she needs her bracelets on to contain her power, yet never in her 23 years figures out that she is more than clay?
- Diana felt like a bit player many times in the series.
- Played more like an Elseworld series
- As others have stated, Diana didn't even need to be the main character in the story
- I know I am missing some of the 'cons', but this for the most part was a horrible run!

[I'm a Fish]

- Apparently if you can push the First Born hard enough, and there is a hole nearby, you can defeat him. Hopefully the Batman has written down this
weakness

I like how that's the First Born's weakness but not Bane's.

But yeah, I think it was a bad idea to hit Diana with such a hard reboot. When Perez rebooted the character, he build off of the characters origin instead of tearing it down. You're just shooting yourself in the foot if you do a hard reboot because then no one is going to go back and read older runs.

Diana herself was alright, but 90% of the time you could have replaced her with Xena and no one would know the difference.

[SiegePerilous02]

I like how that's the First Born's weakness but not Bane's.

But yeah, I think it was a bad idea to hit Diana with such a hard reboot. When Perez rebooted the character, he build off of the characters origin instead of tearing it down. You're just shooting yourself in the foot if you do a hard reboot because then no one is going to go back and read older runs.

Diana herself was alright, but 90% of the time you could have replaced her with Xena and no one would know the difference.

In fairness to Azzarello, Perez's reboot did a lot of the same things he did as a clean slate. It wiped out all previous stories and the only characters it preserved from the old canon were Hippolyta and the Gods. Steve and Etta were so changed they were pretty much new characters, and Darnell and the Holliday Girls were wiped out. The Amazons were all new faces, which wasn't bad because he had the best Amazon cast, but faces like Mala, Nubia and Althea were missed. He brought in some of the old villains, but they were all heavily revamped to the point where they were new as well. So in the grand scheme of things, having Zola and Lennox as her cast wasn't much different the chucking the old crew and bringing in the Kapatelis women, Myndi, Indelicato, etc instead. Or Dessa and Aleka being new Amazons just like Philippus, Euboea, Hellene etc. were post-COIE. Both writers also did not write advanced Amazons.

But of course Perez still preserved the clay birth and the fact that the Amazons were meant to be good people who raised her to be a hero. Azz had the two changed from that, but unfortunately they were doozies.

[Gaius]

Azzarello's take on the gods isn't as accurate as people think.

Also worth noting the Ancient Greeks weren't even consistent with the portrayal of the Gods as there's no real "canon" for Greek mythology.

[SiegePerilous02]

Also worth noting the Ancient Greeks weren't even consistent with the portrayal of the Gods as there's no real "canon" for Greek mythology.

They did seem to be consistent with depicting the Gods as ideal, perfect humanoids though, so fish man Poseidon would be right the hell out

[Gaius]

They did seem to be consistent with depicting the Gods as ideal, perfect humanoids though, so fish man Poseidon would be right the hell out

Fair enough, lol. I go back and forth on that Poseidon design myself on whether I dig it or hate it.

[SiegePerilous02]

Fair enough, lol. I go back and forth on that Poseidon design myself on whether I dig it or hate it.

I pretty much always dig it, but I think it'd work better if it was form he occasionally adopted, not his default look

[Vordan]

Holy **** that poll is perfect. The two most popular options are loving or hating it. I bought the omnibus guys and it’s currently the only WW omnibus I own, I hope you can forgive me. I want to buy a Rucka Rebirth Omnibus but DC is insanely slow at putting out omnis. Hickman is already getting an omnibus for his X-Men, why does DC drag their feet on this?

[I'm a Fish]

Holy **** that poll is perfect. The two most popular options are loving or hating it. I bought the omnibus guys and it’s currently the only WW omnibus I own, I hope you can forgive me. I want to buy a Rucka Rebirth Omnibus but DC is insanely slow at putting out omnis. Hickman is already getting an omnibus for his X-Men, why does DC drag their feet on this?

One would think they would have shot out the Omnibus of Rucka's run the moment it finished to ride the popularity of the WW movie.

Even with WW84, the Omnibus would still have made sense since it has Cheetah's origin as well. Hell, the bonus features from the freaking movie use panels from the run as reference. DC what is your marketing team doing...

[Gaius]

Holy **** that poll is perfect. The two most popular options are loving or hating it. I bought the omnibus guys and it’s currently the only WW omnibus I own, I hope you can forgive me. I want to buy a Rucka Rebirth Omnibus but DC is insanely slow at putting out omnis. Hickman is already getting an omnibus for his X-Men, why does DC drag their feet on this?

Y'all got omnibuses for at least Perez, Jimenez, and Simone. No one to blame but yourself, my friend

[SiegePerilous02]

One would think they would have shot out the Omnibus of Rucka's run the moment it finished to ride the popularity of the WW movie.

Even with WW84, the Omnibus would still have made sense since it has Cheetah's origin as well. Hell, the bonus features from the freaking movie use panels from the run as reference. DC what is your marketing team doing...

Wish it could have made it into the movie lol.

More I think of it, the more I wish they ditched the 84 setting and even Steve coming back and just do a Diana, Barbara and Veronica Cale movie. With Cheetah and Circe in WW3

[I'm a Fish]

Wish it could have made it into the movie lol.

More I think of it, the more I wish they ditched the 84 setting and even Steve coming back and just do a Diana, Barbara and Veronica Cale movie. With Cheetah and Circe in WW3

At this point, I've made my peace with the dissections made in with WW84 whether I agree with all of them or not. It still blows my mind Cheetah got to be in a live action movie, and I like the version we got in the movie, even if Rebirth Barbara is my favorite (does anyone else read her with Claudia Black's voice? Lol.)