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

[JaggedFel]

Its hard to rate this run from me. From the broad perspetive I liked it, fresh take, new ideas, and good storytelling but when I look at individual details I hate it. I dont like her being Zeus's daughter, goddesses being her enemies, Amazons getting written out early, them being a bunch of murderous rapers, or them being so low tech, I dont like the new designs for the gods besides Apollo even if he is jacking Sunspot. Dont mind the bracelets, liked the New Gods, liked the supporting cast especially her siblings.

[Mel Dyer]

Cliff Chiang and Brian Azzarello's New 52 Wonder Woman run ran for thirty-five agonizingly slow issues, with TWO additional specials: First Born and Secret Origins. Each issue was so light, in content (and that's being really kind), that, in first circulation, their run was one of the most torturously unsatisfying, of any comic, in my recent memory. Truly highway robbery, I'd say, considering how little story and art we got - like half a page, dedicated to Zola looking out of a window, doing nothing. It was like they were doing a Sunday newspaper comic strip, that came out TWICE, a month; seriously, the time-content ratio was that bad. Bloody awful...

Sound like my math is off? It isn't. The Cheetah origin, in WW #23.1, was SO bad, confusing and anti-climactic, I'm not even counting it, as something worthy of a trade. It was horrible, but, Azzarello and Chiang had nothing to do, with it...didn't write or draw it.

The Chiazzarello issues were reprinted, in six trades, - six issues, a piece - with titles like Blood, War, Guts, etcetera. To be fair to us readers, I think it should have wrapped in about twenty-four, solidly entertaining issues, that reprinted in four trades - eight issues, per trade.

That said, I can say, without pause, that the New 52 issues were the most imaginative and transformative Wonder Woman comics, since George Perez's post-Crisis reboot, in the mid-80s. Wonder-52 was truly a game-changer.

[I'm a Fish]

This run was my first Wonder Woman comic ever. I was much more into Marvel in my early years, but with the New 52 relaunch I gave DC a try, and I was the New 52's target age demographic at the time, (though perhaps not target gender demographic) being in my early teens, so looking back on it now is quite fascinating to me.

I was naturally drawn to Wonder Woman because I was big into Greek mythology at that age and also the latest DC film I had seen was the 2009 Wonder Woman movie. So, with that being my only real inkling as to who Wonder Woman was and what her world was like, I was basically a blank slate. (I didn't watch much of the JL cartoon, I didn't know any of the comic drama either.)

I wasn't bothered by the heavy focus on Greek Mythology, the characterization of the Amazons, Diana becoming Zeus's kid, or lack of old school villains. I even remember thinking the First Born was a cool villain, in both design and execution. I thought Diana becoming the god of war was cool (it was my God of War video game phase...) but they never did anything with it which annoyed me, greatly. In the long run it was probably for the best though. I also read the collections at Barns & Nobel's, not the individual copies, so the pacing didn't bother me.

After the run was said and done though, I basically dropped the series. I didn't read much of the run after or much of DC comics in general, I actually went back and read The New Teen Titans, not even the New 52 Teen Titans run. But yeah, I was done with Wonder Woman after that.

And then Rebirth came and blew my socks off. I liked it so much, I actually went back and read Perez's run (and even some golden age) while I was waiting for the next Rebirth issues to come out.
I learned Wonder Woman had all these cool villains. I, like the general population, only knew of Cheetah, Ares and Giganta (I actually didn't know of Circe as a Wonder Woman villain if you can believe it).
I liked Diana's supporting cast a lot more.
I didn't care that Azzarello's run got sort-of retconed out of existence, despite that being a run I enjoyed.

So yeah, Azzarello's Wonder Woman was my first comic introduction to the character and I had no qualms with it the first time I read it. I even liked a lot of it. So judging it completely by itself, with no prior knowledge of anything Wonder Woman, I think it's good. (Also great art).

But knowing what came before, I see why it upset people, and the run itself is mostly unreadable to me now. It has none of the characters I like, save for Wonder Woman herself (at times), Strife, and some of Wonder Woman's siblings (Hera could be fun too sometimes). The plot itself is so rooted into Greek Mythology, it's actually quite predictable when you know Greek Mythology. And in the long run, much of it is forgettable, since the plot does move so slow. The most memorable event that happened to Wonder Woman in the run was becoming the god of war.

[DisneyBoy]

I also read the collections at Barns & Nobel's, not the individual copies, so the pacing didn't bother me.

I'm sure your lack of purchase bothered them, though LOL.

[Gaius]

I came in though through Rebirth, though I lurked in the comics community for years so I was aware of the whole stuff around Azz's WW. I'm fairly hot and cold on this run, the overarching story isn't a bad one and Diana isn't wholly far removed from how I traditionally see her. I also think First Born had potential for an interesting villain conceptually and think under maybe a revamp he could be pretty cool.

But the portrayal of the Amazons goes too much against their entire point in WW's mythos imo and I've really, really come to hate the "daddy Zeus" status quo so like with Max Lord meaning I'll never read the Justice League International series, the Zeus thing sticking around is a huge asterisk mark on the entire run for me.

I've always been 50/50 on the Gods designs here. Some are aces (Strife, Hera, Hades, Apollo) while others I thought I were just to weird or just bad imo (Poseidon, Hermes). Others like Ares I'll always prefer their Perez design.

[OBrianTallent]

The Azzerello/Chang run, to me, was everything Wonder Woman is not and should not be. As has been said above that it ran for 35 issues was agonizing (although I must say what came next was infinitely worse.) Likewise, as it's been debated to no end, Diana being the daughter of Zeus is just ridiculous. I hated much of the designs of the gods with Posiedons being the most ridiculous. Then we have the Amazon's themselves....dear sweet mercy.
What it all boiled down to me was Azzerello wrote his dream job...Xena, Warrior Princess, it just had a different name slapped on the cover. It was not Wonder Woman.

[Samm]

The Azzerello/Chang run, to me, was everything Wonder Woman is not and should not be. As has been said above that it ran for 35 issues was agonizing (although I must say what came next was infinitely worse.) Likewise, as it's been debated to no end, Diana being the daughter of Zeus is just ridiculous. I hated much of the designs of the gods with Posiedons being the most ridiculous. Then we have the Amazon's themselves....dear sweet mercy.
What it all boiled down to me was Azzerello wrote his dream job...Xena, Warrior Princess, it just had a different name slapped on the cover. It was not Wonder Woman.

I disagree. With the exception of the Amazons, this is the best run Wonder Woman has ever had and likely the most unique. Most of her other runs are outright forgettable but this one is not

[Gaius]

I disagree. With the exception of the Amazons, this is the best run Wonder Woman has ever had and likely the most unique. Most of her other runs are outright forgettable but this one is not

Poor decisions like making Diana have a father and said father be a massive rapist are indeed unique, yes.

[rayray1127]

I will start by saying that, as a whole, I think Azzerello's take on Diana and her mythos was a HUGE step backward.

That said, I did like a FEW things about it. What I liked was;

Diana was, for the most part, very much as she had been, personality wise.

I liked Sirraca

Chiang's art

And

I liked that Diana pretty much existed in her own world, with little to do with other DC characters.

And that's it.

I pretty much disliked EVRYTHING else, but here are the main things;

Zeus-daddy is for the birds

Amazonian sex raids/man hating

Blonde lobster Hippoyta

The red, black (or dark blue), and silver color scheme of Diana's outfit

Most of the god's designs

Ares as mentor/trainer

Ridiculous story pacing (it seemed to me that Azz found out the LEAST amount of words he could write and still call it an "issue" and stuck to that throughout)

The First Born was just bad from the get-go. A nothing character that was invented purely to give Diana some hyper-masculine "bad-ass" to punch.



All in all, even after re-reading it several times, I can't help but put it in the same category as kung-fu Diana and romance comic Diana as a truly LOW point in her 80 years. And the fact that Zeus-daddy is still a thing is very sad, and I hope an editor comes onboard someday that mandates that be stricken from her origin.

[John Venus]

If you just colour her hair blonde and call her Cassie Sandsmark then nobody would have been offended by this take on WW.

[WonderLight789]

I disagree. With the exception of the Amazons, this is the best run Wonder Woman has ever had and likely the most unique. Most of her other runs are outright forgettable but this one is not

I'm pretty sure that pre 52 WW has concepts more unique than basically turning her origin into a female Hercules, and making amazons rapists and men haters. Like so many stereotypical portrayals about all women societies in fiction. In fact. Classic WW is still very unique and controversial in many aspects. Which is why the writers like azzarello go out of their way to make her character ''safer'' for them to write. And for some delicate straight men to read.

[OBrianTallent]

If you just colour her hair blonde and call her Cassie Sandsmark then nobody would have been offended by this take on WW.

And that's the major problem. If you can replace the main character and it still read fine (or better) you have failed in writing your story.

[WonderLight789]

And that's the major problem. If you can replace the main character and it still read fine (or better) you have failed in writing your story.

And that is because they didn't know much about WW lore and didn't care. Changing her origin and the origin of the amazons. They basically wrote a comic where you can replace WW with any other greek mythology inspired character and nothing would change. I mean, cliff chang himself suggested WW was not good before their run. By suggesting WW was perfect and did not make mistakes in previous version. Saying that is not interesting. And acting like having a father also made her ''relatable'' For me their run was a slow boring mess. Nothing relatable about it. So to each their own i guess. I don't see how they made WW better.

[hairys]

If it were an elseworlds story, it'd be at least a 7/10, as it was for the most part a good self-contained story.

But yeah, since it was intended to be canon, the changes made were not good, even if Diana herself was characterized decently.

[Dr. Poison]

If it were an elseworlds story, it'd be at least a 7/10, as it was for the most part a good self-contained story.

But yeah, since it was intended to be canon, the changes made were not good, even if Diana herself was characterized decently.

I think it would have made a good story for the Earth 3 Superwoman or the Justice Lords version of Wonder Woman. Azzarello's Olympians and Amazons seem a better fit for those worlds instead of the main DCU Earth.