How Much Hate Does The Perez Run Get?

[Agent Z]

While I've seen mostly positive reception from my research, it appears that there exist certain folks who detest the Perez run. If you do can you please explain why. I'm not here to pick a fight just trying to see where people are coming from.

[Dr. Poison]

I think the majority of people appreciated Perez's run but with anything in life, there will always be some that have a different opinion. I liked the majority of what Perez did with Wonder Woman's world with a few significant exceptions:


1.) Having Diana debut in Man's world much later than Superman and Batman therefore being unable to help found the JLA.

2.) Aging Steve Trevor to the point where he could no longer be a romantic interest for Diana. If Perez didn't want to deal with Steve, he could have just not used him rather than mucking things up for Diana's romantic life until the New 52.

3.) Eliminating the Diana Prince ID. I think this is the underlying reason why Perez's Diana came off as stuffy and preachy to some. She really never experienced life as a normal human being without being a celebrity until Infinite Crisis/Alan Heinberg fixed all of this. She was Wonder Woman 24/7 and/or playing princess/ambassador.


Other than that, I thought Perez did a great job of blending the mythological and superhero aspects of Diana's world. He gave us great revamps of Ares, Cheetah, Silver Swan, Circe, and Dr. Psycho plus the art was 2nd to none when it comes to Wonder Woman.

[Mel Dyer]

I think it's what came after the Perez run that did the most damage.

The big development that came with the Perez run was that the heroine was an Amazon princess, who happened to be Wonder Woman, instead of the other way around. Keep in mind that, while Mr. Perez made her a doe-eyed foreign princess, he also gave her a new supporting cast of human beings and ended his run by moving her in with Doc Julia, ..in Man's World. He made a very earnest and timely attempt to grow her beyond that.

He also ripped Circe's soul out of her body and dropped her into a black hole.

Writers, who followed him, ignored the way Mr. Perez ended his run and kept her a princess, who was absolutely miserable being Wonder Woman and the messiah of her race. I got so sick of hearing her whine about what a terrible burden it was to be Wonder Woman.

[Agent Z]

I think the majority of people appreciated Perez's run but with anything in life, there will always be some that have a different opinion. I liked the majority of what Perez did with Wonder Woman's world with a few significant exceptions:


1.) Having Diana debut in Man's world much later than Superman and Batman therefore being unable to help found the JLA.

2.) Aging Steve Trevor to the point where he could no longer be a romantic interest for Diana. If Perez didn't want to deal with Steve, he could have just not used him rather than mucking things up for Diana's romantic life until the New 52.

3.) Eliminating the Diana Prince ID. I think this is the underlying reason why Perez's Diana came off as stuffy and preachy to some. She really never experienced life as a normal human being without being a celebrity until Infinite Crisis/Alan Heinberg fixed all of this. She was Wonder Woman 24/7 and/or playing princess/ambassador.


Other than that, I thought Perez did a great job of blending the mythological and superhero aspects of Diana's world. He gave us great revamps of Ares, Cheetah, Silver Swan, Circe, and Dr. Psycho plus the art was 2nd to none when it comes to Wonder Woman.

1) I can understand this, but I don't really see this as an issue. There are plenty of fan favorites within certain superhero teams who are associated with them despite not being original members (Storm and Wolverine being well known examples). That she was a member at all is not something to scoff at. Plus I felt it suited the outsider thing people were going with.

2) While I don't mind Steve Trevor, I don't think Perez was really under any obligation to push a romance between him and Diana. I would say that it was writers after her that made a mess of her love life (which can't that important to the character) by either creating bland love interests or going the lazy route of forming relationships/romantic tensions with other superheroes. Superhero writers have this weird aversion to the idea of a super powered woman settling down with a human male. One particularly controversial example is the revelation the Jen Walters (She-Hulk's) feeling for husband John Jameson was the result of emotional manipulation by Starfox.

3) This has often confused me. Yes secret IDs are a staple of the superhero genre, but I don't think they fit every hero. From Marvel I can list several characters (Luke Cage, Steve Rogers, FF, every single X-Men) who have got along fine without secret IDs for decades). Celebrities after all do not need such things to function in the real world. Nothing stopped Diana from interacting with ordinary folks when she felt the need to do so. Plus the disguise made her even more of a Superman rip off

[Dr. Poison]

1) I can understand this, but I don't really see this as an issue. There are plenty of fan favorites within certain superhero teams who are associated with them despite not being original members (Storm and Wolverine being well known examples). That she was a member at all is not something to scoff at. Plus I felt it suited the outsider thing people were going with.

2) While I don't mind Steve Trevor, I don't think Perez was really under any obligation to push a romance between him and Diana. I would say that it was writers after her that made a mess of her love life (which can't that important to the character) by either creating bland love interests or going the lazy route of forming relationships/romantic tensions with other superheroes. Superhero writers have this weird aversion to the idea of a super powered woman settling down with a human male. One particularly controversial example is the revelation the Jen Walters (She-Hulk's) feeling for husband John Jameson was the result of emotional manipulation by Starfox.

3) This has often confused me. Yes secret IDs are a staple of the superhero genre, but I don't think they fit every hero. From Marvel I can list several characters (Luke Cage, Steve Rogers, FF, every single X-Men) who have got along fine without secret IDs for decades). Celebrities after all do not need such things to function in the real world. Nothing stopped Diana from interacting with ordinary folks when she felt the need to do so. Plus the disguise made her even more of a Superman rip off

1.) The removal of Wonder Woman as a founder of the JLA was kind of a slap in the face to her credentials and her importance as a leader and a mother figure to all of the female heroes that came after her.

2.) I get that Perez wasn't interested in using Steve but he didn't have to ruin any prospects that future writers of Wonder Woman had with putting she and Steve together. Making Steve an older man was kind of selfish on Perez's part.

3.) I don't have a whole lot of interest in many heroes without secret identities. Their stories typically offer less variety and "real life" moments. I never saw Diana Prince as a Clark Kent rip-off. I'm guessing you feel this way because they both have dark hair and glasses? Those are very common traits, at least here in the United States.

[Vanguard-01]

None.

No hate. At all.

It was a fantastic run, and if DC had insisted that subsequent writers actually PLAY in the sandbox that Perez established, rather than tearing it down and building their own completely different sandboxes, Wonder Woman may very well have been in a much better state that may never have made DC feel the need for a new run.

[SeanT]

The problem with Perez is that he was the anti-Marston, removing everything that made the original unique, turning her into a generic warrior superwoman. It was like he was embarrassed by all that stuff-- the mythology of the bracelets, the Amazon training, the Amazon technology, the theme of self-improvement, the prevalence of love as her guiding principle.

Hippolyta fell in love with Hercules and Diana fell in love with Steve-- those were the pivotal moments in Diana's origin, and Perez did away with that. Diana originally was a grassroots character who helped people on an individual basis-- transforming the character of man-- and turned her in a political figure who ostensibly was trying to change policy to better mankind. The problem with the ambassadorship is that it was so boring both Perez and subsequent writers ignored it. She became boring and earnest, a hero who gave speeches instead of personally transforming people's lives.

He essentially created a problem that subsequent writers had to contend with, making tweaks in Crises events trying to return elements of her earlier self, until they finally wiped it all out and started over with Azzarello.

[Agent Z]

None.

No hate. At all.

It was a fantastic run, and if DC had insisted that subsequent writers actually PLAY in the sandbox that Perez established, rather than tearing it down and building their own completely different sandboxes, Wonder Woman may very well have been in a much better state that may never have made DC feel the need for a new run.

If what I hear is true, one of the reasons Rucka's run was so well received was because it built on the foundation Perez laid down. One poster, americanwonder, called Rucka's WW a grown up version of Perez take.