Originally Posted by
SiegePerilous02
Perez's run was great for its time, and still holds up very well today. But the ambassador role and the preachiness started here, and it only got worse as time went on. The convoluted explanations for the Amazon origins and the Diana Trevor stuff just made the story come to a screeching halt: origins are meant to be simple and quick, and there's a reason for that: they are the most boring part of the mythos, and getting them out of the way as efficiently as possible is for the best.
- His take on the Amazon society as a whole was a major step down, including the lack of bizarre sexual politics and sci-fi technology. However, he gave us the best cast of Amazon characters of any writer. Hippolyta came close to stealing the show from Diana on many occasions, and Philippus, Menalippe and Helene were all great, three dimensional characters as well. Ideally, I would love Perez's Amazon cast filtered through a Marston lens. Hopefully that will be what Morrison gives us.
- I liked many of his new Man's World characters, but hated what he did to Steve and Etta. I understand that the romance between Golden Age Diana and Steve wouldn't have worked for modern audiences, but it should have been re-tooled instead of cast aside altogether. Older Steve is just so boring, and has no purpose for being in the story. Etta, while thankfully much less of a parody of obesity, lost all of her personality. Steve and Etta getting married is also like Lois marrying Jimmy. On the plus side, Perez gave us a bunch of women of varying body types, ages, background and who all had careers and played significant roles in the plot. I wish Azzarello and many modern writers could take note.
- He made Diana too powerful. Without her being susceptible to the Lasso, the berserker rages and the weakness of having her bracelets welded together, in addition to the Gods just handing her all her powers at birth, everything just seemed to go swimmingly for Diana without any effort on her part. Making her a flying brick also doesn't benefit her or her mythos all that much: it was just done to make her equal to Superman when it wasn't really needed. The Gods should overpower her regardless of her strength level, and none of her classic rogues require her to be that powerful, so why bother?
- Speaking of the villains, Perez's revamp of them is one of the best aspects of his run. It was like they came straight out of a Vertigo title, and I wish he had the chance to bring back Giganta, Dr. Poison, Blue Snowman, Cyber and others before he left. With their power levels, it's unbelievable how subsequent writers treated them like jokes. However, changing the Cheetah's real name from Priscilla Rich to Dr. Barbara Minerva did the character more harm than good. None of the Bat-villains had their civilian names changed, so why is so much inconsistency allowed to occur with WW villains? Just keeping her as Dr. Priscilla Rich would have gone a long way to solving this problem, you could even keep the Urzkartaga and were-Cheetah mythos. See also: Helen Alexandros to Valerie Beaudry.