Dear DC, Please Publish More Wonder Woman Comics Like This One

So the other day I was going through the July DC Comics solicitations for work, when I noticed that they're publishing an honest to goodness Wonder Woman comic for little girls that month: DC Comics Presents: Wonder Woman Adventures #1.

I couldn't help but comment on how this is pretty great...But it's also kind of strange.

This is a reprint containing four issues of the late '90s series Adventures in the DC Universe, which was an oddball little series. It launched in 1997 shortly after "Superman: The Animated Series" and its comic tie-in started expanding Bruce Timm's "Batman: The Animated Series" setup onscreen and off. But with no TV precedent set for a lot of the DC heroes, Adventures in the DC Universe ended up being a weird DCAU/DCU mash-up. When someone from the Batman or Superman shows appeared up in the series, they'd be consistent with their onscreen appearances. When anyone else showed up, they'd be consistent with whatever was going on in the DC Comics of the day.

This made for a few head-scratcher stories, such as issue #16 (which I have in my apartment somewhere) where Green Lantern Kyle Rayner and Green Arrow Connor Hawke starred in a kid-friendly spiritual sequel to Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams' iconic "Speedy Does Heroin" story.

Luckily, Wonder Woman wasn't in one of her leather jacket phases then. So the comics being reprinted in July star pretty much the classic Wonder Woman – the character that also appears on any number of t-shirts, coffee mugs and Halloween costumes sold by Warner Bros. Consumer Products every year.

Now, when I first saw this book I had to put on my Graeme McMillan speculation hat and wonder exactly who greenlit this series and whether or not DC sees it as a way to test the waters on more WW material for girls. I really doubt that, because you figure they would have promoted this SOMEWHERE if its sales performance would at all impact future publishing launches. But wishful thinking has me hoping someone at DC is talking about doing this...because it would be SO radical if they actually did.

Pound for pound, "A Wonder Woman comic you can give to a little girl" is the #1 thing I hear from retailers/parents/comic readers-in-general when discussing obvious comic projects they'd like see. It is just such a basic "They should be doing this" observation. And I'm not one of those people who likes to go around the internet looking at daydream pitches for comics starring teen reporter Lois Lane or manga-esque Wonder Woman saying, "I'd buy that and it would do really well." Because I'm not sure I would, and I AM sure that those comics wouldn't sell huge numbers at launch. But you've got to think SOMEONE would buy a kid-friendly Wonder Woman comic at some point along the distribution/platform chain.

I mean, okay, posting the above picture of a totally adorable little girl in a Wonder Woman costume standing in front of a totally gross picture of Catwoman on all fours licking up milk is a cheap tug to the heartstrings on this issue. I know it is. And I don't want to make this a blog post decrying things like the New 52 Wonder Woman series or DC's Wonder Woman output in general. I've only read a few issues of the latest book, and I think that taking the gore of Greek myth and twisting it into the WW mythos with an eye towards horror is a perfectly valid direction for the character. It might be fun, I don't know!

But for real, that photo illustrates a valid point at the same time. Wonder Woman is used to sell products to little girls – often via their moms and grandmas who grew up on a kid-friendlier set of comic books and the TV show. And the comics that get put out are never consistent with that image. I don't make an absolute or moral judgement on that. I think there can be room for all sorts of Wonder Woman comics, and I'm happy to have DC continue to make them for fans of the "serious" superhero universe that comprises its main line. I just don't think that kind of product and a kids product are mutually exclusive concepts.

Speaking from personal experience, I know that my sister-in-law has literally dozens of Wonder Woman products around the house for herself and some for my niece LuLu as well. But not one of those products is a comic book. And LuLu LOVES comics! She goes to bed every night reading my brother's old Garfield collections, she devours Archie Digests, and this weekend she flipped when I brought here a stack of FCBD books including Peanuts, Tinkerbell, Yo Gabba Gabba! and The Simpsons. But until July comes, I'll have no Wonder Woman comics to give her, no matter how happy that would make her and her mom. The reason is simply because there's been almost no basic kid-friendly WW material created since the early 1980s.

In fact, the whole DC Comics Presents format was created to collect material that isn't substantial enough by volume to justify a full trade. And what that means is that DC doesn't actually have enough Wonder Woman material suitable for little girls that they can put out a trade collection. Actually, even the four issues in the upcoming reprint aren't ALL Wonder Woman stories. One is the series debut, which focused on the whole Justice League, and amongst the stories reprinted is a short Batman Vs. Poison Ivy piece. That makes for less than three single comic books starring Wonder Woman. Compare that to the fact that since DC started doing kid-friendly superhero books in the early '90s, they've published hundreds of Batman comics, hundreds of Teen Titans comics, over 100 Superman comics and over 100 Justice League comics.

While that's a little depressing in its own right, it also makes it harder for DC to place Wonder Woman as a character in the kid-friendly initiatives they've already got going. For example, recently the kids book publisher Capstone Press, whose Stone Arch imprint did a fine job teaming with Art Baltazar on a series of DC Pets chapter books, signed a deal to release library bound collections of DC kids comics for educational and mass market distribution. And as you can see from that link, all the 100+ issue franchises I mentioned above have entries in Capstone's launch scheme. Wonder Woman doesn't.

But all hope is not lost!! Like I said, I think DC publishing even this one mini collection is a very positive step and something we should give them a collective internet high five for. And even though there are scarcely any more Wonder Woman comics from recent years to represent (ignoring the question of new books for little girls), I think there are just enough issues around for them to do another collection like the one shipping in July. If you take the comics from the Justice League Unlimited series (which I remember Adam Beechen doing a fine job on back in the day) that focus on Wonder Woman in total, you'd have the promising-looking issue above as well as this one with Deadman, this one with the Royal Flush Gang and this one with DC's Western heroes. That's not quite as strong a start as Wonder Woman meeting Catwoman or Supergirl, but I think it's enough to make for a DC Comics Presents: Wonder Woman Adventures #2.

And hey, two issues of DC Comics Presents: Wonder Woman Adventures is practically the same thing as two Capstone Wonder Woman library collections. See what I just did there? Sure, it wouldn't mean that hundreds of thousands of little girls would suddenly know the joy of having their own awesome superhero comics to go with their Halloween costume, but it would at least ensure the character had the same chance of finding some readers in a market where the big boys of the DCU already have a head start.

After that, who knows? I know that the DC kids comics are at least 80% based on current animated series, so asking for an ongoing Wonder Woman comic out of the blue is a stretch. But if the publisher wants a shot at reaching the same little girls whose nerdy parents make them clothes out of this kind of fabric, they've got to have more material suitable for that age group to play with. It has to start somewhere. Maybe it'll start in July.

Leather Fetish

I’m currently in the process on working on a fairly epic series with Marvel.com video whiz Rich “The Dragon” Herrera that should hopefully be up in the next couple weeks on the site in time for the 600th issue of Fantastic Four. Without giving away the game, we’ve got about three hours or so of footage interviewing Tom Brevoort about the history of the FF from start to finish with plenty of anecdotes and neat facts along the way. It was basically like taking a master class in Marvel from a gent very qualified teach it and one of the cooler experiences I’ve had in a very cool career.

One of my favorite bits from the whole thing, oddly enough, was when we got to the 90’s and Tom spent a substantial spot of time talking about the period where the Fantastic Four got leather jackets and specifically that The Human Torch had a leather jacket (“Was he cold? He’s on fire!”). Tom of course acknowledged that the folks working on the book at the time, Tom DeFalco and Paul Ryan, were just going with the general trend in the industry at the time, but as those were the comics coming out when I was a kid and I was part of the audience who more or less said “we would like to see The Human Torch in a leather jacket,” it got me thinking (again).

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again (right now, in fact): If you wanted your comic book character to look cool in the 90’s, you gave them a leather jacket with option of earring, ponytail and possible razor stubble. But did “looking cool” actually translate to “being cool”? Heck, did it even look cool? Let’s examine…

FANTASTIC FOUR
Y’know, from a functional standpoint (if not a fashion one), leather jackets really aren’t that out of place on the Fantastic Four. After all, they’re more explorers than super heroes at heart, so it does make a degree of sense they’d want plenty of pockets to carry around gear for wherever they’re headed and whatever they’ll encounter so they can always be prepared (and also stay warm, I suppose). Although Tom is right that a jacket offers very little use to the Torch, since he’s got built in weaponry and it would take excess time to treat anything he’s going to be carrying around or picking up in asbestos or whatever. And The Thing would never actually use anything but his fists so long as those are handy, plus he’ll tear through those suckers frequently enough to make the Hulk’s purple pants budget look frugal. And a jacket would actually hinder The Invisible Woman since at least part of her power hinges on not being noticed, which becomes more difficult with something making noise, causing wind resistance, etc. Ok, so maybe Mister Fantastic could wear a leather jacket from a functional standpoint.

WONDER WOMAN
Covered this recently, but the answer is no, Wonder Woman should not wear a leather jacket (in my opinion). Her gear is more than just a costume, it’s a uniform; the honor guard of a proud people symbolizing their greatest champion yada yada yada. You can alter it slightly (as has been done currently), but in story there’s a certain level of prestige and heritage that’s integral to Diana’s character, while on a real world level Wonder Woman has one the most recognizable costumes in comics and you shouldn’t be covering that up with a leather jacket (or bike shorts). To be fair, there was a very valid story reason why she wore what she wore—she wasn’t Wonder Woman anymore so keeping the garb would be disrespectful to her mother and her people—plus it was only ever designed to be a short term gig, but Diana should never be a slave to fashion trends.

THE X-MEN
X-Men and leather go together like peanut butter and jelly; it’s a beautiful and symbiotic relationship. In the 80’s, you had Mohawk Storm’s gear, in the 90’s you had the brown jackets that carried over from the comics to the animated series, and this century you had the black and yellow (and white) gear Frank Quitely introduced. It’s my belief that the reason the X-Men floundered commercially in the 60’s and early 70’s was not due to lack of Wolverine, but because they were hung up on spandex. Also, Gambit would probably curl up in the fetal position and weep if you took his duster away from him, and that’s a story nobody wants to see (unless Mike Carey has a really good angle on it, maybe).

SUPERBOY
A thousand times yes. That Superboy to this day is not sporting a leather jacket, an earring, John Lennon sunglasses and a fade cut is a crime against fashion. And since he was supposed to be not that much older than me when he was introduced, it made total sense he would emulate the same looks I did (particularly when his genetic role model had a mullet). I only wish his aesthetic dynamic had stopped aging along with his physical body.

THE AVENGERS
No.

THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES
There are aspects of the Five Years Later run of Legion of Super-Heroes that I enjoy, but on the whole, making the best bright and shiny future in comics into the typical dystopian fare was a misstep. It felt wrong all the way to the way the characters dressed, since colorful attire with potent symbolism was central to the “carrying on for the greatest heroes ever” Legion conceit while the drab gear the FYL crew wore signaled how out of place they were. Only Ultra Boy and Timber Wolf are street enough to rock leather jackets (Karate Kid could if he wanted to, but he would never want to).

CAPTAIN AMERICA
What I said about Wonder Woman, probably magnified. Cap is literally draped in the American flag; play that all out, or don’t play it at all. Covering up the symbol he’s proud/brazen enough to wear in that manner is not Steve Rogers at all. He’s also all about grace and agility, so all that extra weight is no good (again, there was a reasonable story reason, and the character was actually against the change, but it was still not so hot).

NIGHTWING
Actually never wore a leather jacket, but he made a disco collar and mullet reasonably cool well past their respective expiration dates, so if anybody is gonna bring it back, Dick Grayson is the man. Also: pixie boots.

First Impressions (and more): Wonder Woman

My first memory of Wonder Woman (as a comic book fan—blah blah blah usual disclaimer about how I saw her on Super Friends and lunchboxes as a kid) is her wearing a baseball cap and serving tacos at a fast food joint. I’m referring to the Brian Bolland cover pictured above to Wonder Woman #73, an issue set in the midst of William Messner-Loebs’ mid-90’s run with the character.

I didn’t read Wonder Woman growing up so my exposure came solely from DC house ads and seeing the covers, which more often than not featured her doing stuff I’d more expect out of Batman like fighting the mob or posing for sight gags like the aforementioned waitressing gig or having a delicious pasta dinner with Flash.

As a reader (rather than a cover viewer), I made Wonder Woman’s acquaintance when she became leader of the Justice League following the death of Superman. Now this was a ways before I understood what “pre-Crisis” and “post-Crisis” meant, so the concept that Wonder Woman wasn’t part of the Justice League already and further that her joining was a big deal first time thing baffled me a bit, but I rolled with it. More puzzling to me, I suppose, was how she come off almost as a bit of a wallflower with super strength. Fun Bolland covers aside, my abstract concept of Wonder Woman was still that she was a bad ass—she was an Amazon warrior after all—yet to my mind she was written in Justice League America as a figure whose name and reputation intimidated those around her, but she would then win them over with how down to Earth she was, which was a perfectly valid characterization, but seemed still off to me. I wanted to see her punching Guy Gardner in the face like Batman did, showing him there were women who could stand up to him physically as well as verbally, but instead she tended to reason with him.

Not long after this, Wonder Woman had her Death of Superman/Knightfall/Emerald Twilight prerequisite mid-90’s DC shakeup storyline wherein she was replaced in her role by a redhead named Artemis and took to just calling herself Diana and sporting a leather jacket and biker shorts as her look. I read the stories years later, and as is generally the case with Messner-Loebs (along with a young Mike Deodato) it was solid stuff, but again, at the time it was strange to me how there seemed to be this trending pattern toward making Wonder Woman/Diana “just one of the gang,” and humanizing her whether through comedy, fast food jobs, complacency on a team or losing her status; even at that age, I held the opinion—even if I couldn’t articulate it yet—that Marvel characters fit the “feet of clay” mold better while DC heroes were cool when they were aspirational, so humanizing Wonder Woman didn’t really work for me personally.

Apparently, somebody at DC in the late 90’s thought teenage me was right on, as the next era of Wonder Woman—which coincided with my getting out of comics temporarily, so I didn’t witness it first hand—brought her back in the direction of being a formidable and imposing figure who commanded respect through words as well as actions, both in her solo title under the reins of John Byrne and particularly as Grant Morrison penned her in JLA. Morrison’s Diana was certainly more along the lines of what I always expected, with her being an advocate for peace, but also somebody who understood it may take a smidgen of aggression to get there, at least in the short term. I dug how Wonder Woman fit into the team dynamic, with Superman and Martian Manhunter as her buddies, holding even Batman’s respect, flirting with Aquaman and then reducing Flash and Green Lantern to nervous man-children with her beauty/brassiness combo (Mark Waid was pretty great at writing that last one as well).

I finally jumped into the Wonder Woman well as far as her solo title when my good friend (not then, but now) Phil Jimenez was serving as both writer and artist. I’m a little nervous about using hyperbole here, particularly since I’m talking about a pal, but honestly, Phil’s Diana was the one I’d been waiting for.

Initially I picked Phil’s Wonder Woman up for the art—I’d been a fan since he did Robin fill-ins for Tom Grummett when I was a kid—but I stayed for an endearing take on a character I’d always been flummoxed by in regard to where her following came from. Ok, first off, the art was gorgeous, but I’ve talked about that before. What worked for me was that Phil was able to make Diana the fierce warrior I’d read about in JLA but also give her the softer side I’d always understood she was meant to have without having her roll over when challenged by her friends and teammates or depowering her. The key as I saw it and see was that where past creators had tried to make Wonder Woman more relatable in some way by “humanizing” her and attempted to bring her closer to somebody we felt like we knew, Phil made her empathetic by playing up that while the world may see her as a goddess, this can often make her feel more apart than embraced.

(This is about when I’ll get an e-mail from Phil explaining who this isn’t what he was going for but he can totally see where I’m coming from because he’s the nicest, most charitable person in comics)

She appreciated and loved the people who stood in awe of her, but felt a sad distance from the friends who had grown old while she remained young, the supposed peers who got weak-kneed around her, and the family she had reluctantly put at a distance so she could do her work. Phil’s Wonder Woman was powerful, regal and graceful, but she also had a loneliness in her eyes that made me feel like I knew her more than wearing a baseball hat ever would. This was a woman who could stare Lex Luthor in the eyes and not be intimidated, but didn’t know how to ask a normal man out on a date and was devastated when he said no (both scenes and several other terribly insightful ones occur in Wonder Woman #170, an issue narrated by Lois Lane who follows Diana around for a day and jots down observations, many of which I’ve cribbed for this article; I consider this essential reading for anybody who wants to tackle the character).

I would later read George Perez’s late 80’s reimagining of Wonder Woman—which came directly before the Messner-Loebs run—and see where Phil got a lot of his inspiration from. Perez brings Diana to Man’s World for the first time and grounds his story in her journey of discovery and her relationships with ordinary people. She is very much the foreign exchange student who is fascinated by everything around her and makes mistakes because she doesn’t understand, but she’s also still definitely Wonder Woman, able to stand up inspirationally to any challenge through strength and wits; just because she may be naïve doesn’t mean she’s not plenty clever. It was certainly a far cry from the Wonder Woman I remembered playing second fiddle to Captain Atom in my Justice League comics.

When Allan Heinberg launched a new Wonder Woman series back in 2006, I did a retrospective piece on the character speaking with him, Phil, Greg Rucka and others who had worked on her. It was an article about what was upcoming and what made Diana tick, but inevitably a lot of the familiar questions about her relative lack of commercial success against Superman and Batman came up. I explored the gender issue—character and fanbase—as well as the lack of a “Dark Knight Returns” (i.e. classic pivotal story), but also examined the other side of the coin: when Wonder Woman was a success. Two points came up specifically: Wonder Woman was a hugely popular character in the Golden Age, specifically during World War II, and that the Lynda Carter TV series remains a fondly remembered and cherished piece of Americana. While the character has been around over 70 years and had some great stories (and not so great stories) along the way, my conclusion was that her prominent place in the public consciousness came from images ingrained by those earliest tales and her multimedia portrayals in animation and live action TV shows.

I’m no expert on Wonder Woman, I’m just a guy who can kill an evening rambling 1500 words about her while waiting for the new episode of Happy Endings. But the take away I got from that article and really all my experiences reading the character is this: On Wonder Woman either go big or go home (coincidentally enough, a patented Phil Jimenez expression). She succeeded in the 40’s because perhaps even more so than Captain America she was over-the-top American propaganda, but also plain fun. She succeeded on TV because Lynda Carter embraced the role quirks and all. I love the work Perez, Jimenez, Morrison and others did because they enjoyed the fact that they were writing an Amazon princess who had a magic lasso and fought Greek gods; they didn’t feel like they needed to ground her in mundane trappings so readers wouldn’t be intimidated.

I’ve said it before, but it applies double to Wonder Woman: You don’t want to relate to every comic book character, sometimes you just want to read about them having crazy adventures. I’d much rather watch Wonder Woman hanging out with centaurs and fighting Joker with snake hair than serving fast food in a leather jacket.

My Five Favorite Wonder Woman Artists

Back during my Wizard days, somewhere in the neighborhood of 2006, I got assigned—or pitched, I can’t remember—a piece on Wonder Woman, a character I didn’t know all that much about aside from what everybody knows. The article was examining why a property as universally known as Wonder Woman had trouble sustaining the commercial success of contemporaries like Superman and Batman or even the burgeoning Green Lantern. I recall not being entirely happy with the finished product mainly because I found it to be a huge topic and couldn’t condense it into the space allotted, but I really enjoyed working on it because I got to chat with intelligent folks like Phil Jimenez, Greg Rucka and Allan Heinberg to get insight into the subject and learned a lot.

(NOTE: You can have a good conversation with Phil Jimenez about pretty much anything, but ask him about Wonder Woman and prepare to have your mind blown—also don’t plan to get anything else done that day)

The ultimate conclusion I reached on the question posed was that in many ways Wonder Woman had peaked early. More than any other character created in the 1940’s—including Captain America—she was very much of the era in terms of being designed with a specific purpose and thriving in a particular environment. There have been many great Wonder Woman stories told in print as well as through other mediums; in particular the classic Lynda Carter television series, but it was interesting to find how fondly remembered her Golden Age stories were by true fans of the character. With most properties, you find the 30’s and 40’s were a formative period but not so technically proficient; the original Wonder Woman stories have an undeniable energy to them and it also happened to be when the character achieved her greatest commercial success.

Basically, Wonder Woman got a reputation for being an equal point of DC’s “big three” triangle out of the gate and has been struggling to justify it ever since without the timelessness Superman and Batman seem to enjoy.

However, as I said, there are a lot of good Wonder Woman stories out there. In researching that article, I got to read quite a few. What I came to appreciate even more than the writing though was how challenging it must be for an artist to approach this icon and how impressive it is when they succeed. Created to be the female role model girls were lacking, Wonder Woman is the embodiment of feminism, but she’s also a beautiful woman in a form the idealizes—and often exaggerates—the female form. For an artist to walk the line between archetype and sex appeal with this character is an achievement that demands recognition.

Honorable Mention

HARRY G. PETER
The man who started it all deserves to be credited for a great design.

ADAM HUGHES
The most prolific Wonder Woman cover artist I can think of, and more or less defines the character for many, but I want to see interiors.

J.G. JONES
He can depict her as a beauty, as a fighter, and as a horror—see Final Crisis; one of the more versatile Wonder Woman artists for sure and he just misses the cut.

5. FRANK MILLER
Nobody draws Wonder Woman like Frank Miller. His bold choices when it comes to the costume or how he composes her face are undeniable. His Wonder Woman is not a lady you mess with. She’s got a primal energy that speaks to her status as a warrior princess. He’s number five only because I see too much of too many of his Sin City vixens in his take; if he had an extended run to make a mark on the character, he’d most likely be higher.

4. MIKE SEKOWSKY
As the designer of the bold “Mod Wonder Woman” redesign of the 1960’s, there’s no denying Mike Sekowsky has a major spot in the character’s visual history. Though I think it was definitely a good short term look rather than long term given the strength of the typical design, I look back at the “New Wonder Woman” as an era that featured very pretty art. Sekowsky had a knack for making something as simple as a white or black jumpsuit come alive through a strong use of basic shapes, dynamic inking and bold colors in the background to accentuate the figure. He drew great action sequences as well, really hurling Diana into the thick of it. Even before he took on Wonder Woman solo, Sekowsky spent years defining her look in Justice League of America and I would presume influenced many who came after.

3. DOUG MAHNKE
For a guy who made a lot of at least his early reputation on doing exaggerated extremes when it came to super heroes with The Mask, Major Bummer, etc., Doug Mahnke for my money draws a great Wonder Woman because he makes her look down to earth. When Mahnke was on JLA, I loved his mammoth Martian Manhunter and his ever-shifting Plastic Man, but I always thought the way he managed to make Diana look pretty in a relatable way as well as dangerous but not bloodthirsty was pretty neat. I dug the little things, like how he drew her with straight hair that matted down—as hair would when it’s fairly consistently drenched in sweat—as opposed to the wildly curly or silky smooth manes other artists give her. He gave her a nose that made her seem both unique and exotic; her eyes were a bit haunted. He was also able to balance her figure between sexy and sturdy; he used smooth, heavy lines to convey that this was a woman who had honed her body as a weapon, but possessed a more grounded strength as opposed to a bodybuilder’s physique. To describe Doug Mahnke’s Wonder Woman in a word, I’d go with “enchanting”—she’s a lady you admire from afar, but think twice before getting too close to.

2. PHIL JIMENEZ
I’ve encountered no bigger Wonder Woman fan than Phil Jimenez, and he brings the enthusiasm as well as the work ethic that comes with that distinction whenever he works on the character. He doesn’t draw every wisp of hair or every star on her costume because it’s his job, he does it because he loves it and he’s afraid to do her a disservice. During his run on Wonder Woman—notably as writer as well as artist—his Diana always seemed to tower over the rest of the cast—as she should—but as every bit the Amazon princess she is, not an awkward giant. He was—and is—excellent at framing the scene, her posture and her outline so as to emphasize her strength without detracting from her beauty. Phil doesn’t skimp when it comes to using as many lines as it takes to tell the story of the characters he’s drawing, but with Diana he also knew when to stop and let what he had on the page finish the job; he does a tremendous job of getting her face to “act,” whether it’s anguish over the loss of her mother, joy at the prospect of a new love, or rage en route to delivering an ass kicking. In his Wonder Woman stories—which are among my favorites—Phil seemed to delight in bringing in huge ensembles, be it dozens of Amazons or every female hero and villain in the DC Universe, but he never let the guests overwhelm his star; there was never a question that Diana was front and center and you believed she belonged alongside Superman and Batman. It was also Phil’s birthday yesterday—he only gets better with age!

1. GEORGE PEREZ
When I spoke at the beginning about the Wonder Woman stories I read while researching her that really made the character shine for me, I was talking about a few, but mainly George Perez’s run on her title. Rebooting her post-Crisis, Perez didn’t just make some costume tweaks or a change to the origin, he reinvented the entire world of Wonder Woman from the ground up. If you’ve followed George Perez’s work—and I have—you know among his many incredible qualities as an artist, perhaps nothing stands out so much as his unparalleled attention to detail. He will draw every piece of rubble in a fight scene; he will squeeze a hundred characters into a panel where most would put two. He brought this all-or-nothing approach to Wonder Woman as both writer and artist, mining every aspect of the character for story—warrior, teacher, ambassador, foreigner, daughter, hero—and sparing nothing when attacking her visually. His Diana was one who possessed statuesque and intimidating beauty, but a naive innocence in her eyes that made you trust her and want to protect the most powerful woman in the world. In battle, he made her formidable, with a grimace that you believed would scare a war god, but at peace he bestowed upon her a smile that said everything would be ok. My descriptions are lapsing into pretty sappy poetry here, but frankly that’s what Perez’s brilliance inspires in me as a fan. He also never settled to depict Wonder Woman in merely her iconic costume or to make a change and stick with it; he drew the heck out of the classic look and owned it, but he’d also create variation both subtle and bold as the occasion required, be it armor for war or a stately look for diplomacy. George Perez imbued every single character that appeared in his vast Wonder Woman cast with a singular energy and vitality, creating a diverse gallery of faces rather than an army of clones, but none shone brighter than Diana herself; nobody touches the master on this one.

My First Justice League

In the inaugural post of my new blog over at Marvel.com, I talked about being initially exposed as a comics reader (not as a video game player, toy buyer or general consumer of pop culture knowledge) to the X-Men in the backdoor manner of discovering them via the Kings of Pain crossover because I was buying New Warriors, and thus having the first roster I ever encountered consist of Legion, Madrox, Polaris and the rest of the Muir Island misfits who filled in while the real team was momentarily disbanded. I mused on how particularly as a kid the first impression you get of a comic book team is an odd thing and sticks with you even if you first “met” a short-lived and unremembered line-up, which certainly happened a lot in the 90’s.

Take the Justice League.

My actual first experience with the Justice League was as a very young kid when I would go to visit my friend Josiah and he had a big chest in his basement of probably around a hundred old comics he’d gotten from some older relative. They ran the gamut, but were mostly from the later Silver Age with a lot of DC’s, particularly lengthy runs of the Satellite Era Justice League of America. One of my first vivid comic book memories is reading the issue where the JLA fights Jonah Hex and a bunch of other time-displaced heroes who are being manipulated by The Lord of Time.

(Fun fact: It was also at Josiah’s house that I concocted my infamous homemade Flash costume which my mother took a picture of that she later blew up to a poster when I was 18 and has since made its way online if you look hard enough)

I didn’t become a serious comic book fan until the 90’s though, starting with Marvel, primarily New Warriors and the X-Men books. It was the Death of Superman that first got me curious about DC and it was via that storyline that I first came across a contemporary Justice League.

And they got their asses kicked in the first issue of their book I purchased.

Shortly before Superman got killed off, the guy who committed the deed—not Doomsday—writer/artist Dan Jurgens had just taken over Justice League America (“of” was not very 90’s, hence why Legion of Super-Heroes never saw the success it did in the prior decade). He brought Supes in as team leader—a big deal since in that post-Crisis On Infinite Earths/pre-Infinite Crisis period Superman had never been part of the League, his Silver Age stints retroactively wiped out—to a group that included then-mainstays Guy Gardner, Booster Gold, Blue Beetle, Fire and Ice, as well as reformed villain Maxima and supposedly all-new character Bloodwynd (spoiler alert: it was Martian Manhunter with amnesia and the most 90’s name this side of X-Treme).

A comic book neophyte, I had no exposure to the glory days of Justice League International and thus no clue why Guy, Booster, Beetle, Fire and Ice were on the team. I had no idea who Maxima and Bloodwynd were. Having read those old 70’s issues and just knowing the big DC heroes via cartoons and lunchboxes and whatnot, Superman was the only guy on the team who made any sense to me, yet he was treated like an odd fit and about to die anyhow.

As I mentioned, this team was not long for the DC Universe. They were served up as cannon fodder to Doomsday in order to demonstrate how badass he was (which as you might imagine didn’t work for me as I was totally unfamiliar with the characters and thus unimpressed that he whooped a guy in bug goggles and girl with green hair). Before all was said and done, Beetle was in a coma, Booster’s power-providing gear was shredded, Fire burned out her abilities and Ice got traumatized into retirement.

Just as soon as I had been introduced to the Justice League, they were shuffled off. The next issue, a new team debuted, led by Wonder Woman—who, remember, like Superman had never technically been in the League before, so this was a big deal—retaining Guy, Maxima and Bloodwynd, then adding Agent Liberty, Black Condor and The Ray. This configuration was also short-lived, with Liberty and Condor taking off after an arc and being replaced by the returning Beetle/Booster/Fire/Ice quartet as well as Captain Atom. As Zero Hour drew near, the Judgment Day crossover came and went, paving the way for consolidation of the various Leagues—there was a Justice League Europe/International as well plus a Task Force led by Martian Manhunter after the Bloodwynd thing ended—for the Gerard Jones era I wasn’t too high on and ended up jumping off of.

The funny thing is it didn’t drop my jaw when the first X-Men I saw was a guy with a Mohawk instead of Wolverine. Likewise it didn’t seem unusual that “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes” as far as Marvel was concerned were The Black Knight and Sersi when I started reading comics. I was aware of Marvel, sure, and that’s where I started as a fan, but I had residual sense of how things were “supposed to be” gleaned from cultural osmosis. If the comic I was reading told me that Scott Lang was Ant-Man and also kind of in the Fantastic Four, then I took that at face value, because it was all I knew.

It was different with DC. Whether it was the Batman TV show from the 60’s or Super Friends or coloring books or actions figures or just the old comics from Josiah’s basement, I had a pre-formed opinion of how the DC Universe was supposed to be, and when those Justice League stories didn’t deliver what I was expecting, I felt oddly betrayed. Not by the creators or company, but by the characters themselves. How dare Batman not have time to spend away from Gotham? What the heck were The Flash and Green Lantern doing hanging out in Europe? Did Aquaman seriously have conversations to hold with fish that were more important than fighting Despero?

When I returned to reading comics around 2000, Grant Morrison had brought the Big Seven back to the JLA and all seemed right with the world. Likewise, thanks to Kurt Busiek and George Perez’s work, I now understood that being an Avenger was a bigger deal than Crystal and Deathcry would have had me believe.

It’s somewhat ironic that the current Justice League line-up is closer to the one I grew up reading than the Satellite/Morrison team—and the New Avengers at least aren’t far off from the Bob Harras-penned team I followed in my youth in terms of relative A-listers—but now it seems far more like these quirky teams exist when a creator sees potential, not simply because the characters they really want are preoccupied.

In other words, Aquaman may have snubbed the Justice League 20 years ago because he was playing with his hook hand, but now James Robinson won’t return his calls! Eat it, Sea King!

5 Random Wonder Woman Pictures

So hey, everyone and their sister-in-law (or at least MY sister-in-law, who's a Wonder Woman nut) already heard about Wonder Woman getting a new costume and origin. For the basic facts of the change, you can check out my interview with writer J. Michael Straczynski, and for a great reaction round up check out Robot 6.

I actually didn't think I had much to say about Jim Lee's design or the story surrounding it beyond "it looks all right I guess for something that won't probably last more than two years" and "JMS defines hit or miss for me, so we'll see," but after seeing all the blog reactions and people Tweet-a-booking about it and whatnot, I figured I'd share some random Wonder Woman pics that have crept across my browser.

1. OK, despite what I said about not having any real problems with the new design, it really doesn't hold a candle to the Jamie McKelvie one Shaun Manning reminded me existed this morning:


Seriously, I would buy him drawing that character in that book in a heartbeat. I've never understood why more comic artists don't tap actual fashion sense when designing characters and costume choices. Remember back in the day when Ian Churchill did Cable and everything Nate wore was straight out of classy British fashion mags? That was rad.

2. Heidi MacDonald's post of Wonder Woman covers throughout the years covered a lot of ground including the recent run of cheesecake-tastic images by Adam Hughes, but how she could have missed Hughes' WW masterpiece is beyond me:


I was actually an intern at DC when this cover came in, and if I recall correctly, Hughes created the piece by drawing the old school H.G. Peter homage and then stuffing that art under his recliner cushion to be sat on for a few weeks until it was worn enough to look time-damaged and then he slotted the modern Diana in.

3. I haven't read Wonder Woman #600, the issue where the new costume debuts, just yet so maybe I'm off base here, but when I saw this preview page on DC's The Source blog featuring WW and a roundup of DC superheroines...


...I thought to myself, "Damn, is that really what a lineup of the company's best and brightest female superheroes looks like?" And then I realized that no, it isn't. I'm not sure why Gail Simone didn't include, say, Catwoman, Black Canary, Huntress, Power Girl, Fire, Ice, etc. in the story. There might be an actual reason for it once I read the whole damn thing. But as it is, a bunch of the Teen Titans and Birds of Prey supporting characters really isn't packing quite the Oompf it should for me, you know?

4. Is there ever a reason NOT to link to Kate Beaton's Wonder Woman?


I think not. Also: you should really read the full strip.

5. Finally, after reading this post, MY best guess as to why DC has changed the costume is to cast Helen Mirren in a Wonder Woman movie:


Think about it: she's been around since the 1940s, and she's got great cans.