Wonder Woman reading list

[DHacker615]

It occurs to me that if I wanted, I could show someone the "story of Batman" with about twelve trades. Consider:

Batman: Year One
The Man Who Laughs
Batman: Long Halloween
Robin: Year One
Tales of the Demon
The Killing Joke
Son of the Demon
Batman: Hush
Batman & Son
A Death in the Family
The Dark Knight Returns
Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?


The continuity is not exactly perfect. For example, Jason Todd and Tim Drake get kind of clumped together. There are certain stories that you could add to flesh things out. However, that is a complete arc for Bruce Wayne.

So, my question is this: does Wonder Woman have anything comparable? Ignore pre-COIE and post-COIE. Can you list 12 WW stories that tell more or less the whole myth?

[Cardinal!]

Do 12 trades of Wondy even exist? Unfortunately, a lot of "the myth" remains uncollected, so I guess we'll stretch the truth and pretend a little here.

But I guess from what's available, you have:

Gods and Mortals
Challenge of the Gods
Her Sister's Keeper (or whatever it should be called, the story arc with Cheetah's origin and the discovery of the Banas)
Chained (the WML story with Diana in space)
The Contest
The Challenge of Artemis
Second Genesis
Transfiguration (collecting #120-127)
Sins of the Mother (#128-136)
Paradise Lost
Paradise Found
Down to Earth
Mission's End
JLA: A League of One

Rise of the Olympian?

[Leto]

Dude, Rucka's run. All of it.

[SJNeal]

Dude, Rucka's run. All of it.

Ditto.

I'd say the Perez trades, the Rucka trades and then Gail's "The Circle". As much as I liked Phil Jimenez' run, a lot has been retconned and therefore could be skipped if you're looking for a stack of trades to initiate a WW newbie...

[CaptainCanada]

Very little of Wonder Woman's publication history is traded. In terms of introducing new readers, there are the four Perez trades:

Gods and Mortals
Challenge of the Gods
Beauty and the Beasts
Destiny Calling

The first two and the fourth are extremely strong; the third is middling, but it advances the plot. The remaining 40ish issues of Perez's run remain uncollected.

The period from 1989 to the early 2000s has maybe three trades, but they're old/possibly out of print. The Contest from the Mesnner-Loebs period (the introduction of Artemis) would be the significant one (though the story itself isn't great).

Jiminez's run was about two-thirds collected, but the first one ([Paradise Lost) is out of print; Paradise Found still is, the remainder of his run never was. I don't know if there was a trade of Simonson's fill-in. Then there are the five trade of Greg Rucka's run (Down to Earth, Bitter Rivals, Eyes of the Gorgon, Land of the Dead, Mission's End), which I'd strongly recommend.

Perez and Rucka are the big ones there.