The new look of Wonder Woman- A sutle tip of the hat to John Byrne's design?

[PauloIapetus]

This have ocurred to me while reading this old comment in Newsgroups:

I've long thought that Byrne has fine sense of
clothing design -- he's the only artist who seems to be able to dress
Lois Lane in anything that does't look like it came from Value-Village
-- and I love the modifications he's done to Wonder Woman's uniform
such as: finally giving her cool gauntlets instead of jewelry on her
forearms, refining the mess of sparkles into two stylized stars,
removing the strip of red above her WW chest-plate that only Perez
could ever seem to remember to draw with any consistancy, and
punching-up the look of the entire uniform by drawing black hightlights
(blacklights?) in both the red and blue areas. I think its great that
Byrne has been able to update her look while retaining the integrity of
the character design. He's proven that Wonder Woman can look like a
90's heroine without having to resort to butt-thongs or leather bras.

Compare with the original rendition in Pérez's design



PS: of course the correct is a "subtle" tip of the hat!!! ;-P

[DisneyBoy]

I did also flashback to that look from the '90s, but I don't think it was an intentional homage. It's just easier to draw two stars, and avoid putting one on her...erm, most private of areas. And lets not forget the whole thing with the pants. Could have been pants!

[I-Ching]

The two stars instead of star spangled looks like Byrnes but he also drew a HUGE tiara and belt. This new costume is much more refined than his version.

[Wonder39]

I thought about Byrne's rendition too.... I never liked his version of the costume, though. He drew the tiara and bracelets HUGE (like, crazy huge!) and the lack of red over the chest symbol and only two stars was just laziness.... (did her start that nonsense or was it Ross?)

The emblem needs the red band along the bustline to frame it and make it more prominant, it helps to make her top not look like it's falling off (the gold sort of blends in with her skin color) plus everyone in design knows you work with odd numbers motifs-- using pairs of things is jarring in a design sense.... I mean, do three stars -- what's one more? lol

Matt

[PauloIapetus]

Cliff Chiang, certaintly, might have improved upon the model but,IMO, it's pretty clear that John Byrne has paved the way to the changes... Quite possibly, his redesign was also an influence to Xena that debuted in the same month and year?

But I think that she was already included in the previous season of Hercules ( in an episode aired in the first semester of that same year), wasn't she?

Probably, Byrne used the reference as a template to his revision of the characters's visual.

[MelDyer]

From Wonder Woman's cool, confident warrior attitude ..to the introduction of a short, scrappy sidekick (once Cassie, now Zola) ..to the massacre on Paradise Island, followed by the burning of funeral pyres on a dark beach ..to Diana's parting ways with the Amazons ..to the formation of a small, functional supporting cast, ..the Nu' Wonder Woman is feeling an awful lot like John Byrne's run on this comic...

Besides physically resembling Byrne's WW, Chiang's lanky Amazon princess is even wearing an updated version of the same costume - clunky bracers, shorts with two stars, big tiara, enlarged metallic emblem on chest. The similarities just lay there quietly in these new comics, because the Byrne run was awhile ago, ..then leap out at you, like a parade.

A lot of us forget that Jon Byrne, before things went terribly wrong, ..also tried to put Paradise Island and the Amazons in the background, toughen up and mature Wonder Woman AND ground her stories with a cast of interesting, supporting characters...no one can deny his run changed how WW was portrayed in the comic and the rest of the DC Universe - confident, tough and second-in-power ONLY to Superman...

There are more than a few revolutionary ideas, which have made it into the New 52 Wonder Woman, that were first pioneered by John Byrne, so long ago. I would dare say over HALF of this new version, when compared to Byrne's run, isn't new at all. The only fans here, who refuse to acknowledge it are Byrne-haters, who will try to flame you away from this; ..so, ignore them.

I was all over this way back in 2011, my Padiwan apprentice.

Incidentally, I don't think that Brian Azzarello has just respun the Byrne run, ..but, I think the similarities between these two ground-breaking runs begs comparison.

http://forums.comicbookresources.com...-the-BYRNE-RUN!!!

[PauloIapetus]

Meldyer, thanks you a lot for your insightful reply, quite sincerely, I have missed completely your previous posts about the matter, I'm happy to see that we have covered the same ground and are sharing the same impressions about the run and John Byrne's underestimated influence and merits.



I have recently noticed the parallel between Champion/Heracles and Lennox.

[Franklin]

And the Byrne wonder-bottoms hearkened back a bit to Curt Swan's wonder-bottoms.

[CylonDorado]

I kind of liked the Golden Eagle better, but I'm still very ok with this version of the costume. I wouldn't know about if it's an homage, or whatever to that older book, but I'm happy as long as it fits the character. I argued for days about why the one piece was more practical then the reboot with the pants, but more importantly, I'm ok with it as long as it has the same symbols. Especially since I just found out that they're from the coat of arms of an Amazon hero that Diana was named after. Plus I thought it was a really nice touch that originally, the similarity to the flag was a clue by the gods that her fate was intertwined with Steve Trevor and the country he was from.

[no1wonderfan]

Those Perez covers from WW Vol.2 (1 & 120) remind me of the magic and the beauty of Diana's history, origin and mission.....all of which has recently been decimated by the nu52 garbage. How sad.

[Wonder39]

And the Byrne wonder-bottoms hearkened back a bit to Curt Swan's wonder-bottoms.

I'm not sure of the timeline, but I want to say that Swan's rendition came after Toth simplified the costume for the "Superfriends" cartoon....

Either way I like the simplification-- it's more graphic and clean. You don't have to put just two stars on the shorts to make it less "star spangled"-- three nice big stars front the front view and three from the back are good, and are more pleasing from a design perspective.

Matt

edit: Wonder Woman #121 was from 1974, and Superfriends first aired in 1973! ^_^