The Great Wonder Woman Readathon

[Scott Harris]

Wonder Woman #246
Jack C. Harris, Jose Delbo and Vince Colletta



Synopsis: I'm just going to say right up front that this is by far the weirdest issue of Wonder Woman I have read yet. Hands down.

Okay, so the story starts with Diana at home, in her apartment, getting ready to do some laundry. I think this might be the first "down time" scene of Diana we've had since I started reading with #212, when she lamented that she couldn't tell her three roommates about what was going on -- three roommates who went unnamed and who have never appeared or been mentioned since, I might add.

Anyway, she apparently has a swank apartment all to herself now, but she still has a communal laundry room, so she heads to the basement to wash her costume. On the way, she changes into Wonder Woman and saves two other residents from being stuck in an elevator. One of them notes that she's not wearing her tiara, which she left back in her apartment.

Arriving back in said apartment after doing her laundry, Diana is shocked to see there's been a break-in. Nothing has been stolen, though... except for her tiara. Hmm. Coincidence? Nope, because just then a big shadowy figure in a hood appears and knocks Diana out cold in one panel.

She wakens to find Steve Trevor looming over her, a nightmare scenario if ever I heard one. He's all, hey kid, someone trashed your apartment and, oh, by the way, your apartment building is shrouded in a creepy black fog. Diana quickly realizes that the building has been transformed into a gateway between dimensions and that someone is using the building as a conduit to funnel demons to Earth. How does she know this? Because "as an Amazon, I'm familiar with quite a few strange things." Okay, whatever you say.

Tasking Steve with keeping the rest of the building's residents calm, Wonder Woman begins to fight the black magic fog. She does this by, you guessed it, using her super-speed to create a tornado that whisks it away. Now, this is the third issue in a row she's used this trick; the first time, she had her plane do it and the second time she and her plane teamed up to do it, but this time she just uses her own super-speed to do it herself, saying that while she doesn't have the stamina to keep up such speeds like Flash or Superman, she can at least go at super-speed long enough to create one tornado. Again, if you say so.

Finally, she meets up with the hooded figure, which turns out to be a woman wearing Diana's tiara. She's using its power as a focus for her black magic. The fight doesn't go qwell, but then Diana has an epiphany: She needs to fight magic darkness with magic lilght. How does she do this? She bangs her bracelets together until they create a spark that catches a pile of newspapers on fire, then she brandishes this "magic" torch. She then attacks the demon-witch and hits her with the "magic" fire.

This causes the demon to reveal her true form by dropping her cloak. And her true form is... seriously you guys, it's twisted is what it is. Underneath the cloak, from the shoulders down, she's just a bunch of thing strands of exposed muscle and sinew, like a Slim Goodbody doll gone wrong. Except, at key points, there are big demonic faces -- and by key points, I mean her breasts and crotch are replaced by screaming demon faces. As are her kneecaps for some reason. Again, just to make sure you got that: her breasts and crotch are replaced by screaming demon faces.

Even more disturbing, her left breast isn't a demon face, but rather the face of her kindly upstairs neighbor, Mrs. Kravitz, who Diana saved from the elevator earlier. And she can totally talk and everything. Turns out she accidentally summoned the demon while reading a book about the occult and now she's been absorbed by the demon and is doomed to be a talking demonic left tit forever.

Except, of course, Wonder Woman lassos the demon-witch and just orders the demons to leave. So they all do, vanishing and leaving a really confused Mrs. Ktravitz behind.

Diana and Steve retire to her aparment, where she notes that the other residents are a little wary of Mrs. Kravitz, which, no kidding. But luckily, it's over, although Diana not-so-helpfully says that there's no actual way of knowing whether all the demons left or some of them made it through to Earth. Whatever the case, the story ends with a mysterious figure sneaking out of Diana's apartment and into the next issue. The End!

Notes: Holy WTF. This whole issue just came completely out of nowhere. I like the change of pace, I like giving Diana an actual life with new neighbors who may or may not become a supporting cast. It's the first time that Diana actually seems like a real human being.

That being said, where to begin here... First off, Diana changes into her Wonder Woman costume while climbing the elevator shaft. How she does this I have no idea, because until now she changes into her costume and back by standing in place and whirling her lasso around, but that's impossible when she's climbing a cable. Then she can't change back using her laso because she says her new outfit hasn't been synchornized with the lasso, so again, how the hell did she change costumes in the first place.

Then there's the matter of her flash-like super speed. Did Jack C. Harris get put on the wrong book? because he really seems to like using Flash tricks instead of, you know, Wonder Woman's actual, established powers.

Not even getting into the ridiculousness of Diana creating magic fire by banging her manacles together -- or the fact that she just suddenly has all this knowledge about the occult as though she's Dr. Fate or something -- the whole demon thing with the faces instead of body parts was just... wow. Just wow. Disturbing doesn't even begin to cover it. Some of this was intentional, other parts maybe not so much, like the fact that the demon's crotch was a giant, gaping, screaming demonic mouth. I've heard of vagina dentata, but I've never heard of vagina necromonica. Also, since the demon was wearing Wonder Woman's tiara at the time, from the neck up she looked just like Diana. I am going to have nightmares.

My Grade: Honestly, this deserves a B- at best, but I am going to give it an A++ for being one of the most unintentionally terrifyingly weird comics I have read in a long time. It made no sense, but for once that was a good thing. This is a case where gross incompetence led to pure entertainment.

Avert your eyes if you don't want to be scarred for life:

[berk]

I gotta admire your tenacity, Scott. I consider WONDER WOMAN essentially unreadable during that era - indeed, I think the book has mostly been poor-to-awful for most of its existence after Moulton - and would have given up on this project well before this point. I bought some of those books back in the day, hoping for a JSA appearance that didn't suck and mostly having those hopes crushed.

I was going to ask - has there ever been a consensus "classic" WW run? I'm neutral - not particularly a fan but don't actively dislike the character either, except perhaps for the way Greek mythology seems to be handled in the WW stories I've seen. People seem to talk a fair bit about the Perez run but unfortunately for me I happen not to like the style of his artwork around the time he was drawing that series, at least not as much as I like his earlier and to a slightly lesser extent his more recent work.

[destro]

I was going to ask - has there ever been a consensus "classic" WW run? I'm neutral - not particularly a fan but don't actively dislike the character either, except perhaps for the way Greek mythology seems to be handled in the WW stories I've seen. People seem to talk a fair bit about the Perez run but unfortunately for me I happen not to like the style of his artwork around the time he was drawing that series, at least not as much as I like his earlier and to a slightly lesser extent his more recent work.

I don't think there is any real consensus on a classic WW run beyond the Perez issues. Which I don't think are really that great honestly. So I'd have to say no. But those are definitely the top contender I suppose.

[Scott Harris]

Wonder Woman #247
Jack C. Harris, Jose Delbo and Joe Giella
backup story: Bob Toomey and Maurice Whitman



Synopsis: At the end of last issue we saw a shadowy figure sneaking out of Diana's apartment. Turns out that was one of the government guys investigating the disappearance of Steve Trevor. After bugging Diana's apartment, they have become convinced something fishy is going on (though... they still don't seem to have figured out Diana is Wonder Woman, so that's a pretty crappy job by our intelligence agency).

Anyway, they decide they need to interrogate Steve "Howard" as he is calling himself. So naturally they show up at the front door of the apartment building and abduct him at gunpoint. Because just asking him to come in for some questions would be too rational.

Wonder Woman is getting ready to go save him yet again when a ray of energy shoots out of nowhere and turns her invisible plane inside out. She crash lands it on a nearby roof and after entrusting it to a random stranger (who... I'm not sure how he can see it to watch over it, but whatever) she goes to chase down the guy who shot at her. That guy, as it happens, is a freak calling himself Inversion, The Inside Out Man!

Now, the cover claims he has a startling secret, but honestly, the name tells it all. Inversion was a scientist trying to create teleportation technology, only when he tested it, it turned him inside out. It also made him go crazy, so now he's trying to get Diana to reveal the secret of the JLA teleporter so he can use it to turn the entire world inside out. He does defeat her, tie her up with the lasso and command her to teach him how the tube works, but once he teleports away, she just unties herself and fiddles with the machine so he gets stuck in the teleportation process. Then she flies up to the JLA satellite, where Elongated Man is on duty, and shuts down the teleporter from that end, trapping The Inverted Man inside a little jar.

She then tries to revrse the polarity and fix both him and her plane, but while the plane is fixed, he's still all inverted inside his jar. So she flies to Paradise island, deciding a freak in a jar is of more immediate importance that Steve Trevor being abducted at gunpoint. To be Continued!

Backup Story: This issue begins a new feature, Tales of the Amazons. In it, we learn how Hippolyta and her best buddy, Diana, freed themselves and the Amazons from slavery after being tricked by Herclues. Diana is killed in the escape, though, so Hippolyta vows to make a new copy of her when she gets the chance. Then, as they sail off, a kraken attacks, only to be defeated by a sea serpent sent by Aphrodite. The goddess then opens a vortex to another dimension and sends the Amazons through to get them safely away from the rest of the crazy Roman pantheon.

My Notes: The Steve Trevor fake death plot continues, though why the guy from the Pentagon decided to pull a gun on Trevor in broad daylight instead of just inviting or ordering him to come along is beyond me. That makes more sense than Diana's inexplicable decision that trying to fix Inversion was more important than rescuing Steve. Inversion is stuck in a jar. he's not going anyway. You can fix him whenever. Steve, on the other hand, was abducted at gunpoint. Hello? Good thing hero priorities wasn't one of the 12 Labors, because she would have just failed.

Some more continuity bits in this issue, as Steve and Diana briefly reference a JLA mission (in JLA #154) that apparently took place between last issue and this issue. Jack C. Harris, strengthening those DC bonds after years of neglect. I'm not always a fan of tight continuity, but if any book ever need some, it's this one. I was also happy to see the backup story, which was added as part of the DC Explosion's move to giant-size many books. In this case, Wonder Woman went to 44 pages. I think this is a good idea in theory, because for my money, Journey Into Myster with Thor didn't really take off until Tales of Asgard was added to flesh out the mythology. Tales of the Amazons should in theory be able to do the same, though I note that Stan and Jack aren't working on it, so it will probably end up just sucking.

I don't know who Maurice Whitman is, but the art in the backup is pretty good.

My Grade: B-. Subplot and continuity: Good. Inversion the Inside-Out Man? Um, no. Gets a small boost in grade for the introduction of the backup story.

[Scott Harris]

Wonder Woman #248
Jack C. Harris, Jose Delbo and Joe Giella
backup story: Bob Toomey, Maurice Whitman and Vince Colletta



Synopsis: Jack C. Harris strikes again!

So, picking up where last issue left off, Wonder Woman has dumped the jar containing Inversion the Inside-out Man on Paradise Island so their scientists can try to fix him. of course, if they do, there will be a man on Paradise Island, so they might want to figure that part out first. but anyway, Diana then rushes off to finally get around to saving Steve.

Steve, meanwhile, is brought into a secret underground army base, where the pentagon guys who have been investigating him for the past few issues are waiting to pounce. Up top, Diana storms into her UN boss's office -- Morgan Tracy, who hasn't been seen in like two years -- and demands to know where Steve is. Tracy finally admits they let the pentagon guys take Steve, so Diana quits in a rage, saying she can't work for someone as spineless as Tracy. Scratch one UN job for Diana!

And Steve does need help, because the army guys have figured out he's actuall Steve Trevor, back from the dead. Which wouldn't be such a big deal, except the commanding officer then goes even further into his underground base and reveals that... there's a giant skeleton of an ancient demon entombed inside the base and he's been secretly working for years to bring the demon back to life. Not for the army, mind you, just because he's a fanatical death cultist.

I bet you weren't expecting that payoff from the Steve Trevor fake death subplot!

Anyway, the bad guy thinks that Steve Trevor may hold the key to resurrecting his demon lord, what with Trevor being back from the dead. So he dons some creepy cultist robes and hooks Trevor up to a machine to drain his life energy. needless to say, his second in command is like "what the EFF are you doing?!" But sure enough, it works and the demon lord comes back to life. And the first thing he does is immediately kill the army cultist guy. Sucker!!

Meanwhile, Wonder Woman stole Steve's file from Morgan Tracy while they argued and it revealed the location of the underground base. So she smashes down through the city and into the Army base, where the army guys are really surprised. She's pretty pissed off at this point, so she starts smashing everything and kicking everyone's butt. Just as it's about to get really hairy, though, the giant undead demon skeleton thing attacks and suddenly the army guys are pretty okay with Wonder Woman being there.

Diana battles the creature and the second in command reveals to her that the beast is feeding off Steve Trevor's life energy. So she runs over to Steve and severs the connection. This instantly causes the demon to turn to dust, but it's too late, as it has drained all of the magic that resurrected him and he drops dead again. NOOOOOO!!!! The End!!

Backup Story: The Amazons find themselves in another dimension. Their ship develops intelligence, but then it gets stuck in a giant spider web, which also has captured a centaur/pegasus guy who turns out to be a) a king and b) a douche. They eventually cut a deal to help each other and they drive off the giant spider, who is really forlorn at being driven off and pouts with some really sad and pathetic dialogue. It's all very weird and melancholy.

Notes: Holy hell, they killed off Steve Trevor. So this is interesting. Steve was brought back (as far as we can tell) by editorial mandate explicitly to make the series more like the TV show. Once they were back on Earth-1, though, they said in the lettercolumn that they were no longer planning on hewing to the Tv version. Hence, Steve Trevor was no longer mandatory. So the first thing they do? Kill him again!

Basically, this revived Steve Trevor was really only in a handful of issues -- a few during the Marty Pasko run and then a few after the return from Earth-2, and he did almost nothing whatsoever during this period. Clearly,nobody really wanted him back, they just did it because of the TV show, so with that gone, time to cut their losses. They also dumped Diana's UN job at the same time, you'll note, effectively clearing the decks for Jack C. harris to introduce -- wait for -- another new status quo, one to his liking instead of mandated by outdated editorial concerns.

I'm actually kind of curious at this point to see what Harris has planned, because I have to say, I never expected the pentagon investigation subplot to end like this, with a weird demon cultist straight out of a bad issue of Conan. Does this make any sense, strictly speaking? No. But I like it when comics just say to hell with reason and go for the big adventure, damn the torpedoes. And on that level, Jack C. Harris has succeeded admirably in two of the last three issues. If he can continue this crazy streak of utter randomness, the comic may not be good, but at least it will be entertaining, which is almost better.

The backup story was just flat out weird all around. All the emotional notes were off kilter and the "evil" spider thing was really just a really sad beast that you end up feeling sorry for. I have a feeling this backup story is going to only be memorable for bad reasons, but I hope I am wrong.

My Grade: B+. Steve Trevor is dead! And he was killed by a random demon cult inside a secret subterranean army base! Deconstruct that, Grant Morrison!

[An Ear In The Fireplace]

I always liked Jack C. Harris. I'm not sure why--I never met the man--but I always got the feeling from the books he edited and the stories he wrote that he was a swell kind of guy. He was never celebrated as a big star. He was a worker. He was capable of writing trash, but he also turned in some really good stuff. He seemed to care about what he was doing, but he was no prima donna.

[JeffreyWKramer]

I was going to ask - has there ever been a consensus "classic" WW run? I'm neutral - not particularly a fan but don't actively dislike the character either, except perhaps for the way Greek mythology seems to be handled in the WW stories I've seen. People seem to talk a fair bit about the Perez run but unfortunately for me I happen not to like the style of his artwork around the time he was drawing that series, at least not as much as I like his earlier and to a slightly lesser extent his more recent work.

I don't know that it's possible to identify any significant run on WW as deserving "classic" status, save for the original run through the end of Moulton's involvement with the character. Most subsequent runs in the history of the series lack any consistency or distinct character, such as one can associate with classic runs on most books, and a lot of them are just plain dreadfully bad. For most of its history WONDER WOMAN has been a really crappy book that keeps going on interia and recognition factor more than anything else.

Those runs that stand as exceptions generally have their own problems. The Perez run on Wonder Woman, for example, was a really good try, and stands well above average for a WONDER WOMAN run - it's probably the best candidate for "classic" status, in my opinion - but much of it already reads as very dated, plus it suffers from lack of focus, some really weak art by Chris Marinnan and others, plus the same frequent involvement in corporate crossovers that mars so many modern books. As a result, I don't think it compares well to series or runs which undeniably deserve "classic" status (Lee/Kirby FF, Lee/Ditko Spider-Man, Kannigher/Kubert Sgt. Rock, O'Neil/Adams Batman, Thomas/Buscema Avengers, etc). It looks pretty great compared to, say, the stuff Scott is reviewing here, but compared to really great stuff, it doesn't look so great.

A few years ago, I gave away huge chunks of my collection, as I needed to downsize for space reasons and had already gotten trade reprints of a lot of the really good stuf. In prep for the downsizing, I reread all of the stuff I remembered as good, and I recall rereading the Perez Wonder Woman and feeling it didn't stand up to any of the other stuff I was reading from more or less the same era (the Milestone books, Waid's FLASH, the DeMatteis/Giffen Justice League, Morrison's ANIMAL MAN, etc.). I ended up giving up the entire Perez run of WW and have never regretted that decision. In contrast, it still pains me that I had to sell my long silver age runs of FF, Spider-Man, Hawkman, Metal Men, Adventure Comics (Legion era) and so forth in order to pay for college, and then had to give up most of the rest during and right after grad school in order to get by, buy a home, etc.

Notably, I also don't miss any of the old Wonder Woman issues I sold back when sold the stuff I do miss.

[Scott Harris]

I haven't reviewed them here (yet) because I am still missing a few, but while classic might be stretching it, I have enjoyed the I-Ching issues I have read a lot more than the stuff I am reviewing. They certainly aren't perfect, but there is a great deal of crazy energy in them, which elevates them above the boring, corporate-mandated stuff I've been reviewing.

[An Ear In The Fireplace]

In hindsight Wonder Woman might have been better off if Maxwell CHARLES Gaines had worked out a deal with William MOULTON Marston to bring over their Amazing Amazon to EC when Gaines sold off his interest in All-American (he did bring Picture Stories from the Bible with him).

Wonder Woman was always in her own world and the efforts made to bring her in line with the rest of the super-hero community have either warped the very things that made WW popular in the first place or have made her unpopular with those who don't like super-heroes that fall outside the paradigm.

Of course, if WW had gone to EC that would likely have affected EC's fortunes, as well.

[An Ear In The Fireplace]

I haven't reviewed them here (yet) because I am still missing a few, but while classic might be stretching it, I have enjoyed the I-Ching issues I have read a lot more than the stuff I am reviewing. They certainly aren't perfect, but there is a great deal of crazy energy in them, which elevates them above the boring, corporate-mandated stuff I've been reviewing.

Yes this is my favourite run of Wonder Woman, other than Marston's, and probably because, like Martston, Sekowsky marches to his own drummer.

[Scott Harris]

Wonder Woman #249
Jack C. Harris, Jose Delbo and Joe Giella
backup story: Bob Toomey, Maurice Whitman and Sue. D. Nym (get it?)



Synopsis: Wonder Woman is at Steve Trevor's grave when she is approached by two people: Shiera Hall, aka Hawkgirl, and a man who claims he is Steve Trevor's brother, Greg. Greg says that he works for a secret agency and that the lives of the JLA members are in danger because an evil group called U.N.R.E.S.T. is trying to assassinate them. To punctuate this, his car blows up while they are talking.

Shiera and Diana leave and spend some time having a brief heart-to-heart about Steve's death, then they get a call from greg to meet him at a bar for more info. When they arrive, there is another assassination attempt, so Diana and Hawkgirl leave to go find the other JLA members to warn them. For some reason their communicators aren't working.

No sooner do they leave then someone fires a giant missile at them. Hawkgirl tries to defuse it but fails and somehow gets taken out as a result. Wonder Woman realizes the missile is tracking her through a homing device on her bracelets, so she chucks it just in time, letting the bomb harmlessly explode over there somewhere. Then Hawkgirl uses her alien technology to track the missile's radiation signature back to the guy who fired it: Greg, naturally.

Turns out he is the only member of UNREST. He apparently was actually a CIA agent, but when Steve died (the second time) he had a nervous breakdown and decided to get revenge on Wonder Woman. Some CIA guys show up out of nowhere and haul him off. The End!

Backup Story: Hippolyta and the other Amazons fly in their magic ship to the land f the centaur king they rescued last issue. The land, though, has been cursed and is in ruin. Centaur guy flies off the handle and tries to kill the ship, but Hippolyta smacks him around until he regains his senses. By the way, this king guy, named Char? he's a complete douchebag. Anyway, he and Hippolyta fly around until they find some weird creatures, who say they are about to give a living sacrifice to the evil god that lives in Char's castle. So Char and Hipolyta fly to the castle to confront this evil god. To be continued?

Notes: There's some good stuff in this issue. I like the fact that they deal with Steve's death and I like Hawkgirl showing up to try and comfort Diana. Given the fact that, with Steve's death, Diana literally has no supporting cast whatsoever (unless you count her deus ex machina mother), adding someone like Hawkgirl to the mix is a good idea. I hope she sticks around, though I am sure she won't.

It was pretty obvious right from the get go that Greg was the bad guy in this issue. Greg's breakdown over his brother's death was somewhat effective, but on the other hand, Steve already died once before, so why is he just having this breakdown now?

The backup story is just weird and rambling. I'm losing hope for it very quickly.

Oh, one more note: There's a full page obituary for Mort Weisinger in this issue, which I assume was published in every DC comic for this month.

My Grade: B-. It does feel like Jack C. Harris is building something here, which is both good and necessary, even if the actual plots he's working his character stuff into are weird and random. The bizarre and out of place backup story is not helping like I had hoped, but instead is detracting from the book at this point.

[Scott Harris]

Wonder Woman #250
Jack C. Harris, Jose Delbo and Joe Giella



Synopsis: Diana is called back to Paradise Island for a surprising reason: One of the other Amazons -- a jerkweed named Orana -- has challenged Diana's right to be Wonder Woman. As a result, there must be a new tournament to determine who is most fit to be Wonder Woman, the Amazon's emissary to the wider world.

The challenge has four parts, one for each element. First is the Earth challenge, which involves the contestants all fighting each other. At the end of the day, only six Amazons remain standing, including both Diana and Orana. Day two is the challenge of water, where each contestant must stay under water for 12 hours, with only one breath per hour allowed above the surface. Diana realizes that Neptune is trying to kill the Amazons, so she saves one of them from an eel. Orana, on the other hand, viciously kills and sea creatures that come near her, ignoring the plights of her fellow Amazons.

Going into the third challenge there are just four Amazons left. The challenge of air requires the Amazons to float on wind currents for 12 hours. Diana is at a disadvantage because she has been relying too much on the invisible plane. But before she can sort things out, a giant Roc attacks! it's going to kill them so Diana calls the others together to fight it. She is clobbered in the process and almost falls to the ground, but two of her fellow Amazons, following her plan, manage to defeat the Roc and wake Diana in the process. However, to defeat it, they have to land, and are disqualified. Diana is unhappy about this, but Orana -- who got out of the way during the Roc fight -- is pleased, as there are now just two left.

The final trial is fire and for this, the Amazons go up in a super Amazonian spaceship into low orbit, where they have to survive inside a meteor shower for 12 hours. Diana jumps from rock to ruock, but Orana begins punching the meteors out of her way. She hits them with such force that the enter the atmosphere too quickly; instead of burning up, they begin crashing into buildings and ships. Diana ditches the challenge in order to save Earth from Orana's mayhem.

Upon her return, Hippolyta names Diana the winner of the challenge, as she equaled Orana's might while showing more compassion. But then the gods appear and say that under the letter of the law, Orana was actually the winner. Unable to defy the gods, Hippolyta names Orana the new Wonder Woman. Orana dons the costume and takes the invisible plane to America.

Meanwhile, though, Diana decides to defy the gods and illegally leave Paradise island to follow Orana. To be continued!

Notes: This is a great idea. It's one of those ideas that is so simple that once someone does it it's hard to believe it hasn't been done before (or maybe it has been, I don't know). Reading this for me was kind of like reading Thor #337, where Simonson posed the seemingly obvious question: What would happen is someone else who was worthy lifted Thor's hammer? Having Diana compete in the tournament and lose so that someone else becomes Wonder Woman is a similarly simple but excellent idea rooted firmly in the character's origin.

On another note, there's no backup story. And there's no mention of the backup story anywhere, not in the lettercolumn even. Apparently they decided to just ditch it, mid-cliffhanger and all. Apparently the evil god and Char the centaur king are languishing with Etta Candy's French fiance in the land of abandoned plotlines. I didn't miss the backup story at all because frankly, it was pretty bad.

My Grade: A-. Great idea executed well. I'm still not convinced the payoff is going to live up to the setup, but the Jack C. Harris era, after starting off as badly as possible, is showing some promise in recent issues.

[Slam_Bradley]

I was going to ask - has there ever been a consensus "classic" WW run? I'm neutral - not particularly a fan but don't actively dislike the character either, except perhaps for the way Greek mythology seems to be handled in the WW stories I've seen. People seem to talk a fair bit about the Perez run but unfortunately for me I happen not to like the style of his artwork around the time he was drawing that series, at least not as much as I like his earlier and to a slightly lesser extent his more recent work.

The only time I ever purchased WW was when The Huntress was appearing as a back-up by Levitz & Staton. I bought the book for that back-up and seldom read the WW story. I don't know if there is a consensus. WW fans are terrifying critters on par with X-fans. Were I to hazard a guess I'd think probably early Marston-Peters and maybe Perez.

[Scott Harris]

WW fans are terrifying critters on par with X-fans.

They can definitely be a different breed of fan, no question. I applaud their passion for the character, anyway. I've invited the people on our CBR Wonder Woman board to come over and participate in this thread, so hopefully we'll get a first hand taste of what think of all this.

[JeffreyWKramer]

The only time I ever purchased WW was when The Huntress was appearing as a back-up by Levitz & Staton. I bought the book for that back-up and seldom read the WW story.

That was probably the best way to enjoy reading a Wonder Woman comic during that era: Ignore the story that featured Wonder Woman.