My Collection - WONDER WOMAN [1987 Series]

Wonder Woman [1987 series]
62 issues [1987 - 1992]
1 - 62

Another concise list. Mostly thanks to the fact that I got rid of all the later issues that I didn't like as much.

This is the current series of WONDER WOMAN, relaunched after DC's Crisis storyline with art and story by George Perez, starting the character from scratch. Perez wrote up to #62 (initially with co-writer Greg Potter, then Len Wein, then solo, with a stretch co-written with Mindy Newell later) and pencilled the first two years before handing that off to others.

I began reading this with the last few Perez pencilled issues around 1989 shortly after I started reading comics again, just because I was a big fan of Perez's artwork as a kid and curious what he was up to. And yes, my first reaction was "oh no, not Wonder Woman...", not being a big fan of the character, and didn't expect to get more than one sample issue, but I quite enjoyed it, quickly picking up a bunch of back-issues and continuing with the new stuff. I was a bit disappointed that he stopped drawing it a few months later, but I liked the new art well enough and liked the writing a lot. Chris Marrinan was the next regular artist, and later Jill Thompson was on until the end of Perez's run (and slightly beyond). Both were good, but I kind of get the feeling sometimes both were trying a bit hard to look like Perez, for obvious reasons.

After Perez left as writer I lost interest pretty fast, and dropped the book. Picked it up every now and then since, never really that impressed, especially when some of the writers seemed to actively contradict elements of Perez's work, and the only ones I kept were those first 62 issues.

The Perez run is kind of an interesting take on super-hero comics, approaching them from a different direction than most, with an emphasis on the mythological roots and the human interactions, at least when it was at its best. Unfortunately a few times in the run it drifted to more conventional super-heroics, in particular when it was involved in crossovers with the rest of the DC line, which weakens the run a bit.

Keeping this entire run, although now that they're finally reprinting the run at least up to when Perez stopped drawing I might pick those up sometime to have that stuff on better paper. Don't think there are any back-issues I want to get.

A few especially good issues:

#1 is a great re-imagining of the origin of the character, milking the mythological roots as much as possible and with some great art.
#22 was the first issue I picked up, and is a really good endcap to the first part of Perez's run, with a lot of the main themes explored.
#50 is a good double sized issue, again an effective endcap issue to another era of the book (the year after that has some good points, but it more of a super-hero book than what came before). Plus a few good pin-ups including Sergio Aragones, which is always fun.