December 26, 2010
by J. R.
Before Wonder Woman #600, I had never considered reading or buying a Wonder Woman comic. Sure, one may have slipped into a crossover, but reading the ongoing itself never once crossed my mind. Wonder Woman was never a character that was interesting to me. Every writer I had read, with the possible exception of Mark Waid and Alex Ross on Kingdom Come, wrote the character far more motherly than I would ever like to read.
However, when DC announced the dramatic costume change and revamping of the character, something made me want to check it out. Maybe it was that it was going to be a fresh start for the character, or maybe it was because there was some much backlash to it from Internet fans. I don’t know. Either way, at issue #600, I started buying it, and have lasted longer than Straczynski did writing it. In all fairness, it still is his story, but now Phil Hester is scripting it.
In a nutshell, I’ve enjoyed the book. I like the younger take on Wonder Woman. We still have the Amazon warrior princess aspect, but now we’ve lost the acting like your grandmother aspect. Sure, the story itself has been up and down, but not so much to distract from the establishing of just who this character is. Also, not sure if it was the story content or not, I like Hester’s dialogue better than Strazynski’s.
Although, I’ve said this before and still think it, I do believe that this story was originally intended to be an Earth One story. Back in August, DC released Superman: Earth One, which was written by Stracynski. I remember when DC initially announced that book, they also announced a Batman: Earth One book. I get the feeling that this Wonder Woman story was a pitch for a Wonder Woman: Earth One story. The change in the character’s background and attempt to update her image would line up with the Earth One stories. It also seems like the scenes in which there is a reference to the old character are thrown in, and not really important to what’s going on. Not yet anyways.
With all this said, Wonder Woman hasn’t quite gotten on my pull list yet. When I started, I did so with the understanding that with the first issue that bored me would be the last issue I bought. With that as a starting point, it has at least earned the benefit of the doubt on an issue or two. Maybe in a couple issues it will gain my confidence enough to put it on my pull list.
