Customer Reviews

Wonder Woman: Who is Wonder Woman?

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I was so excited when DC announced Wonder Woman would relaunch with Allan Heinberg as the writer. This "story" ended up being a gigantic disappointment. If it wasn't for the beautiful artwork of Terry and Rachel Dodson, I would have stopped reading Wonder Woman for the first time in 16 years. Heinberg nearly killed my love for a character who's been a part of my life since the age of three; 25 years now.

The story went absolutely nowhere and he had no grasp whatsoever of who Diana is. Heinberg's Diana is a total incompetent who is reliant on Batman and Superman for everything she has: the secret ID, her job, her transportation, and more. That is NOT what Wonder Woman was or is about: she is a self-reliant, independent, intelligent woman...Heinberg's Diana never displayed any of that. His Wonder Woman is dependent on all the men in her life and is, essentially, stupid. He showed a great lack of research into Diana's history and overall foundation in how he portrayed her. Any time Batman, Robin, Superman, or Nemesis appear in the story, it becomes theirs. The men in this title shine while Diana, the supposed star of the book, looks the fool. This storyline is entitled "Who Is Wonder Woman?" It's clear the writer never knew since he never answers the question himself.

This collection is printed on paper thinner than the actual comic book issues and the once-vibrant colors look washed out. There are some character design sketches in the back of the book by Terry Dodson.

Buy this only for The Dodson artwork; the definitive Wonder Woman artists of the modern era.

I've already spent more time writing this review than Allan Heinberg did "writing" this five issue collection. A huge letdown.

I think people just read their comics, bag and board them, then never reread them again, then they come online and bemoan that the plot made no sense. (Somewhat understandable, when the original printing of this story took a year to finish.) But, here's the plot that seems ever elusive to the other reviewers: Circe sets a trap to steal the powers of the entire Wonder Family.

The book isn't perfect, but there is some strength that others ignore. The title of the book, "Who is Wonder Woman?" actually plays more than has been let on.

For starters, is it just a name of a superhero? Is Wonder Woman the Champion of the Gods? Is she the champion of Women? Is Wonder Woman a warrior that is willing to kill? The book highlights all these questions.


Its greatest weakness is, of course, Diana's answer to the "Who is Wonder Woman?" As it flies in the face of the character's established roots. However, its not like every single spoken word in a Wonder Woman book has to be taken as Gospel. Just substitue your own answer if you don't like what you read.

While the big villains battle at the end was entertaining, the JSA had to spoil it by coming in to help. Certainly, it's logical (since they also helped Superman upon his return to Metropolis,) but it would have been more fun to see Diana take on her entire rogue's gallery without them.

Another head-scratcher is why Circe would do Diana the favor of making her human, if she despises her?

And, Wonder Girl's anger with Diana solves itself too quickly, and smells of an aborted subplot.

Despite this. Nemesis is not sexist. Men don't steal the spotlight from Diana. And her relationship with Clark and Bruce is perfectly normal. It's a perfectly serviceable relaunch of the character. It put her in a different place than where she was before, and like all drastic changes, it's certain to leave some fans cold.


However, after this introduction into Diana's new status quo, feel free to skip the next few volumes of Wonder Woman, and continue with Wonder Woman: The Circle. And subsequent stories by Gail Simone

Allan Heinberg exploded onto the comics scene with his brilliant "Young Avengers" series for Marvel, one of my favourite recent comics projects...and then it slowed to a crawl, before vanishing for years with no sign of return; nevertheless, DC tapped him to handle the relaunch of "Wonder Woman" following "Infinite Crisis". I was hopeful, initially, given the high quality of his "Young Avengers", but the result was less than satisfactory.

At the end of "Infinite Crisis", Diana of Themyscira's status quo was not in an inspiring place. Geoff Johns (a friend of Heinberg's, a factor which doubtless influenced the reboot negatively), the author, believed very strongly that the version of Wonder Woman created by George Perez in 1987 was seriously flawed by her lack of a secret identity and because her purpose was to teach Amazon philosophy to the rest of the world, rather than to be shown how wrong her whole culture was an adopt American culture (said Amazon culture is blatantly misconstrued in many ways as well). Not a particularly inspiring place for a reboot to start, but Heinberg takes this concept and runs with it. Moreover, as Heinberg himself has said, his primary interest in Wonder Woman comes from the camp 70s Lynda Carter TV show, not from any of the comics produced with the character in the last 20 years, and so he sets out to remake George Perez's wonderful reboot with a massive nostalgia injection (dispiritingly, this is DC Comics' answer to a lot of things these days). In short succession, we get:

- Secret Agent Diana Prince as a secret identity, complete with campy spin transformation.
- A heavily reimagined Nemesis as a sexist, arrogant love interest (if you want to bring back pre-Crisis Steve Trevor, which I would strongly discourage, just bring back Steve Trevor).
- Wonder Woman and "Diana Prince" actually being different bodies, along with it the idea that Wonder Woman literally doesn't bleed.
- The idea that up until this point, Wonder Woman has thought of herself as not being anything more than a golem brought to life, which is completely wrong.

Finally, and, for fans of the character as she existed from 1987 to 2006, most gallingly:

- Diana's 'answer' the question 'Who is Wonder Woman?' concludes that she was originally sent by gods to preach to mortals, "but she learned to be human instead", and protected mortals from gods; this is, quite frankly, a monstrous abortion hackjob on George Perez's story, where the representative of an enlightened culture was sent by the benevolent Pantheon to prevent the rogue War God Ares from destroying the world. By the end of the story, Diana has embraced the idea that she has nothing to offer the world other than punching people, and that her whole culture is wrongheaded; how wonderful. Of course, looking back, the worst ("Amazons Attack") was yet to come.

Quite apart from the broader issues with Heinberg's relaunch approach, the story is not fitting the character's stature. She had a whole year to take a vacation and work out her issues, but, based on Heinberg's story, that whole year accomplished absolutely nothing; for a character known for intelligence and decisiveness, this is nothing less than an insult. Also insulting is her general portrayal here, as well as those of supporting cast members like Donna Troy, as generally hapless and stupid. The big finale sees the entire DC Universe arrive to lend a hand, since Diana can't defeat her own villains by herself, apparently.

The villains issue is, by the way, both the strongest and the weakest aspect of this arc; Heinberg has actually dug up a bunch of old Wonder Woman rogues (her rogues gallery is notoriously weak for a character of her professed importance) who hadn't been seen in twenty years or more, and, for the most part, they actually seem interesting. Reintroduced at a solid pace, with focus and attention, one could see most of them being put to good use; but Heinberg's only doing five issues (thank God, given how long it took for him to write even that), so he just throws them all in at once with captions saying who they are, with the result being that they all get lost in the shuffle and make absolutely no impression.

For a positive, the art by Terry and Rachel Dodson is wonderful stuff, generally; it's a shame they didn't get a better story to illustrate.

Avoid at all costs.

Wonder Woman at the end of her second series had taken a lot... Her sisters fled to another plane, she sacrificed her reputation to save the life of her best friend and was scorned for her choices and actions.

She took a year off to explore who is Diana and what does that mean.

This book brings with it a solid well written story that needs to be judged as a collected edition not on the time delays that caused it to be late. The publisher made a choice to accommodate Allan Heinberg, writer of many hit TV series. They made a choice of quality over quantity.

It paid of in the finished product.

The Dodson's artwork for Diana is what Diana would look like or should look like in an animated series. She is powerful, gorgeous and evnces great martial and athletic prowess. Her fight scenes are breath taking.

I won't spoil the plot. This book is about a woman who is finding herself and feels alone but realizes that the friends and companions she cultivated stand by her, love her and from that love she finds she is the most powerful warrior of all.

That is who Wonder Woman is.

A 5 star read.

But if Heinberg cares to do another story, I would kindly suggest it get done first before it is marketed as such to the public.

Part of DC's post-Infinite Crisis relaunches, Allan Heinberg's much delayed arc on Wonder Woman is finally collected here, for better or worse. Attempting to re-introduce Wonder Woman, the book doesn't really succeed at all, and instead (as the previous reviewer stated) is just one big over-extended fight sequence that goes nowhere fast. If you read Heinberg's run on Young Avengers for Marvel, then you'll know just how surprisingly great it was, and probably figure that he'd translate well to Wonder Woman at the very least. Well, sadly not. It kind of seems as if Heinberg wasn't as hands on with the character as he would have liked, and as a result, Who is Wonder Woman? ends up being nothing we haven't seen with the character before. Greg Rucka introduced new facets into the character during his run, but Heinberg fails to give the story any legs. Terry and Rachel Dodson provide some spectacular artwork though, as they often do, and is a worthwhile endeavor in itself. Other than that though, this botched Wonder Woman relaunch is a pretty big disappointment. Worth a look for Wonder Woman fans or fans of the artwork of the Dodson's, but all others can do without this collection.

That it took over a year to put together five issues which amount to no more than an overextended fight scene is execratable. Further, the characterization of Diana, Wonder Woman is completely at odds with all previous runs and the question "Who is Wonder Woman" is never answered since it was never a serious question. There is no exploration of why or how the character is where she is at the beginning of the tale and the ending is pulled off by cooperation with a villain who has always sought to destroy Diana. One should watch Hurley-Burley with Sean Penn. I could only imagine someone as unable to relate to reality as that character was (a near sociopathic drug-addled producer) could be able to put together a story like this.

This was the relaunch of the Wonder Woman comic series. There were hints of a good story but they weren't allowed to develop. Since I haven't followed the series I have no idea if any depth has ever been added. The use of comic book titles to introduce two characters was lame. NEMESIS is probably known to many readers but I doubt there are many younger fans who even know about the Wally Wood / Walt Simonson HERCULES series that ran what? Twelve issues, if I remember correctly. This book reminds me of a joke we used to tell about Image Comics: Image Comics is the right name. Substance Comics would be a lie. Oh, and with regard to Back Story: congratulations on the single worst picture of Donna Troy that I have ever seen. And a full page rendition, to boot.

I loved this book. I'm sorry some reviewers didn't like it, but I thought it was a decent story, especially when you can read this book (issues 1 - 5 of the current run which began in 2006) and now read all the way up to issue #40, which is the current issue as of this writing. As the series went on, Diana has struggled with having killed a man (in self-defense, but still...) and with her identity as a human and a goddess. The beginning of the saga starts with this book. So this book is important if you want to understand the current WW comics.

Certainly if nothing else, this book is filled with gorgeous art and lots of full page drawings. The color is vivid and crisp and I thought it was fun to see so many DCU characters make an appearance, like Batman, Robin, Donna Troy, Wonder Girl, Superman, and Power Girl. If only for the art, you won't be disappointed.

When I was a child, Wonder Woman and most DC heroes were written differently. The comics were about the bad guy of the day and about the powers of the villian vs. the hero. Today, DC characters are written more like old school Marvel characters were. Today's DCU characters are deeper, richer and struggle with their problems and issues just like we do. Adult readers certainly can appreciate the more complex characters and writing. I truly recommend reading this for yourself before deciding anything.

I almost didn't read this after reading so many negative, and very negative reviews of the book. I was expecting some kind of train wreck. Having just finished the book I'm relieved to say I though it was great. I'll have to remember not to pay too close attention to naysayers in the future.

I certainly can't claim to be a WW aficionado. I'm very found of George Perez's run in the 80's, and I love Greg Rucka's more recent run on the title. I also am current on Gail Simone's run, and I'm loving that too. So for what it's worth, I'm not brand new to the character.

I didn't find anything wrong with this story. Diana's finding her way back to being a superhero after the events of Infinite Crisis, and she has lots of help from wide cast of DC characters. Particularly her two proteges Donna Troy, and Wonder Girl.

The art, as well as the coloring are breathtaking. You could almost open the book to any page at random and make a poster out of whatever you find. All in all, I think this is a great book and I'll be picking up the next in the series.

The way I judge a comic is,Is it entertaining? Does it have great art? Does it leave me wanting more? Which the answer to all 3 in Who is Wonder Woman are YES!