The hardcover Wonder Woman #750: The Deluxe Edition came out a couple months ago, but as with similar deluxe reprint volumes like Detective Comics #1027 and Flash #750, I held off reading it until the regular Wonder Woman series caught up with the #750 mark. Wonder Woman #750 actually serves as a full issue of the main series along with a number of celebratory short stories, whereas Detective Comics #1027 was more anniversary-focused with one small “main series” “Joker War” backup. The Wonder Woman “main story,” part three of Steve Orlando’s “Wild Hunt” storyline, was included in Wonder Woman Vol. 4: The Four Horsewomen, so this review will focus mainly on the ancillary tales.
[Review contains spoilers]
A notable difference between Wonder Woman #750 and 2016’s Wonder Woman 75th Anniversary Special1 is that this one has relatively fewer (by a small margin) alt-history or World War II-set Wonder Woman stories than the previous did. My guess is this has to do with the earlier book’s proximity to the first Wonder Woman movie versus now; perhaps reflecting Wonder Woman 1984’s more modern-ish sensibilities, #750’s are largely in line with current continuity. Cheetah appears twice, which shouldn’t be a surprise; more surprising is that Max Lord doesn’t appear at all, though the Wonder Woman title’s next story to be collected (written by Mariko Tamaki, who also contributes a sharp story here) features him prominently.
[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]
Overall I’d say #750 is more my speed precisely because the stories here are less abstract or artistic, more distinctly superheroic, though still celebrating Wonder Woman’s longevity. Among notable ones are again Tamaki’s, who spins a mystery with a couple of twists in just eight pages, and delivers the requisite Ares appearance, too, with fine art by Elena Casagrande.
Neither would it be a Wonder Woman anniversary party without Greg Rucka, who’s in fine form alongside Nicola Scott, herself colored with great depth by Romulo Fajardo. This is the second Cheetah story (after Orlando’s) and works in evergreen Wonder Woman villain Circe too. Rucka initially leads us to believe Diana’s motives for working with Circe might be selfish, even giving up great power for selfish reasons, before delivering lovely notes of grace from all sides.
Another fun one is Gail Simone’s with Colleen Doran and the return of Simone’s young character Star-Blossom. I felt the deeper introduction to Peony’s family made the ever-optimistic girl seem more real and less just a gimmicky foil for Diana. I might quibble with Simone’s characterization of Diana here, that she’d never eaten homemade mac and cheese before for instance, though the line about how the Themyscirans have dairy “when the minotaurs are amenable” is the book’s winner. (Also that the story turns on Diana’s grief because her pet shark died.)
It’s always nice to see Riley Rossmo drawing anything, though Shannon and Dean Hale’s portrayal of Hippolyta as nagging mother was too silly for me. Kami Garcia provides the requisite origin story with no new insights, but equally I’m happy to see Phil Hester and Andre Parks on art. Vita Ayala makes good use of the questionable new Silver Swan from James Robinson’s Wonder Woman Vol. 7: Amazons Attacked, and I particularly liked Amancay Nahuelpan’s art here, as I did on Justice League Dark.
Scott Snyder and Bryan Hitch round out the book with a story of Wonder Woman inspiring the Justice Society and the Golden Age of heroes. I’ve no idea if any of this, seemingly Snyder’s original plan for what became DC Comics: Generations, survives through Dark Nights: Death Metal and beyond. Like, we know the “Generations” story from Detective #1027 will be reprinted in the Generations collection, so that’s still in play, but I don’t know if in Death Metal’s multiple realities or whatnot, there will still be a point in which “some” Wonder Woman inspired “some” Justice Society and this story “happened.” A central tension in DC continuity for a while has been whether Superman was, in-story, the first superhero or the heroes of the Justice Society were; giving over credit to Wonder Woman (in line with the essentially defunct DC movie universe) seems a good compromise, though I’m not wholly sure an immortal Wonder Woman who’s lived in Man’s World for 80-some years is the right answer either.
2.25
Rating
This deluxe edition includes a bunch of variant covers (it’s good DC gives George Perez something to do in this one, though I’d have preferred a story; for the life of me I can’t figure out what’s going on in the Brian Bolland cover), a bonus gallery of sketches, Gail Simone’s story script, and a reprint of the Wonder Woman story from All-Star Comics #8. I was not familiar with this one and the long text piece was surprising, just as seemingly more emphasis on Steve Trevor’s exploits than Diana’s was bemusing. Clearly this caught on, but I was surprised we never get to see Wonder Woman being Wonder Woman in her first-ever story.
Anniversary anthologies seem to be a continuing thing at DC; I do like that they’re coming out as “collections” and also that they’re not anthologies only, but seem to have a story tie to events in their ongoing title as well. Wonder Woman #750: The Deluxe Edition is enjoyable, more hits than misses, and with particular instances of strong artwork.
[Includes cover gallery and extras]
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It feels like DC has been in anniversary mode for a while now, both because it's probably worth sales and as an overcompensation perhaps for the renumbered, legacy–less New 52 days. ↩
Not so much a comment about this specific collection, but I really enjoyed the 80 Years of the Batman Family TPB that collected the various 80th collections and 'Tec #1000. I hope DC finds a good way to collect the rest of these recent anniversaries into more economical collections.
ReplyDeleteWhich other were there? Green Lantern is one; mostly others, like Green Arrow, were the deluxe hardcovers with reprint stories, unless I misunderstood. At some point I thought there weren't enough other ones to do another collection.
DeleteGA and GL both had 100 page spectaculars, I imagine WW will have one later this year for her anniversary, then Flash 750 and WW 750. I might be missing something else, but essentially a "Justice League" version of this:
Deletehttps://www.amazon.com/Batman-80-Years-Bat-Family/dp/1779506589
I guess maybe DC could re-collect Flash #750 and Wonder Woman #750, but those already had deluxes ... I think your best bet is probably some additional 100-page spectaculars to go with the GL and GA ones. I did like that Batman: 80 Years of the Bat-Family collection a lot.
DeleteI'm a bit torn as you are about Diana being there during the forties. I like that it makes her appearances in the JSA possible, but I don't like that she would maker her way more of a veteran hero than the rest of the Justice League.
ReplyDeleteI think that, for me, the ideal solution would be to have her debut once the Justice Society is already formed, join them, and then have her jump forward in time somehow to the time when Superman and Batman first showed up. That way, she gets to be there for the JSA, but she's only got 4 or so years of extra experience on the rest of the league, not 50.
In the end, really, I'll prefer any version over having her be a rookie, coming a full ten years after Superman and Batman and the League, like she was post-Crisis on Infinite Earths. I can't fathom what they were thinking back in the 80's when they did that with her.
True; I hadn't thought about Wonder Woman being a rookie in that context. Though I do like the idea that post-Crisis, the "story" of the DC Universe didn't really start until Wonder Woman arrived, even though Superman and Batman were in operation before that.
Delete