Monday, January 7, 2019

WONDER WOMAN #21 & #22

“THE COSMIC MIGRATION”
Story & Pencils: George Pérez | Finished Art: Bob McLeod
Lettering: John Costanza | Coloring: Carl Gafford
Editor: Karen Berger

The Plot: Following Myndi Mayer’s funeral, Princess Diana is summoned back to Paradise Island by her mother, From there, Diana, Hippolyte, and Menalippe are transported to Olympus by the gods, who inform them that the Amazon’s help is needed for the “Cosmic Migration”. The Amazons agree to help and, through Diana’s strength and the Amazons’ prayers, the gods move on to the next plane of their existence.

Sub-Plots & Continuity Notes: It’s revealed that Wonder Woman’s indestructible bracelets were forged from Zeus’s own shield.

My Thoughts: Ehh. It’s more god stuff, which in general never impresses me, as I’ve noted before, but this story commits the additional crime of just being boring. I don’t really think we needed an entire issue dedicated to the gods having people pray for them so they could leave Olympus. This would’ve worked much better as the second half of an action story or something. So let’s move along, shall we? Nothing more to see here.

“THROUGH DESTINY’S DOOR”
Writer-Artist: George Pérez | Finisher: Bob McLeod
Letterer: John Costanza | Colorist: Carl Gafford
Editor: Karen Berger

The Plot: On Paradise Island, the Amazons hold a vote and decide to open their shores to mankind. Diana returns to man’s world to share the news with her friends and invite them all back with her. With invitations extended, she then returns to Paradise Island to help prepare for visitors.

Sub-Plots & Continuity Notes: One Amazon, Hellene, is against letting outsiders onto the island. She has a heart-to-heart with Diana and agrees to give the concept a chance, though she still clearly doesn’t like it.

There are a series of sub-plot pages throughout the issue where:
  1. A small orb of energy makes its way to Earth.
  2. A camper is replaced by his exact duplicate.
  3. A mysterious hooded figure arrives on Earth, looking for Diana.
  4. Another mysterious figure watches via binoculars as Wonder Woman flies over Boston.
  5. And then they all converge as this totally confusingevent transpires:

Vanessa comes across Barry, who she believed was her boyfriend, making time with a new girl at school named Lucy. Later, Julia makes a date with Vanessa’s Geometry teacher, Mister Westlake, but is forced to postpone it for the upcoming weekend trip to Paradise Island.


Diana visits Hanscom Air Force Base to invite Etta to the trip, but is told she’s on a secret mission. The princess is also unable to reach Steve for an invitation.

My Thoughts: I always hate it when I read some legendary run or another for the first time and it doesn’t do much for me. It kind of makes me feel like I’m missing something that others see. I feel that way about John Byrne’s FANTASTIC FOUR, for example. It’s a decent run of comics, but I don’t understand the mountains of praise it routinely receives. But at the same time, I think I decided during my last go-round with that material that the FF in general just don’t really gel with me in the same way the X-Men do, for example.

But in any case, I think we can lump George Pérez’s WONDER WOMAN in with Byrne’s FF as something I feel like I’m supposed to love, but that I just can’t get into. Heck, I’m not even done with the issues I intend to cover—we still have one annual and two single installments left to go—but I’m already writing a post-mortem because I’m at a loss for anything else to say. Lately it’s become a bit of a chore just to talk myself into reading an issue, and when I reach the end of it I’ve formed pretty much no thoughts from which to compose a post.

But we’re almost done, so of course I’ll tough it out to the end. And for this particular issue, I’ll simply say that I’m not sure placing a “quiet”/sub-plot issue immediately after an issue with no real action or conflict might not have been the best idea. As if I wasn’t already bored by this run, these two issues in succession have knocked my interest down even further than ever!

Next Week: It’s a history of the Amazons in WONDER WOMAN ANNUAL #1.
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2 comments:

  1. JackJanuary 7, 2019 at 1:11 PM

    I'm pretty sure this run is looked on favorably because (1) it was drawn by George Perez at the height of his 80s powers and (2) Wonder Woman runs tend to be graded on a curve because the book has just been really miserable quite often. Perez often gets credit for being a definitive run just because Wonder Woman is sorely lacking in classic runs period. And in the mid to late 1980s George Perez was one of the best artists in the business coming off the Titans and Crisis on Infinite Earths; the fact that the writing was rarely up to snuff tends to get ignored these days.

    I mean, most anything Perez draws from once he hits the Titans is gorgeous, so it's understandable, but he really could have used a proper writer on the book. And no, not Len Wein. Hell, given how awful Adventures of Superman was, why the hell didn't they put Marv Wolfman on this book? Putting Wolfman and Perez on it would have reunited a very good team on a book that really needed it and someone else could have written around what Byrne wanted to do on Adventures.

    Always perplexed me that they didn't do that.

    (Had to delete my first attempt at this because I hit publish instead of preview. C'mon Blogspot it's 2019, let us edit these!)

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    1. MattJanuary 8, 2019 at 3:01 PM

      That makes a lot of sense. John Byrne himself has said that he doesn't think his FF run is as legendary as people believe, but the stuff that had come between Lee/Kirby and him was so uninspired that his work simply seemed better by comparison. So I could see Perez's run being held up as a shining beacon of glory if Wonder Woman's prior adventures just weren't that memorable. The artwork is great regardless, though!

      And I like that idea of teaming Perez with Wolfman as writer. I don't love Wolfman on his own, but Perez clearly brought out the best in him on TEEN TITANS. Though who knows; perhaps Perez viewed WONDER WOMAN as his chance to show he could do something without Wolfman after working with the guy for such a long time.

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