Wonder Woman #15
story by George Perez and Len Wein, art by George Perez and Bruce Patterson



Synopsis: Wonder Woman has a wet dream about Superman. Meanwhile, some guy steals information from someone or other about something called Silver Swan. Meanwhile, meanwhile, Mindi Mayer and her assistants plan another big Wonder Woman themed event. MEANWHILE, there's a lot of crosscutting here, because some lady almost gets run over by an assassin. Instead, the assassin gets killed by the thief from earlier. He then shoots the random lady with some kind of dart gun, and she wakes up chained to a bed in a cabin in the woods. William Moulton Marston would definitely have approved of this turn of events.

The guy then exposits that her childhood pen pal has been the subject of a weird experiment that has apparently given her super powers and made her crazy, which combined in a bad way when she murdered his dad. Now she's trying to get to random woman and thief guy, who has vowed vengeance, is... trying to get vengeance.

Got all that? Okay, so everybody converges at this public Wonder Woman event. Like every public event featuring a superhero since, say, 1961, this one is disrupted by a supervillain - Silver Swan, naturally - who blows up a ferris wheel full of kids. TO BE CONTINUED!! My Grade: C+.

My Notes: This one didn't really work for me on a few levels. First, this whole Diana/Superman thing, which George is handling I think as well as he can given that it's a terrible idea apparently forced on him by editorial. Still, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Secondly, almost the entire issue is exposition and setup, where we get data dumps providing up the backstories of a bunch of new characters I do not care at all about. I know this information is supposed to make me care, but it does not. Thirdly, the Wonder Woman publicity event being crashed by a supervillain - not only is this already an old comic cliche even in 1988, the exact same thing happened once already in this very title, when Diana made her first public appearance in #3-4 and was attacked by Decay. I find the basic idea to be boring, and it makes everyone look kind of dumb for doing the exact same thing again. I know from the covers that something interesting is eventually going to happen with Mindi Mayer, so I suppose this is more setup, but... meh.

This issue also reminds me strongly of #9, where we get a bunch of buildup and a lot of exposition to set up The Cheetah, which is followed by one little fight scene and then The Cheetah disappearing and not returning for the rest of George's run. Maybe George has more plans for Silver Swan, but it feels kind of like he feels obligated to build up Diana's rogue's gallery, rather than that he actually has real interest in this character.

Oddly, the cover credits Bob Smith as inker, but inside, it turns out Bruce Patterson is still doing the actual inking. Smith won't take over until next issue.

Finally: hey, look - there's a statement of ownership in this issue! I think this is the first one in this series; I don't recall seeing one earlier, probably because it would have been in issue #3 and there wasn't any data yet to report. At this point, though, the average sales for the previous year, 1987, were 119,537. By comparison, sales for the previous version of Wonder Woman were below 50k when the title was cancelled during Crisis. So while 119k is hardly a runaway hit by any stretch of the imagination, it's a significant win in the context of Wonder Woman.

Okay, so here are links to shaxper's reviews:

Superman #17: You'll note that despite the blurb at the end of Wonder Woman #16 claiming that the story is continued in Superman #17, Wonder Woman does not even appear in this comic. There's only a post-script setting up the phone call that Superman has already made in Wonder Woman #16.

Adventures of Superman #440: At least Wonder Woman is actually in this issue, as she and Superman start their date; but the events in this brief encounter are retconned in the very next issue of the crossover! Good job, guys.

Action Comics #600: shaxper gives this issue an F. Highlight: The ending of their "relationship" makes even less sense than any of the buildup. As expected, this entire stunt was a stupid and insulting waste of everyone's time in the name of fan service, only with no fans actually getting serviced.


It's amazing how a comic as good as Wonder Woman has been can be so consistently undermined by these terrible editorially mandated crossovers.

Wonder Woman #17
story by George Perez, inks by Dick Giordano



Synopsis: Diana, Julie and Vanessa go to Greece to visit all the ancient sites that the amazons haven't been able to visit in 3000 years. Diana gets a letter from her mom, which makes her miss home; it also details how the amazons are trying to modernize themselves to prepare for the new world they find themselves in. Meanwhile, Julia reveals some of the details of her past.

During the trip, a mystery man tries to reach Diana to give her an important warning, but unfortunately, he's devoured alive by demonic sheep. Not knowing anything about this, the group goes for a sail in the sea, and Diana is suddenly struck down with some mystery ailment while looking out at a mysterious island. Hmm.

Meanwhile, on Olympus, the gods debate the best course of action to follow after being attacked by Darkseid for no apparent reason in Action Comics #600. My suggestion: They should take out the true evil, John Byrne, and save the world from his increasingly crappy storylines. TO BE CONTINUED!!! My Grade: B-.

Notes: Is really hard to give this kind of issue a grade. This is one of those transition issues - it ties up stuff from previous stories and sets up new stories, but doesn't really do anything of its own. Except, I suppose, Diana's trip to the Acropolis, which is a nice touch. I like the idea of this Greece trip, and I also gather that we're about to be introduced to the post-Crisis version of Circe, so I'm hopeful that the threads being set up here end up paying off. But a whole issue of setup, while handled well, isn't all that exciting.

We do get some thoughts from Diana about her failed date with Superman, which she basically writes off as a bad idea. To which, we all say: AMEN. Her reasoning behind why they don't work together probably makes a lot more sense than anything in Action #600 - she sees herself as a teacher, and is uncomfortable with Superman's role as self-appointed guardian.

The cover is striking, but it also doesn't quite work entirely for me. The big black bar down the middle is just weird - yes, I know it's a pillar at the acropolis, but for me it just hacks the cover in two to no good purpose. I think it would have worked better without the pillar, so the eye is really drawn to Diana, instead of being drawn to this random black stripe. I will say that the cover works better smaller - the thumnail image in this post looks better than the actual full sized comic.

I've also noticed that George seems to use either blue of black as the base color on almost all his covers, which I mostly approve of.

Len Wein departs as scripter, so it's all George now. Dick Giordano takes over as inker. Hard to beat that art team.

It's ironic that in order to express my displeasure at all these crossovers, I ended up having a crossover. But I'm sure glad you read this crap so I didn't have to.

I remember getting really confused at the Greek Gods at this point and overall just tired of them. There were so many and I was constantly confused as to why I should care about the roles they served. Maybe it's because most of the time they were all seen on Mount Olympus having long winded diatribes that didn't really move the story forward that much.

Wonder Woman #20
story by George Perez, inks by Bob McLeod



Synopsis: Myndi Mayer has been killed. The Boston cops try to figure out who did it, which is made a bit more difficult due to the fact that everyone hated her guts. Her assistants in particular have reason to kill her, because she just fired a whole bunch of them.

Diana gets back from Greece and goes on what constitutes a rampage by her standards, which means she's slightly more stern and forceful than usual. She roughs up a few thugs, and uses her lasso to find out what happened. Long story short, her newest assistant was actually a drug dealer who not only was supplying Myndi with smack, but was somehow using her p.r. firm as a front to distribute his nose candy. I'm still unclear on how exactly that worked.

Anyway, Diana finds out that this guy shot Myndi. After getting this confession, Diana accidentally lets the guy go, and he electrocutes himself on a nearby fence. Whoops. It seems like a closed case, but the detective on the job reveals that the coroner's report indicates Myndi actually died of a hemorrhage before being shot. So it was drugs that did it after all - she killed herself with her poor life decisions. THE END!! My Grade: B.

Notes: As far as "very special" issues go, this one is pretty well done. The cover and the narration by the detective throughout the issue give this issue a different feel than the previous ones, which is nice; it's good to mix up the tone now and again. George also does some really nice work with his action sequences; there's a really good one where the drug dealer is trying to escape and he is hearing Diana battling other guys off panel, and we get his mounting fear and panic. It's very cinematic, and it's a testament to George's skill that it still works even though we can't actually hear what's happening.

On the other hand, this did feel like a bit of a let down in terms of all the build up we've been getting with Myndi.I haven't much cared for her character or for the role she has had in the series; the whole p.r. firm thing never quite felt right to me, as it clashed with Diana's style and felt a bit out of character. There was also quite a bit of setup with Myndi's assistants in previous issues. Frankly, with all that set up in the first 19 issues, I expected something a bit bigger than what is essentially a well done after school special for adults.

There are several letters in this issue about Action Comics #600, all of which reveal some level of disappointment and/or confusion over both that specific story and how the Clark/Diana stuff was handled in general. So it's not just the benefit of hindsight.

Boston Notes: Large sections of the action in this issue happen in "the Combat Zone." Wow, I have not thought about the Combat Zone in years. Back in the 70's and 80's, the Combat Zone was the rough and dangerous part of Boston, down around Chinatown, where there was a lot of drugs and prostitution and gang activity. Like New York's more publicized nastiness around Times Square from the same time period, the Combat Zone was finally cleaned up in the late 80's and early 90's; now the area is perfectly fine to visit, and is part of the theater district. This gave me some real flashbacks to watching the nightly news as a kid, as there was always some murder or other going on in the Combat Zone back then.

Wonder Woman #21
story by George Perez, inks by Bob McLeod



Synopsis: Well, this is going to be a short synopsis.

Diana is summoned back to Themyscira. Seems the Amazons have all been summoned to Olympus! O, glorious day. When they arrive on Olympus, though, they find it is still a complete ruin after the events of Action Comics #600. They are bummed. Then they are even more bummed when the gods show up and explain that they have decided to leave and create a new home. Since the amazons are the only worshippers they have left, though, and the gods get their power from worship, they need the amazons to pray wicked hard in order to blow up Olympus and send the gods on their way.

The amazons do pray real hard; their power is focused through Diana's bracelets or something, and she blows up Olympus. All the gods leave forever (or... probably not), even though Hermes in particular is really grumpy about this. The Amazons are left with no gods, finally masters of their own destiny, with their big vote on whether or not to join the real world set for the next day. THE END! My Grade: B-.

Notes: This issue was fine for what it was, but while it was important and had some nice thematically relevant discussion about duty to the gods and stuff, not a whole hell of a lot actually happened. The gods left. Okay. Not sure that required an entire issue to get through. Which is a bit of a pattern - every time the gods show up, they pontificate for pages on end. I guess they like to hear themselves talk.

It does set up the vote in the next issue as an even bigger turning point for the series and the amazons, and the direction of the whole series up to this point is moving forward. This title actually feels surprisingly modern in its storytelling, though that is not necessarily a compliment; all the big picture stuff is good and well handled, but on an issue to issue basis, the individual episodes can be a bit lacking, as everything kind of serves to set up the next thing. It feels like something that would read better in a trade, so it's a good thing I am reading them all at once and not going month to month.

There are several extremely long and thought out letters in this issue. I appreciate it; that sort of thing has been lost these days. But it also makes it a bit difficult to get through the letter column now, as I don't feel like reading a 1500 word essay on amazonian religion when I can just read the next issue instead. Sorry, letter writers of 26 years ago!