Tell me dear reader, have you been reading Absolute Wonder Woman? No? Then stop at the end of this sentence and run out and buy it from one of our stores. I’m serious. That book is a unicorn. An impossible blend of perfect writing and perfect art that exemplifies the character arguably better than her mainstream counterpart at the moment. And that’s not a dig at the current Wonder Woman; Absolute Wonder Woman is just that good.
Anyhow, I’m a Wonder Woman fan. Which is a difficult position to be in since often enough, writers don’t have any idea what to do with her. The late great George Perez often talked about how in the 80s, during his defining run on the character, he was the only person with any ideas for her. So, finding stories to get people into the character is tricky. That’s where I come in.
Here’s some recommendations for good Wonder Woman tales.
Wonder Woman: Earth One by Grant Morrisson and Yanick Paquette
This is actually one I go back and forth on. It’s an easily accessible, self-contained, and deliberately retro take on the character intended to evoke her early appearances, which by modern standards are surreal to say the least. William Marston had some very unusual ideas in both his creative work and personal life, and Morrison has no issue using them here, for better and for worse. The result is something that, by the end, echoes Alan Moore’s Miracleman. Highly recommended.
The Darkseid War by Geoff Johns and Jason Fabok
This is technically a Justice League story, but the Amazons are center stage. The premise is fairly straightforward. Darkseid and Anti-Monitor square off on Earth with everyone else caught in the middle. Anti-Monitor brings along Darkseid’s daughter Grail, who takes the opportunity to expose some dirty little secrets about Paradise Island’s warrior women, and when Superman and Batman are removed from play, Diana is put in command to lead a seemingly hopeless struggle against both the God of Evil and the Slayer of Worlds. Drawn by Jason Fabok, an artist whose talents are especially well-suited to the epic scale of the conflict on display, and written by Geoff Johns, it has probably my favorite scene of any Wonder Woman story in it, a brilliant splash page by Fabok as Darkseid and Anti-Monitor advance on each other. Diana recites Odysseus’s journey through the Strait of Messina, caught between Scylla and Charybdis, and recognizes that there’s no lesser evil. People will die no matter what they do, but they will make them work for it.
Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Various
The most recent entry on this list, it’s one of the most successful uses of the expanded Black Label format. Drawn by three artists over three issues but woven together by the incomparable Kelly Sue DeConnick, it tells the origins of Paradise Island and the rise of Hippolyta, Diana’s mother and the Golden Age Wonder Woman. Combining dark fantasy with a sword and sandals aesthetic, it’s currently the most up to date and coherent origin for the Amazons, and one of the best made Wonder Woman stories period. It’s also directly cited by Kelly Thompson as a big inspiration for Absolute Wonder Woman. So, without this, we might not even have Absolute Wonder Woman as it exists now, and the thought of that makes me shudder.
Hope this list gets you started on some good Wonder Woman. However, and I need to emphasize this, if you’ve read to the bottom of this list and have still not read Absolute Wonder Woman, then you are obligated to read that before any other book on this list. And any other book in general. Seriously. It’s that good.