DIANA PRINCE WONDER WOMAN TPB Cover Gallery...

Copyright DC COMICS

If I bought the above book in its year of publication (2008), I've now owned it for 16 years.  However, it's possible I may've got it within the first year or so after it hit bookstores, but whatever the case, I've now had it for a fair amount of time.  I always intended to get around to buying the subsequent three volumes, but only managed to do so fairly recently.  I never bought Wonder Woman at the time the comics reprinted in these volumes first appeared (1969-'72/'73), though I picked some up a number of years later, including the first two or three in Diana Prince's new direction as a 'Cathy Gale/Emma Peel' type adventuress with no Amazonian superpowers whatsoever.

I was always intrigued by this new direction in her career from her few appearances in other mags (Superman, The Brave And The Bold, Lois Lane, World's Finest, etc.) so I'm glad to now be able to read the complete series of all 27 issues from 178 to 204, though 191 was mainly a reprint issue with 5 pages of new material 'bookending' the reprint.  (Issues 197 & 198 were also reprint issues - maybe the artist got behind schedule.)  The first three books present all the covers as full page images, though the fourth one presents most of them as two (reduced) covers per page, with the exception of The Brave & The Bold #105, where Diana guest-stars with Batman.

At a quick count, Denny O'Neil wrote 7 issues of the series, Mike Sekowsky wrote (and drew) 17, with Robert Kanigher and Bob Haney handling whatever Denny and Mike didn't write.  I'm not counting the few other heroes' mags that appear in the collection so as not to spoil the surprise should you ever decide to buy them.  Mike Sekowsky's scripting could do with a bit of polish (or editing) in some places, as the following example from 'The House That Wasn't' shows.  "Stepping into the main room is like stepping back a hundred years in the past as they enter the large main room and see the giant fire place warming the lovely old-fashioned room."

The word 'room' appearing three times in one sentence is too repetitive and would read better with something like... "Entering the large, old-fashioned main room with its giant fireplace radiating a comforting warmth is like stepping a hundred years into the past."  Another aspect of these stories that could stand improvement is the placement of several speech balloons, which seem completely arbitrary.  Some cover faces and parts of figures when there is absolutely no need for it, there being sufficient room elsewhere without obscuring certain parts of the art.

Anyway, I'll spare you further opinions from 'How To Do Comics The Robson Way' and cut straight to the covers of the four volumes.  After all, that's really what you're here for.

Another groovy item (below) I picked up only recently is one from 2011 - Retroactive (1970s) Wonder Woman, written by Denny O'Neil.  Just thought I'd include it as it relates to the tales above and because I liked the cover.  (I wonder why, as I'm as pure as the driven snow, so I am.)

And below is an example of poor placement of speech balloons.  Both of them could've been positioned without obscuring so much of Diana's forehead and face, especially the second one.  That's lazy lettering.  You'd never have caught me doing this sort of thing during my 15-year career in the world of comics (he said, virtuously - if also a little smugly).

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