Ah, Wonder Woman. Diana Prince. One of my favorite characters in comics, portrayed in movies and TV; sometimes incredibly, sometimes not so flatteringly. Who’s the best of the best it becomes hard to say. Lynda Carter in the 70’s, Gal Gadot recently, or voiced amazingly by Shannon Farnon in the Super Friends Cartoons, and Susan Eisenberg in the Justice League and Justice League Unlimited cartoons. Our bigger question is where to start reading about this character to get a good grasp of who she is.
For young readers in particular, I would suggest ‘Diana: Princess of the Amazons” written by Shannon Hale and Dean Hale. This is a children’s graphic novel about Diana (Wonder Woman) when she is a very young girl being raised on the island of Themyscira. An island nation of women who are thousands of years old. This story is simply amazing. Diana has to deal with a lot of issues young kids have to deal with and navigate those issues. Loneliness, desire to play when adults must work to name a couple. A really fun read with really cute art. I loved this book and feel it is good for all ages. The sequel “Diana and Nubia: Princesses of the Amazons” is really wonderful as well!
For more mature readers tastes, I would suggest “Wonder Woman: The Hiketeia” by Greg Rucka (not just because I am a huge Greg Rucka fanboy). Anything he writes is amazing, but this story is truly a great deep dive into who Diana is and the Amazon culture. Beautiful art by J. G. Jones. One of my favorites
Another truly amazing book is “Wonder Woman – Spirit of Truth” by Paul Dini and art by the amazing Alex Ross. This story is where Diana is trying to find her relevance in todays world. Truly captivating and one of the books I really treasure in my collection.
I would end by suggesting DC New Frontier by Darwyn Cooke. It is not a Wonder Woman book per se, but she is in it and some of my favorite Wonder Woman scenes of all time are in this book, which was made into an animated movie. Darwyn did the screenplay, so it is fairly faithful to the book. The book does go deeper into many areas. Lucy Lawless voices Wonder Woman. It is very much worth a look. DC New Frontier is set in the 1950s, right between the Golden age and Silver age of comics. It tries to make sense of the massive changes that took place then in the comics that were never explained. What happened is McCarthyism, and the book “Seduction of the Innocents” which blamed comic books for the corruption of the youth of America. The government was very close to shutting down the entire comic book industry. So the comic industry got together and created the Comic Code of America, and made sure all comics were safe for kids to read. All Supernatural and Horror comics disappeared. Batman stopped carrying a gun and shooting people. Alan Scott’s Green Lantern disappeared, and Hal Jordan appeared as the new Green Lantern, which were a type of space police instead of just a hero as he was before. Many changes. But they were never explained in the comics, they just happened. This book tries, and succeeds in making sense of it all. Truly one of my favorite DC Comics storylines of all time. It also makes a brilliant primer for the entire DC Comics Universe.
Written by Greg Burrow
