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theartolater's review
1.0
The most "what the heck?" Wonder Woman trade I've read yet. A fairly pedestrian story with some truly tragic artwork and...yeah, this was not good at all. At all.
birdmanseven's review
2.0
Pretty weak as whole. I never like Darkseid and Wonder Woman's new pal, Mike, didn't do anything for me. I suppose it's worth reading for the introduction of Cassie Sandmark.
hammard's review
2.0
This is a very odd collection to read now.
=Some Spoilers=
George Perez had successfully run Wonder Woman from the reboot in 1987 to the 50th Anniversary War of the Gods event. William Messner-Loebs did an okay job afterwards but soon resorted to 90s tropes, firstly sending the character to space, then to have her replaced by a "gritty" (AKA violent and lacking anatomical accuracy) version.
Now Byrne taking over wanted to treat her as a new character, removing a lot of continuity from the last 100 or so issues. This is all well and good if that's what was being done but the actual result is rather different. The supporting cast of Steve, Julia and Vanessa are replaced by the very similar Mike, Helena and Cassie, whilst the villains are very old DC stalwarts of Darkseid and Morgan Le Fay. In fact a large part of one issue is devoted to rehashing the history of the New Gods and referencing John Byrne's prior Wonder Woman story in Action Comics.
This size of the trade is strange too, since it only really contains the start of an arc with Morgan Le Fay, with the conclusion being contained in "Lifelines". Flashing further forward Byrne almost exclusively uses existing villains (e.g. Doomsday, Sinestro, Cheetah) until he decides to completely rehash a Messner-Loebs plot from a few years before.
Back to the actual issue, the stories themselves are not terrible but incredibly generic. You could replace Diana with almost any other character around at the time and you wouldn't notice the difference.
The artwork is better than many other comics from the period (where Liefield's influence was being felt) but neiter is it anything worth preserving.
Overall, for completists only.
=Some Spoilers=
George Perez had successfully run Wonder Woman from the reboot in 1987 to the 50th Anniversary War of the Gods event. William Messner-Loebs did an okay job afterwards but soon resorted to 90s tropes, firstly sending the character to space, then to have her replaced by a "gritty" (AKA violent and lacking anatomical accuracy) version.
Now Byrne taking over wanted to treat her as a new character, removing a lot of continuity from the last 100 or so issues. This is all well and good if that's what was being done but the actual result is rather different. The supporting cast of Steve, Julia and Vanessa are replaced by the very similar Mike, Helena and Cassie, whilst the villains are very old DC stalwarts of Darkseid and Morgan Le Fay. In fact a large part of one issue is devoted to rehashing the history of the New Gods and referencing John Byrne's prior Wonder Woman story in Action Comics.
This size of the trade is strange too, since it only really contains the start of an arc with Morgan Le Fay, with the conclusion being contained in "Lifelines". Flashing further forward Byrne almost exclusively uses existing villains (e.g. Doomsday, Sinestro, Cheetah) until he decides to completely rehash a Messner-Loebs plot from a few years before.
Back to the actual issue, the stories themselves are not terrible but incredibly generic. You could replace Diana with almost any other character around at the time and you wouldn't notice the difference.
The artwork is better than many other comics from the period (where Liefield's influence was being felt) but neiter is it anything worth preserving.
Overall, for completists only.
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