My Five Favorite Wonder Woman Artists

Back during my Wizard days, somewhere in the neighborhood of 2006, I got assigned—or pitched, I can’t remember—a piece on Wonder Woman, a character I didn’t know all that much about aside from what everybody knows. The article was examining why a property as universally known as Wonder Woman had trouble sustaining the commercial success of contemporaries like Superman and Batman or even the burgeoning Green Lantern. I recall not being entirely happy with the finished product mainly because I found it to be a huge topic and couldn’t condense it into the space allotted, but I really enjoyed working on it because I got to chat with intelligent folks like Phil Jimenez, Greg Rucka and Allan Heinberg to get insight into the subject and learned a lot.

(NOTE: You can have a good conversation with Phil Jimenez about pretty much anything, but ask him about Wonder Woman and prepare to have your mind blown—also don’t plan to get anything else done that day)

The ultimate conclusion I reached on the question posed was that in many ways Wonder Woman had peaked early. More than any other character created in the 1940’s—including Captain America—she was very much of the era in terms of being designed with a specific purpose and thriving in a particular environment. There have been many great Wonder Woman stories told in print as well as through other mediums; in particular the classic Lynda Carter television series, but it was interesting to find how fondly remembered her Golden Age stories were by true fans of the character. With most properties, you find the 30’s and 40’s were a formative period but not so technically proficient; the original Wonder Woman stories have an undeniable energy to them and it also happened to be when the character achieved her greatest commercial success.

Basically, Wonder Woman got a reputation for being an equal point of DC’s “big three” triangle out of the gate and has been struggling to justify it ever since without the timelessness Superman and Batman seem to enjoy.

However, as I said, there are a lot of good Wonder Woman stories out there. In researching that article, I got to read quite a few. What I came to appreciate even more than the writing though was how challenging it must be for an artist to approach this icon and how impressive it is when they succeed. Created to be the female role model girls were lacking, Wonder Woman is the embodiment of feminism, but she’s also a beautiful woman in a form the idealizes—and often exaggerates—the female form. For an artist to walk the line between archetype and sex appeal with this character is an achievement that demands recognition.

Honorable Mention

HARRY G. PETER
The man who started it all deserves to be credited for a great design.

ADAM HUGHES
The most prolific Wonder Woman cover artist I can think of, and more or less defines the character for many, but I want to see interiors.

J.G. JONES
He can depict her as a beauty, as a fighter, and as a horror—see Final Crisis; one of the more versatile Wonder Woman artists for sure and he just misses the cut.

5. FRANK MILLER
Nobody draws Wonder Woman like Frank Miller. His bold choices when it comes to the costume or how he composes her face are undeniable. His Wonder Woman is not a lady you mess with. She’s got a primal energy that speaks to her status as a warrior princess. He’s number five only because I see too much of too many of his Sin City vixens in his take; if he had an extended run to make a mark on the character, he’d most likely be higher.

4. MIKE SEKOWSKY
As the designer of the bold “Mod Wonder Woman” redesign of the 1960’s, there’s no denying Mike Sekowsky has a major spot in the character’s visual history. Though I think it was definitely a good short term look rather than long term given the strength of the typical design, I look back at the “New Wonder Woman” as an era that featured very pretty art. Sekowsky had a knack for making something as simple as a white or black jumpsuit come alive through a strong use of basic shapes, dynamic inking and bold colors in the background to accentuate the figure. He drew great action sequences as well, really hurling Diana into the thick of it. Even before he took on Wonder Woman solo, Sekowsky spent years defining her look in Justice League of America and I would presume influenced many who came after.

3. DOUG MAHNKE
For a guy who made a lot of at least his early reputation on doing exaggerated extremes when it came to super heroes with The Mask, Major Bummer, etc., Doug Mahnke for my money draws a great Wonder Woman because he makes her look down to earth. When Mahnke was on JLA, I loved his mammoth Martian Manhunter and his ever-shifting Plastic Man, but I always thought the way he managed to make Diana look pretty in a relatable way as well as dangerous but not bloodthirsty was pretty neat. I dug the little things, like how he drew her with straight hair that matted down—as hair would when it’s fairly consistently drenched in sweat—as opposed to the wildly curly or silky smooth manes other artists give her. He gave her a nose that made her seem both unique and exotic; her eyes were a bit haunted. He was also able to balance her figure between sexy and sturdy; he used smooth, heavy lines to convey that this was a woman who had honed her body as a weapon, but possessed a more grounded strength as opposed to a bodybuilder’s physique. To describe Doug Mahnke’s Wonder Woman in a word, I’d go with “enchanting”—she’s a lady you admire from afar, but think twice before getting too close to.

2. PHIL JIMENEZ
I’ve encountered no bigger Wonder Woman fan than Phil Jimenez, and he brings the enthusiasm as well as the work ethic that comes with that distinction whenever he works on the character. He doesn’t draw every wisp of hair or every star on her costume because it’s his job, he does it because he loves it and he’s afraid to do her a disservice. During his run on Wonder Woman—notably as writer as well as artist—his Diana always seemed to tower over the rest of the cast—as she should—but as every bit the Amazon princess she is, not an awkward giant. He was—and is—excellent at framing the scene, her posture and her outline so as to emphasize her strength without detracting from her beauty. Phil doesn’t skimp when it comes to using as many lines as it takes to tell the story of the characters he’s drawing, but with Diana he also knew when to stop and let what he had on the page finish the job; he does a tremendous job of getting her face to “act,” whether it’s anguish over the loss of her mother, joy at the prospect of a new love, or rage en route to delivering an ass kicking. In his Wonder Woman stories—which are among my favorites—Phil seemed to delight in bringing in huge ensembles, be it dozens of Amazons or every female hero and villain in the DC Universe, but he never let the guests overwhelm his star; there was never a question that Diana was front and center and you believed she belonged alongside Superman and Batman. It was also Phil’s birthday yesterday—he only gets better with age!

1. GEORGE PEREZ
When I spoke at the beginning about the Wonder Woman stories I read while researching her that really made the character shine for me, I was talking about a few, but mainly George Perez’s run on her title. Rebooting her post-Crisis, Perez didn’t just make some costume tweaks or a change to the origin, he reinvented the entire world of Wonder Woman from the ground up. If you’ve followed George Perez’s work—and I have—you know among his many incredible qualities as an artist, perhaps nothing stands out so much as his unparalleled attention to detail. He will draw every piece of rubble in a fight scene; he will squeeze a hundred characters into a panel where most would put two. He brought this all-or-nothing approach to Wonder Woman as both writer and artist, mining every aspect of the character for story—warrior, teacher, ambassador, foreigner, daughter, hero—and sparing nothing when attacking her visually. His Diana was one who possessed statuesque and intimidating beauty, but a naive innocence in her eyes that made you trust her and want to protect the most powerful woman in the world. In battle, he made her formidable, with a grimace that you believed would scare a war god, but at peace he bestowed upon her a smile that said everything would be ok. My descriptions are lapsing into pretty sappy poetry here, but frankly that’s what Perez’s brilliance inspires in me as a fan. He also never settled to depict Wonder Woman in merely her iconic costume or to make a change and stick with it; he drew the heck out of the classic look and owned it, but he’d also create variation both subtle and bold as the occasion required, be it armor for war or a stately look for diplomacy. George Perez imbued every single character that appeared in his vast Wonder Woman cast with a singular energy and vitality, creating a diverse gallery of faces rather than an army of clones, but none shone brighter than Diana herself; nobody touches the master on this one.

The Definitives: Daredevil

So the first issue of Shadowland is in stores this week, and I am excited.

I mean, I’m excited because I work at Marvel and also have already read the issue plus know a bit of what’s ahead, so I know it’s going to be a fun ride, but that aside, as a fan, this kind of “street level heroes event” is an idea I know I’ve kicked around with my buddies for years and wager similar discussions have taken place in other comics-reading circles, so it’s neat that it’s happening. It’s also under the capable guidance of three stellar in editors in Steve Wacker, Tom Brennan and Alejandro Arbona, so the pedigree on this baby is solid.

With the story making Daredevil a central figure in a world he’s typically on the fringe of, I thought this might be a good time to give DD some love with my favorite tales of The Man Without Fear. Truth be told, I’ve come close to pulling the trigger on this particular Definitives a few times but backed down since I kinda figure everybody has the same handful of classics in mind when it comes to Daredevil; but giving it some thought, maybe that’s not the case as I’ve come to discover there’s far more great material on the character than I once believed—much of which I likely won’t even cover here—and even if there’s some overlap, so what, good comics is good comics.

And these are good comics.

“Badlands”
My favorite standalone stand alone story—and quite possibly my favorite story period—in Daredevil’s history doesn’t have Matt Murdock putting on the costume at all or even speaking a single word. The premise is pretty short, sweet and simple: the first part of the story sets up a corrupt hellhole of a town in New Jersey, the rest is a blind man riding in and cleaning things up. It’s not unlike a vintage Western flick, except it really taps into the essence of Daredevil and is a nice primer if you don’t know the character and just want the bare bone essentials that run beneath even the red suit and bill clubs. No surprise it’s written by Frank Miller, the guy who essentially made Daredevil relevant (and his own career in the process). The art comes from one of my all-time favorites, John Buscema, and captures the feel of despair as well as hard-won triumph as only he could.

“Born Again”
While I by no means didn’t enjoy the aforementioned Mr. Miller’s first run on Daredevil, I’m certainly not as into it as many other folks; I’m more impressed by the elements he lays out that have since become so coded into the character’s DNA and the rapid evolution of his work, but to me it does read like work by a guy just hitting his stride as opposed to a more seasoned pro. Probably for those reasons, I’m a much bigger fan of Miller’s return engagement on the book a few years later with “Born Again.” Nowadays, the whole systematic deconstruction of a hero’s life in order to build him back up later stronger and more resolved is far more commonplace in general and also seems to happen to Daredevil pretty much yearly, but Miller did it first and in my opinion still did it best. For me it’s not the ninja stuff or Catholic overtones that finally separated Daredevil once and for all from being the second rate Spider-Man he started out as, but that ability to walk the line of utter despair partly into insanity then emerge from the other end as an even bigger bad ass the likes of which Spidey could never hope to be. This story absolutely made The Kingpin as it’s pretty scary how handily he dismantles Matt’s existence, plus we get that amazing sequence with the Avengers and Nuke that clearly demonstrates why Daredevil can hang with the A-list of Marvel. Also, it should probably go without saying, but David Mazzucchelli’s art is tremendous.

Daredevil: The Man Without Fear
The third and final Frank Miller entry on my little list and what I think most people consider to be the definitive telling of Daredevil’s origin. In many cases when creators go back and try to flesh out a Silver Age origin told in 15 pages to a five-issue saga, it falls flat because often time the original telling was elegant in its simplicity and there’s really nothing more that needs to be said. However, in this case Miller had already basically taken the Matt Murdock that Stan Lee had built and reinvented him from the ground up in stories set years after his genesis; this was just grounding all those cosmetic changes a bit more solidly and making the transfer of ownership more or less official. The early stuff with Matt and his dad is pivotal, but the series really hits its stride when Elektra is introduced. This was the story that finally after many years helped me get the appeal of the Elektra-Daredevil romance, in that it was not the stuff of fairytales as comic book relationships often are, but instead a case of two people stuck on horribly violent paths able to find solace in one another for a fleeting moment that they’re going to spend the rest of their lives attempting to regain. This was also the work that converted me to being a John Romita Jr. fan after not getting him at all on Uncanny X-Men; his cartoonishly imperfect figures and tremendous depth of linework suited the tone of the story so perfectly and made me both re-evaluate all his stuff I’d written off before as well as eat up everything he’s done since.

“Guardian Devil”
This is a “greatest hits” story done right by Kevin Smith and Joe Quesada. It’s got pretty much every character and element—except for Elektra and I guess Typhoid Mary—who has played an important role in Daredevil’s life up to the point it was written (Kingpin, Bullseye, Karen Page, Black Widow, Mephisto and Foggy Nelson all put in appearances), but they are all used to advance a completely new and dynamic story, not just to show up, get beat up/made out with and then not mentioned again. I just re-read this very recently and despite knowing how it all ends was just really impressed with Smith’s capabilities as a mystery-weaver in addition to his skills writing comedy and action, not to mention those heady religious and personal issues DD and his cast must contend with. Quesada totally found his sweet spot drawing Daredevil as the shadows and acrobatics alone really allowed him to open up and play the way he likes to as well as turn in some of his best stuff. I don’t want to dwell too much on many more details as this is a story I think deserves a look from those who may have skipped straight from Miller to Bendis and so much of the good stuff is in the slow unraveling of the plot, but it’s really high quality stuff with incredible human drama.

Daredevil: Yellow
In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve never actually read the original Silver Age run of Daredevil, but it’s not something I’m in any great rush to dive into as obviously there was a need for pretty drastic reinvention by the 80’s and also because the character’s earliest appearance in old Spider-Man comics I did check out recently didn’t exactly blow my mind. However, I did think Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s brief visit to Matt Murdock’s early days as part of their “color” series was a neat perspective on a different kind of Marvel character. As with Spider-Man: Blue and Hulk: Grey, Daredevil: Yellow focuses on the hero of the piece and a lost love from more innocent days, which in this case is Karen Page. But while the romance element is fine and dandy, I think Loeb’s greatest accomplishment in this series is providing a bridge of sorts between the Lee and Miller takes on Daredevil, showing Matt’s attempts to be a more lighthearted swashbuckler but how in private he’s such a different and worn out kind of hero from the start and the pronounced strain that façade puts on him. Sale is at his finest here and it’s cool that they went with the barely-used original yellow costume both because it gives him more avenues to explore and also he really makes it his own.

Daredevil by Brian Michael Bendis & Alex Maleev
There’s no one story from Brian Bendis and Alex Maleev’s five-year run on Daredevil that stands out as being the most important of the bunch for me, and I think that’s a testament to their work, as they really did create an epic that spanned nearly 60 issues and pretty much avoided the valleys in favor of if not constant peaks that at the very least consistent high quality. Bendis redefined the character of Matt Murdock almost as powerfully as Miller did, but in far more subtle ways from his language to his more primal way of dealing with adversity. In a medium where the bulk of the protagonists fly or swing above humanity, Bendis really grounded Daredevil as a hero of the people, one as capable of terrible violence as he is of great empathy. For his part, Maleev has absolutely created the modern template for how Daredevil is supposed to look with his grainer, darker more realistic and painterly style; a DD who looked too far askew from the way Alex Maleev drew him in this day and age just would not feel right. Bendis and Maleev were very bold with Daredevil, recognizing the great potential that the character has always had to be a proving ground for creators on the rise and not resting on the laurels of the work Miller and his contemporaries did, instead forging their own way; the reverberations of their work is still being felt today and likely will continue to be for some time to come.

“Daredevil” The Movie
It was awesome.