Just when you think DC has given up on publishing more volumes of classic Wonder Woman material, along comes this book!
Not that I’m complaining as I jumped on this book almost as soon as it came up for pre-order.
The early previews for this book confused folks following this line DC’s omnibuses. The last Wonder Woman omnibus volume was volume four, collecting some of her Golden Age adventures. This volume took us up to 1949 (Wonder Woman #36). This new Silver Age Volume 1 kicks off with Wonder Woman #98 from 1958 and ends with #123 from 1961.
That’s quite a gap!
Silver Age Wonder Woman
Whatever the reason for the jump forwards, it’s good to get this material collected. It’s also the start of a new line of Omnibuses collecting SIlver Age material.
I’ve not yet read any Wonder Woman comics from this era so I can’t comment on the quality. To be honest it doesn’t have the best reputation. On top of the usual Silver Age silliness, there’s the very confused early appearances of Wonder Girl (Is she a young Wonder Woman or another young Amazon?!) and Ross Andru’s and Mike Espositos’ art can look rough here.
An aside: As a kid I bought several issues of Marvel Tales featuring Spider-Man. These comics reprinted earlier issues and the penciller was Ross Andru. So for a while, Ross Andru was “my Spider-Man penciller”. So it was disappointing to find out that his work on Wonder Woman wasn’t universally liked!
But you know what? I’ve only flicked through the book so far, but some of the covers are awesome! Take issue #108, with a wanted Wonder Woman frozen in a searchlight or #113 featuring the Amazon Princess being chased by the Great Sphinx. Covers like these pretty much have me sold!
Anyway, here’s a few shots of the book cover along with some interior pages that jumped out at me:
Fingers crossed we get some more volumes to close the gap between the Golden Age and Silver Age!