Rank & Phile #1: Wonder Woman Artists
nweathington
Posts: 6,748
This is an idea that spawned out of a recent discussion in the 2017 Reading Thread, where some of us were ranking the artists of an Epic Collection: Captain America volume. Everyone around here seems to like lists like this, so I thought I'd come up with some more. I figure I'll do one a week, and to try to prevent topic confusion and having to sift through pages of posts (assuming people play along), I'll start a new thread for each new list.
Since Wonder Woman is all the rage this week, I thought we could start with Wonder Woman Artists. Rank them by your personal preference, their historical importance, or simply who you think was the best at drawing Wonder Woman. While I would prefer if everyone gave at least a little explanation as to their choices, don’t feel obligated. So here are five of the artists (in chronological order) who drew Wonder Woman the longest:
H. G. Peter, Ross Andru, George Pérez, John Byrne, Cliff Chiang
Since Wonder Woman is all the rage this week, I thought we could start with Wonder Woman Artists. Rank them by your personal preference, their historical importance, or simply who you think was the best at drawing Wonder Woman. While I would prefer if everyone gave at least a little explanation as to their choices, don’t feel obligated. So here are five of the artists (in chronological order) who drew Wonder Woman the longest:
H. G. Peter, Ross Andru, George Pérez, John Byrne, Cliff Chiang
Comments
1. John Byrne - Because I love all things Byrne
2. George Pérez - Because he gave Diana the best hair (so curly!)
3. Ross Andru - Because this is the Wonder Woman of my youth.
3. H. G. Peter - Love that star-spangled skirt!
3. Cliff Chiang - like how he makes Diana more of an Amazon.
But my all time favourite is still Darwyn Cooke's version of WW in New Frontier.
2. George Pérez — Mainly because he tried to make her look more Greek than anyone had previously.
3. H. G. Peter — His work looked antiquated, but it gave Wonder Woman a fairy tale quality that fit pretty well with the more whimsical stories of the Golden Age.
4. John Byrne — I didn’t care for his run all that much, but it was certainly well drawn.
5. Ross Andru — Andru’s Wonder Woman was a little too bland for my taste.
2) Chiang
3) Byrne
4) Peter
5) Andru
2. Cliff Chiang -- I love how clean Chiang's artwork is, and I really enjoyed the modification of Wonder Woman's costume, for this series. Beautiful work.
3. John Byrne -- I remember being stoked Byrne was taking over WW. But, like Eric above, I fell off rather quickly. Something about his take didn't click with me. The art, thought, was what you'd expect from Byrne--good, solid stuff.
4. H.G. Peter -- This was the only artist with whom I was unfamiliar, by name, but doing a Google search, I immediately recognized many iconic images from Wonder Woman's early days. I haven't read any of these comics, but I like Eric's description of the art being "fairy tale" like, which is spot on, and something that intrigues me. Might have to seek out reprints of these someday.
5. Ross Andru -- Fairly certain I've not read any Andru WW issues either, though I'm familiar with his work, which I would describe as solid but not overly appealing, to me.
Thank you @nweathington for starting this. As far as I'm concerned, you are correct--I do "like lists," and I look forward to future threads.
-chris
2) John Byrne - I'm a Byrne fan, so there's bias here, but I liked how he re-did her costume, made her fun and yeah, I'll say it, sexy but an ass-kicker at the same time as only Byrne can. He was a great fit for the book, even though I know many didn't care for his take on her.
3) Ross Andru - had the most "evolution" of the character over his career on her book.
4) Cliff Chiang - He gets props and a shake of the fist for stealing a page from me and Flint on this book. :)
5) H.G. Peter - sacrilege I know to say it, but classic Wondy never did much for me as far as the look and artwork.
However, I have to admit that my reading of Wonder Woman is limited to the One Year Later and New52 runs.
2. George Pérez - But if you are going to have another artist work on it, a guy who is into bondage is probably a good choice. Seems bizarre that Claremont never got a long run writing the character.
3. Cliff Chiang - Almost aggressively misunderstanding the character, but better than...
4. Ross Andru and...
5. John Byrne - Long off the boil at the point he did the book.
While we're ranking the longest standing artists, I'd have said Sekowsky and possibly Jimenez are more important artistic contributors than Andru and Byrne.
Otherwise, my list is as follows:
1) Perez
2) Andru
3) Chiang
4) Byrne
5) Peter