How GEORGE PEREZ Saved WONDER WOMAN From Becoming a ‘Raunchy Sex Object’
THE GEORGE PEREZ INTERVIEWS: Stepping up to preserve an icon… — UPDATED 10/14/26: George Perez and Greg Potter’s Wonder Woman #1 came out 40 years ago, on Oct. 14, 1986! Perfect time to reprint this piece from the June 2019 GEORGE PEREZ INTERVIEWS. Also check out Pete Stone’s brand-new GEORGE PEREZ’S WONDER WOMAN AT 40: Still the Best the Amazon Princess Ever. Dig it! — Dan — Welcome to THE GEORGE PEREZ INTERVIEWS, a weekly series where the comics master discusses his greatest series. Over 13 weeks, Perez, who’s retiring from the world of comics, gives you his take on each installment of our recent TOP 13 GEORGE PEREZ COUNTDOWN, which was written by 13th Dimension contributor Anthony Durso. (Click here for much more on that.) The segments are culled from a panel Perez and I did at East Coast Comicon. Last time was #7 — Justice League of America. (Click here.) This week, it’s Wonder Woman, which Perez and DC relaunched at the end of 1986, post-Crisis on Infinite Earths, with co-plotter Greg Potter: — Dan Greenfield: We’re doing OK on time so we’re just going to keep pushing through. Number 6 on the list was Wonder Woman. George Perez: Ah! Yeah, Wonder Woman is a personal triumph for me. As much as my fortune has been made because of Titans primarily, Wonder Woman was a book that, not until recently when the movie came out, did I realize how much of an impact I actually left on the character. Because it was an uphill battle. Even though I had a wonderful champion in my editor, Karen Berger, a lot of the DC editors at the time really didn’t care for Wonder Woman. I didn’t realize until I came into the office of the then-editor Janice Race, and they were putting together a new Wonder Woman book, that there wasn’t a single woman working in that company — and you’re talking about a company whose publisher was a woman! — who was happy with the direction they were going to go in. But they had to get the book published, or else they would lose the rights to Wonder Woman. I saw that, and at that point John Byrne was on Superman, Frank Miller had just done Dark Knight and was going to be doing Batman: Year One with...
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