Set Description:
Synopsis: This set is composed of 151 books with a minimum grade of 8.0. While the census frequently changes, as of this writing, 123 of our books currently top the census, including 72 single highest graded examples, which is the most for any title we collect.
Background: Wonder Woman was created by the American psychologist and writer William Moulton Marston and artist Harry G. Peter. Marston's wife, Elizabeth, and their life partner, Olive Byrne, are credited as being his inspiration for the character's appearance, as detailed in the movie, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women.
Wonder Woman first appeared in All Star Comics #8 published October 21, 1941, with her first feature in Sensation Comics #1 in January 1942. The Wonder Woman title has been published by DC Comics almost continuously ever since. In her homeland, the island nation of Themyscira, her official title is Princess Diana of Themyscira, while she adopts the identity of Diana Prince in the world outside.
In Wonder Woman's origin story she was sculpted from clay by her mother Queen Hippolyta and was given a life as an Amazon, along with superhuman powers by the Greek Gods. In 2011, DC changed her background with the retcon that she is the biological daughter of Zeus and Hippolyta, jointly raised by her mother and her aunts Antiope and Menalippe.
Wonder Woman has changed in depiction over the decades, including briefly losing her powers entirely in the late 1960s. By the 1980s, artist George Perez had given her an athletic look and emphasized her Amazonian heritage. She possesses an arsenal of magical items, including the Lasso of Truth, a pair of indestructible bracelets, a tiara which serves as a projectile, and, in older stories, a range of devices based on Amazon technology.
Wonder Woman was created during World War II and was initially depicted fighting Axis forces as well as an assortment of colorful supervillains. Over time her stories came to place greater emphasis on characters, deities, and monsters from Greek mythology. Many stories depicted Wonder Woman freeing herself from bondage, is stark contrast to the "damsels in distress" that were common in comics during the 1940s.
In the decades since her debut, Wonder Woman has gained a cast of enemies bent on destroying her, including classic villains such as Ares, Cheetah, Circe, Doctor Poison, Giganta, Doctor Psycho, Maxwell Lord, along with more recent adversaries such as Veronica Cale and the First Born. Wonder Woman has also regularly appeared in comic books featuring the superhero teams Justice Society (from 1941) and Justice League (from 1960), of which she was a founding member.
Wonder Woman has been depicted in a popular television series played by Lynda Carter and in several movies played by Gal Gadot. Shannon Farnon, Susan Eisenberg, Maggie Q, Lucy Lawless, Keri Russell, Rosario Dawson, Cobie Smulders, Rachel Kimsey and Stana Katic among others, have provided the character's voice for animated adaptations. October 21 is Wonder Woman Day, commemorating the release of her first appearance in All Star Comics #8 (with the exception of 2017 which held the day on June 3 to tie in with the release of the film of the same name).
Our Collection: I will say upfront, I really don’t understand this title-at least collecting it. Nobody seems to be trying to put together a high-grade complete set, so we are number one in the registry pretty much by default. But we are miles from completing it and the prospects of doing so seem nil.
Still, this set contains more single highest graded examples than any title we collect. So what to do? Do we pick a point in the later 50s and sell all our earlier books, which seem to be more valuable? Do we just sell them all? Or do we keep plugging away with no hope of finishing it, which has really never been our, at least my, thing?
Wonder Woman is the only Golden Age title that we actively collect and it’s easily the most challenging set to complete in that just finding all 200 WW books spanning over 30 years is damn near impossible. To that point, while we have now hunted these books hard for several years we have still never even seen decent copies of many of the dozens of issues we are missing in our set.
Wonder Woman is also the first title we now collect, which I did not read as a kid, although I remember Lynda Carter’s TV show. When we first started collecting this title, we focused on Silver Age books only. But, unlike Flash and Green Lantern, it’s not as clear with Wonder Woman where one age ends and the next begins. And, unfortunately, CGC has complicated that problem by not establishing any Wonder Woman subsets for separate eras, but instead only provides this one set, which spans roughly 30 years.
So without a lot of thinking on our part, our collection here began to span both eras with this title and through the years we have acquired more and more books from the early 1950s and late 40s. I quite like some of those early examples, but I find others to be downright Disneyish-not that there is anything wrong with that LOL.
This is also a strange run of books to me from a standpoint of the census. Maybe the same is true with all books from the Golden Age, but sometimes there is an early 9.8 and then the next highest graded issue will be an 8.0 or 7.5. Since we generally do not buy lower grade books, it is hard to rationalize breaking the bank for an 8.0 or 7.5, even if it tops the census. To make matters worse, we generally always avoid books with names or writing or stamps on the cover. But with WW, often those defects appear on the highest graded examples. Needless to say, this set has far more holes than any other we actively collect, as we have often passed on books where the covers did not interest us, at least when we started collecting these books.
We more recently started collecting some Batmans, Detectives, World’s Finests and Supermans, but have been careful in each title to sidestep the pitfalls we have encountered with Wonder Woman and have avoided Golden Age books-even though I really like a lot of GA Batman covers, especially those involving the Joker. Fortunately, CGC makes collecting a run of Batman or Detective Comics much easier since it establishes numerous sets covering shortened eras, generally in 100 Issue lots. If they had done the same with Wonder Woman, I doubt we would have fallen into the quagmire we now find ourselves with what to do with this set.
Needless to say, I am still not sure how far we are going to take this one, but admittedly, I got somewhat interested in WW after seeing Professor Marston and the Wonder Women. While I have never read most of these books, I have enjoyed collecting some new covers rather than constantly looking for upgrades. Unlike most Marvels and many DCs, collecting these books is more like a scavenger’s hunt. Clearly, based on the registry, as mentioned above, no other collectors are even attempting to put together high-grade collections of all 200 books in this set, which has made us #1 pretty much by default. All I can say is that they are far smarter than us, because doing so still seems like an impossible task to us involving both immense amounts of dedication to the task and, unfortunately, lots of money when it comes to the early Golden Age books.
At any rate, we have basically decided not to pursue any earlier books than the ones we own currently because of cost and again, we frankly don’t love the covers. And even with the later books we are not a huge fan of the Wonder Woman family covers. Currently, we are not buying any books below an 8.0, and only go that low when that book is at least top three in the census. We raise the bar to a 9.0 with issue #100, unless none exist, and again to 9.4 for later issues. Again, I think the chances we will ever complete this set are virtually nil. In fact, from what I can tell, nobody has ever found all 200 books in any grade, as you are competing with different collectors-gold and silver age-for a run of books that are both rare and somewhat ignored.
Current Stats:
151/200 Books
55 9.8s-All Highest Graded
21 9.6s-20 Highest Graded
18 9.4s-14 Highest Graded
21 9.2s-13 Highest Graded
12 9.0s-9 Highest Graded
15 8.5s-5 Highest Graded
2 8.0s-1 Highest Graded
56 WP
48 OW/W
19 OW
11 Cr/OW
72 Single Highest Graded
124 Highest Graded
19 Second Highest Graded
8 Third Highest Graded
44 Pedigrees
|