War Of The Gods!

I no doubt glimpsed his work before on small features here and there across the Marvel landscape, but the first time I remember the name George Perez registering in my consciousness was in The Avengers #141 in 1975 when the Assemblers bounded into action against the Squadron Supreme. Perez quickly established himself as the master of team comics and soon enough landed the Fab 4, off to DC and The NEW Teen Titans, and then with the regrettable passing of Dick Dillin the Justice League of America itself. I consider the Avengers issues he and Kurt Busiek put together at the end of the last century and into this one to be the last great comic book I've come across. So it was on the strength of his art that I dipped my toe into his DC crossover epic War of the Gods. 

That and the fact the mythic street brawl included and in fact featured The Son of Vulcan. When DC gifted Dick Giordano with the Charlton "Action Heroes" somehow or other Son of Vulcan was included though to my memory he was never a part of Giordano's regime. Digging up vintage SoV issues proved difficult in those pre-internet days and one of my most pleasurable comic finds was latching onto a beaten and well-foxed copy of Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds #47 (the second SoV story) in a little shop in North Carolina. It completed my set of Son of Vulcan comics and for the most part all of the Charlton heroes I spend much of the 80's wrapping up. So it was nice to see Johnny Mann get some focus in a comic at long last, even it did prove to be his swan song. 

This event was intended to do two things apparently -- celebrate Wonder Woman's fiftieth anniversary and to wrap up Perez's well-regarded tenure on the comic. He'd worked hard to make Wonder Woman both distinctive and important and had some success in that regard. But it seems that he and DC disagreed about how much ballyhoo this event warranted and then there were editorial disagreements as well. So this "War of the Gods" proved to be a war indeed and as a result not nearly as good as it ought to have been. It starts out well enough, but as with most of the art in this saga Perez was doing the covers and only laying out the art inside, so it wasn't quite as potent as it should be. Also these events require a good bit of background information, but hopefully most writers can get you around these limits. The complexities of Amazonian existence along with several pantheons of Gods made this one a real puzzler sometimes about what was going on. 

Now this collection includes the Wonder Woman issues which were part of the saga. And they are invariably weaker than the main installments, though at the time veteran readers might have been well pleased. I was just mostly confused having to deal with yet more characters with similar names and frankly similar looks. When you've seen one lovely Amazon, it appears you've seen most of them. 

And as with many of these events, the attempts to wedge in heroes like Batman and Superman feel wooden and arbitrary. 

War of the Gods tells the story of the Greek pantheon of gods battling the Roman pantheon of gods along with other sundry gods from Egypt, Africa, Europe and elsewhere. All of the classics are on tap from Enkidu to Hermes and it gets crowded, very very crowded. The villain is Circe who is trying to destroy or control the Earth or something, but frankly her motivations never made much sense really. It was just a black hat and white hat situation and that's rarely good for a story this complex. 

Characters like Lobo were fun to see since I've read almost nothing with this character. He clearly is of his time and seems like fun, but I'm not sure he was ideal for this one. Though no doubt he helped sales a little. 

And there is more than a whisper of the classic Crisis on Infinite Earths in this one too. Not only because of Perez's involvement, but because characters like Harbinger showing up for a bit of action. But you can almost feel this one coming apart at the seams as you read it. The art gets more and more fractious and more and more diverse hands participate. Some of the storytelling is suspect and at least once someone seems to have cocked up the layout of the pages, or half-pages. I can only assume this was part of the original and never corrected. 

Now Wonder Woman appears to die during this event and that's okay since she gets better pretty quickly. But I did feel it was similar to the whole Superman shebang which was to be fair still several years away. It feels in retrospect like a trial run. 

The final issue feels like a mad dash to the finish and by this time I've gotten really confused about certain details. Certain characters seem to have died that I don't remember at all. For his part Son of Vulcan does contribute in a memorable way even it did cost him all. It was high-profile exit for a hero most would regard as third-rate, though I adore him. 

The collection ends with a dewy farewell issue in which plot threads are tied off and the stage is set for a new writer to take over. Perez fell out with DC after this and went about the world of comics doing this and that for a while. It's too bad this swan song didn't have a prettier tune. 

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