The second volume of WONDER WOMAN was recently released in hardcover, and we were able to get our hands on a copy of our very own. As a huge fan of this series we were pretty excited about reading it for the first time and seeing whether putting some money down for a hardcover edition of this series was worth it. Having checked it out and re-reading the series, there is no doubt that this Wonder Woman hardcover is fantastic and having it collected makes it extremely easy to read. Having said that, it did have it's share of problems.
This series is great, the story is exciting and interesting, but one of the problems I found was that it starts at a very odd place. Beginning the volume with issue #7 feels a bit awkward and feels like you are jumping in at the middle of the story arc. You are introduced to certain new characters in previous issues of WONDER WOMAN that are interesting, but if you are new to the series you might find yourself wondering who they are and how they fit into the overall story.
== TEASER ==One of the cool things about the collected edition of this trade is the fact that the publisher managed to include the penciled version of each one of Cliff Chiang's covers from issue's #7 through #12. It gives us a bit of insight into the way that Chiang works; the fact that he is able to illustrate without really sketching anything out is kind of impressive.
In addition to getting a look at the unfinished covers to the series, we also get several pages of character designs and concept art that had been created for the series. While it is really great, and it is nice to see how the character designs came to be and read the notes associated with the character and concept designs. Our only real complaint is that there aren't very many pages of that, here.
If you have been a fan of this series then you absolutely should get this as part of your collection. If you are not yet a fan or haven't been reading then this may not necessarily be the Wonder Woman collection for you. If you're new to WONDER WOMAN we definitely recommend picking up the Volume one hardcover first as it feels more like a cohesive story that doesn't just start in the middle of everything. I was hoping to at least see a prologue or an epilogue from the writer or someone else invested in the creation of this volume, but unfortunately there isn't anything like that here. Sadly, you only get six extra pages of character sketches and concept art -- which isn't very many -- and I think it would have been nice to have a small blurb from the series' artist discussing his inspiration for the different character designs, but we don't get anything like that either.
Essentially, if you want this series collected in hardcover then by all means pick it up. It's a great compliment if you already have the first volume. However, if you're a new reader, you probably do not want to start here as you miss out on a lot of the story.
