I thought so too but then I noticed he didn't have human hands in issue 0 which could just be an oversight, however post-surgery minotaur is hairless in some areas, his fur is brown and he's a lot stronger than before. I think perhaps Azzarello had something planned for the Minotaur that he couldn't bring to fruition, maybe Cassandra found the body Zeus shed before reincarnating and attached the Minotaurs head onto it lol I mean the finale felt kind of rushed, I think maybe Azz was banking on having an annual

I doubt they wanted an annual, since they skipped on all the other chances where they could have had one, and from what Azzarello and Chiang said during interviews, the story didn't change very much compared to how they pitched it to DC.

My guess is that it is the Zero issue thats the fly in the oinment, because Azzarello originally didn't want to do that issue, but eventually came up with something. He knew the Minotaur was going to appear futher down the line, and he knew he was going to kill Ares, so he came up with the story about Diana's relationship with Ares and the encounter with the Minotaur, which provided quite a bit of emotional weight to later issues.

Well the ending came off a bit flat after such an obscenely long wait, expectations were through the roof. They could've used an annual to wrap it up, if you ask me. And though attention to detail is apparently demodé, a bit more of it wouldn't have gone amiss. The Minotaur deserved more character development

Well, thats easy for us to say, but how exactly do you properly develop a non-speaking henchman that only runs around a punches things?

As for the ending... well yes, I agree that it ended a bit too sudden. But on the plus side, the left the buisness of Hippolyta, the Amazons and Manazons completely open for others to decide on... we are just unfortunate the Finchs has gone their way, with Hippolyta returning to clay being the only oddity.

I don't disagree with you, but I believe the same can be said for the Perez run; my point is that his run is probably looking better, if you view it from hindsight, even though I'm sure I would have enjoyed his run, if I were reading his comic at the time. I lived through that era too, I just simply wasn't aware of any Wonder Woman comic books at the time; I just found out about a decade later that I enjoyed the Messner-Loebs run better than any other run except Marston's, while reading through each run; at the time I was reviewing past runs, Rucka's run was just being formed; because subsequent runs were not looking to be as good as Marston's run, I skipped most of them, although I sampled each run; I didn't like the idea of Wonder Tot, because I wasn't looking to get into anything meant for children. I went completely through Perez's run and noticed that Wonder Woman was getting victories too easily, although I really loved the bizarre stuff Perez came up with; they really suited Wonder Woman, but it got spoiled when she got victories too easily; I wanted to see things like bondage and sticky situations for Wonder Woman to climb out; I did go completely through Wonder Woman's powerless run, and, of course, I went completely through Messner-Loebs's run; I skipped through the Hippolyta as Wonder Woman stuff in Byrne's run, although I enjoyed the parts of his run that I read, except, again, she got easy victories. I admit, in terms of creativity, Perez was really good, he just avoided putting Wonder Woman in sticky situations. I liked Rucka's run more in hindsight; I wanted him to further develop the interaction between Wonder Woman and Ferdinand, and I liked that he had plans for Dr. Psycho working with Veronica Cale, but he messed up by taking it from that and diving heavily into Greek Mythology; additionally, I didn't like him bringing another woman in between Wonder Woman and Ferdinand, and it would have been good to see how they got connected with each other. I wish Gail Simone would have stayed with the Grendel subplot or that group from Messner-Loebs's Space Pirate arc a lot longer, but I think she was struggling with editorial, causing her to be unable to close plot lines smoothly; one flaw about the Messner-Loebs's run for me was his decision to leave the Space Pirate story arc so soon and his slip up with giving Wonder Woman an easy victory while leaving that story arc. JMS/Hester left Dr. Psycho too soon and the run was too focused on blood and gore.

He came out of nowhere looking completely different, many times stronger and wearing a mask that blocked bullets that Wonder Woman couldn't deflect with her bracelets. That sort of raises questions, a 2 or 3 page flashback following his death would've been nice I think

I see it the other way around: I'm finding things about the Perez and Rucka's runs to like; again, we're getting a skewed view of things, because DC took the approach to cater to people who have a taste for the Perez and Rucka's runs, while driving away fans who would like the Marston and Messner-Loebs's runs. What I consider getting through sticky situations and struggling are demonstrated in the Marston's and Messner-Loebs's runs; nothing resembled those situations in the Perez and Rucka runs, that I can recall; I don't think she's a worthy character to be seen as only having equals in the supernatural; not just her, but any DC superhero; in Marston's and Messner-Loebs's runs, she was put in situations by mortals, as it should be.

I am not so sure about him being stronger than he once was, the only example of his strength was that he headbutted a wall.

As for blocking Eros' bullets, I think maybe we should be looking at the fact that it was bullets from Eros' love gun and not a conventional weapon. Like DIana took a bullet in the heart and didn't die. It may have penetrated her bracelets because the bullet forces the target to fall in love, the Minotaur however has never known love, so it might be it's it's nature thats allowed it to overcome it.

That's ok that the mortals used magical things and other tactics to fight Wonder Woman; that's just what I liked and a perfect ground to begin introducing Dr. Psycho as her arch nemesis. I don't remember anywhere in Marston's run where it was stated that her powers had no limits; yes, her powers could improve with additional training but that does not mean that her powers would have no limits; that's another aspect of Marston's run that I liked. Although she moved an island inside an issue, I don't think she moved the moon inside an issue. The issues that you pointed out that I refer to used plot devices for Wonder Woman that I liked that need to come back and make a modern day Marston interpretation of Wonder Woman.

I could've sworn that Eros said his bullets were all-penetrable but I must've dreamed it up. I think yours is a plausible explanation :)

I think he was depicted alright but my issue is the way Diana treated the minotaur in the end. She showed him mercy the first time which was nice, but in the end when he had been robbed of his free will, and obviously even more deserving of mercy Diana just treated him like he was nothing but an evil monster. There was one theory I read before the final issue came out that I think would have been much better. Have the minotaur break free of the other villain's control, and actually be the one to deliver the final blow against First Born. Making Diana's first act of mercy being what saved the day.

I think you misread it, Diana didn't recognize him, changed as he was, before the helmet was broken off. The Minotaur clearly recognized her however, hence why we had all those closeup's and moments of hesitations whenever he was supposed to engage her.

And in the end, he did break free... and the First Born killed him for it, while Diana was too wasted to save him, but the act did kick her back into gear, because she saw him before he died.