In 2004, writer Greg Rucka made headlines as one of the few writers to write DC Comic's Big Three — Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman — all in the same month, writing the former two in their own individual series. Regarding the three, Rucka told Comic Book Resources, he found Diana the most difficult to write, in part because of the many different ways she's been written over the years through many different writers. To that end, the interview says, Rucka's initial graphic novel Wonder Woman: The Hiketeia was less about Diana herself, "but rather how she was perceived."
From the beginning of Rucka's Wonder Woman run — as one of Diana's staff deals with a legal challenge regarding whether Diana's Lasso of Truth violates a criminal's Miranda rights --Rucka examined the idea of truth as it related to Diana, and moreover, the difference between truth and perception. Indeed, one of the precipitating actions of the first of five trade paperbacks collecting Rucka's Wonder Woman run, Down to Earth, is Diana's publishing a book of essays — a book of her opinions, her perceptions, meant to evoke debate. However, one difficulty Diana encounters, almost immediately, is the confusion of truth versus perception --a conservative group wants to censor Diana because they believe her truth threatens their own.
This tension is found throughout Rucka's Wonder Woman stories, culminating most severely in Diana's killing of rogue Justice League liaison Maxwell Lord in Mission's End. Max specifically tells Diana that the only way to stop him from mind-controlling Superman is to kill him, and yet Superman still maintains to Diana that there had to be another way. When Diana asks Max a question, with her Lasso of Truth wrapped around him, is this the truth? Or is it only Max's perception of the truth, and if so, does this point to a failing in Diana's powers? Can Diana compel a person to speak a truth beyond their own knowledge? Rucka suggests the answer over Diana's two televised battles; her aide Jonah McCarthy notes that, even though Diana killed both Maxwell Lord and, earlier, the fearsome Medousa, in the public eye, it is Max's death that will end Diana's mission because Medousa looks like a monster, and Max doesn't. In the end, it seems, Diana is defeated as perception wins out.
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