My first encounter with him was in the Avengers after his friendship with The Beast had been established and the two of them provided much of the humor within the storylines leading up to the 200th issue with George Perez providing the pencils.

Later on I read some of his earlier appearances when he had little confidence in his new superhuman abilities and was hesitant in battle because of his fear of dying again (specifically issue #162 when the Avengers took on Ultron). 

After I read the earlier issues, I saw his friendship with The Beast as a means of getting him to embrace his new life as a superhero, have fun, willingly join his teammates in battle, and not live in fear. Unfortunately, once Perez left the title I lost interest and did not follow up with WM until his stint on West Coast Avengers with our host at the helm. By that time he has been resurrected yet again and I wasn't current on the details.

I don't think Wonder Man was better off in a coma. I didn't want him to be like the Bottle City of Kandor in the Fortress of Solitude that gets shown/described to readers on the rare occasion. But since I missed out on his follow-on development and "ionic resurrection" my connection with the character was lost and though our host did a fine job with him on WCA that link never really came back.