Can’t Start a Fire Without a Spark

WONDER WEDNESDAY

On Wednesdays I look at various chapters in Wonder Woman’s history. Click here for previous installments.

This time writer Martin Pasko and artists Jose Delbo and Vince Colletta give us a two-part story in two issues, which was a fairly rare thing back in 1976. Nowadays, of course, it’s standard practice to spread a single story out over six, twelve or even 20-odd issues, but back in the ’70s single issues tended to have self-contained stories. So what’s so special about “A Life in Flames”? Well, let’s see.

That’s one long arm.

Wonder Woman#226, DC Comics, November 1976.

The major players in this particular tale are Hephaestus, the Greek god of blacksmiths and fire, and singer-actress Julie Gabriel, a star with a reputation for being difficult and unreliable—kind of the Lindsay Lohan of her day, I guess.

Not “drugs”! That’s the worst kind of drug!

But first we get a lovers’ spat between Diana and Steve, who renamed himself Steve Howard last issue, and since then has apparently dyed his hair black to complete his new identity. Also, Diana is referred to in a caption as “former U.N. Crisis Bureau agent Diana Prince,” and that “former” is also new information, though it’s not explained yet. Anyway, Steve feels like a man out of his own time, having been dead for a while, and Diana hates that he’s felt the need to change so much.  Drama!

I love that they brought up the clay thing as a sore spot.

So let’s actually talk about the fact that Steve Trevor came back from the dead a few issues ago. One thing I forgot to mention about the last issue is the letters column, which was full of responses to Steve’s resurrection, many of them negative. A whole lot of people just really didn’t like Steve. Adam Castro of New Rochelle, NY, wrote, “No, no, no, no, no, no, NO! This is the one thing I hopes you’d never do! Why did you bring back Steve Trevor? Not because of any great demand, I’d bet, because there’s never been any mention of him in the lettercol! Nor was it his greatness as a character—Trevor is boring! The only motive I can see is so that you can kill him off again. Parsko must be planning some big tragic accident in which Wonder Woman loses Steve once more. She’ll feel personally responsible and even more insecure.” The letters chosen for the column were actually about half-and-half pro and con, but man, the ones that were con didn’t just not like Steve being brought back or the way it was done; they just didn’t like Steve. (And let’s face it, it’s not like he had a memorable and meaningful death or anything like that. He was done away with pretty offhandedly.)

So why did Pasko bring Steve back, aside from the general trend of restoring Wonder Woman to her pre-mod status quo? Well, I’m guessing it had something to do with the launch of the Wonder Woman TV show of the 1970s, starring Lynda Carter. The pilot aired in late 1975, but the series proper started in fall 1976, which is to say right about this time, and Steve Trevor was a regular character. Mind you, the first season was also set in the 1940s, but, well, just wait a couple of issues. We’ll get to that.

Anyway, the two of them are fighting, and suddenly Diana’s apartment bursts into flames! That’s pretty weird and all, but what’s weirder is that she instantly knows who’s to blame. “At last—Hephaestus has made his move!” she exclaims, because apparently she’s seen this coming for a while. Not that this is a callback to a previous story or anything; as far as I know, this is the first time we’ve encountered him in a Wonder Woman story, though it certainly won’t be the last. Wondy also quickly figures out that this fire is feeding on emotion. Having shooed Steve out (while he was being petulant about having to be rescued again, just like in the old days), she figures her own agitation must be fueling the flames, so she uses the ancient Amazon calming technique of punching herself in the face, knocking herself out.

Why are you hitting yourself?

That’s Hephaestus’s “viscero-combustor” at work, planted by one of his “golden handmaidens,” robot women of his creation. And why does Diana know so much about it? Oh, she saw Hephaestus plotting with Ares, god of war, on her mother’s all-seeing Magic Sphere the last time she visited Paradise Island. The blacksmith god wants to trade Ares the viscero-combustor as a powerful weapon of war, in exchange for making him handsome and fixing his twisted, spindly legs. Students of mythology may recall that Ares routinely has sex with Hephaestus’s wife, Aphrodite—who’s also the Amazons’ patron goddess—but this comic doesn’t get into all of that.

Anyhoo, Diana has to go act as technical consultant on a movie called Security Council, having been reassigned from the UN Crisis Bureau to the Special Services Department. And that’s where that troubled actress comes in, because she’s starring in it. As much of an infuriating mess as she is, she’s good at what she does, and when she emotes, everybody feels the emotion. And that’s not the greatest thing when a god is test-driving a weapon that sets emotions on fire.

Man, she’s on fire in this role.

This time Diana has the bright idea of using her lasso to command everybody to feel no emotion rather than punching all of them out. That seems like progress. Then she proceeds to have a knock-down, drag-out fight with Hephaestus (and that fist of flame he was showing off on the cover) and his golden handmaidens, who bear more than a little resemblance to the robot from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. For a god, Hephaestus isn’t a particularly impressive fighter, so he runs off to cause more mischief in the next issue, now that he knows Julie Gabriel is a fiery emotion machine.

Holy sic semper tyrannus!

Wonder Woman#227, DC Comics, January 1977.

Pulse-pounding part two, pilgrims! We start with Wonder Woman kicking a golden robot in the face in front of the freakin’ Statue of Liberty, because that’s just how she rolls. Oh, and the New York Bay is on fire, not just because the Hudson River is disgusting but because of that whole god-of-fire thing.

Boot to the head!

Hephaestus is having his Golden Girls set stuff on fire at landmarks all over the city to keep Wondy busy while he sets his master plan to work. And what’s that? Well, Diana reprograms one of the robots, called Hesione, to tell her all about it. Actually WW just presses Hesione’s free will button, and she rats her master out on her own accord. Hephaestus has rigged Carnegie Hall with viscero-combustors, so when Julie Gabriel gives her concert tonight, the whole joint will go up in flames.

Don’t start her talking, or she’ll tell you everything she knows.

In her Diana Prince identity, WW goes to ask Julie to cancel the concert, a benefit for UNICEF. Julie thinks that’s crazy talk, so Diana reveals her secret identity and fills Julie in on the whole scheme. Plot-wise, this doesn’t bode well for Julie, because you gotta figure that if she’s learned Wondy’s identity, she’s either going to come out of this a recurring character or amnesiac, comatose or dead.

That’s a pretty dynamic recap page, I gotta say.

Julie’s convinced, but she still has to do the concert, because she correctly points out that if the flames are cued by strong emotion, her cancelling will fire people up worse than her singing. All Wondy can think to do is to use her lasso to command Julie to give a tepid, mediocre performance that won’t make anybody feel anything in particular.

There’s something pretty insightful about that, really.

But here’s the problem. With Julie’s charisma, her devoted fans are going to be moved by even the crappiest performance, and that’s just what happens. Cue the fireworks, and mass panic that only fans the flames.

Basically everything comes together here: Hesione, Hephaestus, the other Golden Handmaidens, and of course Julie Gabriel’s big moment. I won’t give you a play-by-play because it’s actually a pretty effective conclusion, but in the end Hephaestus is turned over to Aphrodite for imprisonment (and protection from Ares’s wrath).

Oh, and why the heck isn’t Diana working for the UN Crisis Bureau anymore? Well, funny story—they meant to explain that in this story, but ended up not having room, so it had to be explained in the letter column instead. It seems that a guy named Keech was promoted to become the boss of Morgan Tracy, Diana’s boss. Being a male chauvinist pig, Keech decreed that Crisis Bureau work is way too dangerous for a “mere woman” and had her reassigned. And in the next issue, we’ll find out this change is essentially irrelevant, as the series makes an abrupt shift back to the 1940s.