It’s a Wonder Woman Thing

WONDER WEDNESDAY

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

So what was the Wonder Woman of the 1970s up to in 1977, while both her own comic and her backup feature in World’s Finest were only telling stories set during World War II, taking their cue from the Lynda Carter TV show? Well, the modern-day WW was still appearing regularly in Justice League of America (and Super Friends, but that was based on the cartoon and wasn’t quite in continuity), despite DC’s editorial stance that it would be confusing for new readers to have her in the 1940s on TV and the present day in the comics. Really, they were just trying to have it both ways.

So what was the modern-day Wonder Woman we’d been following for years up to in JLA while her 1940s Earth-2 counterpart was battling the ancient Egyptian space alien Osira? (Well, “while” is obviously relative here. I’m just talking about in comics issue-dated June 1977.)  She was taking no shit, that’s what she was doing.

I love how into it Black Canary is.

Justice League of America #143, DC Comics, June 1977.

This tale told by writer Steve Englehart and definitive JLA artist Dick Dillin is all about Wonder Woman’s attitude. Superman takes her aside and says he’s concerned about how prickly she’s been lately. Isn’t that just like a man?

You tell ‘im!

And, basically, Wonder Woman flies off the handle and quits the team, just like that. I don’t want to say she’s overreacting, because Superman’s being pretty patronizing with his chortle about “women’s lib,” but… well, yeah, okay, she’s overreacting. But there’s a reason for that.

No sooner has Diana stormed out of the JLA satellite and teleported back to New York than she runs across a bank robbery perpetrated by Poison Ivy and the Scarecrow, apparently on vacation from Gotham City. She winds up fighting the third guy running along with them, only to find that he was actually chasing them. He’s Mark Shaw, formerly Manhunter, now trying out the new costumed identity of the Privateer—which, to be fair, looks and sounds a lot like just another pirate-themed villain, and not much like a hero.

Meanwhile the actual crooks get away, and have a strange compulsion to hide out in the abandoned satellite they used when they were part of the short-lived Injustice Gang of the World.

Batman has stern words with Green Arrow and the Flash for aggravating Diana enough that she quit, which of course leads the hot-headed GA to quit the JLA for the umpteenth time, dragging an indecisive Flash with him. Can this be the end of the Justice League?

Blame your tailor, fella.

Wonder Woman continues to let her temper get the best of her. Over lunch with the Privateer to make it up to him for letting the bad guys get away, she takes such offense to an offhand comment about her mind wandering that she starts wrecking the restaurant, even knocking him off a building without any concern for his safety. This really isn’t the WW we know.

In fact. this is so unlike her that she notices it too, and once she starts questioning her sudden temper this unknown influence becomes a straight-up mental attack.

She must check herself before she wrecks herself.

The next thing we know, she’s fully under the control of, um, whoever, and is compelled to visit the Injustice Gang’s satellite along with Ivy and Scarecrow. There we lead the big bad is a living computer called Construct-II, the instant replacement for the original Construct that was introduced and destroyed in the last issue. And he’s going to use these minions—including Wonder Woman—to destroy the Justice League!

That’s one handy power.

More villains keep showing up—Flash’s sparring partner the Mirror Master, the Atom’s nemesis Chronos, even C-list Green Lantern foe the Tattooed Man—only to disappear in mid-fight with random Leaguers, as the Construct adds them to his collection. Wonder Woman, meanwhile, takes out Superman, who’s manning the JLA Satellite all by himself. She defeats him, too, although she cheats a bit, threatening to launch all the US’s missiles through the Satellite’s controls (it can do that?) unless he submits to her magic lasso. Mind you, they seemed pretty evenly matched up till that point, so I say she coulda took him anyway.

Wait, was that sound effect seriously “blunt”?

The Construct’s master plan seems pretty dodgy—to make Superman call the full force of the Justice League to the JLA satellite, where the much smaller and less powerful force of the Injustice Gang will ambush them and overpower them, um, somehow. But through a little nuance Superman manages to clue his colleagues in that his summons isn’t on the level, so they put the pieces together of their random encounters with ex-Injustice Gang members and attack the evil satellite instead. Good thinking, gang!

Whoa, lay off the mind control, Diana!

Despite the right-on telling-off in the first part, Wonder Woman doesn’t get to save the day in this one, or even help. She’s the one who has to be rescued, which certainly isn’t what I look for in a Wonder Woman story. But the upshot here is that the Justice League is a close-knit family, and families stick together through thick and thin, and help each other out when they’re being mind-controlled into destroying them all. Aww.