Lose Your Illusion
WONDER WEDNESDAY
On Wednesdays I look at various chapters in Wonder Woman’s history. Click here for previous installments.
The Twelve Labors of Wonder Woman continue, as she earns her way back into Justice League membership by having various Leaguers monitor her adventures and judge whether or not she’s worthy to return. Last issue Black Canary was on Wonder Woman monitoring duty, and this time it’s her boyfriend Green Arrow’s turn. Read more
No Boys Allowed
WONDER WEDNESDAY
On Wednesdays I look at various chapters in Wonder Woman’s history. Click here for previous installments.
For most of Wonder Woman’s history, it’s been a rule that no man can set foot on Paradise Island, but exactly why that is seems to change all the time. In the version I’m most used to, a man stepping on the island would instantly make the Amazons lose their immortality and any other powers, but in some stories it’s portrayed as something that would kill the man instantly or otherwise invoke the wrath of the gods. And in some stories, the prohibition is forgotten entirely. Writer-artist Mike Sekowsky showed Diana’s martial arts mentor I Ching visiting Paradise Island, and longtime WW scribe Robert Kanigher had Nubia’s male warriors hanging out on the island without a problem. But generally speaking, it’s an absolute taboo, and in this story a very rich and powerful man sets out to find out why. The answer may surprise you!
Amazons Attack Atlantis
WONDER WEDNESDAY
On Wednesdays I look at various chapters in Wonder Woman’s history. Click here for previous installments.
This week we continue our look at The Twelve Labors, the series of mid-1970s adventures in which Wonder Woman insists on earning her way back into the Justice League of America by having fellow JLA heroes observe and judge her exploits.
But just as a side note, you may be interested to know that there’s a play about the creator and the lasting legacy of Wonder Woman,
Lasso of Truth, opening next week at Marin Theatre Company. Check back tomorrow for a link to my advance feature in the Marin IJ. I’ll actually be taking part in a panel discussion on the legacy of Wonder Woman after the 2pm matinee of Lasso on Saturday, March 1, alongside comic creator and women-in-comics historian Trina Robbins and Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, director of the documentary Wonder Women: The Untold Story of American Superheroines. So that may be a good time to come check it out if you’re into that sort of thing. Read more
I’m Henry VIII, I Am
WONDER WEDNESDAY
On Wednesdays I look at various chapters in Wonder Woman’s history. Click here for previous installments.
Give Peace a Pass
WONDER WEDNESDAY
On Wednesdays I look at various chapters in Wonder Woman’s history. Click here for previous installments.
Out of Their League
WONDER WEDNESDAY
On Wednesdays I look at various chapters in Wonder Woman’s history. Click here for previous installments.
The history of Wonder Woman, at least in my lifetime, seems to have been one abrupt shift after another as the powers-that-be at DC Comics see the need to reinvent the world’s most prominent super-heroine every few years. We’ve covered a number of these start-from-scratch revamps on this blog already, particularly occurring in the last few years. But this habit of trying to “fix” Wonder Woman goes back a long ways. We’ve seen Wonder Woman abruptly renounce her powers and become a karate-chopping mod detective in 1968, along with a sudden scrapping and replacement of her entire supporting cast. We’ve seen the mod era just as suddenly erased in 1973 with the return of Wonder Woman’s longtime writer-editor from the 1940s through the 1960s, Robert Kanigher, who took a similar scorched-earth approach, killing off Diana’s erstwhile mentor and erasing her memory of the whole period. As we’ve seen, the next few issues were a little weird, not only returning Wondy to her previous status quo, with her old costume and powers, but actually retelling Kanigher’s old WW stories from the 1940s with new art.
And now, abruptly again, that oddly retro period stops with entirely new management on the title: Julius Schwartz, mastermind of the superhero revival of the Silver Age and longtime Justice League of America editor, took over editing Wonder Woman, bringing in a reliable roster of writers to tell the next batch of tales: Len Wein, Cary Bates, Elliot S! Maggin and Martin Pasko. Appropriately enough, the next eleven issues would be all about Wonder Woman earning her way back into the Justice League after a long absence.
The Origin of Everything
WONDER WEDNESDAY
On Wednesdays I look at various chapters in Wonder Woman’s history. Click here for previous installments.
Having exhausted the ostensibly original content in Wonder Woman #211
last week (actually slightly tweaked and reillustrated stories from the late 1940s), we turn our attention to the wealth of reprinted material that filled out that issue’s 100 pages. Most, but not quite all, of these stories boil down to “How Wonder Woman got” this or that item associated with her, and many of those stories boil down to young Diana being assigned three daring feats to perform to prove her worthiness. But enough generalizations—let’s take a look at the stories! All of these were written by Robert Kanigher during his 21-year original run as writer-editor of Wonder Woman, from creator William Moulton Marston’s death in 1947 up until the start of the “mod” era in 1968. Read more
Twice Told Tales
On Wednesdays I look at various chapters in Wonder Woman’s history. Click here for previous installments.
WONDER WEDNESDAY
It seems like we just had the end of an era, but here we are at the end of another one. When DC abruptly decided to call it quits on the Emma Peel-like, fully human “mod” Wonder Woman of the late ’60s and early ’70s, longtime old-timey WW writer Robert Kanigher was put back in charge. After hastily disposing of Diana’s erstwhile supporting cast, he quickly gave her the powers and costume back, wiped her memory of the “mod” years, and put her back into the mousy Diana Prince secret identity. But then he promptly ignored the new status quo he’d set up to just retell his own stories from the 1940s, with new art by Ric Estrada. In the letters pages he made it pretty clear that this was just the way it was going to be, and when people asked if WW was going to rejoin the Justice League, his answer was a clear no.
The Littlest Amazon
WONDER WEDNESDAY
On Wednesdays I look at various chapters in Wonder Woman’s history. Click here for previous installments.
We now continue with our look at the weird period in the mid-1970s when writer/editor Robert Kanigher
reclaimed control of the Wonder Woman comic book after the ill-fated “mod” experiment of a nonsuperpowered Wonder Woman. Kanigher not only went right back to basics with the old powers, costume and secret identity, but he even started retelling his own stories from the late 1940s, with very slightly updated (but still retro by ’70s standards) art by Ric Estrada. Read more
Winter Wonder Woman
WONDER WEDNESDAY
On Wednesdays I look at various chapters in Wonder Woman’s history. Click here for previous installments.
It’s that time again. ’Tis the season to dig up another one of Wonder Woman’s very special Christmas stories from the 1940s, by Wonder Woman creators William Moulton Marston and H.G. Peter. This one’s from 1945’s Sensation Comics #38, reprinted in the hardbound Wonder Woman Archives vol. 5.
