On Sea Monsters and the Holocaust
WONDER WEDNESDAY
On Wednesdays I look at various chapters in Wonder Woman’s history. Click here for previous installments.
OK, we’re still on that weird period in 1977 when the Wonder Woman comic shifted abruptly from the present day to World War II because that was the setting of the TV show (but only for one season, after which both the show and the comic returned to the 1970s). For existing comic book fans, the explanation was that we were going from Earth-1, where the modern Wonder Woman lived, to Earth-2, home of the original versions of the DC heroes from actual 1940s comics. Of course, keen-eyed fans noticed right away that even that explanation didn’t quite add up because in most instances where the TV show differed from the old comics, the new comics took their cue for the show. So now Steve Trevor had brown hair, whereas he had always been blond; Diana Prince was a yeoman rather than a lieutenant; and their boss was General Blankenship, a character created for the show, rather than General Darnell. In the letters column of issue 233, the editor explains that all this was intentional, because they didn’t want fans of the show to be confused when they read the comics, and because DC wasn’t really reprinting 1940s stories at the time, they figured hardly anyone would notice.
Hey, Soul Sister
WONDER WEDNESDAY
On Wednesdays I look at various chapters in Wonder Woman’s history. Click here for previous installments.
One of the many troublesome things about Wonder Woman being an undervalued property at DC Comics is that the vast majority of her comics have never been reprinted or collected. Up till now I’ve largely focused on the ones that have been reprinted, just for convenience’s sake, but having reached the end of the mod era I come to a stretch of never-reprinted issues, which in a way are more interesting to discuss anyway.
The End of an E.R.A.
WONDER WEDNESDAY
On Wednesdays I look at various chapters in Wonder Woman’s history. Click here for previous installments.
Well, this is it—finally the end of the mod era of Wonder Woman of the late 1960s and early ’70s, as seen in Diana Prince: Wonder Woman vol. 4. The bold experiment of making the superpowered Amazon princess into a regular karate-chopping human fashionista detective draws to a close.
Seeing Double
WONDER WEDNESDAY
On Wednesdays I look at various chapters in Wonder Woman’s history. Click here for previous installments.
