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
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.
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
Till Kanga Come
WONDER WEDNESDAY
On Wednesdays I look at various chapters in Wonder Woman’s history. Click here for previous installments.
Wonder Wall of China
WONDER WEDNESDAY
On Wednesdays I look at various chapters in Wonder Woman’s history. Click here for previous installments.
Now that Robert Kanigher was back in charge after the
sudden end of the mod Wonder Woman experiment, the first thing he did was restore the old status quo: star-spangled outfit, magic lasso, invisible jet, the works. He also gave her a new job as a guide at the UN, nameless Asian and African-American roommates, and even a long-lost black sister. But no sooner did he set all that up than he abruptly wiped away even that little bit of newness and started presenting the same style of stories he used to write when he took over the Wonder Woman series in the late 1940s, after the death of creator William Moulton Marston. Suddenly Wonder Woman was the most old-fashioned comic that DC was putting out. Read more
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.
Hands Off My Superman
WONDER WEDNESDAY
On Wednesdays I look at various chapters in Wonder Woman’s history. Click here for previous installments.
There have been a number of stories over the years that have toyed with the idea of Superman and Wonder Woman becoming a couple, sometimes with Lois Lane and maybe Steve Trevor looking on in dismay. Heck, quite recently in Geoff Johns’s Justice League series, Supes and WW got to smooching, but of course in the New 52 relaunch, for worse or for worse, Superman and Lois Lane aren’t even a couple.
