When First We Learn to Deceive

WONDER WEDNESDAY

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

We’re still in the late 1970s period of the first season of the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman TV series, and because that season was set during World War II, suddenly so was the Wonder Woman comic book. In DC Comics continuity, that meant a shirt to Earth-2, where Wondy, Superman and Batman were all active in the 1940s, as part of the Justice Society of America.

The funny thing is, this is kind of the opposite of what actually happens inside.

Wonder Woman #239, DC Comics, January 1978.

This issue is a good example of the subtle and not-so-subtle tip-offs on the cover that we’re back in the 1940s. Showing the Golden Age Flash as a guest star pretty much clinches it, unless this turned out to be one of those interdimensional team-ups that DC characters had from time to time.

The title of this story by regular writer Gerry Conway and artists Jose Delbo and Vince Colletta is “A Duke Named Deception,” and longtime readers will know exactly what that means.

Wonder Woman is getting pretty freaking sick of all the sexism she’s been encountering lately, such as from General MacArthur in the last couple of issues. So when the Flash jumps into a fight she’s having with some Nazi spies, she tells him off, saying she didn’t need his help.

Women! Am I right?

Now, this is pretty uncharacteristic for Wondy, who’s usually a team player and pretty even-tempered. But it’s certainly true that she’s more than capable of taking care of a few gunmen by herself, and also that the JSA promptly appointed her secretary when she joined the group. It’s high time she called them on that bullshit.

Meanwhile, everyone in military intelligence is pretty much convinced that Wonder Woman’s a menace, because she’s attacked US soldiers a couple times in the last few issues, usually when they’re trying to kill somebody she’s already fighting perfectly well already.

The Duke of Deception was always a servant of Mars, god of war, and now we see him again in that context, even if he’s way less wizened and grotesque than the Duke we knew back in the actual 1940s. Now his fiendish plot involves turning the military against Wondy even more than they are already.

Damn, Duke. Did you do something new with your hair? Like actually having hair?

Just as Diana and the Flash are meeting up in their secret identities (his is Jay Garrick) so that he can apologize for society’s (and the Society’s) institutionalized sexism, Diana happens to notice that the Statue of Liberty is about to attack Manhattan. (This is the second time that’s happened in a Wonder Woman comic in three years, but the previous incident happened to Earth-1 Wondy in the 1970s, so this Diana wouldn’t know about that.) However, the Flash doesn’t see anything going on, which should be a tip-off that this is some elaborate deception. Too bad Diana doesn’t know what this story’s title is!

All Jay sees is Diana knocking over the Statue of Liberty for no good reason. Man, Amazons be crazy! Then Wondy thinks she’s stopping a U-boat full of invading German troops, when in fact she’s really attacking the US Navy. If that doesn’t turn the military against her, I don’t know what will!

Wonder Woman: Threat … or Menace?

Wonder Woman #240, DC Comics, February 1978.

In the second part of the story, the US Army has come in full force to arrest Wonder Woman, tanks and all. But of course Diana, still under the influence of the Duke of Deception, sees them as Nazi soldiers and fights back fiercely, though she’s eventually overpowered by sheer force of numbers.

Man, this guy digs himself.

Meanwhile the Flash is battling a sea monster that he pretty quickly figures out is an illusion. It’s something the Duke whipped up to distract him from helping Wonder Woman, naturally.

Wonder Woman’s bracelets are chained together, something that makes her lose her powers (at least when a man does it), and she’s dragged off to court with the crowd howling for blood.

How soon they forget.

There’s a little more foreshadowing about Etta Candy’s new French boyfriend, Lieutenant Marchand, who we pretty much know is just stringing Etta along and is up to no good, but we don’t yet know exactly what his deal is. We’ll find out more about him in the next issue.

Wonder Woman’s trial is interrupted by an attack by a Nazi supervillain called Seigfried the Speedster, a guy we’ve never seen before—or have we? Seeing a Nazi attacking Wondy pretty quickly turns the crowd back in her favor, and I’d guess that would be exactly what was intended if it were, say, a super-speed superhero in disguise. If only we knew somebody like that, somebody who, say, was already in this issue! And we know the Duke isn’t in on it, because he’s sitting in the courtroom fuming about this new development.

Deception, eh? Two can play at that game!

The Duke enlists the aid of a guy named Napoleon Jones to act as his agent, a bowery bum that he’s suddenly turned into a gang boss. He gives Jones some kind of gizmo that creates illusions everybody can see: a Nazi army and some kind of cement monster to attack Wonder Woman. She eventually sees through it all and catches Jones, but all he can tell her is that a duke gave him this “illusion-lens,” and that doesn’t mean anything to her.

See, it turns out that this story, set in June 1942, is actually supposed to be Wonder Woman’s first encounter with the Duke of Deception, before his actual first appearance in Wonder Woman #2 in the fall of 1942.  And indeed, none of our heroes actually lay eyes on the Duke in the course of this story, so Wondy can still meet him for the first time even if she’s actually fought him before. Oh, and as punishment for his failure, what does Mars do to the handsome Duke? Turns him into the bald, shriveled-looking man he was when we met him!

The Sumo? Really?

Weirdly, this isn’t the last we’d see of this Nazi speedster as well. Even though Seigfried the Speedster doesn’t exist–he’s just a disguise for the Flash–an actual Nazi agent with super-speed later shows up in Roy Thomas’s All-Star Squadron series wearing exactly the same costume. This one’s named Zyklon, a henchman of Baron Blitzkrieg, and the weirdest thing is that the Flash actually encounters Zyklon and doesn’t react at all to the fact that the made-up baddie he made up has apparently become real.  In fact, nobody mentions or seems to remember the previous iteration of this costume, although one of the American heroes tauntingly calls Zyklon “Seigfried” at some point, among a steady stream of other nicknames (Fritz, Blue Streak, Breezy, etc.).

On a side note, I have to say what a nostalgia kick it was for me seeing the ads in this issue of Wonder Woman. There’s a Batman and Robin ad for Hostess Cupcakes, a Dracula ad for Slim Jims, ads for hot new DC heroes Power Girl and Firestorm and for the incredibly awesome super-sized comic Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, plus the usual assortment of advertising for Sea Monkeys, selling Grit magazine, building muscles quick, and a whole lot of novelty items.

She’s busting out! See, because, um, never mind.

I remember all these ads well, because this was around the time I was really getting deep into DC comics, and it takes me right back to my Golden Age of comics. Someone once said, “The Golden Age of comics is seven”—when a kid often reads her first comic—and that’s exactly the age I was when this issue came out.