Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!
The Silver Age WONDER WOMAN (or: "... is this any way to treat a comic book icon...?")
(This page is dedicated to JOANNA SANDSMARK: Headmistress, Beeta Lamda Holliday College for Girls. Who is gonna shoot me stone dead, immediately upon reading this entry.)
To borrow from the estimable Dickens: "It was the
worst of times; it was the worst of times."
Wonder Woman -- vaunted DC "icon," and (at that point) pretty much the only super-heroine with an ongoing solo monthly to call her own -- was in the clutches of DC "war comics" whiz Robert Kanigher; a situation tantamount (in storytelling terms) to placing the Batman at the beck and call of the Joker, or Ra's al Guhl.
Now, please don't misunderstand: I harbor precisely the same
deep-seated fondness for the Silver Age WONDER WOMAN comics that I do for every
other entry on this site (save, of course, for the ones I've blatantly ridiculed,
I mean. Like "Bee-Man," f'rinstance. Snicker.).
And, Lord only knows, any man who's publicly championed the flagrantly silly
likes of, say, the Space Canine Patrol Agents scarcely
has room enough to cock back an arm and start lobbing rocks at the glass house
next door. I'm only sayin', here.
However: neither my own predilections for the egregiously goofy or
any attempts to seem even one jot less "hypocritical," in this regard, render
the actual comics under discussion -- i.e., the WONDER WOMAN comics of
the 1960's -- any the less artless or inane. And, hey: the lady's
a freakin' Amazon, for pity's sake. If a card-carrying ubergoober
like Robby Reed (DIAL "H" FOR HERO) can
bear up under the sting of the critical lash... then so can our Lady Di.
Just so's were all singin' from the same hymnal here, is all.
Everything being shipshape and belowdecks, then: on with the autopsy.
One of the first things readily apparent to even the most casual of observers, stumbling upon these comics for the very first time -- other than the notion that regular series artist Ross Andru sure could draw, couldn't he? -- was the fact that the aforementioned Mr. Kanigher seemed positively obsessed with Princess Diana's... ummmm... "desirability" to anydamnthing walking around with a "Y" chromosome tucked away in its genetic makeup.
Aside from the series' all-but-sexless regular "romantic interest" (U.S. Air Force Colonel and all-around wussasaurus Steve Trevor), there were such hot-to-trot contenders for Diana's maidenly charms as the aggressively annoying "Mer-Man" and the flat-out disgusting "Amoeba-Man." [See cover reproduction, accompanying]
I dunno about the rest of you, out there... but: with options such as
these from which to select a potential bed-mate... lifelong chastity
no longer seems like that untenable an option, really.
On the other hand: even watching Kanigher and Andru attempting to hook the Amazing Amazon up with Charles Nelson Reily IIIwould be preferable to having to endure one of the all-too-frequent "Wonder Tot" tales of the period. [See cover reproduction, accompanying]
The Wonder Tot offerings, y'see, were s'posed to be "untold tales" of the pre-adolescent Wonder Woman, back in the days when she was (ostensibly) be-bopping around the Amazonian homeland of Themyscria in her little blue-and-red jumper. (I use the qualifiers in the sentence preceding because Kanigher also penned the occasional story in which Wonder Woman; Wonder Tot; and a teenage, pony-tailed Wonder Girl would all team up against some silly menace or another.)
(To make matters even more confusing: some of those sagas
were designated, in the telling, as being "Impossible Tales." As opposed,
one presumes, to the ones detailing the globbish likes of "Amoeba-Man."
Those, I take it, really "happened." See what fascinating sorts
of things you end up missing, the second you let that subscription to NEWSWEEK
slide...?)
Wonder Tot was frequently seen gallivanting about in the company of a buck-toothed
and mustachioed djinn by the name of "Mr. Genie," who was -- my oath on it --
the single most studiedly moronic individual ever to grace the pages
of any mainstream American comic book. You could spot this clown both
rooks and your queen, and still have his sorry hinder in "check"
within half-a-dozen moves. He was slavishly devoted to Wonder Tot, recognizing
in her a being of vastly superior intelligence. Comparatively speaking,
I mean.
If you think The Big Hurt Train is pulling to a stop at this point
along our narrative
line, however... dream on, bubbie. We still have the painful and
humiliating subject of Wonder Woman's (*kaff*kaff) "rogues gallery"
with which to contend. God help us all.
I won't attempt to sugarcoat the detailing of the carcinoma, in this instance: the poor woman simply didn't have a halfway decent "arch-nemesis" to her name, once you've discarded "the Cheetah" (the only one still reasonably "active," today) and the somewhat disconcertingly mannish "Baroness Paula Von Gunther" [think: "evil Tallulah Bankhead," here].
For the most part, Wonder Woman had to content herself with squaring off against
costumed foemen so irretrievably lame, they all but inspired the tune "You'll
Never Walk Alone." Scoring the gold, silver and bronze medals
in this particularly cheesy competition was the notorious "Mouse Man" [see cover
reproduction, above]: a pipsqueak darting about in lemony spandex, who
derived some sort of tactical advantage (I don't pretend to follow the argument)
from being easily trodden upon. "The Legion of Doom," these clowns decidedly
were not.
That being said, however: at least he wasn't one of themost flagrantly insulting racial stereotypes ever to see print in the comics medium, entire. No, no... for that level of auctorial obnoxiousness, we had to await the publication of WONDER WOMAN #158 (November. 1965; I'm reasonably certain World War Two had ended, by that point), and the coming of: Egg Fu [see cover reproduction, accompanying].
A hundred-foot-tall, egg-shaped "super- computer" created by the Red Chinese, this altogether shameful and wretched character conceptualization spoke in a sing-song caricature of English (e.g.: "So solly, Wonder Woman... but: my unbleakable 'Moustache Tlap' has you in extremery tickrish situation... yes?")
Even for a writer who'd spent the bulk of his many years within the industry pandering to the basest of jingoistic impulses, re: the monthly OUR ARMY AT WAR... this sort of borderline "hate speech" was, quite simply, well and truly Beyond the Pale.
Quite often, Diana fared far better within titles not written by her regularly assigned "Boswell." Not only was the character showcased (to far, far better effect) within the pages of the monthly JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA series; she also shone all the more brightly whenever utilized (all too infrequently, alas) in one of the BRAVE AND THE BOLD sagas of the day. [See cover reproduction, below]
(The cover preceding, by the way, was the work of comics veteran Jim Mooney, who -- whatever else his artistic and/or storytelling faults -- certainly knew a thing or three about How To Draw Beautiful and Powerful-Looking Super-Heroines.)
"... super-chicks"...? )
Meanwhile: back at the atrocity exhibition...
This has
just gotta be my single, all-time favorite Silver Age WONDER WOMAN cover.
Oh, golly... where to begin...?
It's the breathless, semi-sordid prose stylings, I think, that vault this
particular competitor to the frontmost ranks of our little Deconstruction Derby.
I
mean: "... their strange gods... their fearful laws... their
[*pant*GASP] punishments... their island paradise... their
Amazon code"...? Heck... any comic book that delivered on even
half of those promises would be enough to keep Leopold von Saser-Masoch
up all night, bug-eyed and sweating into the sheets -- !!
(For the record: there are, sadly, no -- as in none; zip; NADA
-- scenes in this comic book, detailing the forbidden terrors of the oft-rumored
Amazonian punishment ritual: "trial by nude spanking." Just so I
don't accidentally cause this particular back issue's list price to, y'know,
skyrocket, come the next edition of THE OVERSTREET COMIC BOOK PRICE GUIDE.
Keep it holstered, cowboys.)
As gruesomely fetishistic as all of this was, however... you just
knew that -- eventually -- somebody with more editorial responsibilities
than brains would step in, at some point, and louse the whole thing up.
With the advent of WONDER WOMAN #178 (September, 1968), Our Lady of Bondage was unceremoniously transformed from super-powered heroine to "go-go"-booted Diana Rigg wannabe, in an altogether vainglorious attempt to cash in on the long- since-vanished AVENGERS/ MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. market.
De-powered (and hooked up with a blind and wizened Oriental gent by the name of -- swear to Jesus -- "I Ching"), Diana took up the study of karate under her new mentor's aphoristic tutelage, and boldly embarked upon a series of adventures of absolutely no bloody significance whatsoever.
This thoroughly unnecessary state of affairs dawdled on for a little over four years (give or take). And then...
... well: what happened next offers material enough, easily,
for a second WONDER WOMAN page. But that will have to wait for another
time, and another installment.
Justice League of America
Justice League of America: PAGE ONE
Justice League of America: PAGE TWO
Justice League of America: PAGE THREE
Justice League of America: PAGE FOUR
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