The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 837: Wonder Woman #268, June 1980

Our last little look at Wonder Woman's adventures for now wraps up a long-standing storyline about The Cartel, a mysterious organization working to....do something. I've never really been quite sure about their motivations. Something vaguely sinister and world-dominating, I would imagine.

Diana and Buddy follow a lead to the south of France. The first page of the issue has Buddy rubbing tanning oil onto Diana's shoulders (who, being invulnerable, shouldn't really have to worry about a sunburn). I shudder to think what poor Ellen would think.

The story wraps pretty quickly, actually, which makes me think that this was writer Gerry Conway finishing off a story so that he could move the comic in a different direction. The finale of the story seems to sever Diana's contacts with the U.N. and the teaser on the letters page for the next issue notes that there will soon be a "major transition in the Amazon's life." Just what it is is a mystery for the ages.

We're going to follow Mr. Buddy Baker for a little while, starting tomorrow. I'll see how much of his early stuff I haven't already read, and then maybe we'll get into the Morrison run. But this week has definitely been awesome. I'm glad that I enjoyed the Wonder Woman movie, because it prompted me to read some of her comics, and keep my eyes open for more.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 836: Wonder Woman #267, May 1980

So I have a confession to make.

Much as I laud the Man of Steel, much as I find inspiration in his stories, he's not my favourite superhero.

Animal Man is.

I've written a few times about Animal Man. He's a character that is near and dear to my heart. He's the first superhero I ever read by Grant Morrison, whose work is also so dear to my heart.

(The first Morrison I ever read was The Doctor.)

Even in the strange, lost years in which I was not an obsessive comics fan, I recalled Animal Man's adventures fondly. And when I regained my senses and got into comics again, his were some of the earliest comics I started tracking down.

Today's comic is one of the few pre-Morrison Animal Man adventures that exist. Between his origin and Morrison's comic, there's probably less than 15 appearances. It's nice to see A-Man show up and hold his own against the Amazon Princess, especially given the limits of his powers at this point. Rather than his connection to a morphogenetic field in the later run, Buddy could only access the powers of animals he could see. Good thing for all those coincidentally useful creatures passing by.

There's one line in this issue that I think sums up Animal Man quite well. It's quite wise, which isn't surprising given its source. Wonder Woman, considering her new ally, thinks "A strange man. At first, he seems almost like a clown...but underneath that humorous exterior, I sense a driving purpose..." I noted in my very early entry on Animal Man #5 that the art on that run is very cartoon-y, but is meshed with a proto-Vertigo sensibility. Which is kind of what Wonder Woman says right there. Neat.

One last little bit of the Amazon tomorrow, and then I think we're going to follow Animal Man on his adventures after this little encounter.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 835: Wonder Woman #256, June, 1979

Kind of a bland adventure today, though the reveal that is teased on the cover likely came as quite a shock to regular readers at the time. I didn't have quite as much investment in the character, so his revelation as a super criminal was neat, but not affecting.

As far as I can tell, Diana has had enough of training to be an astronaut by the end of this issue, and packs up and moves back to New York. As I noted before, the choice to put her into NASA's astronaut training was a strange one - while I get that she has to have interests outside of her superheroing, this is the sort of thing that smacks of a young Clark Kent playing football. How can anyone stand up to the Amazon Princess? Couple this with her ability to literally go into space whenever she wants to, and isn't it a bit unfair that Diana is competing against "normal" humans for the opportunity to do so?

An odd characterization to be sure.

Not much else to say about this one. To make up for the Justice League comic in the middle of Wonder Woman week, I'll do a couple more this weekend, featuring the ever-entertaining Animal Man.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 834: Wonder Woman #252, February 1979

We've jumped ahead a few years, and Wonder Woman's trials appear to be over - and now she's training to be an astronaut?

There must be a story behind why, but I'm afraid I'm not privy to it. Indeed, the fact that Diana faces off against Astarte, today's villain, while on the Moon kind of makes her work toward becoming an astronaut moot. Perhaps there's a bigger story going on, a reason that Diana might be pursuing this path, but considering she's part of a superhero team with a space-bound headquarters, and that her robot plane can fly into space, and that she has an "Amazonian spacesuit" (which seems to be invisible too), there seems to be little good reason to place her civilian identity into a place that might be better served, and better serve, a non-powered human.

All of which is to say, I didn't really get what was going on in today's comic, either in the Diana Prince storyline or the Wonder Woman storyline. But, as far as the WW story, she didn't really understand what was going on either. A strange woman named for a Babylonian goddess in a flying space snake comes to Earth, or Earth orbit, accusing Wonder Woman of being evil, and tries to push her soul from her body, only to be shocked at Diana's selfless act in stopping a space shuttle from crashing into the moon.

(Side note: the creators of this comic seem to think that the Moon is within less than a day's travel for the Space Shuttle. Umm.....)

The answers to who Astarte is are promised to be revealed next issue, but I don't have it, so don't hold your breath. This will just have to be one of the great mysteries of the 40 Years of Comics Project. There are many.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 512: Wonder Woman v.1 #257, July 1979

Today is mine and my lovely wife's twentieth wedding anniversary. One of the great things that she brought to our joining together was a small, but very cool, collection of comics she'd had since she was a little girl. I thought that today I would read one, as a way of paying tribute to the most wonderful human being I know.

I was a bit flummoxed when I first got my hands on these comics. There were a lot of Disney and Archie comics, but sprinkled about for flavour were some cool superhero titles. Like this issue of Wonder Woman - published by Whitman? Now, many years ago, I figured out for myself that these comics were more than likely packaged together and distributed by Whitman, but, coincidentally, as I was reading the back matter of this issue, the question is actually posed to Bob Rozakis in his "Ask the Answer Man" column. He verifies that these comics were published as special value packs. I remember such things, but haven't seen any for many moons.

Pre-Crisis Wonder Woman is really pretty great. Unlike many of her incarnations, this one strides across the page like the Greek goddess that she is. Her thoughts and actions are epic. The comic begins with the invocation-like list of the deities that have gifted WW with her powers, echoing the beautiful opening captions of the earliest of her adventures, and calling to mind the incantations that Alan Moore takes up in his meditation on Wonder Woman in Promethea. This poetic aspect of the character is one that doesn't get nearly the attention it deserves. More than most of the mythic superheroes, Wonder Woman is one that almost self-consciously has her origins in language. She is a created figure, going by her original origin (I'll be honest, I have no idea if she's still meant to have been molded from clay in the newer iterations of the character), and where narratively she is sculpted from clay, figuratively, she's sculpted from words. This is something Marston understood very well in his original scripts. I'd urge you to have a look, even at just those opening captions. They're really quite lovely.

In this issue, Wonder Woman is faced with the menace of Multi-Man, an old Challengers of the Unknown villain, who has one of the most ridiculous costumes I've ever seen.

You're welcome.

(Also, we have a variation on the Wonder Woman being restrained theme here, though it's glass spheres and sleeping gas, rather than shackles and chains.)

Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 289: Wonder Woman v.1 #270, August 1980

Occasionally I will hear stories from friends about inheriting a cool collection of old comics from a relative, or (and this is true) just finding a box of comics chucked in a dumpster. More often than not these troves contain treasures, though slightly tarnished, that I would dearly love to add to my collection. Alas, it's never happened to me. However...

While tidying my basement the other day, I came across a stack of old comics and I have no recollection of where they came from. I think it might have been a 50-cent bin at a local comic store, but none of them have been entered in my database, so I've no record of where, or when, they found their way into my lair. Today's comic is one of them.

Wonder Woman is so often over-looked that even to say that has become a cliche. Part of me wonders (pun intended) if it's because she's undergone so many metamorphoses over the course of her existence (which sort of links her back to her Greek roots, I guess), many of which have been quite short-lived, that no one's really got a good sense of her. For myself, I think the original version, and some of the original comics, are probably the best version of her. But this issue, by Gerry Conway and Jose Delbo, seems to be yet another reboot, a few years after the de-powering feminist issues, and a few years before the George Perez Crisis-inspired reboot. And while such repetition can be troubling in a periodically published story, I wonder if these retellings of her origins don't actually bring her closer to her mythological roots.

I've recently finished teaching an introductory literature course, and the linking facet of the texts was their hearkening back (and forward) to myths of the past. One of the things I told the class very early one was that myths become myths because we keep telling and retelling the stories in different forms for different times. Is this why we see so many retellings of Wonder Woman's origins, why there's so many different versions of her? Perhaps. Maybe there's something fundamental going on in this tale of the girl made of clay who becomes a paragon of peace. Okay, not maybe. There definitely is. So, I suppose the question becomes, when will we actually see a version of this story burst into the popular culture and be regarded as every bit as good and important as the other members of the DCU trinity?

Hopefully soon, but, much as I like to remain optimistic, I'm not holding my breath.