Wonder Woman 72

Wonder Woman is back home, and is trying to figure out what happened while she was gone.  Julia has rented her room out!  But this gives an excuse to give Diana's origin story again.  This stuck pretty closely to the origin I am familiar with, only adding the Diana Trevor factor.  (I really only know the TV version, with Steve crash landing on the island.  All my Wonder Woman knowledge was formed by Lynda Carter and Lionel Waggoner.) Diana Trevor saves Paradise Island from the hordes of Tantalus by crashing her plane into the mountain, and she dies. That is what leads to Diana's formation from clay, etc.  

So after Diana tells this story to Quinn, Julia tells her that Hippolyta has closed down the Themyscrian Embassy, and disappeared.  No one has been able to get in touch with her.  This amazes Diana, who proceeds to check with the Meyer Agency (this sounds vaguely familiar -- was that Myndi Mayer? Is this another editing issue...I think the MEYER in this issue is supposed to be MAYER, opps) and the bank.  No traces!  So off to check in with Etta and Steve.  She foils a robbery at the airport, and proceeds on to find Steve and Paradise Island.  She finds Steve, but the island is gone!  

I think I am ready to move on.  Tomorrow, Justice League Number 1 (1987).  

Wonder Woman 71

Okay, final issue of Diana IN SPACE!  All the Sangtee slaves are freed, and the prison planets un-prisoned.  Diana's ragtag crew is starting to break up.  Then Julia, the Daxamite, goes a little crazy and tries to kill one of the Sangtee.  This is when Diana realizes that Julia is speaking English!  It has been so long since Diana heard English that she didn't recognize it at first.  There's no explanation for why Julia knows English, but she does.  And she apparently also knows where Earth is, and is able to give that information to the scientist working on the transporter, so that Diana and Natasha can be sent home -- very Star Trek!  But before she goes, the girls all give her a big going-away thank you.  Party for Diana!  

Interspersed with all of this, we also see Julia Kapatelis writing a letter saying goodbye to Diana.  After months and months of Wonder Woman being missing, she has finally given up on her "second daughter" and accepted that she is dead.  Then, she answers the door and there is Diana!  Happy tears ensue. 

I would guess the next issues will deal with Diana trying to find out why Asquith Randolph tried to get rid of her.  It is implied in this issue that he took her place as a hero, so that may be reason enough, but will Diana have her revenge?  Maybe I'll read a few more issues and find out.

We're only getting two new comics this week, so I will probably continue to read a Wonder Woman or two, before moving on to JLI.  Mark has talked me into reading the first three years of that, so there's a month of posts!  Hmmmm.  Justice League #1, 1987 and JLA #1 2011, both in the same week for me.

Wonder Woman 70

So, in this issue, Diana confronts the Sangtee Emperor, finds out he is really a she, and  -- presto -- the now-Empress will release the slaves and start the Sangtee people on the road to integration of the sexes. 

Wait a minute, who are the Sangtee?  In the first issue of their captivity, Diana and Natasha learn that the race of people who make up the empire that runs the prison planet is the Kreel.  Now, though they are being referred to as the Sangtee.   I am so confused.   No wonder continuity becomes an issue, when an editing error like that can slip through.  

At any rate, Diana gets her costume and accessories back,  as her captors did keep them.  So now, I expect the next issue will deal with Diana getting home.  I would say this came to rather an abrupt end; and no real Wonder Woman fighting action at all.  We did see the Daxamite wrecking a few things, but all Diana did was catch an advisor with her lasso.  

I am glad that I have only a couple more issues of this Wonder Woman sequence.  I am looking forward to pulling out the old JLI issues on Kooey Kooey Kooey!

Wonder Woman 69

My first impression, looking at this cover, was that Diana had cut her hair short.  But then I saw the pony-tail holder.  Not sure Dina should have a pony-tail.  But that is more practical to fight with than loose hair that would fly in your face.  But I really think she should have cut it short, like Natasha's.

Exposition, exposition, exposition.  I am not sure the purpose of telling the first part of this in an expositive flashback by a Kreel official.  Why not just tell the story?  I guess it's a convenient way to skip through six months.  So, we learn that Diana and her band of former slaves are now acting as pirates, catching the Kreel ships and adding their cargos - more women - to the fighting force.  They are training and waiting for the right time to focus an attack on the Emperor.  Natasha continues to entertain with magic tricks, while Diana lounges around on a big bean-bag chair and looks like Harry Mudd with breasts.  I am not very fond of the  overcoat they've put her in...and I think she looks much better on the cover than inside the book.  

And Diana has her team of scientists (amazing what you get with a load of slaves and an asteroid) working on a new lasso, which answers one of my questions from earlier.  They haven't quite got it yet, though.

And now we've reached the climax of the story.  Diana has gotten the Daxamite, now called Julia, to team up with their pirate band, and Diana takes the fight to the Emperor, appearing as a giant head to challenge him. Go to it, great and powerful Diana!

Wonder Woman 68

A Comic a Day continues...

Wonder Woman is now a "PRISONER OF A SAVAGE PLANET!"  Poor Diana, with only rags held together by rope to wear. (I like the cover with her still wearing her tiara.  I guess she has to wear it on the cover, to show who she is...inside she only has the grey sweatband of prisonerhood.) 

Our story starts off with Natasha narrating.  It has been three long months of slavery.  Diana is a beacon of hope in the otherwise despairing camp.  She protects the weak, and does more than her share of work.  She and Natasha gradually learn the camp pidgin language, and determine that their captors are the Kreel, an alien race that only has one sex; then every century they change sexes.  This explains why they are only keeping women in the slave camp; they hate women when they are men.  Huh?  That didn't make a lot of sense to me.  And it seems like a lot of work to run a whole planet prison camp just because you hate women.  Maybe it makes sense to the Kreel.  We also learn that there is a Daxamite being held in special captivity on the planet.  How convenient!

So, through a series of serendipitious events, Diana and a small group are able to commandeer a ship, rescue the Daxamite and make their way off planet.  Diana now plans to take down the Kreel empire.  She has four issues to do so!  We'll see how that works out.

There was one thought I had as I was reading this story (related to Diana's tiara, see how I am tying this in...).  Diana's lasso, and presumably the other accoutrements of her Wonder Woman persona like the bracelets, were with her in the original spaceship.  How will she get them back?  Did the Kreel realize their importance and take them?  Or are they still floating around in the first ship?  I want to know!

And...  an ad for DOOMSDAY!  So maybe that's why Superman can't come help Diana now?  

Wonder Woman 67!

The continuing saga of Diana and Natasha in SPACE!

The girls are passing time in space with magic tricks and super-exercising.  There's lots of "I am sure we are going to die." and "No, we're going to make it." exchanges.  Diana makes a space walk to boost their distress signal.  It's been two weeks and they have another week of air and food.  BORING!  No, it's about what you'd expect to see if someone were on a really long space flight.  

But eventually their ship is captured by some sort of an alien vessel, and our girls are captured to be used as slave labor on an unknown planet with slaves of many worlds.  Poor Diana is beaten badly, and the two are forced to work the mines and fight their fellow inmates for food.  At the end, our Amazon princess comments that their captors made one mistake..."They let me live."

Now, all through reading this book, I thought to myself, why did they even bother with this ship floating in space for two (relatively) weak women.  It seems to me that would be more trouble than they were worth.  But maybe we'll find out differently in the next exciting installment.

The thing I found more interesting in reading this book were the ads!  This book is from 1992, which in the general scheme of things is not that long ago.  But you realize how quickly the video game industry progressed when you see the ads for Sega Genesis games (Super High Impact! Evander Holyfield's Real Deal Boxing!).  The screen shots included with these ads just seem cute now, but how cutting edge where they then?  

Then, oh, the joy.  Those little ads for "Build your own personal jet-pack" and "Muscles? in 7 days."  It really made me want to send in my $19.95 for plans to build the jet-pack.  I thought these ads were gone with the Silver Age.  

Wonder Woman 66

Day 4!  

Today I read the original printing of the story from the recent Wonder Woman Retroactive, 1990's.  (By the way, the links I use to comics all point to specific issue on comixology.com.   Mark uses that site to set up his pull-list with our LCS, Packrat Comics.)  I wanted to know what happened to Wonder Woman after she is marooned in space with the cosmonaut Natasha Terranova -- although with a name like Terranova, one almost suspects that we will see her marooned on another planet, trying to start an Earth colony, no?  

This story is near the start of the William Messner-Loebs run on Wonder Woman.  I only know that because the letter columns writers refer to the change of creative team.  Diana is apparently more confident and sure of herself in the "man's world."  I won't comment on this, since I didn't read the previous issues, but Diana sure seems confident, although this book starts with a scene I don't think we'd see in a Wonder Woman comic today...Diana getting her hair done!

So Diana has to go into space to save this cosmonaut, who is running out of air.  Why can't Superman, or one of the other space-capable superheroes go?  (I thought Diana was space-capable.  Not this one, I guess.)  Because they are all off somewhere else, conveniently.  While trying to get back into the atmosphere, a mysterious explosion sends them off into the universe.  They don't know where they are or how they got there.  What will happen?  Tune in for the next issue...

I did like this story.  I love when writers can make the normal, everyday interactions of superheroes seem normal and everyday!  The hairdresser scene was fun.  Watching Diana and Natasha bond over magic was fun.  There was some superhero stuff, and the golden lasso got some play, but Diana was basically a regular person interacting with other regular people.  She just happens to be superstrong and can fly.

I'll move to Wonder Woman 67 tomorrow.  I am sure Diana and Natasha won't be stranded in the spaceship very long!