WELCOME TO WONDERTOWN, ..THE QUIRKY X-FILES CAPITAL OF THE DC UNIVERSE!

 By Mel Dyer

It's a shame Gateway City, Wonder Woman's fictional, West Coast metropolis, from the now infamous, John Byrne run on her comic, ..wasn't in the book, long enough to become one of DC Comics' most iconic, superhero locales.

Does Wonder Woman deserve her own slightly quirky, comically menacing, instantly iconic X-files Capital of the DC Universe – a narrative playset, from which to launch her greatest, strangest adventures? Could her having someplace to slam back caramel macchiatos, with Etta, Steve and I Ching, surrounded by uniformed, military personnel and beings from other planets, magical realms, alien dimensions and lost civilizations, ..give us the next Gotham or Metropolis?

Afternoons in Gateway could find you smacking around Talos, giant robot from Jason And The Argonauts! (John Byrne art)

Truthfully, while I'm done with seeing her poking around big, American Northeast cities, like Washington or Boston, I still think she needs a place to tear up, ..at least, once, every two years. It doesn't have to be Gateway. A Holliday City or Marston City, with new, unimagined amenities would do. Imagine that Portland, Oregon and Washington, D.C. had a baby city...

This would be it.

I think a Wonder-town should prominently feature the chapel and tree-lined campus of Holliday College, a top-secret U.S. Air Force Base, the ultra-modern Cale Tower and Campion Building. Why not a Marston Monument, ..a large, obelisk-topped monolith (honoring Wonder Woman creator, William Moulton Marston), which recalls the Washington Monument? I have envisioned it, cluttered with absurdly gargantuan monuments, ..which, sometimes come to life and beat the hell out of you! At the center of town, I imagine a new A.R.G.U.S Headquarters, a citadel, resembling the U.S. Capitol, ..but for the giant, mechanical eye, firing lasers, from its glistening dome! How about a Sappho’s Coffee ..and a Kanigher’s department store, filled with oversized sight-gags, mocking comedic moments from Wonder Woman's Fifties comics?

Wonder-town could be enough of a parody of the real D.C. that you get the joke - not so weird or crazy that it couldn't just nondescriptly sit, in the background, ..while important things happened to Diana and her supporting cast.

Somebody get this lady a supporting cast, please!

Detective Mike Schorr is likely the most humanizing supporting character, since cowgirl co-ed, Etta Candy! (John Byrne art)

The DC Universe's iconic cities are half-parodies of real-world cities, and they typically visually embody something iconic about the heroes, who live in them. For Superman, Metropolis mirrors his optimism about the future and humanity's potential to be great - that's what Big Blue's comic is and has always been about. For Batman, Gotham is a scenic, meta-poetic expression of Bruce Wayne's struggle to wrest hope and justice from the darkness of the human condition.

I don't think Wonder Woman having a similar backdrop, and, by itself, that's all the iconic city really is - a backdrop - would be such a terrible thing. Something, besides Paradise Island, needs to center her on-going narrative, so that every new creative team isn't building her, from scratch and flower. Maybe, an artistically quirky, colorful landscape, littered with gargantuan, neo-classical monuments to war, wealth and power - the Amazon's nightmarish view of Man's World - could help that narrative centering along. It doesn't mean that all of WW's stories have to unfold in one place (though most typically do, youknowhere), ..but, a fictional city could set the narrative tone for a meta-poetic stage, from which to launch her best stories.

Couldn't hurt.

This is WONDER WOMAN...used to be a place, where any bizarre, freaky thing you could think of could actually happen. Sure miss that comic. Can you tell?

Look alive, kangaliers!

Want to KNOW WONDER WOMAN, the way I know Wonder Woman? You've got to get ALL THE WAY down to the... STAR-SPANGLED PANTIES!

Edgar Miraculous (Mel) Dyer, without his fine, coyote-hatin' Goldiweiller, Kirby (now moved on to that big, coyote-hatin' hate group in the Sky) continues a somewhat bleaker, dogless existence in the Capitol Hill area of Washington, DC. He has been an active member of the Latino Culture Council of the Capitol Area (El Consejo de Cultura Latina – La Zona del Capitolio) and the Kiwanis Club of Capitol Hill.