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A RASH ON MY TITANS (AND IT SMARTS)...STARRING WONDER WOMAN!

By Mel Dyer

Sometimes, I don't understand the logic behind writing Wonder Woman, anymore.

How this comic can continue to ignore one of its own greatest antagonists, the quasi-mystical, cybernetic mastermind, Doctor Cyber, in an age of internet, virtual reality and artificial intelligence, just ..ASTOUNDS me! At what point are the myth and magic and pretensions to classicism in the Wonder Woman comic, overkill ..or missing the mark?


It's the Information Age, and writer, after writer, consigns Wonder Woman to hack her way through one column of witches and krakens, after another! Has anyone on Wonder Woman's creative team seen the Terminator films of the late 80s or the Resident Evil films, which have been so immensely popular in recent years? Can leaving zombie-creating, Boba Fett'ish, bounty hunter, the Bushmaster, ..and Doctor Cyber, who is basically, a female Darth Vader, ..in editorial mothballs, be justified, in a comic that's struggling as hard, as Wonder Woman has been, since WWII? Just Doctor Cyber and Bushmaster, alone - hold-overs from the Bronze Age Seventies - represent powerful trends, in popular fiction, and opportunities to connect with modern fans ..that continue to go completely ignored, by the Wonder Woman comic.

Why is that? Again, the perplexing logic...

With Terminator films breaking box office records in the 80s, Wonder Woman passed up on Doctor Cyber ..to chase cat-ladies. (Don Heck art)

Who needs Doctor Cyber and Bushmaster, when we have a library of obscure goddesses and witches for Wonder Woman to tangle with? The Wonder Woman comic does! Where is the editor, who gives a damn? Where is the Stan Lee, who is driving writers up the wall, with demands for stories, featuring the most promising super-villains - villains, whose broad appeal might increase the comic's fanbase? Does the Wonder Woman comic have a Stan Lee, in its stables?

There's editorial waste, here, on a scale, that Marvel Comics' super-editor, the late, great Stan Lee, would have never tolerated.

For the last twenty-plus years, Wonder Woman comic editors have watched a relentless phalanx of writers crank out stories, about witches, slinking around in togas and disco clothes, ..or wars, between Greek war gods, creeping around in moldy, Roman-styled armor. Where in popular culture have movie-goers been clamoring for either? Of course, there was the occasional story about a bumbling, weight-lifter god, plotting world domination - who is ordering that pizza? These are the kinds of questions Stan Lee used to ask his writers and editors, shaping the classic stories, that unfolded on the pages of great comics, like Amazing Spider-Man, Uncanny X-Men, Incredible Hulk, Doctor Strange...Mighty Avengers?

No, ..Wonder Woman certainly doesn't have a Stan Lee, on speed-dial.

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!

I want so much to understand the reasoning here, but, I just can't. Lord Of The Rings and Xena are great, commercially successful fiction works, but, Wonder Woman doesn't belong in either of them, ..because she's not Xena or Aragorn or King Arthur! Skilled writers and editors, with a broad vision for the comic, can postpone the next god-war, for some adventures in other dimensions, ..strange, futuristic worlds, ..and lost, Tomb-Raiderish empires!

Or even to Asgard!

Pick up Wonder Woman #770, by Becky Cloonan and Michael W. Conrad, ..and you'll see what I'm talking about. So far, the chances of seeing somebody ride through this issue, bare-naked, on a Pegasus, are assuringly low, while the leading lady stabs and punches her way, through a longhouse of dead vikings! Sure, it's switching out Greek mythology, for Norse, ..but, it's a bigger Wonder Boat, conceptually - a broader stage for the Amazon to play on! It isn't the first time writers have raised the bar for how imaginative a Wonder Woman story can be, and, if the comic is ever going to recapture the nuclear crackle of its Golden Age success, ..it shouldn't be the last.

And krakens are properly Norse, anyway!

Should the Wonder Woman creative team get rid of the mythical, magical elements, like the Amazon Island and the witches and obscure Greek gods? Of course not.

It should be understood, however, that her magic lasso and Herculean strength, like Diana's myth-inspired origins, ..are incidentals. The authentic Wonder Woman story, with its roots in the same pulp fiction that created the John Carter novels, is about how she uses her antiquated, myth-inspired stuff to save the modern world from rocket invasions, by the war god, Mars, ..or subjugation, by very real Nazis. What made Wonder Woman a hot-selling comic in the Golden Age Forties wasn't half-naked titillation, ..entirely. It was a breadth of imagination that changed our ideas about the impossible, ..and about who we could imagine leaping into its fiery, Crayola-colored canyons, on a giant kangaroo, in her underwear...

And changing everything!

Imagination. That's what we've lost, in Wonder Woman. That is what needs ..rebirth.

[Second Edition]




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.

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