By Edgar Miraculous Dyer
In the 1950s, ..while DC Comics was inviting comic fans to emotionally invest in the warm familiarity of Gotham City, Metropolis, Central City, Coast City, Ivy City, Midway City and Gateway City ..and their association with its most popular superheroes - with a super-New York being established for Marvel's - nothing close to that was happening in the Wonder Woman comic.
Like Aquaman or Thor, she originated from an iconic lost civilization, the Amazons' Paradise Island, and many of Wonder Woman's stories almost always unfolded there, leaving her fans, without the tone-setting, iconic city thing that the fans of so many other popular comics ..have had fifty or sixty years to get attached to.
This is where Wonder Woman fans reach the Marston City limits, wherein lies, well... nothing? I think we've got to keep that in perspective.
When looking at the too-long missing, regular supporting cast, ..iconic settings, stylized vehicles and weapons, we've got to look at the comic book multiverse full of Batmobiles, trick web-shooters, Phantom Zones and cosmic surfboards, fans are passing over to get their hands on this comic, ..Wonder Woman! When Wonder Woman fans are grumbling about feeling deprived, dismissed, disrespected or left behind, when compared to other superhero comic fandoms, ..it's because we have been.
Whoever writes this comic, finds themselves trying to fix old problems, with new, innovative solutions - like Myrina Black, as the greatest never-before-seen, perennial, arch-supervillainess, ever. Worse, they have to make those new fixes feel like they've been in the comic, for nearly a hundred years, to patch up the editorial black hole, created by editor Robert Kanigher's neglect in the Silver Age Fifties. I think Wonder Woman's missing Wonder-town is twisting around in there...
Somewhere.
I think those of us, who want to see the Wonder Woman comic feature a fictional, iconic city - Ocean City (Robinson run), Gateway City, Holliday City, Marston City - want a city that belongs to us, the way Gotham belongs to the Batfans. As with the Dark Knight, having Wonder Woman's most recognizable Wonder-lore and essentials occupy a unique, signature space in the DCU ..could help writers chart a direction for the leading lady or shape the overall personality of the comic - the TONE. Just looking at the city should answer questions about Wonder Woman. Like...
"Who is this lady, and what's important to her? Why's she doing what she's doing, the way she's doing it? Oh, look at Marston City - I think I get some of it!"
With the iconic city, real estate is partly prologue! In a good comic, the iconic city becomes a character, unto itself...in its own right! It's typically distinguished by some kind of potentially iconic building that, on site, announces:
You are reading a Wonder Woman comic!
This is where Wonder Woman fans reach the Marston City limits, wherein lies, well... nothing.
As with so many other problems in this comic, Wonder Woman's friendship with brash, gun-slingin' Texas rancher, Etta Candy, ..is the key to finding the right tone for this comic!
Had writers followed Etta's wild, indomitable, cowgirl optimism out of World War II, the trail would most certainly have taken them back to the big, loving family, she'd left on a sprawling Texas cattle ranch, ..the legendary Bar-L. It might also have helped writers re-characterize Wonder Woman, as belonging to the same world of timeless, rambling adventure, which Silver Age Fifties Wonder-editor, Robert Kanigher, confessed to loving so much, in interviews.
I also think the idea of making Wonder Woman's home, the X-files Capital of the DCU, might play better in the Southwest, which people associate with weird experiences - UFOs in Roswell, NM and Arizona, Burning Man or the secrets of Nevada's Area 51. With all of that going on, a Roswellish Marston City could seriously rock, as the home of ARGUS, also! So, where is it?
This is where Wonder Woman fans reach the Marston City limits, wherein lies, well... nothing.
Far be it from me to judge, but, ..I think the only reason Wonder Woman, globally celebrated champion of freedom, feminist icon and tiara aficionada, is still in Washington, DC ..is because her BOYFRIEND, Colonel Steve Trevor, worked there...
In World War II. [Hear the crickets? Me, too.]
Seriously...the Big One is over! With the Internet, drones and satellite technology, her need to physically monitor America's defenses, using a secret identity in our Nation's Capitol, has passed! We might even ask why writers continue to keep Steve, there.
Why is Wonder Woman still in Washington?
As for the prospects of Diana having an iconic hometown in Man's World, Marston City ..or Wonder-town? The work of the current creative team, which I love, is pushing me towards favoring a super-Washington in its stead, ..like the Stan Lee Spider-Man's New York.
If you take a really good look at the Washington, D.C. of the Marston Era 1940s, that's the stage he was telling stories on. Ghoulish agents of Mars slithering in and out of the halls of political and military power...out of people running our war effort! Big, oversized marble monuments and gorgeous Greco-Roman architecture, everywhere...waiting to be pulverized in a battle, between Diana and whatever giant robots, malevolent gods and monsters happened to be trampling through DC, at the time! Spies, some of them god-possessed or controlled by invading aliens...everywhere! That wasn't the Washington of reality, but a weird, almost Felliniesque (sometimes), surreal parody of the Nation's Capitol that Marston and H. G. Peter crafted to bring their stories to life - the super-Washington I mentioned, ..and it was fabulous.
It was iconic.
If she's going to stay in DC, I'd really like to see some writer consider Holliday College, Etta Candy's alma mater, ..for her residence. Maybe, Holliday could give Diana an old mansion or gymnasium on the campus - some sort of stately or unusual looking place to live in and house her armory, vehicles, danger-room thing and the rest.
I think she's living in a townhouse with Etta, in Washington's Georgetown district, right now, when she isn't at Colonel Steve's Checkmate office. So, another familiar place, fans might look forward to seeing, every month, ..couldn't hurt!
Maybe, at Holliday, surrounded by quirky, impressionable, young women, she doesn't need a whole city to give Wonderfans, what Superman fans get from the universally beloved Daily Planet! Instead of a Marston City, maybe, with time, a Marston Hall or some quirky, old building at Etta's college can become just as iconic a residence, as Wayne Manor, ..and just as LOVED by fans!
Where is it?
Can Holliday College give Diana a weirdass, old library or gym to work out of? Maybe, she doesn't need a Gotham! (H.G. Peter art)This is where Wonder Woman fans reach the Marston City limits, wherein lies, well... nothing.
We want the iconic city, because we see them in other popular comics. Nothing deeply philosophical about it - we see other fans enjoying them.
So, naturally, we want them, too! Why is that so hard to understand?
We want a city, entirely imagined and unique to the Wonder Woman comic! Does it even have to be a fully fictional city, anymore? Seeing as how highly stylized or fictionalized, real-world cities - the Chicago of Dick Tracy, the New York City of the Spider-Man comics - have become so much more iconic in comics, ..I wouldn't say that it does.
Honestly, I don't think we have to have a sound, rational, defensible reason for wanting them, and I doubt the fandoms of other popular comics do, either. It just looks like fun; so, we want it.
Maybe, Marston City makes a little more sense, because, like Paradise Island, the iconic city - the place Wonder Woman lives, the people she interacts with - literally tells us where she's coming from, ..as much as it might tell us where she's going. What a marvelous treatise for adding an iconic city to the Wonderverse!
Look alive, Kangaliers!
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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