Wondabunga

By Mel Dyer I think one of the reasons that it's so hard for modern writers to get  Wonder Woman  right, today, is because the genre of fiction that  Wonder Woman  creator,  William Moulton Marston,  crafted her from - adventure fiction or pulp fiction - is not, as common, in popular literature and film, as it used to be. I also think Cliff Chiang and Brian Azzarello, during DC Comics'  'New 52'  publishing event, came very close to rebooting the  Wonder Woman  comic to its roots, ..and I'll try to articulate why I do. Conceptually, Wonder Woman seems a much closer cousin to the heroes of  John Carter Of Mars, Buck Rogers, Doc Savage, Flash Gordon, Scorchy Smith, The Phantom, Jungle Jim, Hawkman, Doc Strange  and  Mandrake the Magician,  than she'll ever be to  Superman  and  Batman  ..or even to television's  Xena.  The problem with writing  Wonder Woman  is that most modern wr...

  A magic boy, born from a meteor and with  "the strength of a hundred full grown men", falls from the heavens, into World War II, ..to battle Nazis and racketeers! Now, rising from an atomic grave, to fight at Wonder Woman's side, he battles immortal Queen Clea and the mechanical terror, Roboseidon, ..in WONDER BOY LIVES! 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! 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.

VIRBIUS REX      --------------    P   E   R   S   O   N   A   L      D   A   T   A    --------------      Real name:  Virbius Rex Nemorensis, formerly Hippolitus or 'Hunter Prince' Secret File art:  Lorkalt on Deviantart.com (above) Occupation: Adventurer, Virbius (immortal king) of  Aricia and Nemi Marital Status: Married Known Relatives: Egeria (wife), Queen Antiope (mother), Queen Hippolyta (aunt), Princess Diana - Wonder Woman (cousin), Theseus (father), Menalippus (half-brother), Demophon (half-brother), Molpadia (half-sister or cousin), Poseidon (grandfather), Hunter Prince (future younger cousin) Base of Operations: enchanted forests of Aricia Group Affiliation:  Kingdom of Nemi and the Amazons of Themiscyra Height: Tall Eyes: Dark Hair: Black Notable Appearances: Wonder Woman, Volume...

By Mel Dyer I think one of the reasons that it's so hard for modern writers to get Wonder Woman  right, today, is because the genre of fiction that Wonder Woman  creator, William Moulton Marston, crafted her from - adventure fiction or pulp fiction - is not, as common, in popular literature and film, as it used to be. I also think Cliff Chiang and Brian Azzarello, during DC Comics' 'New 52' publishing event, came very close to rebooting the  Wonder Woman  comic to its roots, ..and I'll try to articulate why I do. Conceptually, Wonder Woman seems a much closer cousin to the heroes of  John Carter Of Mars, Buck Rogers, Doc Savage, Flash Gordon, Scorchy Smith, The Phantom, Jungle Jim, Hawkman, Doc Strange  and Mandrake the Magician,  than she'll ever be to Superman and Batman ..or even to television's  Xena. The problem with writing Wonder Woman is that most modern writers and readers really don't know anything about the pulp fiction genre that...

A magic boy, born from a meteor and with  "the strength of a hundred full grown men", falls from the heavens, into World War II, ..to battle Nazis and racketeers, as WONDER BOY!

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 tha...

By Mel Dyer Villainous Lex Luthor stalked Superman out of World War II and into superhero comics' Silver Age, just as the Joker of the Fifties clown-danced the Batman into the infamous, camp-crazed Sixties, ..and a groovy Green Goblin bedeviled Spider-Man into the Bronze Age Seventies. All the while, Wonder Woman, trailed by a caravan of bizarre, rainbow-colored and deservedly obscure baddies, since the Golden Age of comics - that's World War II - remained terminally nemesis-less. That was the deal, until DC Comics movie producer and comic writer/editor, Geoff Johns, gave us the multi-comic crossover event, Darkseid War! Enter  Myrina Black.  She has a lair. [A lair!] Like Wonder Woman, Myrina, a mythical Amazon from real-world, classical literature, is a quirky genre-mix of heroic fantasy magic and sci-fi strange - a superhumanly strong, physical match, tailor-made for scraps with the Amazing Amazon! More obsessive, than malevolent, she checks the classic super...

By Mel Dyer What can you do, with Colonel Steve Trevor? Not to get sacrilegious - for some comic fans, he's Playgirl' s answer to Mary Magdalene - but, perhaps, it is time to replace Wonder Woman's official hot piece, since World War II, ..with another   love interest. Is it time to replace Col. Trevor's backstory, with something broader or more nuanced, revealing a tragic past, a dark family secret ..or an apocalyptic destiny?  Is it time for Steve to be retconned, as an entirely different character, with a wholly different personality and motivation - maybe, something more challenging to Wonder Woman? Like most of you, I can throw some things against a wall and imagine what might stick, but can't really picture him, as anything, but, what he has been, since the Golden Age: swaggy, All-American flyboy hero. There's really nothing else in the Steve-burrito, amigos. I've looked. He's not enough of an obsessive, entitled ego-monster to be a plainclothes B...

By Mel Dyer Wonder Woman is at her best - her most entertaining - under fire and rising to a challenge! Game-changing stakes and characters, who challenge her freedom-loving, Bohemian ideals, distinguish her as more than a female Man of Steel; they uniquely define her, ..as Wonder Woman. Certainly, one of the greatest challenges to her Amazonian mettle, ever created, ..has been classical literature's superman, Hercules. I don't think Wonder Woman’s creator, Dr. William Marston or most of the writers, who followed him, have ever fully  reformed Hercules, an alternately quarrelsome, thuggy companion and outright enemy of the Amazing Amazon’s, ..since her launch in World War II. Even 1950s writer/editor Robert Kanigher, after making him one of Diana's fairy godfathers, lending his magical strength to her own, ..typically wrote him, as an unrepentant jerk. Like so many other male supporting characters, who are not perennially neutered boyfriend, Steve Trevor, and don't beha...

By Mel Dyer If you were a well-known comic book, with a  Galactus-like  bad guy at your disposal – a comic that’s rarely a hair’s breadth from  total cancellation  – what would you do with him?  What if such a comic had another super-villain, who was like a  female Doctor Doom  or  Darth Vader  ..and another, like a cross between the  Borg Queen  and the  Xenomorphs  from the  Aliens  films?  What if such a comic had still another fantastic character, who was like a cross between the Batman comic’s  Bane  and  the Kurgan  from the  Highlander  films? Well, ..if your title is  Wonder Woman,  the answer is easy… Absolutely  nothing. When it comes to knowing what to do with a potentially GREAT super-villain, no comic book has historically been more infuriatingly clueless or outright wasteful, than  Wonder Woman.   Who know...