Wondabunga

By Edgar Miraculous Dyer A Wonderfan once said, "Nubia is perfection. Etta is perfect imperfection. Don't need 2 Nubias." I'm still there. Standing by that. I don't like to see writers or artists slimming down the original  Wonder Girl,  Etta Candy, for political correctness ..or modernity. I think it was a mistake tying DC Comics'  Wonder Woman  comic into that network-rejected David Kelley  pilot - you know the one, starring Adrianne Palicki, loosely based on Greg Rucka's critically acclaimed run. The fat, weird, fun and fun- loving   Etta  in the comic - the Golden Age Wonder Woman's Robin  - was one of the major casualties of this game-changing TV tie-in. Frankly, I don't see any reasons that Etta has to be black, anyway, ..except to tie-into that failed, never-aired Kelly TV show pilot. She might just as well be Irish, Mexican or Chinese. Etta can be anybody... any of us, ..and that was Wonder-creator William Moulton Marston's point in ...

By Mel Dyer After the rather tepid debut - more of a meow, than a roar - of her most enduring comic book foil, the Cheetah, in Patty Jenkins'  Wonder Woman 1984  (now, streaming and in theatres), ..the Amazing Amazon's arch-nemesis is presently an empty chair. That said, her perennial sorceress enemy,  Circe,  has slowly developed into something interesting, outside of the  Wonder Woman  comic -  "The Witching War" arc in the hot-trending  Justice League Dark. In James Tynion IV's origin tale, the mythical princess of ancient Greek  Colchis,   celebrated for her radiance and healing arts,  .. finds herself   the young (maybe, teenaged) hostage in an arranged marriage to the cruel king of a  wealthier nation . Upon killing the abusive pig - a rich friend of her father Aeetes, perhaps - and hanging him in a meat locker, her once worshipful people chase her into the Underworld, where the Greek goddess of witchcraft,...

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...