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...

By Mel Dyer This cover really makes me miss the imaginative world-build that artist Cliff Chiang's and 100 Bullets writer Brian Azzarello's run brought to the  Wonder Woman  comic. It was a landmark run, and on the skyline of the comic's greatest creative periods, it stands out, ..with decidedly quirky distinction. Looking back on the comic's 80th anniversary, it was memorable. Can't say that about all of them! The Chazzarello run on Wonder Woman  - better known, as DC Comics' New 52  - changed the context of Wonder Woman's superheroic mission, in that it left her reasons for coming to the world of men, ..a mystery,  which Brian never truly solved for us. In its place, he and Cliff gave Diana a quirky, imaginative and iconic world, from which to launch her stories and, occasionally, explore her myth-inspired background. I even miss the nifty raptor companion,  Zephyrus the Wonder Eagle,  that the New 52 gave to teenage Wonder Woman, ..because ...