The first time I saw Wonder Woman, she was slugging it out with a futuristic giant robot, along with four other members of the Justice League, in the second of the team’s tryout appearances in The Brave and the Bold (May 1960).
The real wonder to me was discovering I could read the individual adventures of these colorful heroes in various comic books — a mission I undertook with alacrity.
I appreciated the Amazing Amazon’s strength and speed and her transparent, telepathically controlled jet, but her “gliding on air currents” power gave me pause. Even to a 6-year-old, that seemed shaky at best. Superman’s flatly inexplicable power of flight somehow seemed a better bet.
Wonder Woman was drawn by the capable Ross Andru, but penned by Robert Kanigher, who wrote spare, moody combat stories for DC’s war titles but bizarrely erratic, unsatisfying Wonder Woman adventures.
The plots didn’t make any sense, even by comic book standards. Dinosaurs and gigantic clams and electric eels and nuclear missiles seemed to show up at random and disappear for no reason, and Wonder Girl displayed an unsettling taste for dating teenage males who were half-fish or half-bird.
Nor did Steve Trevor cut too impressive a figure, making goo-goo eyes at “my angel” at every opportunity. The idea that a woman would have to “give up her career” of saving the world when she got married seemed ridiculous even in the 1950s and 1960s.
But then, what can you say about a guy who actually accepts the explanation, “I’ll marry you, but only after I’ve eradicated crime from the face of the Earth?”
Talk about an obvious brush-off.
No comments:
Post a Comment