The 12 Labors of Wonder Woman

[jkcarrier]

saralakali requested "The 12 Labors of Wonder Woman", a storyline that ran in 1974-75.

A little background:
After a few years of Wonder Woman being a non-super, karate-chopping, "mod" adventurer, DC abruptly decided to take the character back to her classic form. While there was some attempt to explain the transition, some things fell through the cracks, not the least of which was the unexplained return of the previously-deceased Steve Trevor. When new editor Julius Schwartz took over the title, he and writer Len Wein decided to try and untangle this continuity. The result was Wonder Woman #212, "The Man Who Mastered Women!"

(approximately 6 pages worth of panels from a 20-page story)

Reporter Clark Kent is on the scene when Wonder Woman thwarts the attempted assassination of Pamanasian prime minister Indira Gamal. After WW changes back to Diana Prince, she pulls Clark aside to catch up on old times.



Superman heads to the JLA satellite, but WW isn't there. She mistakenly went to the JLA's old mountain sanctuary, having forgotten that they moved. Superman brings her to the satellite, where an examination shows that there's nothing physically wrong with her.




The JLAers agree to her terms, and Superman is assigned to monitor her first (which means he's pretty much eavesdropping on her 24/7...kind of creepy, even though she consented to it). Diana goes to Paradise Island, where she accuses Queen Hippolyta of messing with her memories, since she knows that only Amazons have the technology to do such a thing.



And that's that. Trevor would eventually be resurrected (a couple of times), but for now Diana is feeling abandoned and miserable. She needs something to take her mind off her problems. Morgan Tracy of the United Nations Crisis Bureau had previously offered Diana Prince a job, and she decides to take him up on it. Unfortunately, Tracy and Prime Minister Gamal have both been kidnapped by Batman's old foe, The Cavalier, and his harem of sexy slave girls.



Clark Gable The Cavalier plans to take over Pamanasia, and from there...dun dun dun...The World! But Wonder Woman has something to say about that.



...or does she?



With his mojo not workin', Cavalier is forced to resort to weaponry. First, his electric sword.



(Gosh, that's not Freudian at all)
He also tries throwing the razor-sharp plumes from his hat at her, but she deflects them with her tiara. Finally, he pulls out his "specially-treated snuffbox".




It turns out, whatever was in that snuff counteracted his sexy hypnosis, freeing his victims. Sadly, WW prevents them from killing his smarmy ass, but you can't have everything. So the continuity is straightened out, the Prime Minister is saved, Diana Prince gets a new job, and Wonder Woman is one step closer to rejoining the JLA.

If there's interest, I can post the other 11 parts of this storyline too. You can never have too much Bronze Age. :D

Comments

[shadowpsykie]

heehee sorry despited it being so dated (and slightly sexist, though saved from being totally sexist) i couldn not help but giggle at several points

also heehee sexy hypnosis makes me think of Captain Jack Harkness, stupid sexy Jack :D

[shadowpsykie]

hmmm stupid sexy jack does not apply... im gay LOL eh, you know what i mean....

[jogadoresesquecidos.blogspot.com]

Yep, never too much Bronze Age! :)

[auntneppy]

I hate to say it, but that pic of Steve with "BRAAP" and surrounded by yellow clouds...makes it look like he's just let out a killer fart.

[korvarthefox.livejournal.com]

+1 vote for more!

[jcbaggee]

All I can notice is that the colorist really screwed the pooch on the belt coloring.

[saralakali]

No, that's what color her belt was for several issues.

[philippos42]

Nope, it was white back then.

[darkknightjrk]

Heh--at first I thought, "When did they have Diana running around in a belly shirt?"

[misterbug]

"You have no partner, Marshal...you came here alone."

[proteus_lives]

That sounds so familiar, where is it from?

[fredneil.livejournal.com]

Late Silver age, I thought, though it couldn't be more than a few months either way, assuming we date the beginning of the Bronze Age to the death of Gwen Stacy.

For real crack, there's Diana's first day at the UN, where her boss comments several times about Diana being the plain one among all the beautiful women who normally work at the UN. And she cries a little over it. Granted, being called an "ugly duckling" is going to sting a bit, no matter who you are, but I really don't see Diana taking it that much to heart. And the attempt at the end to set up an early sixties Superman/Clark/Lois triangle at the end doesn't really work.

Besides, I would really like to live in an universe where six-foot tall Amazons are the plain ones.

Pluses: The art is nice, and the line about her "poor, sweet, darling Steve" is sort of touching, even if he hadn't been sweet or darling for a couple of decades before he died.

[saralakali]

Bronze Age started at DC in 1970. Marvel may count their Bronze Age from the death of Gwen Stacy, but that event had nothing to do with DC.

[jkcarrier]

I tend to think of the Bronze Age as starting around 1970, with books like "Hard-Traveling Heroes" Green Lantern/Green Arrow, the "Mod" Wonder Woman, and "Darknight Detective" Batman marking a change from the innocent goofiness of the Silver Age to a more serious, quasi-realistic take on superheroes.

[darkknightjrk]

Diana, having the beauty of Aphrodite, was called the "ugly duckling?" Jeez! Either her disguise was better than we ever gave her credit for, or homeboy's got some inhumanly high standards!

[saralakali]

Thank you! This is, excuse the pun, wonderful. I missed it the first time around (my collection starts with the very next issue). I had no idea that playing with Diana's memory was a recurring theme with Hippolyta. Kind of puts a creepy spin on their relationship.

[badficwriter]

Creepiest bit being the "we made you fall in love with a fake to make you feel better!"

[darkknightjrk]

Yeah, that's kinda creepy when you think about it--and she's done it to Diana multiple times? Yeesh, no wonder Diana wanted off that island so badly! That's the kind-of thing that even Super-Dick would think, "Okay, that's just fucked up."

[fredneil.livejournal.com]

Whenever I've read anything about the Silver/Bronze ages, there was one demarcation point for each age, not separate company-specific points. (For instance, the first appearance of the modern Flash is considered to have started the Silver Age, not to have started it for DC, while the first appearance of the Fantastic Four started it for Marvel) What event in DC are you thinking of that would have started the Bronze Age?

It's a moot point since, if this came out in 1974, it would have been a few months after Gwen Stacy's death.

[bluefall]

The only solid demarcation point of any kind is the start of the Silver Age, and even that's just an arbitrary event that everyone happened to agree on. You'll get nothing but arguments, "plus or minus" vagaries and even naming disputes once you pass that point. Comic book ages, like all cultural periods, change as a process, the edges bleeding into each other as different writers pick up the trends and change their viewpoints at different times. Even within a single company there's no easy break point, much less one for all of them.

Babs, for example, is 100% a Bronze Age hero; her sensibilities, the reasons for her creation, the creative choices made in her personality, the kinds of adventures she had and her relationships with Bruce and Dick, were all extremely typical of the Bronze Age, and very unlike the more fantastic, immature Silver Age. She showed up in '66. Her early team-ups with Supergirl, on the other hand, involving space aliens and Mxy and prank-pulling and pure cape hijinks, were pure Silver Age sensibility, and lasted well into '76.

There's no hard line.

[badficwriter]

The coloring on the belt makes it look more like her tops a midriff with hotpants. Makes me realize how much worse things could have been.

[retro_nouveau]

Cool, I don't remember seeing Diana come in a building without using the door before, I thought that was Clark's uniquely signature move. XD I don't know about her super-breath there, though. I guess she's only a couple feet away, so I'll let that go. Awesome backhand. Not too crazy about the lasso cutting through steel, I would much rather she looped it around the blade and disarmed him. GASP! "Deflects them with her tiara"??? Thank you so much for sparing me the sight of such sacrilege! And now comes icon time.



I for one will be very grateful to see some of the other 11 labors.

[janegray]

Love the first one. Taken and will credit :D

I also love the trinity icon you are using. Who do I have to credit for that one?

[darkknightjrk]

So her Twelve Labors is just her standard adventures with the Justice League watching her? Man, that's kinda lame. I was expecting something epic, bestowed to her by the Gods or something.

And when did Cavalier gain hypnosis powers? I never saw him with that before.

But yes, please post more--can never go wrong with some old-school comic book zany, and from what I've seen, Wonder Woman has plenty of that. :D

[psychopathicus_rex]

I think the idea is that she's worried about her psychological stability, so she's staying out of the League for now for fear she'll crack up and let them down. If she can remain psychologically stable for the next bunch of cases, that'll prove she's fit to be a member again - twelve is just a handy mythological number.

[red_menace]

I vote for more of this. You can't have too much old-school Wondy.

[q99]

-
If there's interest, I can post the other 11 parts of this storyline too. You can never have too much Bronze Age. :D-

Oh, there's definite interest from me :)

This is an interesting Wondy. She's not as crazy as the early stuff, and somewhat resembles her modern form.

[psychopathicus_rex]

By all means, post the rest!
I like this version of the Cavalier. He's kind of like the Mandrill, only not a monkey-man and with a 'dashing swordsman' theme. It's nice to see him treated as a genuine, if minor-league, threat, instead of the joke he's usually depicted as in recent years.