The 12 Labors of Wonder Woman - Part 2

[jkcarrier]

Part 1 of this storyline is here. The TL;DR version: Amnesia and bad continuity have left Wonder Woman unsure of her abilities, so she asked the JLA to monitor her next 12 missions to make sure she's still fit for duty. Now it's The Flash's turn to play peeping tom, in "The War-No-More Machine!"

Wonder Woman #213, 1974. Approx. 6 pages from a 20-page story.

The story begins with a thunderstorm in New York City...



A couple of days later, Diana meets with her U.N. boss Morgan Tracy, who gives her some bad(?) news.




Meanwhile, our old pal Marty Tragg has decided to hijack a plane and hold the passengers for ransom, to pay off his gambling debts. Things don't quite work out as planned.



Lucky for him, Wonder Woman is on the scene.



Realizing that she and Tragg both seem to be immune to the "peace epidemic", WW heads for Paradise Island to do some research. When she arrives, she sees the Amazons being attacked by a rampaging "rhinotaur"...like everyone else, her sisters are now too timid to fight back.




She finally manages to toss the beast into the ocean, where it calms down.



The Magic Sphere is a handy little deus ex machina from the Golden Age. With it, Diana finds out about the robot that shot the peace-rays all over the world, and learns that it was the combination of the electrical storm and the pain they were feeling that kept her, Angie Blake, and Marty Tragg from being affected.

Wonder Woman tries to get Angie and Marty to help her, but they refuse; Angie thinks the global cease-fire is a good thing, and Marty just doesn't give a crap about anyone. But Di is in no mood to argue.



That's right, not only is she forcing them against their will into a dangerous battle, she doesn't even let them ride inside the plane. Nice one, princess.



The robot grabs WW and buries her in the ground up to her neck. Flash wants to help her, but of course he's been pacified too. Just when all seems lost...





An inscription inside the robot reveals that it was built by an alien scientist who's planet had been decimated by nuclear war. He wanted to prevent the same thing from happening to other planets, but as Flash puts it, "The only true kind of lasting peace must come from the human race itself -- not a machine!" Stupid aliens, always trying to keep us from killing each other. Mind your own business, Klaatu!

Comments

[aaron_bourque]

This is . . . sort of cute.

[kaete]

A ha ha ha, "reversed the polarity." Gotta love it.

[bluefall]

It solves EVERYTHING.

[louisadkins]

Amazingly, the "Polarity Reversal" page seems to be blank, on TV Tropes.

[ulf_boehnke]

Quick! We must reverse the polarity of TV Tropes to restore the page! :)

[aaron_bourque]

That's because you reversed the polarity.

[louisadkins]

Weird. That's a different page than I was linked to from the technobabble page. ( http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PolarityReversal ) Time for a redirect!

[louisadkins]

Also, I have no idea why the spacing on this comment was borked.

[aaron_bourque]

Sometimes http markup includes parentheses in links, and sometimes not?

[myniamh]

That's nothing that can't fix!

[retro_nouveau]

Bumped her foot on the curb? Ok...

Towing a 747 is the best use of the jet I've ever seen. Loved the rhinotaur battle.

I don't like that Barry could "tread air" to fly for this story.

[thelazyreader]

It was the Silver Age. Like Superman Flash occasionally had ridiculous powers or feats that were forgotten by the next issue.

[psychopathicus_rex]

Let me get this straight - stubbing your toe on a sidewalk causes enough pain to block out a worldwide signal? I mean, fine, there was some sort of electrical storm going on, but still - that's... that could have been done better.
And I kinda like the tripod-robot's design.

[saralakali]

Picking up a splinter seemed to be enough for that Angie chick. I'd say that was on the same order of pain as a stubbed toe. Remember this iteration of WW didn't explicitly have invulnerability as one of her powers.

[psychopathicus_rex]

A splinter in the finger I can buy, actually - those things can be PAINFUL. A stubbed toe, on the other hand, especially when she's wearing BOOTS - nah.
And I'm not sure if she's really invulnerable NOW, for that matter. She's damn tough, much tougher than your average person, and can take a beating like no one's business - but she's clearly not invulnerable, or she wouldn't bother with the whole bullets-and-bracelets routine.

[red_menace]

She took an ICBM to the face at some point in the last couple years. If I recall, she less invulnerable than Supes, but there are degrees of vulnerability. Like: Stabbing and bullets>blunt force trauma. Or something like that.

[psychopathicus_rex]

Right - her skin can be penetrated, but it can stand up to a superhuman amount of pummeling.

[q99]

She really did use the lasso more creatively back in the day, only occasionally does she use it for stuff other than strait lassoing in recent years.

I'll be darned.

[rolzup]

It's a riff on Damon Knight's book RULE GOLDEN, isn't it? Tripedal alien comes to Earth and starts spreading peace in a forcible manner....

Different method (Knight's is far more interesting in its implications), but even so, I can't imagine that it's a coincidence.

[janegray]

...I'm sure people who are stuck in places that are ravaged by war are very happy that the world is back to normal.

[cricharddavies]

1. They've had a breather, and one where no one was engaged in building up supplies of weapons.

2. It's not impossible that people involved will realize independently that the conditions that have just ended are more to their self-interest than the conditions that existed before them.

[janegray]

Sorry, but those sound like extremely weak excuses to me.

How insignificant is a breather compared to everlasting peace? It's like a drop in the ocean.

If somebody is dumb enough to believe that war is a good thing, being forced to behave for a couple of days wouldn't change their mind. And then there are those for whom war is to their self-interest (merchants of weapons, of oil, of slaves), and generally those tend to be the ones in charge.

[psychopathicus_rex]

I think the implication is that, while the crook and the peace protester are the only unaffected ones that she can find, there will invariably be others - and those others would have a monstrous advantage over the rest of humanity, should they choose to exploit it. They could set themselves up as overlords, and people wouldn't be able to do a thing about it - a handful of them could subjugate a city, since all it takes is the suggestion of violence to send people into a state of terrified submission. No more war would undoubtedly be a good thing, but the absence of the ability to defend oneself would not - humanity would basically become a race of sheep, ruled by a few shepherds.

[janegray]

Ok, fair enough, that is a good reason.

[psychopathicus_rex]

*bows*

[jlbarnett]

there's also the fact this is a universe with aliens in it, so this leaves Earth ripe for invasion.

[janegray]

Other good reason.

[saralakali]

The pages with the rhinotaur are missing from my copy of this ish. Since I'd long forgotten what it was that the Amazons had run from, this was a nice reminder.

Thanks again for posting these. This run was at the very beginning of my comic buying years, when my collection was spotty at best. I am looking forward to the rest of the run.