Wonder Woman Part II

Written by Chris Fluit

Friday, 26 October 2007

Issues 15-19: The Silver Swan and Circe With these issues, George Perez and Wonder Woman start to get back on track.  Back in issues 8 and 9, I was glad to see Perez expand Wonder Woman’s gallery of rogues beyond the pantheon of the gods.  Then, I was disappointed to see him return to the gods and myths again so quickly.  These are the stories I wish he had told then.  First, we meet the Silver Swan, then some people who change into wild beasts which in turn, leads us to meet Circe.  Even if these stories had preceded Challenge of the Gods, I would have some problems with Challenge based on the revelations that I didn’t like.  But I do think I would’ve liked Challenge better if it had followed these issues as I wouldn’t have felt quite as inundated with gods. Anyway, back to the issues themselves.  In issue 15, Wonder Woman’s publicist Myndi Mayer hosts a Wonder Woman fair designed to promote her client while also raising some money for charity.  Meanwhile, a few crooks decide that they’d rather take the collection for themselves.  And these crooks happen to be male chauvinists to boot, giving them an added incentive to rob this particular party.  One of the crooks has twisted a woman named Valerie around his finger.  He’s convinced her that he loves her, that she needs him and that Wonder Woman is a threat to all women everywhere because of the unattainable idealized image of women that she represents.  This woman is the Silver Swan, and she’s been so deceived that she doesn’t even realize she’s as beautiful as Princess Diana, or that Diana isn’t what these men claim she is, or that the man who claims to love her really doesn’t.  Valerie’s friend tries to warn Wonder Woman and to seek help for her friend.  And two Boston cops, Indelicato and Shands, catch wind of the problems and cause further complications. It’s not the best story, but it works.  It adds yet another complicating element to Wonder Woman’s life in the presence of the Boston police officers.  And it expands her rogues’ gallery.  However, the Silver Swan is a little too simplistic and naïve. Plus, her story is a little too “after-school special.”  It’s a problem that affects a number of late ‘80s titles, not just Wonder Woman.  For some reason, whenever the entertainment industry (and not just comics) tried to address issues of the day, the stories became really earnest.  This happened in New Teen Titans with issues like runaways, and in New Mutants with issues like watching too much television (I swear I’m not making that up).  And it happened in Wonder Woman with issues like co-dependency and domestic abuse.  It’s not that bad in these two issues.  We only get a hint of it here.  But it will get worse as the series proceeds.   Following the Silver Swan incident, Wonder Woman travels to Greece with Julia and Vanessa Kapatelis.  Julia brings Diana to the country where she was born, and introduces Wonder Woman to her parents.  I actually enjoyed the domestic moments in the early part of the story.  I certainly enjoyed it more than the odd “somebody is taking possession of all of the animals” mystery that’s being presented in the background.  Werewolves and were-sheep just don’t seem like natural foes for Wonder Woman.  It’s a good thing that the story keeps moving from there.  The “somebody taking possession of all of animals” turns out to be Circe, who is a natural foe for Wonder Woman.  Even though she is another mythical character, I don’t object to her presence.  She doesn’t have the connections to the Olympic gods in either the ancient myths or in this series, so she really is a distinct threat.  And, as a powerful magician, she’s a very different villain from what Wonder Woman has faced so far.  Also, I like how her introduction takes me from a blah “oh, she’s fighting werewolves” feeling to an “oh wow, she’s fighting Circe” feeling in an instant.  The phrase “Oh, snap!” wasn’t in use when I first read this story, but it certainly fits.  Issue 20: Who Killed Myndi Mayer? Sometimes, single issues take on a notoriety of their own and come to define the series that they’re a part of.  I think that this was the case with the New Teen Titans and “A Day in the Life.”  And I think that this is the case with Wonder Woman as well and “Who Killed Myndi Mayer?”  This is the issue that cemented that Wonder Woman isn’t just about mythical gods and magical creatures.  It’s also about real life, about real life people and real life problems.  We’d kind of known that for a while.  After all, we’d had normal people like Julia and Vanessa Kapatelis as windows into this world for a while.  But this is the issue that really brings this home. Myndi Mayer is dead.  Wonder Woman’s publicist has been shot.  Ed Indelicato and Michael Shands, the Boston cops that we first met during the Silver Swan story, are heading up the investigation.  We really get to know Myndi’s staff and Wonder Woman’s supporting cast as they’re interviewed about the incident.  And we really get to know Myndi Mayer as her past is slowly revealed.  We know about her more in death than we ever did in life.  We know about her troubled past, her passion for life and her use of drugs.  We learn about her bad taste in men and in business partners.  And we learn how Myndi’s own faults and excesses led to her own death.  She wasn’t killed by Ares or Circe or the Cheetah.  She died of a drug overdose, before being shot by an ex-lover.  This could have been an episode of Law & Order or CSI.  Or to be contemporary, this could have been an episode of Hill Street Blues.  But it wasn’t.  It was an issue of Wonder Woman, as Princess Diana and her circle are suddenly forced to deal with the same kinds of problems that many of us have to deal with such as the death of a friend.  Earlier, I noted that Wonder Woman could get a little simplistic and didactic when dealing with real-world problems like this.  And it does, but not here.  This particular issue is well-balanced, well-paced and true to life enough that it comes off as a story and not just a public service announcement.  There are a lot of good things about the George Perez run on Wonder Woman.  This issue is one of the best. Issues 21-24 and Annual 1: Cosmic Migration After the Myndi Mayer one-shot, we move on to four more solo issues.  However, all of these solo issues deal with a similar theme of transition.  Issue 21 picks up after the funeral for Myndi Mayer.  Wonder Woman has been recalled back to Paradise Island where she learns that the gods have decided to depart this realm.  This is sad news for Wonder Woman and the other Amazons as they have devoted their entire lives to serving the gods and worshipping them.  But this is good news for the readers as even a fan of myths like me resented their tendency to take over the title.  Issue 22 marks another significant change to the status quo.  The Amazons vote overwhelmingly to open up their island to outside visitors.  This will have a major impact for later stories.  For now, it means that Diana decides to reciprocate one of Julia’s earlier offers.  Julia had brought Diana to her childhood home, and now Diana is able to bring Julia to her childhood home.  The rest of the issue deals with updating us on the character’s personal lives, particularly in seeing how Vanessa is dealing with her grief in the wake of Myndi’s deaths, and in setting up some cryptic threats for future issues. Next up is Wonder Woman Annual 1 which depicts Wonder Woman bringing her friends Julia and Vanessa to Themyscira as the island’s first visitors in centuries.  Its part of DC’s Private Lives special, designed to give us a glimpse into the lives of these characters.  And in that sense, it’s successful, though it’s not like we haven’t had plenty of glimpses into their private lives already in this series.  We certainly get to know Paradise Island better, as well as the two Kapatelis women.  Also, there’s some great guest art by pencilers like Art Adams and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez.  However, as with Challenge of the Gods, there are a few flaws which keep this annual from being as good as it could be.  For one thing, Perez has to work a little too hard at creating some sort of intrigue or threat to what is otherwise a pleasant visit by Diana’s friends to her childhood home.  Even worse, Perez crafts a connection between Julia Kapatelis and the Amazons.  Apparently, she had fallen off of a ship as a small child.  The Amazons rescued her, brought her to their island to heal and then sent her back to her parents.  As much as I dislike the Diana Trevor insertion, I like this one even less.  It creates a connection that was unnecessary and answers a question that was never asked.  Plus, it gives Julia a mythical connection which negates her ability to be the audience’s connection through one normal character.  Personally, I like to pretend that this revelation never happened. After the annual, we get to the fall-out from the departure of the gods.  Not all of the gods wanted to go, while other gods aren’t impressed at having been left behind.  As the messenger of the gods, Hermes has become very familiar with the mortal world.  And he doesn’t want to cut himself off from it.  Plus, there’s a hint that Hermes may be romantically interested in Diana and he’s not quite ready to cut himself completely off from her either.  Of course, things don’t work out as well for Hermes as he might expect.  He’s greeted as an eccentric or a lunatic, rather than an object of worship.  And his antics lead to the return of Phobos and Euryale, two of Ares’ children who had been left imprisoned.  Issue 24 features Wonder Woman’s battle with Phobos and Euryale and the giant Ixion the Assassin.  It’s a solid battle issue and a good change of pace after the multiple quiet issues that preceded it.  In that way, it reminds me of the first fight with the Cheetah in issue 9, another spurt of violence that followed several quiet issues.  It’s nice to see Wonder Woman let loose, something she hadn’t been able to do in quite some time. Issues 25-27: Invasion With the next couple of issues, the Wonder Woman title does one thing that it hasn’t done in a while and another that it hadn’t done yet.  The one thing that it hasn’t done in a while is to emphasize Wonder Woman’s military connections.  Wonder Woman has maintained her friendships with Steve Trevor and Etta Candy but they’ve pretty much wandered around as unrelated background characters since about issue 8.  The thing that Wonder Woman hadn’t done yet was to have a clear adventure with DC’s other heroes.  They’d been mentioned in passing in issue 8 as we were told how Wonder Woman’s involvement in Legends fit in, but she’d never teamed up in her own title or even met another superhero in these pages.  The Invasion story fixes that.  Invasion was one of DC’s big summer crossovers.  In this particular story, a large number of alien races including the Dominators, the Thanagarians and the Khunds all decide to invade earth together.  Invasion is not one of DC’s better crossovers.  But it actually comes out okay in this title.  We get to see Steve Trevor in action as a military man.  And we get to see Etta Candy in her natural role as a military administrative assistant, though she does get involved in the action, too.  It’s actually the involvement of her military friends in defending Earth from this invasion which draws Wonder Woman into this conflict and into connection with other superheroes.  There are some good moments in which she attends a meeting of the Justice League, ignores come-on lines by Blue Beetle and clashes with Guy Gardner over tactics.  And in issue 26, she teams up with Captain Atom before being tricked into fighting it out with him by a shape-changing Durlan.    Wonder Woman, as a title, could sometimes be a little light on action but with the fight against Ixion in issue 24 and then two straight issues of Invasion that certainly can’t be a complaint leveled at this stretch of comics.  Of course, they are followed up by a typical Wonder Woman reflecting after the big battle issue.   With the Invasion over, Wonder Woman brings Steve Trevor and Etta Candy as the third and fourth visitors overall to Paradise Island and the first man.  There’s a sub-plot keeping us abreast of Vanessa and her high school hijinks, and a leftover Khund to be defeated, but this issue is primarily a break after the big battle.  That’s pretty standard for Wonder Woman and also appropriate at this juncture. The one major negative at this point is the deterioration of the creative team.  The first significant departure actually came after the Silver Swan story when Len Wein left as scripter.  George Perez, who was already penciling and plotting the series, took over the dialogue chores too.  At first, the transition was fairly smooth as Perez stayed fairly close to the style that Len Wein had established.  But as the series progressed, the quality of the scripting declined.  Perez began to overwrite his narration in an almost Claremontian fashion and the dialogue became less crisp as well.  Then, after two years of penciling the series, George Perez handed off the art chores to Chris Marrinan.  Chris tried to stay close to George’s style for the title, but it was clear that we were getting watered-down imitation Perez rather than the real thing.  This was especially apparent on the quiet issues such as number 27.  Marrinan’s work is a little stronger on the action issues, but it would be a while before Wonder Woman would be a title known for its art again.   Come discuss this and other Fluit Notes colums at the Captain Comics Message Board.

Last Updated ( Friday, 26 October 2007 )