| ||||||||||||
Wonder Woman launched into the Silver Age of Comics with these tales, in which the Amazon Princess battled colorful new foes including alien dinosaurs, amoeba men, and other threats, with the mysterious Merman at her side, along with her teenaged sidekick, Wonder Girl!
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
AM I THE SAME GIRL?,
This review is from: Showcase Presents: Wonder Woman, Vol. 1 (Paperback)
You should know right up front that these DC SHOWCASE reprints are in black and white. For long time fans this is seen as something of a sin, while new fans might find these collected issues incomplete - and they're both right - but, to keep the price down and the volumes bulging with material, a middle ground had to be reached and DC has gone out of their way to present these issues in the best possible light. The artwork is clear, clean and still fresh even without the color, but, I can't lie, the color really MADE some of these issues work.
But, color aside, WONDER WOMAN, while still a wonder, does lose some of her luster here due to a poor editorial choice. Instead of taking us back to the very beginning of WONDER WOMAN's run and reintroducing us to the wicked, wild, subversive, sexually daring and outright crazy landscape that made WONDER WOMAN such a instant classic, DC Comics has chosen instead to pick up WONDER WOMAN's story starting in 1958 (with ISSUE #98) - long after all the uproar over her brushes with bondage, college trading, hazing and baby parties were a dim memory. No Nazi's either, no Nippon armies, no WORLD WAR II, no US propoganda - from page one on, WONDER WOMAN follows the 1950's SUPERMAN's lead in handing us impossible stories mixed with magic and scientific advances (more so WONDER WOMAN here, where it seems the writers tired to at least get a few facts right, even in the midst of sheer flights of fancy), while WONDER WOMAN fights Col. Steve Trevor at every turn to remain a single super-heroine, yet not distance the man she truly loves at the same time. Truth be told, after reading these issues you can't help but figure that Trevor is a complete masher and Wonder Woman could (and would) do better than him (especially when she finds out that Steve has "been" with other women - a truly funny moment in this collection). And while some of these stories are very clever (some even classic), most are repeative plots just moved from one location to the next to try and make them seem fresh. I lost count just how many times Wonder Woman (and Wonder Girl) fights off aggressive whales in this collection - but she does, time and time again. And did someone say nukes? We got 'em, and you'll get two atomic KABOOMS! before you reach the last page. But, despite the action, the wit and the avalanche of "ah gee-whiz" gimmicks to make the impossible possible, this collection really drops us cold into the middle of a time of stumbling transition in Wonder Woman's career, with only one panel (found on page 26 - SHOWCASE numbering) to remind us of all that had come before. But, this does not mean you should pass on this chance to pick up this collection and enjoy. The action is here. The adventure leaps off the page. But the fuss, the fume and that knowing slow, sly and sultry wink... all lost.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Unreadable, these are just plain bad,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Showcase Presents: Wonder Woman, Vol. 1 (Paperback)
I'm a long-time comic fan with a certain fondness for the Silver Age of comics. I enjoyed my Superman and Batman reprints and had high hopes for this book.
It's bad. Not 'bad but with a certain charm' nor even 'so bad it's good' no, just good old fashioned bad with a heaping of boring thrown in. In one story a mad scientist wants to prove his Wonder Woman robot is better than the real Wonder Woman. So he challenges her to a contest. Fair enough right? Lots of potential there. What's the contest? To see who falls asleep first the robot or Wonder Woman. The story is not just illogical, not just dumb, but it has no drama at all. And the book is filled with stories like these, over 500 pages worth. Wonder Woman encounters some bizarre alien or magical threat then defeats it by luck or embarrassingly bad dues-ex-machinas. There are stories that, in the right hands, could have been mad and surreal but instead come off as poorly plotted and foolish. I really can't see any entertainment value in this book. It's not over-the-top enough for camp, not good enough to stand on its own merits, not original enough to be interesting. It's just sort of there. 500 pages of mediocre, incoherent, uninteresting stories.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
New Part of the History of Wonder Woman Under Editor Robert Canniger,
This review is from: Showcase Presents: Wonder Woman, Vol. 1 (Paperback)
In the 1950's, "Wonder Woman" went through changes with the death of the character's creator Dr. William Moulton Marsdon from cancer and soon follow by the death of All American Comics Publisher M.C. Gaines who upon the death of Dr. Marsdon, gave the "Wonder Woman" series over to editor Robert Canniger in which Gaines was supposed to have helped Canniger with as to determine the direction as to where the series would not go. However, Gaines that weekend met an untimely death from a boating accident.
The parent company DC Comics at this point then decided to merge the subsidiary company (All American Comics) with the parent company (DC Comics) to form one entity. Now without M.C. Gaines, Canniger was left alone in charge of "Wonder Woman" and totally had no idea as to what to do with the character and the series. One thing he decided to do was to try and appeal to young female comic book readers by introducing more romance interests and themes between Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor. Plain Diana Prince would even find herself looking at her alter ego, Wonder Woman, as competition for Steve Trevor wondering if Steve Trevor would and could love Diana Prince if she wasn't Wonder Woman. Canniger basically tried to incorporate aspects of romance/love comics into "Wonder Woman." Also it was the 1950's and monsters and science fiction was at the height of their popularity in movies and comic books, so ask Canniger did with the "Batman" comics he was also in charge of at the time, he had Wonder Woman in science fiction type stories and fighting monsters, dinosaurs, and aliens from outer space. Another thing that Canniger did was to borrow the concept from the "Superman" comics in doing stories of the character when they were younger as the "Superboy" and "Superbaby" stories. This also appeared "Wonder Woman" stories when Wonder Woman was "Wonder Girl" and when she was "Wonder Tot" at times meeting up with a young Steve Trevor. There went the continuity of the series. That's right, the character "Wonder Girl" originally was supposed to be 'The Adventures of Wonder Woman When She was a Girl." Later on "Wonder Girl" and "Wonder Tot" became their own separate entities or beings. They became Wonder Woman's younger sisters. "Wonder Girl" is still around, older and using another name, with a new girl as the new "Wonder Girl." The character of "Wonder Tot" had disappeared some time in the late 1960's when DC Comics had to revamp their comics due to loss of sales. When the 1966 camp "Batman" TV series hit big, DC Comics decided to go all camp with their comic book titles. When the "Batman" TV series popularity dropped and the show was cancelled on ABC, so the sales of DC Comics also dropped and many a title, even some of the standard ones, were cancelled. Writer Denny O'Neil was brought in to revamp "Wonder Woman" in which "Wonder Woman" gave up her Amazon powers along with her costume, magic lasso and bracelets, and invisible plane to remain in "Man's World" to help Steve Trevor out of trouble again while the other Amazons and Paradise Island went into another dimension to rest and recuperate their tired Amazon powers. In response to this, feminist activist Gloria Stynum wrote a letter to DC Comics letting them know of her disapproval of this Diana Prince: Wonder Woman - Volume 1 (Wonder Woman (Graphic Novels)) and Diana Prince: Wonder Woman VOL 2 (Wonder Woman (Graphic Novels)) and Diana Prince: Wonder Woman Vol. 3 (Wonder Woman (Graphic Novels)) and Diana Prince: Wonder Woman Vol. 4 (Wonder Woman (Graphic Novels)). In closing, the volumes of "Showcase Presents Wonder Woman" is a compilation of stories from the "Wonder Woman" comics published in the late 1950's and so far, the early 1960's under editor Robert Canniger. Despite the fact that these are not looked upon as well as the original stories written by the creator Dr. William Moulton Marsdon, these "Showcase" volumes are worth looking into especially for the price of these volumes. These volumes do not cover the mid-1960's when the 'Wonder Woman" stories went camp. In which in one issue, we find Wonder Woman and Colonel Steve Trevor in the clutches of the evil Red Chinese villain Egg Fu's large mustache that he has coiled around Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor holding them captive. Egg Fu is a large, super intelligent egg. Wonder Woman manages to loosen her arms and grab her magic lasso and ensnares the large egg and then uses her Amazon strength to tighten the indestructible magic lasso until you see cracks appearing in Egg Fu's shell and then the shell breaks to reveal a large egg yoke inside. The compilation of the Wonder Woman stories appearing in these volumes of "Showcase Presents Wonder Woman" present another part of the history of Wonder Woman. For those interested in comic book history of Wonder Woman, these are great books to get.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
