Customer Reviews

Showcase Presents Wonder Woman Vol. 2

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Fans and critics have argued over the matter for years: What is RK's best work? Rock? Enemy Ace? The Flash? Metal Men? But rarely, if ever, name Wonder Woman. I will.
Is this Kanigher's best work? Stories of mystery, suspense, romance, adventure, science-fiction, drama, fantasy and horror starring Wonder Woman, beautiful as Aphrodite, wise as Athena and as swift as Mercury and featuring the most unique cast in the comics: Steve Trevor, The Impossible Family, Angle Man, Hercules, Mer-Boy, the Multiple Man, Mister Genie and many more.
The best of the best may be "Wonder Tot and the Flying Saucer" or "The Island Eater" or "The Robot Wonder Woman" or...
It's impossible but true but Robert Kanigher has topped himself.

In these issues of Wonder Woman we see the middle period, as I reckon it, of the character's evolution. In the Golden Age she was quaint and subtly comical, and that was all right, given the conventions and even the nature of even "serious" adventure comics as "funny books." But Wonder Woman becomes significantly more serious in the Silver Age, though with that light, whimsical touch we associate with the Silver Age. You can measure this by comparison to the various post-Crisis on Infinite Earths attempts to make her relevant and epic in tone, as Marvel's Thor was as soon as Jack Kirby took over penciling chores. New creative teams have tried to get a handle on the character and the concept for years now, producing many enjoyable results, but eventually requiring yet another reboot. Yet I might say the instability of the character, or the difficulty of finding new, serious ways of dealing with her, have illustrated how she really belonged in an earlier era. This one, the Silver Age. Just as Captain Marvel has never succeeded outside of his original Fawcett run, no matter what mutations and indignities DC has put him through, and Hawkman has suffered more from inane editorial decisions than from Gentleman Ghost and the Shadow Thief (till Geoff Johns resurrected the Winged Warrior), Wonder Woman still searches for a place in the modern era. May she needs to hook up with Geoff Johns. But in the beautiful tales contained in this Showcase collection, she is in her element! When you behold her face (as drawn by Ross Andru and Mickey DeMeo), her huge limpid eyes, you realize that Lynda Carter was born to play her!

I was so excited to receive this Volume 2, but I had hoped it would be the Wonder Woman stories I remembered from being a kid, where she is at work in the Army with Steve and has adventures with the Holiday girls, but this particular volume is not that. Almost every story involves Wondergirl (teen Wonderwoman) and Wondertot (Wonderwoman as a baby) which I could care less about. Plus, there is a love interest named Merboy (A mermaid teen boy) who has the same story in this book a hundred different ways where he loves Wondergirl, she wants to focus on being an Amazon, she saves him from something, etc. The only positive from this volume is that it all takes place on Paradise Island, which I always wanted to read more about, but as it is Wonderteen and tot that live there, I wasn't so interested. I am hoping that other volumes will have the era that I love, but if you love Wondergirl, Wondertot, and Merboy, this is the volume for you.

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. (As a side note: Steve Trevor was later killed off in this new version) 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.

As I said, after the death of Dr. William Moulton Marsdon, nobody was able to recapture the original Wonder Woman afterwards. And since then, Wonder Woman had never regained the height of the popularity she had back in the 1940's. However, these "Showcase Presnets Wonder Woman" volumes are great to have which shows how the character and the series was changed and what it became after Dr. Marsdon's death. You also get to see Wonder Woman stories that enter into the realm of science fiction that was at the height of its popularity in the movies and teh comic books back then. Definitely worth checking out.

For me, these years of "Wonder Woman" -- the late 1950s and early '60s -- are the best... The stories are simple and fun (some would say "dumb") and the art is both stylish and straightforward... There is none of the cluttered, clumpy artwork and psychosexual oddity of the 1940s Chuck Moulton era, or the muddled, retrograde feminism of the '70s, nor the increasingly stylized violence of the '80s, '90s and '00s... This is WW at her most straightforward, the closest she comes to a female superhero icon that you could have little girls read without feeling some qualms about the nature of the content you were presenting; here, Wonder Woman is truly just another superhero, having the same kinds of goofy adventures as Batman and Superman, with the same sense of innocence and fun.

So what's the downside? Well, the de-colored, black-and-white reprints are appalling and ugly, and make it impossible to enjoy the stories, especially when you've read some of these stories in their original form. I know some people think that these cheapo reprints are a "bargain" but I for one can't wait until they finally make these stories available in color -- it'll be worth a few extras pennies to see these stories published the way they were meant to be seen! (Joe Sixpack, ReadThatAgain book reviews)