BOOK POST | WONDER WOMAN 1968

 Hippies, psychedelia, karate and no powers!

What am I talking about? 1968’s run of Wonder Woman. 

When I was a kid I never read Wonder Woman. Ten year old me thought it was for girls, so that was the end of that. 

However, as I got older, I did dip my toes into the world of Wonder  Woman and really enjoyed myself. 

Now, I am older, I want to read more Wonder Woman. I mean there’s a reason that the immortal Amazonian is a flagship hero for the DC Universe isn’t there? 

And so with that I delved into Wonder Woman’s past. 

Originally brought to the page by American psychologist (and inventor of the Lie Detector) William Moulton Marston and artist Hardy G. Peter in 1941, the inspiration for Diana was based on Moulton’s wife, Elizabeth and their life partner Olive Byrne, which is an interesting story in itself! If you want to know more about that, Professor Marsten and the Wonder Women is a good film that explores the women in Marsten’s life, and also Jill Lepore’s book The Secret Life of Wonder Woman.

Now, I want you to cast your mind back to the 1960’s (if like me you aren’t old enough to remember the 60’s just imagine), America was in the grip of a counter culture revolution and the biggest thing on television was The Man From Uncle and James Bond was smashing it at the cinemas. DC, in their wisdom, decided they were going to cash in on the spy craze. In a brilliant moment of inspiration they decided that the perfect vehicle for their foray into spy fiction would be Wonder Woman. 

WHAT?

Yep! What they did was relaunch Wonder Woman. Except this Wonder Woman was completely powerless due to the fact that the inhabitants of Themayscira were feeling a bit feeble due to their ten thousand years on the planet and needed to renew their energies. When asked if she wanted to join her people in another dimension, Diana opts to give up her powers due to the fact that her boyfriend Steve Trevor was in a critical condition in hospital after (unknown to Diana)  taking on a top secret mission to uncover a dastardly plot by an unknown supervillain Doctor Cyber to take over the world. 

The comic obviously took its inspiration from the popular 1960’s British TV Program The Avengers, with Diana taking on the role of Emma Peel (played by Diana Rigg), and I Ching resembling (even down to the suit and bowler hat) the role of Steed (played by Patrick McNee). The series ran from 1961 to 1969 in the UK, but was only shown on late night slots in the US due to it being deemed too violent. 

During this run, Wonder Woman was written by Dennis O’ Neal (who put the dark back into the Dark Knight in the seventies, along with Neal Adams) with art by Mike Sekowsky (JLA) and Dick Giordano (who joined Adams and O’Neil on Batman and whose inks defined the era), and also had SFF giant Samuel R. Delany writing a couple of issues before Diana gets her powers back and returns to her customary red, yellow and blue outfit. 

Devoid of her powers and her identifying costume,  Diana sets herself up as a business woman and has to get herself somewhere to live. On her first day there she witnesses a blind old man being beaten up by a couple of thugs. Except this old bloke isn’t entirely powerless. In fact, he’s a karate master trained in the ancient arts of fighting. After a bit of jibber jabber, Diane discovers that the man is called I - Ching and that Diana and him have some stuff in common - Dr Cyber. 

I - Ching tells Diana his story and how Dr Cyber stole some ancient artifacts from the monastery where I - Ching and his order live protecting certain secrets. I Ching enlists Diana’s aid and subsequently teaches her all his ancient fighting arts turning her into a honed fighting machine. 

Diana and Ching are joined for their first few adventures by private detective Tim Trench. A thoroughly odious character, that is at first a stereotypical gumshoe detective but turns out to be a misogynistic shite bag. There is one instance where he is captured and attempts to trick his guard by telling her there’s a mouse, and then ends the sequence by stating that ‘at some point all chicks will prove themselves stupid given half the chance’. 

Now, I am paraphrasing here. I can’t exactly recall what he says, but it is pretty terrible. 

Surprisingly, despite the fact that he is a man of upstanding character and moral fibre,  he ends up betraying Diana and I Ching for a box of Jewels.When Tim joins the crew, the writers in my opinion make one of the greatest mis steps of the series so far when Diana begins to think that Tim might be a pretty big catch and that she needs a man. 

Eeeeerm, Diana! No! Stop it. I don’t know why she thinks that Trenchcoat Tim is in anyway slightly attractive. Never does he give off an air of fanciability. I might be going out on a limb here, but he is a proper knob head. 

In fact, initially, this is a recurring theme in this run. I don’t know if it is due to the fact that Diana lost her powers and that this resulted in her being confused, but not only does she lose her powers, she loses all common sense and gets off with some right dicks, with one giant British posh cock proposing to her after knowing her for all of five minutes. Anyone with an ounce of common sense would definitely smack this upper class tosser up the side of his head and then promptly stick their knee in his nether regions if you ask me. However, as the run becomes more established, Diana finds her inner strength and as the writers become more comfortable with the confines of what DC wanted, a lot more of what William Moulton Marston envisioned for Wonder Woman comes to the fore. 

The adventures are varied with her tackling the ultra devious Doctor Cyber, an utterly bonkers street gang, Morgana le Fey, wars against the god Ares, fighting tyrannical rulers in different dimensions and even Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser from Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar series turns up at one point (O’Neil did a comic of the books later in the 1970’s, but it only ran for five issues before being cancelled due to bad sales). All whilst dressed in the mod fashions of the day.

The period was a controversial run with many believing that Wonder Woman was not the representation of womanhood that she had been in the past. In a thesis written by Kristi Fleetwood in 2015, she highlights that a number of feminist activists, such as Gloria Steinman, believed that the move to strip Wonder Woman of her powers made Wonder Woman more submissive.  However, Fleetwood in her thesis “Forget the Old . . . The New Wonder Woman is Here”: The New Wonder Woman and the Feminist Movement, 1968-1972” argues that contrary to this view, Wonder Woman was in fact just as feminist as she had always been. 

Originally, William Marston created Wonder Woman as a positive female role model for women in comics, moving against the social normative views of women as being ‘beautiful and submissive’. 

Coming from a background of supporting women’s rights for equality in voting and in domestic politics, Marston wrote Wonder Woman in response to the normative values of women at the time and wrote Wonder Woman to counter the public perceptions of femininity by writing a feminine character that had the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman. 

The character was introduced in 1941 in a supporting role and soon joined the Justice Society along with Batman and Superman, and gained her own comic in 1942. Fleetwood then goes on to describe that during her evolution, she moves from being just an Amazonian Princess to an inspiration to people like Gloria Steinman who eventually broke free of the stereotypical views of women to carve out a path a successful feminine icon (fun fact: Steinman is the stepmother of actor Christian Bale). 

Drawing from a number of different sources, such as Les Daniel’s Wonder Woman: The Complete History - The Life and Times of the Amazon Princess (Titan Books, 2000), Fleetwood argues that “it transformed the Amazon into a political symbol of national significance’  and that she ‘began to experience intense scrutiny from comic fans, scholars, and even the general public’.

In the book, Daniels describes the motivations behind the change in direction, describing that Sekowsky (the artist of the period) viewed the change as creating a ‘super female for the real world’ and that she was someone who was more relatable, whilst Denis O’ Neal thought stripping Wonder Woman made her more independent and making her more human. 

However, they did more than strip Wonder Woman’s powers, they also stripped her of her emotional ties to her past when they decided to consign Steve Trevor to an undecided fate who is virtually never mentioned again through the run. 

The period is definitely an interesting one. For me, I think that the period showed that Wonder Woman was indeed more relatable as she only had her strength, ingenuity, skill and resilience to fall back on. Yes, the run wasn’t perfect, but there are some really good stories in there. Eventually, in issue 204, Diana does get her powers back when the run ends with the abrupt end for a certain major character by a gun toting sniper and Diana is returned to paradise Island after losing her memory.

If you are interested in Wonder Woman, it is definitely a period to have a look at. Whilst I said earlier, the run isn’t perfect, there are some good stories in there and some fantastic art by Mike Sikowsky and Dick Giordano.