Wonder Woman #178 is typical of something I blogged about in February, that changes that looked seismic in the late 1960s are now just footnotes in comics history. Wonder Woman’s transition into Diana Prince, martial arts adventurer, seemed game-changing and shocking when it happened. Four years later she’d be back in costume and the depowered era largely forgotten, or occasionally treated with amused nostalgia.
It’s also a reminder that the dividing line between the Silver and Bronze Ages wasn’t clean-cut. While I’m still inclined to go with Kirby’s Fourth World or Green Lantern/Green Arrow as the beginning of the Bronze Age, I can’t help seeing #178 as the end of WW’s Silver Age. Whether it counts as the beginning of the Bronze or a transition between ages is another question.
(What follows is a reprint of a column from two years ago, putting this issue into my Silver Age Reread in chronological sequence).
Wonder Woman #178 is a one-shot that shows change is in the wind. “Wonder Woman’s Rival” (Denny O’Neil, Mike Sekowsky) opens with the police arresting Steve Trevor for the murder of one Alex Block. Steve says he met a girl at a hippie nightclub who can alibi him, but he didn’t get her name and can’t locate her (undoubtedly a riff on the 1940s Cornell Woolrich thriller, The Phantom Lady, which uses the same set-up). At the trial we learn Block insulted, then groped Wonder Woman, after which Steve decked him. WW, instead of thanking Steve for protecting her honor, flew off later in the middle of making out so she could deal with an emergency. A frustrated Steve went out and picked up the nameless girl.
Even by the legal standards of comic books, the case against Steve is thin. No evidence tying him to the crime, no witnesses, no weapon. Just the lack of an alibi, and WW testifying that Steve told her Block deserved to die. That’s enough for the jury to find Steve guilty though and it leaves him seething: how could Wonder Woman betray him by testifying? Because she’s totally the kind of woman who’d perjure herself under oath, am I right?
Unable to clear Steve as Wonder Woman, the Amazon decides to find the mystery woman as Diana Prince. That requires visiting counter-culture hangouts like the club, so Diana needs a whole new wardrobe to fit in.
With the help of Steve’s best friend, Roger, she find the girl, Tina. Then it turns out Roger’s an embezzler who murdered Block to hide his crimes. Now all he has to do is eliminate the two women — too bad he has no idea who Diana Prince really is.
Steve forgives WW at the story’s end, but tells her Diana’s been so awesome he wants to date both of them. As WW’s always been annoyed Steve doesn’t find her other identity attractive, this should be a win; instead, she worries that Steve will jump from dating Lt. Prince to dating more women. To keep Steve’s love, she’ll have to change.
It’s hard to look at this story objectively a half-century later, particularly when I know what’s coming next. It must have been a startling break from the Kanigher norm, with a stronger plot — despite the prosecution’s dubious case — and a more contemporary feel. On the other hand, Steve/WW doesn’t work at all well here — though of course, that’s irrelevant, given Steve’s doom is in the works. Indeed, the change of direction this issue hints at is nothing like the changes that began in #179. Were Sekowsky and O’Neil pulling a sleight-of-hand so what happened next would be more of a shock?
That said, the story does set up much of the feel of the reboot: hip settings, cool fashions, ordinary crimes rather than supervillains or monsters. And a Wonder Woman who cares about fashion in a way that seems out of character for her.
The reboot was Mike Sekowsky’s brainchild, according to this quote on Comic Book Herald: “What they were doing in Wonder Woman, I didn’t see how a kid, male or female, could relate to it. It was so far removed from their world. I felt girls might want to read something about a super-female in the real world, something very current. So I created a new book, new characters, everything, I did up some sketches and wrote out some ideas.” The article at the link says Sekowsky’s “new book” was a separate character who became a Wonder Woman reboot but Comics Bulletin assumes Sekowsky’s idea was a WW reboot all along.
Either way, the reboot has begun.
#SFWApro. Art by Sekowsky.
I was always a fan of the Diana Prince, Wonder Woman, as it had personality, which the superhero Wonder Woman seemed to lack. My first Wonder Woman comics were post-return to costume and they were pretty generic. When I got ahold of these, it was very refreshing and it became the only WW run of issues I ever collected, beyond stuff like the issues with the Huntress back-up stories (which outshined the main feature, at the time). I amassed the whole run, without much outlay. The early issues, with more of the Emma Peel flavor are better, before editorial gets involved and they start vacillating between modern adventure and fantasy settings. The story “Them” gets pretty daring, though since it is still under the Code, everything is couched in vague allusions.
I similarly loved Lady Cop, in First Issue Special and felt that the approaches employed in both would probably have appealed to girls more than the standard superhero stuff, if they had tried hard enough. Having read about how Dorothy Woolfolk, who edited the romance books, was often treated with ridicule and sexism, I can see how DC couldn’t figure out how to keep girls reading comics. It seems they wanted something more than parading around in bathing suits and skimpy costumes and being subordinate to male heroes and love interests.
Case in point, Kanigher having a Dorothy Woolfolk stand-in (“Dottie Cottonman, woman’s magazine editor”) shot when he returned to WW.
I like the era too — even picked up the omnibus a couple of years ago.
At some point I’ll post about the British girl’s comics market. It ran out of steam eventually but they had a better idea of what a girl reader might want.
I only recently read a story with depowered Wonder Woman; it was while reading Silver Age JLA, and she came in to resign. She didn’t have much of a presence.
I read comics for the fantasy, so I prefer my heroes *with* powers. Batman has that compelling goth-ness to his setting, that makes it feel like fantasy even if it isn’t, but others tend to strike me as kind of hollow. For what I want.