Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Today in Comics History, June 19: Wonder Woman loses her powers for a day and is captured by an alien giant and placed on a human charm bracelet with Steve Trevor and I'm honestly not making any of this up, I swear

So yesterday, June 18, we discovered that due to using a really powerful shampoo...


from Wonder Woman #176 (DC, May 1968), script by Robert Kanigher, pencils by Ric Estrada, inks by Mike Esposito

...Wonder Woman loses all her powers every year on June 18th.


Ouch! That's some powerful shampoo. On the other hand, it did rid the Amazing Amazon of her Demonic Dandruff, so that's not all bad. But it appears it's also given her some Amazonian Amnesia, because the last time this happened, was it on June 18? No. No, it was not. It was June 19. (picks up echoing megaphone and announces through it:) Continuity!


from Wonder Woman #106 (DC, May 1959), script by Robert Kanigher, pencils by Ross Andru, inks by Mike Esposito

The title of this story is "The Human Charm Bracelet," and that ain't allegorical, brother sister.

On the other hand, while Ozma Queen Hippolyta watches on the Magic Picture Omni-Screen, it's clear that our Miss of Might (or is that Supergirl?) is in definite need of some ginkgo biloba. Geez, would it kill ya to give her a phone call and remind her, Hippie?


Well, long story short, yada yada yada, next thing you know it's 10:00 AM on June 19 (arbitrary, ain't it?) and Diana has lost her Amazon powers for 24 hours. And we're not given an explanation of why or how. Presumably it's in a previous issue of Wonder Woman, but there's like, a hundred of those and so many of them involve Diana getting tied up for silly reasons, so I'm not looking through those now.


No time is a good time to lose your superpowers, but this is especially a difficult moment because Wondy and Steve "The Male Lois Lane" Trevor have been captured...by a giant who clearly doesn't understand the Square-Cube Law. (And yes, I'll wait here patiently while you follow that link to TVTropes.org and then spend the next three hours opening multiple browser tabs.)


Also ignoring any known laws of perspective, proportion, and storytelling, the giant attaches Diana, Steve, and Wonder Woman's various accoutrements (bullet-deflecting bracelets, tiara, lasso, GIANT INVISIBLE PLANE) to a charm bracelet. Hence, the title. What? The story if called "The Human Charm Bracelet" and I warned you it wasn't allegorical. And please ignore the fact that her bracelets are the diameter of the I-Jet's engines. Look, it's a human charm bracelet.


Oh! Also he's a space giant, and he has a cute girlfriend. All together now...awwwwwwwwww.

Then there's a lot of stuff about Wonder Woman competing against Mr. Space Giant Alien Guy in Love™ in a Giant Space Olympics competition in order to win her (and, as an afterthought, Steve's) freedom. In an arrow fetching contest, she hops aboard...hee hee hee...a giant arrow...hee hee!...that travels one thousand miles...BWAH-HA-HA-HA! No, seriously, folks. Wonder Woman in the late sixties, everyone: Wonder Woman.


Also, this issue features Donna Troy*: Vampire**.


Which is surprising, because, y'know, Amazon camera technology...light-years beyond ours***.

*Not actually Donna Troy.
**Not actually a vampire.
***This might be true.


1 comment:

Charles Ardinger said...

No one will see this, but I have trouble wrapping my mind around what a model of an invisible plane would look like.