Tuesday, June 23, 2015

THE WILD WORLD OF WONDER WOMAN : THEM!

I'm not sure, but I think those are just full-size Trollkins and you can probably just melt them with a Bic lighter.

The newly-updated and liberated Wonder Woman - so liberated, in fact, that she's powerless, devoid of a signature costume and now shares her masthead with her Jiu-Jitsu instructor and watered-down Eastern mystic "The Incredible I-Ching," which is exactly what feminism was trying to accomplish, thanks - starts her series of all-new, all-different adventures with some out-of-the-ordinary tales. So far, she's gone full hippie, fought a robot Frankenstein and remote-controlled red baron planes, opened a boutique, watched Steve Trevor go full-on bazonkers, and now she's protecting teenaged runaways from ... THEM!

A lot of my dreams start out this way.
Returning from her one-time home on Paradise Island, Diana Prince opens the door to her boutique only to find a cowering teenager named Cathy Perkins hiding among the hip-wader and bellbottoms, which sounds pastoral if you say it slowly enough. Cathy is on the run from -- THEM! And if you like third-person articles, then this is the book for you!

THEM is a gang of street-level thugs and hooligans dressed like the Golden Ticket winners at Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory let loose in the radioactive wasteland of Mad Max until adulthood. The gang - numbering anywhere from three to a million, depending on how densely packed Mike Sekowsky's often-wordless panels chooses to stack the antagonists - is led by Top Hat, a secondary-colored steampunk ne'er-do-well  who keeps her runaway victims on dog leashes, cuts up their clothes and feeds 'em drugs to keep 'em compliant. Yeah, I went to camp, too.

Some egg and melon stew would go down pretty good right now.
THEY cause no end of harassment to Diana Prince and her uninsured boutique ("I forgot to take out insurance" she chirps shortly after the store is burned down by THEM, like an idiot), not the last of which being constant threats shouted from the streets at night and assaults on Diana Prince's groceries.

Typical for these somewhat-underambitiously plotted late-Sixties Wonder Woman adventures, Diana is sometimes capable of handling herself in a fight and sometimes utterly intimidated by her foes into passivity. It's not even a case of THEM having superior numbers on THEIR side as THEY continue to harass Wonder Woman and her charge, maybe she's just afraid of all-caps.

What THEM is actually afraid of is Diana Prince's neighbor across the street, Tony Petrucci, and that's bullpuckey is what that is. Surely, what the revamped, new-for-the-ERA-era Wonder Woman should have had going for her was utter self-sufficiency, but she ends up relying on men - men with less experience, training and drive that she possessed herself - more than ever. In fact, what Tony has in his arsenal that Diana doesn't have in hers is a mother who's willing to cook big meals for strangers. No wonder the yippies are running scared!

Wonder Woman does eventually stand up for herself, long after her stock had been deliberately torn up, her store burned down, and she'd passively walked away from literally THREE occasions when THEY and THEIR pals violently harassed her on the street. Considering that her enemies were literally filthy street people armed only with dog collars, this isn't exactly Wonder Woman's finest hour, powers or no powers.

TFW a Cirque de Soleil street gang makes eye contact with you on your way back from Costco.


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