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Diana Prince: Wonder Woman Vol. One TPB
Diana Prince: Wonder Woman Vol. One TPB
Written by Denny O'Neil and Mike Sekowsky
Pencilled by Mike Sekowsky. Inked by Dick Giordano
Published by DC Comics. $19.99 USD
The reading of this book actually brought about something of a change in my comics-buying habits. Let's come back to that in a moment.
This volume collects the first seven sort of infamous issues of Wonder Woman, where she decided to hang up both her star spangled costume and her drab military uniform, and become something of a happening hippy chick. Dick Giordano had left Charlton to become an editor at DC and brought Denny O'Neil along, and it was apparently O'Neil's idea to try to make her more hip and to also make her changing fashions a new gimmick to help sell the book. It starts out decently enough, with her boyfriend Steve Trevor on trial for murder and Diana getting the new clothes in order to blend into the scene and try to prove his innocence. Sekowsky has some enjoyably kitschy layouts but grounds them in solid draftsmanship. I also wasn't quite prepared for some of the Gil Kane angles and near-3D effects, which are pretty impressive. Not so impressive is the turn the story takes with the arrival of diminutive martial arts master I Ching, but aside from the horrendous name he's relatively inoffensive. O'Neil's story (he writes just the first four issues) is a kind of spy story, with Diana, Ching and crude detective Tim Trench pursue evil genius Dr. Cyber. Mike Sekowsky wraps up the fifth and final issue of that storyline, though after some fun with a second new love interest for Diana betraying her, as well as a femme fatale and some Bondian action sequences, it sort of peters out to allow Cyber to escape to pester Diana again another day. Sekowsky continues as writer for the next two issues, a weakly linked two-parter involving Ares, God of War and then some Valkyries, but even though she's still in hip attire, getting her back on Paradise Island seems to be a momentum-killing step backwards for the book.
So why did I pick this thing up? Well, I've always been one who wants to be in the know, at least as far as comics history. I remember reading somewhere that there was a big change in direction for Wonder Woman in the '60s where she ditched her costume, and wanted to see what that was all about, just like one wants to read, say, the horrible Brother Power, the Geek or that bad comic where Dracula was a superhero. Just '60s kitsch/trash. And after reading this, which wasn't trash but also far from essential, I realized that life is getting far too short to waste a lot of time on stuff like this. I mean, I've never really even liked Wonder Woman all that much, so what was I expecting? That Mike Sekowsky drawing her like Marlo Thomas in That Girl would make it all click?
Written by Denny O'Neil and Mike Sekowsky
Pencilled by Mike Sekowsky. Inked by Dick Giordano
Published by DC Comics. $19.99 USD
The reading of this book actually brought about something of a change in my comics-buying habits. Let's come back to that in a moment.
This volume collects the first seven sort of infamous issues of Wonder Woman, where she decided to hang up both her star spangled costume and her drab military uniform, and become something of a happening hippy chick. Dick Giordano had left Charlton to become an editor at DC and brought Denny O'Neil along, and it was apparently O'Neil's idea to try to make her more hip and to also make her changing fashions a new gimmick to help sell the book. It starts out decently enough, with her boyfriend Steve Trevor on trial for murder and Diana getting the new clothes in order to blend into the scene and try to prove his innocence. Sekowsky has some enjoyably kitschy layouts but grounds them in solid draftsmanship. I also wasn't quite prepared for some of the Gil Kane angles and near-3D effects, which are pretty impressive. Not so impressive is the turn the story takes with the arrival of diminutive martial arts master I Ching, but aside from the horrendous name he's relatively inoffensive. O'Neil's story (he writes just the first four issues) is a kind of spy story, with Diana, Ching and crude detective Tim Trench pursue evil genius Dr. Cyber. Mike Sekowsky wraps up the fifth and final issue of that storyline, though after some fun with a second new love interest for Diana betraying her, as well as a femme fatale and some Bondian action sequences, it sort of peters out to allow Cyber to escape to pester Diana again another day. Sekowsky continues as writer for the next two issues, a weakly linked two-parter involving Ares, God of War and then some Valkyries, but even though she's still in hip attire, getting her back on Paradise Island seems to be a momentum-killing step backwards for the book.
So why did I pick this thing up? Well, I've always been one who wants to be in the know, at least as far as comics history. I remember reading somewhere that there was a big change in direction for Wonder Woman in the '60s where she ditched her costume, and wanted to see what that was all about, just like one wants to read, say, the horrible Brother Power, the Geek or that bad comic where Dracula was a superhero. Just '60s kitsch/trash. And after reading this, which wasn't trash but also far from essential, I realized that life is getting far too short to waste a lot of time on stuff like this. I mean, I've never really even liked Wonder Woman all that much, so what was I expecting? That Mike Sekowsky drawing her like Marlo Thomas in That Girl would make it all click?
Labels: Dennis O'Neil, Mike Sekowsky, Wonder Woman
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