Hey, look who is in the news!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080607/ap_en_tv/people_lynda_carter
How ironic!
Gallo: I don’t think WW’s problems are really about the writer’s gender: both Moulton and Perez, for example, wrote some very good WW stories with a definite pro-Women’s Rights agenda. And just because Simone is a woman doesn’t mean her run will be good. I think the actual problem with WW is her lack of a clear mission and supporting cast. But I’ll analyze that after I’m done with the specific reviews.
And if you want to read “Amazons Attack!” I’m sure you can find copies for sale in the Net- cheap. But I’d recommend for you to look for the (inevitable, these days) trade paperback collection in a bookstore and just look it over.
Part Five: The Animated Wonder Woman
Just as Diana has appeared in many comics, not just her own, over the decades, she has also appeared in many cartoons (her first animated appearance was, of all places, on a episode of The Brady Kids show!) but again, I’ll stick here only to those where she had a starring role.
…Which strangely enough, means only her appearances as part of the animated versions of the Justice League. That’s right- WW is the ONLY major DC hero to never have had her own animated series. (Even Aquaman starred on his own segments in the old Superman cartoon show.) Why is this? Did producers think a female hero couldn’t support her own series? This is of course not true, there have been lots of Superheroine Cartoons since then- in fact, He-Man’s sister She-Ra was pretty much a Wonder Woman rip-off. And having starred in her own Live Action show, you’d think WW would be a better candidate for a cartoon than relative unknowns like Spider-Woman. Or was it that they felt she didn’t have enough “material” to work with? (More on that later.)
Thus, in this section, I’ll only cover two adaptations: The Wonder Woman in Super Friends (the kid-friendly version of the Justice League) and the one in the Justice League series proper, which was more all-ages.
The Super Friends show ran for a surprisingly long time (the “Super Powers Show” in the 80’s was just a renamed SF with new characters added) so this version was in the air for quite some time (and in fact you can still catch it in some cable channels such as Boomerang.) Without a doubt, this is the best known version of the character as a result. She in turn is based pretty much on the Silver Age (Pre-Mod) version. If memory serves me, she was never given much individual coverage in the series (but then, neither did the other heroes) though I do remember an episode where the Amazons participated, and it was revealed that ALL of them possessed Wonder Woman’s powers (if they still were like that in the comics, “Amazons Attack!” might have been a little bit more credible. It still would have had plot holes the size of Utah, mind you.) The SF Wonder Woman was also seen doing some tricks that she has never done anywhere else (like having her lasso change shape) but again, SF played it loose with facts, both of physics and comics lore. SF also featured some of her enemies, though they were never clearly stated to be her personal foes (I used to mistake Cheetah for Catwoman when I was a kid.) Curiously, Giganta was used, but was given the power to grow into a giant, which she did not have back then. (I guess they wanted to explain her name. No reference was made to the fact she was originally an evolved gorilla, however.)
The WW of the Justice League version (in the 90’s) was both better and worse. Better, in that more detail was given to her personality, and some episodes specially focused on her. Yet, this WW had an attitude problem, something no other version did; I guess the writers were basing this on the fact she was an Princess of a warrior culture. It made sense, if you think about it, but it also made the usually cool-headed character into something of a jerk for a while. Thankfully, JL was a series that allowed character development, and she got better eventually.
In this version, Diana actually stole the WW armor from her mother and went to help fight the alien invasion that brought the various JL heroes together (in the pilot) so (unlike the comics of the time) she WAS a founding member of the League. Her lasso, for some reason, lacked the truth-inducing power it had always had, until a later episode were it was “activated”. My guess is that such a power made adventures too easy, especially in a show with as much intrigue as the JL cartoon had. (Such plots would not have lasted long if people could be easily forced to reveal what they knew.)
Another curious detail in the series: there was an attraction between her and Batman! While this has been hinted at in some comics too, here it was more possible to explore since Diana had no boyfriend (Steve Trevor was eventually introduced, but Diana met him during a time-travel adventure- in World War Two! That meant that Steve was WAY too old in the present to have been her lover.) It was an interesting take, though it never went anywhere like, for example, the relationship between Green Lantern and Hawkgirl did in this same series.
There is an animated direct-to-video WW movie currently in the works. Reportedly, this is based on the early Perez version of the character, which means it will likely be very good. There have been quite a few DTV animated features recently, both from DC and Marvel, and they’ve been pretty good. However they’ve also had some wild changes on them. It will be interesting to see if the “murdered women reborn” idea is used for the Amazons in this movie (I’m betting it will not.) Hopefully this will be a hit, and thus help push that Live Action WW movie closer to production.
NEXT: A comparison between the origins of the various Wonder Women, as we look for what they have in common- and what went wrong with each.
