Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,083
|
Post by Confessor on Jul 5, 2015 6:09:55 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Jul 5, 2015 13:26:05 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by Hoosier X on Jul 5, 2015 15:24:55 GMT -5
I've started Showcase Presents: Wonder Woman, Volume Two, reprinting 1960 to 1963 Wonder Woman stories. And this volume has two landmark stories of the era! No, not the first appearance of Mouse Man or Egg Fu.
Wonder Woman #121 has the first "Wonder Family" story. And #122 has the first appearance of Wonder Tot.
Wonder Girl had been around for a while at this point, but if I remember the stories in the first Wonder Woman Showcase volume, writer Robert Kanigher had done a pretty good job of keeping Wonder Woman and Wonder Girl as separate characters thus far. Wonder Girl was Wonder Woman as a girl in stories set in the past, and Wonder Woman had her own adventures, set in the present. Queen Hippolyta appeared in both series.
The stories in Wonder Woman #121 and #122 are pretty decent stories. Later on, the "Wonder Family" stories became ridiculous as Hippolyta began creating "imaginary stories" featuring all three versions of her daughter Diana - Wonder Woman, Wonder Girl and Wonder Tot - and presenting them as if they were three different characters. Some of those stories don't have a disclaimer indicating that the "Wonder Family" stories are basically bizarre fan fiction cooked up by Queen Hippolyta as she succumbs to her somewhat disturbing obsession with the adventures of Diana. (It's very easy to see why Bob Haney thought Wonder Girl was a separate character when he nabbed her for The Teen Titans.)
But it wasn't like that when it started out. These first two "Wonder Family" stories are actually fun and imaginative, and the manner in which all the characters are utilized is not nearly as silly and convoluted as the series would become.
#121 features a story called "The Island Eater." And Wonder Woman and Wonder Girl never appear together! It begins with Queen Hippolyta and Wonder Girl watching the Time and Space Screen, a device which allows them to view the future. Wonder Girl wants to see what kind of deeds she will perform as an adult, so they watch Wonder Woman as she rescues the Holliday Girls from a very stupid bandit who is holding them hostage at gunpoint on a Ferris wheel as he waits for his escape helicopter.
It's pretty dumb. But kind of hilarious. Steve Trevor gets into the act. And this is the Silver Age Holliday Girls. Etta Candy isn't quite so demented, and she isn't the only one named. There's also Thelma Tall, Tina Toy and Lita Little. I don't know how long they were around, but I've seen them in a few stories here and there from this era. They're kinda silly but hilarious.
Anyway, after getting her fill of watching herself in the future, Wonder Girl wanders off to have an adventure of her own, fighting a crocodile that eats islands. (She was worried about stupid Mer-Boy, who got into trouble in a sunken ship and she followed inside and there was a magic entrance to a prehistoric world with several kinds of dinosaurs, including a giant crocodile that eats islands and then ... well, you have to read it for yourself. This whole comic is just one weird, silly, charming, strange incident after another.)
While Wonder Girl is off on her adventure, the Plutonians attack Paradise Island! So Queen Hippolyta leads the Amazons against the invaders!
Meanwhile, in the future, Wonder Woman is curious about her own adventures as a teenager, so she uses her portable Time and Space Screen to look into the past. But she's distracted by Queen Hippolyta's fight with the Plutonian king!
It's a pretty bad-ass fight, actually. He's dressed in armor and is fifty feet tall! And they go at each other with swords on a laser-bridge (or whatever) and Hippolyta opens up the whoop-ass on his ass and beats him in two pages.
So, pretty cool.
Except for Mer-Boy. I really hate Mer-Boy. He gets really old really fast.
Even Wonder Tot hated Mer-Boy when he was just a Mer-Mite!
I'll discuss the first appearance of Wonder Tot in a separate post.
|
|
|
Post by Hoosier X on Jul 5, 2015 22:18:15 GMT -5
Then, in Wonder Woman #122, they introduced Wonder Tot! The story is called "The Skyscraper Wonder Woman!"
There's all sorts of looney Silver Age stuff here that interested readers should experience on their own, so I'll just summarize the story, hitting the highlights and perhaps commenting on how lame Steve Trevor is.
The villain is the Sinister Seer of Saturn. He's a scaly, three-eyed alien who has fought Wonder Woman before and he has come to Earth to get his revenge.
He tricks Wonder Woman into opening a satellite/spaceship and inside is a Wonder Woman robot that starts growing as soon as it is let out of the craft. It grows to be roughly the size of Godzilla and starts terrorizing the city.
Wonder Woman manages to trap the robot with her lasso and she calls the invisible plane to help her get the "skyscraper Wonder Woman" off the Earth and into space. (And Steve Trevor is hiding in the invisible plane because he pathetically can't get through the day without seeing Wonder Woman and pestering her to marry him. He is so lame.)
But the skyscraper Wonder Woman is also a rocket! And when they get it into space, it leaves the vicinity of Earth and takes them to Saturn, where the Sinister Seer of Saturn challenges Wonder Woman to three contests. If she wins all three, she's free to go. But she has to face ... the skyscraper Wonder Woman for each task!
Wonder Woman wins the first task despite extravagant cheating on the part of the Sinister Seer of Saturn. He takes the "sinister" in his name seriously. He even calls himself "the Sinister Seer of Saturn."
Wonder Woman is then trapped by a magnetized device on something called the "age-clock," and it reduces her age until she's a teenager, i.e. it turns her into Wonder Girl! For the second challenge, she has to beat the giant Wonder Woman in a race across a lake, and after some silly (but fun) proceedings where the Wonder Woman robot turns the lake to ice with her super freeze breath power, Wonder Girl wins!
Then she's trapped by the age-clock again and gets turned to Wonder Tot! Here it is! Wonder Tot's grand first appearance!
There's a great panel where the Sinister Seer of Saturn is gloating in the foreground as the skyscraper Wonder Woman and Wonder Tot face-off in the background. Oh, it's great! A very determined Godzilla-sized Wonder Woman robot is staring at a tiny speck.
The Sinister Seer of Saturn tells Wonder Tot that all she has to do is elude the giant Wonder Woman as it tries to catch her. For only thirty seconds! "Easy!" says Wonder Tot, cheeky little moppet that she is.
The giant robot starts trying to blast Wonder Tot with bolts from her eyes. Wonder Tot jumps out of the way at first, but then she raises her arms and blocks the bolt with her bracelets and it bounces back and destroys the robot!
Well done, Wonder Tot!
She turns back to Wonder Woman and captures the Sinister Seer of Saturn and then she grabs Steve and they go back to Earth in the invisible plane. Steve, who hasn't done anything for 20 pages, starts whining about how she's too busy fighting evil and she'll never have time to marry him.
Steve Trevor is so lame!
Anyway, that's the first appearance of Wonder Tot! Not bad! Kinda fun. Great art by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito! I like this a lot better than all those "Impossible Tales" that had the whole Wonder Family teaming up all the time.
How long will it take Robert Kanigher to run this into the ground?
|
|
Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,083
|
Post by Confessor on Jul 6, 2015 7:47:53 GMT -5
It is for you guys, but unfortunately it's getting close to being twice the price on the UK amazon site. Still, £13.50 isn't bad for a hardcover collection like that really, I suppose. I'm just a tightarse.
|
|
|
Post by The Cheat on Jul 6, 2015 15:47:30 GMT -5
West Coast Avengers omni 1 done and dusted. Probably the worst omni I've read, very, very tedious to get through. The Avengers annual alone has to be a contender for my worst single issue of all time. Not too familiar with a lot of Engleheart's stuff, but I understand it's fairly highly regarded. If that's the case, hopefully the stuff in his Cap Epic will be more representative of his usual work. Think I'll leave omni 2 on the bottom of the read pile for a while.
|
|
|
Post by wildfire2099 on Jul 6, 2015 20:39:40 GMT -5
Really? How far does the 1st Omnibus go? It is a little slow at first, but Lost in Space Time is pretty early in the run, and that's a great story.
|
|
|
Post by The Cheat on Jul 7, 2015 5:28:36 GMT -5
Really? How far does the 1st Omnibus go? It is a little slow at first, but Lost in Space Time is pretty early in the run, and that's a great story. Not that far. Plots contained are: The origin mini by Stern - Not too bad a start, but all downhill from here. Grim Reaper & some loser villains attack - Find it hard to take any story with Black Talon involved seriously. I notice they now seem to be allowed to use the word 'Zombie'. Tigra becomes a sex addict - Strangely interesting, in a meta sort of way. Wonder what kind of personal issues the author was working through at the time? Ultron has a change of heart - Didn't really understand this. One minute Ultron-12's trying to kill them all, the next he suddenly decides he's a good guy. And Pym just believes him pretty much straight off? Unconvincing. Also, an incredibly confusing fight scene involving 2 Ultrons and no way to tell them apart by the art. Quicksilver goes nuts, crossover with Avengers - The aforementioned terrible Avengers annual. The WCA annual half gets a bit better, but pretty much everything about the first half really is awful. Master Pandemonium stuff - Terrible villain in a plot that gets dragged out way too long. And throughout, we get the fact that nearly everyone is ridiculously insecure shoved in our faces constantly. "Oh, my powers aren't good enough." "Oh, I'm scared of dying." "Oh, I don't want to be a cat, but without my powers I'm useless." "Oh, what good am I as regular Hank Pym", e.t.c On a positive note, the ongoing joke of Hawkeye pestering the Thing to join was moderately amusing. In fact, Hawkeye's characterisation throughout is probably the best thing about the book. Maybe the introduction of Firebird, although not much is done with her.
|
|
|
Post by The Captain on Jul 7, 2015 11:19:37 GMT -5
Really? How far does the 1st Omnibus go? It is a little slow at first, but Lost in Space Time is pretty early in the run, and that's a great story. Not that far. Plots contained are: The origin mini by Stern - Not too bad a start, but all downhill from here. Grim Reaper & some loser villains attack - Find it hard to take any story with Black Talon involved seriously. I notice they now seem to be allowed to use the word 'Zombie'. Tigra becomes a sex addict - Strangely interesting, in a meta sort of way. Wonder what kind of personal issues the author was working through at the time? Ultron has a change of heart - Didn't really understand this. One minute Ultron-12's trying to kill them all, the next he suddenly decides he's a good guy. And Pym just believes him pretty much straight off? Unconvincing. Also, an incredibly confusing fight scene involving 2 Ultrons and no way to tell them apart by the art. Quicksilver goes nuts, crossover with Avengers - The aforementioned terrible Avengers annual. The WCA annual half gets a bit better, but pretty much everything about the first half really is awful. Master Pandemonium stuff - Terrible villain in a plot that gets dragged out way too long. And throughout, we get the fact that nearly everyone is ridiculously insecure shoved in our faces constantly. "Oh, my powers aren't good enough." "Oh, I'm scared of dying." "Oh, I don't want to be a cat, but without my powers I'm useless." "Oh, what good am I as regular Hank Pym", e.t.c On a positive note, the ongoing joke of Hawkeye pestering the Thing to join was moderately amusing. In fact, Hawkeye's characterisation throughout is probably the best thing about the book. Maybe the introduction of Firebird, although not much is done with her. I read those issues a few years back and it was a chore to get through any of them. Wildfire2099 is right in that Lost in Space Time is a big step up, but the title sort of loses its way after that again.
|
|
|
Post by wildfire2099 on Jul 7, 2015 19:20:34 GMT -5
Firebird gets pretty interesting later... she ends up being depicted as strongly Catholic, and has a really cool romance with Hank Pym.
Pym ends up being pretty cool once he settles into his 'science hero' schtick, with all manner of miniturized gadgets in his pockets.
I agree Hawkeye is the highlight.. both his development and his one-liners... the stuff with the Thing is pretty funny.
I kinda liked Master Pademonium, he's presents a cool visual, even if he's kinda lame as a villain.
|
|
|
Post by fanboystranger on Jul 7, 2015 19:34:35 GMT -5
Not that far. Plots contained are: The origin mini by Stern - Not too bad a start, but all downhill from here. Grim Reaper & some loser villains attack - Find it hard to take any story with Black Talon involved seriously. I notice they now seem to be allowed to use the word 'Zombie'. Tigra becomes a sex addict - Strangely interesting, in a meta sort of way. Wonder what kind of personal issues the author was working through at the time? Ultron has a change of heart - Didn't really understand this. One minute Ultron-12's trying to kill them all, the next he suddenly decides he's a good guy. And Pym just believes him pretty much straight off? Unconvincing. Also, an incredibly confusing fight scene involving 2 Ultrons and no way to tell them apart by the art. Quicksilver goes nuts, crossover with Avengers - The aforementioned terrible Avengers annual. The WCA annual half gets a bit better, but pretty much everything about the first half really is awful. Master Pandemonium stuff - Terrible villain in a plot that gets dragged out way too long. And throughout, we get the fact that nearly everyone is ridiculously insecure shoved in our faces constantly. "Oh, my powers aren't good enough." "Oh, I'm scared of dying." "Oh, I don't want to be a cat, but without my powers I'm useless." "Oh, what good am I as regular Hank Pym", e.t.c On a positive note, the ongoing joke of Hawkeye pestering the Thing to join was moderately amusing. In fact, Hawkeye's characterisation throughout is probably the best thing about the book. Maybe the introduction of Firebird, although not much is done with her. I read those issues a few years back and it was a chore to get through any of them. Wildfire2099 is right in that Lost in Space Time is a big step up, but the title sort of loses its way after that again. The Zodiac storyline after Lost in Space-Time is good, too, in my opinion, as it references the best post-Gerber Defenders story. The crossover between WCA Annual 2 and Avengers Annual 16 is downright classic. After that, it's terrible, especially Al Milgrom's solo "Composite Avenger" story.
|
|
|
Post by spoon on Jul 7, 2015 20:31:18 GMT -5
Really? How far does the 1st Omnibus go? It is a little slow at first, but Lost in Space Time is pretty early in the run, and that's a great story. Not that far. Plots contained are: The origin mini by Stern - Not too bad a start, but all downhill from here. Grim Reaper & some loser villains attack - Find it hard to take any story with Black Talon involved seriously. I notice they now seem to be allowed to use the word 'Zombie'. Tigra becomes a sex addict - Strangely interesting, in a meta sort of way. Wonder what kind of personal issues the author was working through at the time? Ultron has a change of heart - Didn't really understand this. One minute Ultron-12's trying to kill them all, the next he suddenly decides he's a good guy. And Pym just believes him pretty much straight off? Unconvincing. Also, an incredibly confusing fight scene involving 2 Ultrons and no way to tell them apart by the art. Quicksilver goes nuts, crossover with Avengers - The aforementioned terrible Avengers annual. The WCA annual half gets a bit better, but pretty much everything about the first half really is awful. Master Pandemonium stuff - Terrible villain in a plot that gets dragged out way too long. And throughout, we get the fact that nearly everyone is ridiculously insecure shoved in our faces constantly. "Oh, my powers aren't good enough." "Oh, I'm scared of dying." "Oh, I don't want to be a cat, but without my powers I'm useless." "Oh, what good am I as regular Hank Pym", e.t.c On a positive note, the ongoing joke of Hawkeye pestering the Thing to join was moderately amusing. In fact, Hawkeye's characterisation throughout is probably the best thing about the book. Maybe the introduction of Firebird, although not much is done with her. A few years back, I read the mini-series and a smattering of the early issues of the ongoing. I definitely like the mini-series more, but I think my main problem with the ongoing was Milgrom's art rather than Englehart's writing. West Coast Avengers Annual #1 is one of my favorite comics. I had it on a Classic Comics Christmas list. It's a great Avengers, with some history of the team interspersed. I didn't read Avengers Annual #15 (the first part of the story) until years later. It's not even remotely as good as the WCA Annual #1.
|
|
|
Post by The Captain on Jul 8, 2015 5:32:52 GMT -5
I read those issues a few years back and it was a chore to get through any of them. Wildfire2099 is right in that Lost in Space Time is a big step up, but the title sort of loses its way after that again. The Zodiac storyline after Lost in Space-Time is good, too, in my opinion, as it references the best post-Gerber Defenders story. The crossover between WCA Annual 2 and Avengers Annual 16 is downright classic. After that, it's terrible, especially Al Milgrom's solo "Composite Avenger" story. I'd forgotten about the Zodiac story, probably because I was so bored by everything I'd read after Lost in Space Time. Funny you mention the "Composite Avenger" issue, as I'd originally put a note in my post to avoid that one at all costs, but then took it out before hitting "reply". Such a horrible story and complete waste of paper and ink. The parts of the series I read after that never rises above mediocre, while the story with Wanda, her kids, and Master Pandemonium is just atrocious.
|
|
|
Post by Warmonger on Jul 8, 2015 9:04:33 GMT -5
Not necessarily a classic, but a run I dug a lot in the early 90's and am re-reading right now.
Steve Gerber's "Foolkiller" miniseries
|
|
shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,761
|
Post by shaxper on Jul 8, 2015 9:05:20 GMT -5
Not necessarily a classic, but a run I dug a lot in the early 90's and am re-reading right now. Steve Gerber's "Foolkiller" miniseries There's a lot of love for Foolkiller around here. I still need to read it.
|
|