Obviously, Buddy Pickle, the well known purveyor of porn and baby gerkins.

It might be an allusion to Martin Goodman and/or son Chip.

Fellow=Good-man

Dill pickles and Chips, with a sandwich?

Goodman published men's magazines, especially Stag and Chip oversaw it, and they hung onto it, after selling out Marvel and the rest.

Best I can see.  It's not Bob Guccione & Penthouse and Hustler was just getting going; and there is no obvious connection to Larry Flynt.  It kind of fits as a jab to Marvel's founder, who was still involved, in 1972.

Brilliant! Remind me to call on you when I finally tackle “Ulysses.”

Wonder Woman #200 “The Beauty Hater!” (June 1972)



Theme: Fit to be tied

Story and Editing: Denny O’Neil
Art: Dick Giordano

Dramatis Personae
Diana Prince, bodyguard
Jonny Double, man of action
Fellows Dill, mind-wiped crazy guy
Doctor Cyber, criminal mastermind (not a physician)
Doctor Moon, Cyber’s henchman (physician)
The Tribunal, upholders of “purity of holiness”

The Story: The bullet from Fellows Dill’s gun only nicked Jonny Double after all. Diana disarms Dill, which isn’t difficult since he’s in some sort of trance. He follows them in a daze for several pages and then fades from the narrative.



Next, our heroes must evade a kamikaze St. Bernard with a keg of nitroglycerine strapped to his neck. Poor pooch!



After that, they find a luxurious cabin in the snowy forest. It’s full of artwork: All expensive, all depicting beautiful woman, all defaced. A pair of goons arrive shortly thereafter, leading to another battle.



Diana pilots the VTOL aircraft in which the goons had arrived, but the controls are on autopilot, and the airplane takes them to… the estate of Fellows Dill! A squad of unicycle-riding, lance-wielding women attack, separating our heroes. Pretty wacky. Is this the first instance of a man shooting a woman dead in a DC comic? Here it happens in consecutive panels. Take no prisoners! Note that Giordano (handling both pencils and inks) eschews grid page layouts.



Diana ends up inside Dill’s mansion, where she falls down a trapdoor and gets zapped unconscious by a defensive turret. She awakens chained with Jonny Double, prisoners of Dr. Cyber, whose face was disfigured by burning coals back in issue #181. Cyber intends Dr. Moon to transplant her brain into the body of one of her captive beauties; Diana will do nicely. But Diana holds her breath during the anesthesia administration, feigning unconsciousness.



Before Dr. Moon starts cutting on her, Diana makes her move. Neither Dr. Moon nor Dr. Cyber is a match for Diana, and Cyber is accidentally impaled in the heart during the fight.



My Two Cents: I had more here, but its length seemed tedious. Suffice to say that in switching from “Diana protects Fellows Dill from the Tribunal” in the last issue to “Diana finds Dr. Cyber’s dungeon in Fellows Dill’s basement” in this issue, Denny O’Neil introduced numerous plot holes into the story. I would not be surprised if the explanation is, “Jeff Jones gave me these two covers, and I tried to write one story incorporating both of them.”

Dr. Moon had debuted a few months prior in Batman #240 by O’Neil, Novick, and Giordano. He was a mad scientist in the employ of Ra’s Al Ghul, removing brains from bodies and then chemically interrogating them. From his surname, I assume he is Korean.



Dr. Cyber breaks the sterility of the procedure by failing to wear gloves when she hands the scalpel to Dr. Moon. And those long sleeves are going to drape all over the tray of surgical implements, setting her up for a post-operative infection. More importantly: Shouldn't Dr. Cyber herself be on an adjacent operating table, if her brain is going to be put in Diana's skull immediately?



VTOL aircraft were nearly the stuff of science fiction in 1972, despite two decades of experimentation with various designs by various nations. The British Royal Air Force received their first Harrier in 1969, but it required at least a short runway when carrying significant payloads. Osprey class craft began trials in the 1980s but seem "not ready for prime time" even today.



Fashion Plate: It’s a continuation of the previous issue, so Diana still wears the same white suit with an unexplained “W” on the belt. Dr Cyber has a Doctor Doom-esque metal helmet to hide her scarred face, and a low-cut robe with fur trim and a huge Mandarin collar in good Dragon Lady fashion. Her sidekicks wear red tunics atop a black unitard.



Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting: Diana actually passes up an opportunity to name-drop I Ching. She just says that she trained “under a master.”

Sexual Politics: Dr. Cyber says she founded the Tribunal herself, “to destroy all those who trafficked in feminine beauty" since she herself is no longer beautiful. This is different from last issue, in which the Tribunal leader (a man, as are all Tribunal members) seemed hell-bent on protecting the virtue of women by killing those who objectify them. Was that a lie, or is he unaware that his boss has the opposite purpose? Could have been a good story point.

Bond Girl: Jeff Jones’ cover sexes up the scene, putting Diana on the table with a terrified look, a flimsy clinging dress, a bare thigh, and spread legs. The interior story features not just Diana (chained for five pages). Dr. Cyber has a whole dungeon full of other hypnotized, chained women. Seems redundant! Also messy, if the women stay that way for days on end.



Body Count: One exploded St. Bernard. Two unicycle goons shot by Jonny Double. Dr. Cyber impaled on a small scalpel; must have gone just in the wrong place. I appreciate that Diana's hair gets at least slightly mussed by her exertions.



Second Story: Diana and I-Ching stroll down the boulevard in a frame story page by Giordano. Diana reminisces a Wonder Girl adventure originally published in issue #144. In it, Wonder Girl accepts a date from a bird-boy, forgetting she had already committed to a date with a mer-boy. The two boys fight over her. To show his love, Bird-Boy thwarts an alien invasion of Paradise Island. They must get a lot of those.



But wait! A pirate submarine is attacking Paradise Island too, with missiles! (This has huge implications, if we stop to think about it, but the story does no such thing. Continuity, schmontinuity! Note the skull-and-crossbones on its tower.) Mer-Boy disables the submarine’s dive planes, causing the submarine to crash into the ocean floor and snap in two, killing all hands aboard. But Diana is only concerned for the welfare of Mer-boy. Don’t worry; he’s fine.



The two boys resume their argument, and Diana is torn between two lovers, feeling like a fool. Just like Bella in Twilight! Write in to say which boy gets our heroine as his flipper or wing candy, as the case may be!



Eagle-eyed forum member MWGallaher noticed that this story originally featured Wonder Woman and Wonder Tot in addition to Wonder Girl, but evidence of their presence has been removed from this reprint, as seen below in MWG’s image comparisons, which I link here:



Lettercol: Denny O’Neil announces that he has no interest in printing any letters responding to Mike Sekowsky’s stories; no love lost there, it seems. So he uses the lettercol to ask readers to help him rename the lettercol itself. He apologizes for not commemorating the landmark issue #200 somewow. “Wait till the 300th issue,” he promises.

Wow, you have found not only the right film but exactly the right shot from it. Note that the two rightmost women are very similar in Giordano's version. He was clearly using this as photo reference. I wonder whether this issue follows that film in other aspects.

It doesn't even make much sense from a, well, imprisonment point of view. Every time they have to eat or go to the bathroom they must be released. Unless you have to make a mess every time.

This Fu Manchu guy seems to be a quite kinky one!