- How are you doing, you wonderful nerd?
Excited for the Wonder Woman movie, perhaps?
One of the world's most iconic superheroes is finally
getting her own solo film after over 75 years of history!
And to mark this occasion, we'll be whipping out the
good ole' lasso of truth to examine and explain some of
Diana Prince's biggest changes over the years.
Today, specifically, we'll be looking at her major reboot
during the late '60s and early '70s
where DC attempted to Marvelize Wonder Woman.
They took a character they saw as too confusing,
and tried to fix her by
making her more like a Marvel character,
and in the process created the single most uncomfortably
embarrassing period of Diana Prince's comic book career.
It was a story so awful, so revolted by the fans,
so backward and behind the times that
even the creators of the comics refuse to defend them today.
- It's not one of the most glorious chapters
in my comic book career.
- I'm, of course talking, about the Mod Era Wonder Woman,
fashion-obsessed, boy-crazy,
emotionally unstable kung-fu warrior of the '70s.
And suffering Sappho, it was gods awful.
So, in this video, I want to attempt to answer
three questions: What exactly happened?
How bad was it really?
And who is to blame for it?
I mean, you read the title and thumbnail.
You know a twist is coming.
We should start by addressing what this series was
for those who may have never heard of it.
For a little context, up until around the 1970s,
Wonder Woman was primarily written by two people.
First was, of course, William Moulton Marston
who created the character in 1941
and is credited with most of her stories
until his death just a few short years later in 1947.
After Marston, Wonder Woman's stories were written
by Robert Kanigher, who stayed on
as the series writer for two decades!
After all that time writing the same character,
Kanigher was running out of ideas
and the fanbase got bored with Wonder Woman.
It was only selling around 200,000 copies per issue!
So basically no one was reading it!
See, that's a joke
because modern comics rarely come close to that number.
Either way, in 1968 DC Comics removed Kanigher
from the title and gave the series to writer Denny O'Neil
and artist Mike Sekowsky who took over in issue #178.
Over the first two issues,
O'Neil and Sekowsky effectively rebooted Wonder Woman,
changing and getting rid of massive portions of her lore
until she was almost unrecognizable
as the Amazon warrior we know her to be.
Diana Prince gave up her costume, weapons,
and powers becoming mortal while the Amazons left
for another dimension to recharge their powers.
Now powerless, Diana learned kung fu under the tutelage
of a blind martial artist named I-Ching.
Her long time love interest Steve Trevor
was also killed off,
freeing up Wonder Woman to have around six other
love interests within a short twenty-six issue run.
She also became obsessed with mod fashion
which at the time was spreading from London to America.
Instead of her spangly outfit,
she would dress in clothes of that era,
with a particular focus on pure white garments.
Readers were treated to shopping montages
and witnessed Diana open up her own clothing boutique
called Mod-Ly Modern.
Because of the visual change and the focus
on the mod subculture, this period of the character's
history is referred to as the mod era Wonder Woman.
O'Neil and Sekowsky were tasked with revamping
and relaunching Wonder Woman to be more relevant
in that time period with a focus on the culture and trends
of the decade, and, of course, the women's liberation groups
that had started forming all across the country.
I have no doubt that O'Neil and Sekowsky
had the best of intentions.
They wanted to tell a real story
of a real woman in the real world.
No super powers.
No spandex costume or secret identity.
They thought they were doing the right thing, but nope!
They screwed it up.
They took the single most iconic and empowering
female superhero and stole her powers along with
everything else that made Wonder Woman Wonder Woman.
If you heard me describing a fashionable,
karate chopping Diana Prince and thought,
"Actually, that sounds pretty rad!"
Allow me to ruin those thoughts.
Because, I get it.
On the surface, that sounds at least a little interesting.
But once you start looking carefully at the details within
the stories, it quickly becomes apparent
that this whole thing was a massive backward failure
that no amount of online articles about how
"it's really not that bad," can save.
To summarize the two issue arc that started this saga,
Steve Trevor, was arrested for a murder
that he didn't commit at a hippie club called
the Tangerine Trolley.
To exonerate him,
Diana goes undercover to infiltrate the hippie community
and find someone who could confirm Steve's alibi.
Adhering to the classic teen movie trope,
Diana takes off her glasses, gets a new hairdo,
and dons trendy clothes, and she suddenly becomes
more attractive than anyone realized.
After being freed, Steve and Wonder Woman find themselves
cuddled up on the couch talking about Diana.
You see, Steve is not aware that Wonder Woman
and Diana Prince are the same person.
For somewhere around 27 years,
they had a kind of Lois/Clark/Superman love triangle.
Steve Trevor loved Wonder Woman
and didn't think of Diana as more than a friend.
And yet, now Steve seems to have
a change of heart towards Diana as he remarks,
"She's so much more than what I thought she was-in fact,
"I think I'll ask her out one of these days
"and really get to know her."
Could this be due to the simple fact
that Diana had helped to prove Steve's innocence?
I guess, but it's not like Diana
hadn't helped Steve out before.
But she did so looking like this,
and now she looked like this.
Steve's comment about Diana prompted Wonder Woman
to think to herself, "Why, this is silly.
"I can't be jealous of myself-can I?
"If he can fall for Diana like this,
"he can fall for any woman!
"And I'll lose him forever if I don't do something
"to keep him interested in me!
"Wonder Woman must change."
In the following issue, a lot happens.
Steve Trevor was once again in peril,
and Diana was about to head out and save him when she was
suddenly summoned to Themyscira by Queen Hippolyta.
The Amazons had been on Earth for 10,000 years,
but their power was weakening,
and they need to recharge in another dimension.
But Wonder Woman refused to leave
because Steve still needed her help.
Left with no other option, Diana relinquished her costume,
weapons, and powers
and watched as Paradise Island vanished from Earth.
That's an incredibly heroic sacrifice
giving up everything to help Steve Trevor.
And she did so without hesitation.
She went from powerful Amazon
to earthly mortal in less than two pages.
But as Tim Hanley points out
in his book Wonder Woman Unbound,
it's a little problematic.
"Reading between the lines of her rapid decision to give up
"her superpowers, the fact is that Diana didn't need to be
"Wonder Woman to be with Steve anymore.
"If Queen Hippolyta had summoned Wonder Woman home
"before Diana's mod makeover,
"the depowered wallflower Diana Prince would have been
"all alone, because Steve didn't care about her at all.
"But now Steve was interested in Diana and,
"if mentioning asking her out while on a date
"with Wonder Woman was any indication,
"he seemed to like Diana more than Wonder Woman.
"Not only could she remain behind
"and date Steve as Diana Prince,
"but she would be giving Steve the woman he preferred.
"No wonder she was so quick to decide to stay behind.
"It was a win-win situation for the man she loved."
Basically, by trying to setup Diana Prince as a modern,
independent female superhero during
the women's liberation movement,
O'Neil and Sekowsky unintentionally created a version
of the character whose actions were dictated
by her boyfriend's desires.
Yikes.
Then there was her interaction with the Justice League.
Because Wonder Woman no longer had powers, she recused
herself from the team in Justice League of America #69.
"I'm no more than an ordinary mortal now
"much as I admire the Justice League,
"I feel I no longer have a place in it!"
Batman of all people was the first one to chime in with,
with quote, "Feel free to return anytime."
Y'know, if having superpowers is a prerequisite for being
a member of the Justice League, why are you there, Batman?
How about you, Green Arrow?
Got any explanations?
No?
Everyone here is a skilled warrior,
and the only difference is that Diana happens to be a woman?
Cool.
Cool, cool, cool, cool.
Yeah, not cool.
That issue of Justice League
was also written by Denny O'Neil, by the way.
So good job.
And look, I get it.
DC Comics was trying to make Diana Prince more independent.
They took her away from the Amazons.
They took her away from the Justice League.
They even killed off Steve Trevor.
Great.
Fine.
But they could have come up with
a better way to go about it that actually made sense.
Or, as much sense as you can make for a character
based in Greek mythology.
And for all that setup, it's not like Wonder Woman
was wholly independent in her own comic.
After she had relinquished her powers,
she met a blind martial artist named I-Ching who teaches her
kung fu over the course of a few months.
The two of them acted as partners,
fighting crime and righting wrongs.
I-Ching was such a crucial part of the new book
that there were a few months when the comic was called
The Incredible I-Ching and the New Wonder Woman.
Let me restate that
because I don't want to undersell how bonkers this is.
There was a time when Wonder Woman,
one of the most recognizable superheroes of all time,
was second-billed under this nobody on her own comic.
What?
Now, we are barely three issues into this series,
so let me give you some of the average story elements
present throughout this comic run.
After her initial makeover,
Diana Prince became obsessed with fashion and shopping.
One caption in issue #182 read, quote,
"Happiness for any healthy, red-blooded young gal,
"is bedecking herself in the latest fashion finery,
"and our Wonder Woman just happens to be a healthy,
"red-blooded young gal," end quote.
Because she was so trendy and beautiful, Diana attracted
the attention of many men after Steve Trevor.
In these 26 issues that the series lasted,
she was involved with seven different guys.
Which is not a bad thing,
but it is a notable difference from how Wonder Woman
was previously written, along with her new attitude.
Diana used to be kind, caring, and rational.
She would try to help her villains, not just defeat them.
But now, Wonder Woman was recklessly
rushing into battle fueled by anger.
If O'Neil and Sekowsky were trying to portray an ordinary,
everyday woman in Diana Prince,
then their concept of an average female was one of intense,
hysterical emotion that made rationality an impossibility.
It's a ridiculously backward cliche.
And we have yet to touch on the craziest story
throughout this whole run,
the final issue that read on the cover read, quote,
Special Women's Lib Issue!
So yeah, buckle up.
Diana Prince gets a job as a spokeswoman
for Grandee's department store.
All she has to do is wear Mr. Grandee's clothes,
live a fancy, high-profile life,
and endorse the Grandee brand.
So again, yet another fashion-focused plot point.
But it turns out that Mr. Grandee
is secretly paying all his female employees
below the legal minimum wage,
and Diana's friend Cathy wants to expose him.
After a brief and incomprehensible debate about
interstate commerce law, Wonder Woman finally outright says,
quote, "I'm all for equal wages, too!
"But I'm not a joiner.
"I wouldn't fit with your group.
"In most cases, I don't even like women?"
End quote.
This interaction is Diana Prince, Wonder Woman,
female icon effectively saying,
"Women's lib is great and all,
"but I don't really want to be an active participant
"or support it in any meaningful way."
At a pivotal time when the world needed
good female role models to look up to,
Wonder Woman stood by saying, "Ooh, pass."
As the story went on, they eventually did take down
Mr. Grandee's department store.
As Wonder Woman reflects on how accomplished she feels
for doing some good for her fellow women,
a crowd marches in arguing that
shutting down the business was actually counterproductive.
Sure, women were being underpaid,
but at least they had jobs of some kind.
Now that the store is gone, 250 women are jobless,
and Wonder Woman needs to answer to that.
What will Diana do now?
The final panel asks.
Well, nothing, because in the very next issue
this entire mod era of Wonder Woman will be undone.
This story will remain unfinished;
many plot points will be erased from canon as well as
Diana's own memory after she blacks out
during a fight with a sniper who kills I-Ching.
The Amazons come back from their vacation
and restore Wonder Woman to how she used to be
before all this mess started.
This reboot was in no small part due to real life
female leaders demanding that DC Comics bring back
the original Wonder Woman with whom they had grown up.
At least, that was the sentiment.
What ended up happening was people cherry picking the parts
of the old Wonder Woman that they liked
while throwing out most of the problematic stuff
like Marston's affinity for bondage imagery.
Which, yeah, we'll make a video about that,
probably next week or so
because that's the one thing people want to discuss
in regards to the Golden Age Wonder Woman.
The point remains, this new new Wonder Woman became the one
we'd all recognize today, from the Lynda Carter series,
the many animated appearances,
and perhaps the very first theatrical Wonder Woman movie!
So now we get to the question of
who is to blame for all of this.
Your first instinct might be to blame Denny O'Neil
and Mike Sekowsky because, y'know,
they were the ones actually making this comic book.
Don't get me wrong, they certainly deserve a lot
of the blame, except for the Women's Lib issue
which was written by Samuel R. Delany,
but it's important to consider the state
of the comic book industry at this time.
DC Comics was a powerhouse in the Golden Age of the 40s.
Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and many more characters
jump started the massive superhero comic boom.
Unfortunately, it was because of their popularity
that Fredric Wertham called them out explicitly in his book
Seduction of the Innocent about what he saw
as the potentially dangerous effects
that comic books had on children.
We've talked about it here.
As Wertham went on his crusade against comics
and the Comics Code Authority was put in place to censor
the industry harshly, DC was one of the companies
in the spotlight getting torn apart.
One smaller company named Atlas Comics, however,
was spared from the wrath because they were
only a C-list publisher at best.
As the 1960s approached, they started launching
brand new superhero stories under the name: Marvel Comics.
Their fresh new characters like the Fantastic Four,
Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, and Spider-Man
became roaring successes ushering in
what many refer to as the Marvel Age of comics.
But it's not like DC stopped printing superhero stories.
They were also introducing new successful characters like
Barry Allen's The Flash, Hal Jordan's Green Lantern,
and they, of course, kept writing Batman,
Superman, and Wonder Woman.
So what made Marvel so different?
What set their heroes apart from what
DC had been doing for years?
Well for starters, Marvel put their heroes in real cities,
mostly crowding them in New York.
DC, on the other hand, had the fictional cities like Gotham,
Metropolis, Central City, and so on.
Marvel also gave a lot of attention
to their alter egos of their heroes.
Where the primary focus of a Batman comic was simply Batman,
the main focus of a Spider-Man comic was Peter Parker who
just so happened to be the friendly neighborhood web-head.
Marvel dove into the personal lives of their heroes.
They had lives outside of their costumes
with real struggles.
Over at DC, on the other hand,
the biggest problems Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent,
and Diana Prince ever had were
cliche romantic woes that didn't have any real weight
or consequence from issue to issue.
DC stories might have been fun and silly in those days,
but Marvel made readers actually care
and relate to the person under the mask.
Marvel also tended to be more culturally relevant than DC.
The classic example being the mutant X-Men
who acted as stand-ins for persecuted social groups.
All of these factors made Marvel's comics feel real
and relevant to the reader where DC lagged behind the times.
And this is precisely why O'Neil and Sekowsky were tasked
with shaking things up for Wonder Woman's comic.
If you read through the mod era Wonder Woman
with this context, you can see certain stories
and conventions that feel very Marvel.
First, they wanted to make the reader care more about
Wonder Woman as an individual,
so they took away her powers and costume
in favor of focusing on her personal life
as Diana Prince, boutique owner.
They wanted to make her more identifiable.
As Sekowsky pointed out, quote, "I didn't see how a kid,
"male or female, could relate to the Amazon Wonder Woman.
"It was so far removed from their world.
"I felt girls might want to read about a super female
"in the real world, something very current."
End quote.
And right here is where I would insert
a very clever and original joke
about how DC thinks Wonder Woman is too confusing
yet Marvel released two movies
with a talking raccoon and tree monster.
I think I'm the very first person
on the internet to make that observation.
I'm very proud.
See the joke is that everyone says that.
And it just gets funnier every time.
O'Neil and Sekowsky also placed their Wonder Woman
in a real city instead of a fictional one.
Taking a hint from Marvel directly,
Diana's stories were set in New York.
The final thing DC did to this new Wonder Woman was try
ever so hard to make her socially relevant because again,
that's what Marvel was doing.
You get the idea.
They were only trying to replicate
Marvel's formula for success,
but they could not have failed any more spectacularly.
O'Neil and Sekowsky tried turning Diana Prince
into Wonder Woman, instead of just strengthening
Diana Prince as the other half of Wonder Woman.
This made the character weakened by her alter ego
instead of allowing that alter ego to shine and add
complexity with the already strong Wonder Woman herself.
But to their credit,
no one involved with these stories seems to defend them.
Denny O'Neil ceaselessly apologizes for them
and recognizes the mistakes that he made.
- They said that I had
taken the only powerful woman in comics
and had taken her power away from her.
It is now many years later and I
absolutely see what they were talking about
- Good on ya Denny!
Of course, this is just
one short chapter in Wonder Woman's history.
In the next video,
we're going to be going back to the beginning to talk about
the original Wonder Woman
and how the intentions of her creator,
William Moulton Marston, are often misinterpreted.
So, yeah, that bondage thing.
And Diana's sexuality.
Plus, we'll discuss how Marston created Wonder Woman
not for young girls to read,
but for young boys to get them used
to the idea of what he saw as the inevitable matriarchy.
All that and more, next time!
So make sure to hit that big, sexy subscribe button
and tap the bell icon to join the notification squad!
You'll be in good company.
In the meantime,
I'd love to know your thoughts on mod era Wonder Woman.
Do you find it as backward and terrible as I do?
Or do you think it's not as bad as I've made it out to be
and I'm just reading between the panels too much?
I'd love to know your thoughts.
We'll address some of them
in an upcoming comment live stream!
As always, I want to give a massive shoutout
to all of the Patreons, Cristoffer Lange, Paterick Caddery,
Alberto Ramirez, Elizabeth Moncel, and Austin Rogers.
And of course all of the other wonderful nerds
who support us over on Patreon and these are their names.
If you like the stuff that we do,
if you want your name here, go to Patreon.com/NerdSync!
Until next time my name is Scott, reminding you to
read between the panels and grow smarter through comics.
See ya!