Announcing Wonder Woman Wednesdays

Back some time ago, I started collecting the hardbound archives which reprint Wonder Woman’s original adventures, starting at All Star Comics #8. Unfortunately, older comics tend to get pushed further down my ‘to-read’ pile for this week’s pull list or something modern I’ve been meaning to read. I also sometimes find myself ill-at-ease with Golden and Silver Age writing styles. So I’ve decide to push myself with Wonder Woman and her tales. Each Wednesday, I will make a post about Wonder Woman and her comics all the way from the beginning.

Wonder Woman fascinates me on many levels, including:

1. Wonder Woman is the first woman of superheroes and marketed toward young girls. She was very popular.

2. There’s a lot of muddled gray areas around the authorial intent of Dr. William Marston and his beliefs about women’s superiority and submission and his own personal interests in bondage and polyamory.

3. A lot of people bitch about Wonder Woman not being as great of a hero or as iconic as Batman and Superman when they’re supposed to be part of the DC Trinity.

4. Wonder Woman’s been relaunched, rewritten in a lot of different directions, and sometimes seemingly throw up to the editorial with a “I give up” sigh. Her movie’s been canceled again and again.

5. Wonder Woman’s become an icon for LGBT people, especially gay men. This largely has to do with the Lynda Carter TV show.

6. Wonder Woman theoretically could again be a big seller with women and gay men, who are not considered the primary audience of modern comic books.

7. Why does my friend Steve always skip the Wonder Woman-focused episodes of the Justice League cartoon?

In my posts, I may talk about the issue at length or I might focus on a certain theme in the issue or in Wonder Woman’s comics in general. Normally, I rate each issue I read; however, given the way Golden Age comics are, I may forgo a rating as I’m a modern consumer. I am committed to learning more about Wonder Woman through her stories.