What do you guys think about this era. It’s going to be about 50 years since this era came out
Out.
What do you guys think about this era. It’s going to be about 50 years since this era came out
Out.
Why do you have to make me feel so old?
Mod Diana Prince is my favourite. I like other versions of Wonder Woman, too. But I really dig the Mike Sekowsky and Dick Giordano art and the variety of stories. Also--as I only got a few of these comics back in the day--it took me a lot of effort in the early 2000s to track down all the issues on eBay--and her guest star appearances in other titles. Until finally I had the complete run. So naturally, only after I had gone to all that trouble and expense, DC decided to collect the mod Diana Prince stories in TPBs.
Overall I found it to be a really interesting read. The way they sequed into it with the loss of her powers and the whole boutique angle was interesting and having her gain an ally in I-Ching made things interesting. Especially given how deep his background is established to be without the use of mile long descriptives.
The romantic bits were a bit eyerolling. I swear over the course of that run she must have had five different love interests and nearly every one would in some way break her heart and leave her crying.
My favorite elements from that run would have to be basically everything involving Doctor Cyber who was a fascinating and entertaining villain.
And the fantasy elements in which Diana would travel the magical dimensions and do things like team up with a fantasy hero to fell an empire.
A fun supporting cast was introduced, the premise was strong enough that it could have carried an all new character. And the whole of it was a really good read.
I wonder do you guys think mod era could or should get it's own animated movie adaptation? I know some of the material could have some questionable due to characters like eggfu.
Egg-Fu was Kanigher era. I-Ching (or just Ching) was mod era. While the name "The Book of Changes" is odd for a character, I don't think Ching himself was questionable--in fact he was a very positive character and could probably be used well in a new animated movie. I would just give him a real name and use "I-Ching" as a code-word. He came from a temple that was freed by Steve Trevor--so maybe this was a military action to free the monks from the red Chinese and Military Intelligence came up with the code name "Operation: I-Ching."
I guess the other quibble people have with I-Ching is why Diana would need a master of the martial arts to teach her fighting skills when she was a trained Amazon. I think of mod Diana as suffering from the effects of immediately having all her magic and connection to the gods removed. She's feeling vulnerable and on shakey ground--experiencing Man's World in a radically different way from how she felt it as an Amazon. She reaches out to Ching for more training--and calming meditation techniques--to develop her defensive skills and control the overwhelming sensations she's experiencing. But Diana Prince quickly became Ching's equal--so he probably didn't need to teach her very much.
The two stories I would story would be how Diana became powerless and Doctor Cyber.
I-Ching was a really interesting character.Over the course of the series he gets a pretty solid history. Establishing that he came from Taiwan and served as a foriegn agent for one of the many secret spy organizations which are more common than truck stops. Some unexplained event happens which leads to the Chinese government hunting down and killing I-Chings family (In reality they killed his wife but his daughter escaped to be adopted by Doctor Cyber) and he wandered until he found a monastary that 'was the sacred bastion of all the worlds knowledge' where he secluded himself intending to devote his life to knowledge in order to forget the world outside.
Doctor Cyber finds out about the place and raids it for all that precious knowledge both magical and scientific, with only I-Ching surviving thanks to his background, leading to him using magic to find out that Diana Prince was the one person who could help him avenge those Doctor Cyber had slain.
Oh and during all of these he was blind.
While Wonder Womans knowledge was vast, its not entirely unreasonable to say that he could have some martial arts knowledge she might not know given the temple was supposed to be the repository of 'all the worlds knowledge' as described. Plus he was able to give aid in matters such as magic, was able to actually keep up with Wonder Woman in a fight, and he had a number of contacts around the world thanks to his background.
So did anyone else know about the upcoming collection of this era (which is being renamed apparently)?
I mean the cover could be different. Before Golden Age cover came out they just had one of her golden age issue cover as the omnibus cover. It could change
I didn't know about this Omnibus. I'll probably end up buying it, but they will make it more attractive for me if they include some of the extra pages that were left out of the TPBs and some of Diana's other guest appearances.
Of, course calling it a '60s book is itself misleading, since the run didn't start until 1968 and only ended in 1972 (almost 1973). The Mod Diana Prince Era (1968 - 1972) gets the point across more clearly.
And if they're going to include Kanigher's WW 204, then they might as well include 205 and 206, to complete the Nubia arc. After 206, the stories are just rehashes of earlier Kanigher stories from the late 1940s/early 1950s.
Everybody says this is the "Diana Rigg" Wonder Woman, referring to Rigg's role in the 1960s's AVENGERS as Emma Peel--and the cover seems to be pushing that idea. But while this may have been one of the factors influencing the creation of the new Wonder Woman, I don't think it's the primary one.
From various sources, it seems that Jack Miller (the editor at the time of the change), Carmine Infantino, Mike Sekowsky and Dennis O'Neil were all in on shaping the new idea. Now, Sekowsky well before this had been developing his own comic strip that he was trying to sell to the newspaper syndicates--featuring a female adventurer--who I think was supposed to be an American Modesty Blaise. And maybe this is what Mike brought to the table.
Mod Diana Prince seems as much like Modesty Blaise as Emma Peel to me. But she's more than that. One of the things I admire about the concept and the run is that Diana can go in so many directions and it always fits with her character to do so. We get stories of espionage, but we also get sword & sorcery fantasy, martial arts adventures, gritty crime thrillers, psycho-sexual domestic drama, witchcraft and horror tales, political intrigue and social justice morality plays.
I wonder could if done well mod era Wonder Woman be a funny animated movie or more drama to it? Maybe I Ching should get his own movie
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Maybe it could be a twist on the times Diana lost her memory or history was changed, like in JMS' Odyssey. Say a villain has turned all the Amazons into ordinary women and Diana Prince has to find her lasso so she can restore everyone, but they get the option of keeping their identities.