Wonder Woman: a Celebration of 75 Years

With only a month to go until Wonder Woman makes it to the big screen, I think its high time to look back over the last 75 years that made her the UN ambassador, feminist icon and BDSM pin up model that she is. And what better way to do that than with the new anthology, Wonder Woman: a Celebration of 75 Years?

It's a weird and wonderful collection, capturing the feverish imaginations of the various visionaries and perverts who simultaneously wanted to show a progressive world where women are in charge, whilst also undermining it with finding excuses to hogtie said women to the railway tracks every issue.

The book picks up some of the more notable stories of Wonder Woman, set out chronologically from the 50s first issue, when she was carved from mud by Hippolyta, to more recent times, when she becomes embroiled in the Middle Eastern conflicts.

The best story by far though is the one that illustrates not only why Wonder Woman is a feminist icon to this day, but also how comics have in increased relevance; This comic is about the time Wonder Woman ran for presidency.

This episode speculates what would happen should the Amazon ever run for POTUS. Tellingly, it is set in the year 3004, the earliest conceivable date that Americans could elect a woman to office. But what happens? Well, stop me if this starts to sound a bit familiar, but Wonder Woman runs against a certain blonde haired, orange skinned man called Trevor, a man who's desire to return America back to the good old days.

Despite Wonder Woman's efforts to criticise his retrograde views, and his sleazy attitude towards the women, Trevor is quick to garner adulation. Ultimately, despite Wonder Woman earning more votes, Steve Trevor wins anyway due to interference from a foreign oligarch called Mr. Handy, whose crookedness is apparent to everyone but Trevor. Fortunately (and in a departure to reality), Wonder Woman steps in just in time to stop Mr. handy take over the US, beat up his henchmen, and prevent a reformed Trevor  being frozen in liquid nitrogen. Sigh. 

What I like about the comic is seeing WW's fruitier villains, and imagining how the hell they are supposed to work them into DC's super serious, grim dark movie franchise.

How could they fail?

If I had any criticism of the book, and Wonder Woman as a series in general, is that the writers are obsessed with rewriting her origin story every few years. In a similar anthology for Superman, the book is padded out with stories of him marrying mermaids and making deals with evil Leprechauns, but in Wonder Woman: a Celebration of 75 Years, we revisit the whole "Amazons get captured and ravished by Hercules" plot arc way more often than is necessary. A lot of that is probably down to the creators themselves, feeling the need to retell the story through a more era specific (grimmer and mean-spirited) lens.

Other than that though, it is a good read and a helpful shortcut to getting a full perspective on the character without having to actually read through decades of back issues.