Things I 'learnt' from comic books

[Martin Gray]

Back in the Sixties, when the Superman Family were forever meeting/romancing doubles of themselves, I remember editor Mort Weisinger's lettercol telling us more than once that everyone on Earth has 17 doubles (so how many must there be across the universe?). I'm now 45 and have never met anyone unfortunate enough to look like me and am beginning to think he made this up.

Any more dubious facts?

[PowerBook Pete, the Mad Mod]

Mark Sullivan said:

I'm rereading The Invisibles, and one of its plot points is the supposed Mayan date for the Apocalypse (Dec. 21, 2012). I read the issue where it was first mentioned a few weeks ago and did some research on it...just days before all the 2012 stuff hit the news in a big way. Although it has surfaced a few times in the last few years.

If you listen to "Coast to Coast AM," it's talked about all the time.

[PowerBook Pete, the Mad Mod]

People keep asking me if I'm a cop from the next town over.

[The Baron]

PowerBook Pete said:

People keep asking me if I'm a cop from the next town over.

Oh. Are you?

[PowerBook Pete, the Mad Mod]

Not that I recall, no.

[ClarkKent_DC]

I learnt you can crush coal and turn it into a diamond.

[Martin Gray]

I learnt from a Wonder Woman feature page that if you go to sleep with a bowl of water containing a gerbil under the pillow, you will dream about the man you will marry.

Or drown.

[Rich Steeves]

I may be the most generic looking person on the planet. I am constantly told I "look exactly like someone" else. Perhaps my enormous number of doubles lifts the average to 17?

[ClarkKent_DC]

Martin Gray said:

I learnt from a Wonder Woman feature page that if you go to sleep with a bowl of water containing a gerbil under the pillow, you will dream about the man you will marry.

Or drown.

Y'know, I hadn't read many Wonder Woman stories before George Pérez took over the title -- a dozen at the most -- and I still haven't read many from the time before he started. But most of the ones I have read give new meanings to the word "bizarre."

[Doctor Hmmm?]

"William Moulton Marston bizarre", or "Robert Kanigher bizarre"?

[ClarkKent_DC]

They're all bizarre.

The other day, I picked up Wonder Woman: The Greatest Stories Ever Told at a yard sale for two bucks. I haven't finished it -- I started with the last story in the book, one by Phil Jiminez from 2001 or so in which Lois Lane follows Diana around all day for a feature -- and then turned to the front of the book. The first, naturally, is the origin story from Sensation Comics.

The second one is by William Moulton Marston and Harry Peters, and it begins with Wonder Woman and the Amazons capturing an attack force from Saturn (in a battle that seemed to have happened in a previous story). All the men soldiers are bound in chains and sent back to Saturn, but the women soldiers plead not to go back because they will be put into slavery. So the Amazons bind each of the Saturn women in "Venus girdles" AND tie them up in Wonder Woman's golden lasso. The Venus girdles, while being worn, change the wearer's evil nature and makes them "submit to loving authority."

However, the leader of the Saturn army fakes a coma, and while Wonder Woman runs off to get the Purple Ray to revive her, an Amazon removes the Venus girdle, unties the lasso and leaves her alone -- giving her the opportunity to jam the lock on the girdle and steal the lasso! (She wraps it around her arm, under her sleeve.)

Wonder Woman is baffled that her lasso is missing, but "revives" the Saturn leader, who later stages a jail break, and all the Saturn women get the drop on the Amazons, put the Venus girdles on them and lock them away. And with the lasso, she ties up Queen Hyppolyte and instructs her to have Wonder Woman return to Paradise Island. Wonder Woman is captured and she and her mother are both tied to a pole with the lasso AND chained to it with flaming links that burn hotter as they clinch tighter.

Somewhere along the way, Steve Trevor gets captured and chained up and it tortured until his shirt is shredded (he's there to sell them several U.S. Navy surplus submarines) ... Wonder Woman is still tied up and is in a rowboat with the Saturn leader and other villains, and she tries to escape by capsizing the boat, but then -- still tied up, mind you -- has to rescue the Saturn leader because she can't swim ... and Etta Candy and the Holliday Girls are put into a machine that de-evolutionizes them, but it's faulty, so they wind up with ape bodies, but human heads ...

... and THEN it gets weird!

Unfortunately (or not), that (besides the origin) is the only Marston story in the book. But I don't know if I could handle any more.

[Martin Gray]

Ah come on, you'll never be able to resist the Wonder Woman Chronicles come February!

[Doctor Hmmm?]

ClarkKent_DC said:

BR>
Unfortunately (or not), that (besides the origin) is the only Marston story in the book. But I don't know if I could handle any more.

Yeah, the Wonder Woman Archives are some tough sledding.