Wonder Woman Complete History: the Complete History : the Life and times of the Amazon Princess - Softcover

Daniels, Les

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811842339 ISBN 13: 9780811842334

Publisher: Chronicle Books, 2004

Synopsis

Wonder Woman: The Complete History proves that she's still the best super heroine around. This paperback edition is an affordable must-have for every Wonder Woman fan. Now in paperback, Wonder Woman: The Complete History celebrates the very first super heroine of all time. Nearly sixty-five years since her creation, Les Daniels honours her Olympic strengths, her peace-seeking mission, and her fabulous outfits throughout the years. With design by Chipp Kidd and loads of four-colour photography of Wonder Woman art, archival comics, and ephemera, Wonder Woman is a true tribute to a splendid super hero.

About this title

Review:

There can't be many people who haven't heard of Wonder Woman, arguably the first female superhero and one of the "big three" (the others being Batman and Superman). She was created by Dr William Moulton Marston--who also invented the lie detector--as an antidote to masculine comic book adventures that are drenched in violent testosterone-fuelled imagery and portray women as helpless weaklings who have to rely on the men to untie them from the train tracks in the nick of time. Wonder Woman was certainly no weakling; dressed in stars and stripes, armed with bullet-deflecting bracelets and a magical lasso and flying around in an invisible jet, she had no qualms about saving her boyfriend Steve Trevor from certain doom in each issue while dealing a swift blow to the odd Nazi soldier as well. However, most people who aren't die-hard comic fans will only have memories of the camp and kitschy 1970s TV show starring the leggy and beautiful Lynda Carter (who also contributes the book's Forward). As compelling and faithful as this small screen adaption was, there is so much more to the WW mythology as Les Daniels admirably proves in this gorgeous hardback volume. It features lots of covers and extracted scenes from the comic books from her earliest appearance to her latest 1990s image changes and plenty of photographs of the plethora of WW merchandise created over the years. And for those of you old enough to remember the TV show who want to refresh your memories of the infamous theme song, the lyrics are also here in all their star-spangled glory. This is a wonderful nostalgic journey through the life and times of the first lady of Superheroes and a real appreciation of WW's staying power and campy cult status. Beautifully packaged, absorbingly written and wonderfully illustrated, this is a must-have for comic fans. --Jonathan Weir

Review:

These days we devour super-sized meals, ogle strutting supermodels and experiment with superconductivity. But once upon a time there were only superheroes. Murmur their names, and from out of memory's deep emerge lazy summer afternoons spent on covered porches with a bottle of Orange Crush and a bag of Fritos, weekly bike rides to the revolving wire racks in corner drug stores and, of course, our increasingly daring leaps, from picnic tables and brick fireplaces, with an old sheet fluttering from 9-year-old shoulders: "I can fly, I can fly." And we could -- if only during that moment when we flexed our knees and pushed off into the air. Then, for one blissful second, we were commensurate with our dreams. But, ah, those names, how they thrilled and fed our imaginations: the Flash, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Aqua-Man and Hawkman, the Mighty Thor, and a little later the Silver Surfer, Spiderman and the X-Men. To the ignorant eyes of parents, our carefully tended stacks of 20, 50 or 200 issues of Action Comics, World's Finest, Detective Comics, Marvel Comics and so many others merely appeared to tell the same story, again and yet again: A gaudily costumed crime fighter battles a seemingly unbeatable enemy -- sometimes the oddly loquacious alien from another planet or dimension, sometimes the white-coated mad scientist with his destructo-ray, often (and best of all) the monstrous result of some laboratory experiment gone horribly wrong. Never such innocence again. Nowadays, comics have grown up and taken steroids: They are swarthy, mean, perverse, complex, adult. They even require specialized stores -- like X-rated videos -- and aspire to literature. "Graphic novels" can be intricate and wonderful -- ask any student of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman or look at the pastiche brilliance of Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen -- but they would likely frighten or puzzle the children who lingered for hours over the early adventures of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. Three oversized histories now document the life and times of these most durable of all the comic-book legends. Les Daniels's cleanly written text reveals not only the artistic, business and marketing decisions that have made Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman recognizable round the world, but also the ways in which each of their comics differs from the others in style and tone. Superman's adventures, for instance, were nearly always laced with humor and frequently relied on slightly screwball situations: For instance, Mr. Mxyzptlk -- the impish troublemaker from the future -- and Lois Lane's niece Susie Tompkins generally treated the Man of Steel as either an amusing buffoon or a playtime doll. Bizzarro -- the simple-minded partial clone of Superman, who resembled a crystallized Frankenstein's monster -- provoked endless chaos without being truly threatening. The entire reporting cast of the Daily Planet often tended to be exploited just for laughs: wide-eyed Jimmy Olsen, love-struck Lois Lane, even gruff editor Perry White with his favorite ejaculation, "Great Caesar's ghost!" By contrast, Batman dealt with obsession in all its forms (a theme underscored in Tim Burton's two Batman films). Bruce Wayne transforms himself into a caped crusader to avenge the brutal death of his parents. But his opponents are even more seriously damaged individuals, usually driven to crime by psychological trauma: the Joker, who yearns to be acclaimed the world's greatest comedian; Two-Face, who struggles with a Jekyll-and-Hyde personality after his disfigurement; Cat-Woman, a mousy secretary who escapes repression by releasing her inner tigress. Wonder Woman is, of course, the supreme avatar of that particular myth. The ludicrously bespectacled Diana Prince is actually an Amazon princess, at ease with her physical strength and beauty. She grew up in a world -- Paradise Island -- where sisterhood was truly powerful (and telepathic to boot). As a result, she pr

About this edition

• Publisher: Chronicle Books
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0811842339
• ISBN 13: 9780811842334
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208