Weekly Wonder Woman: Wonder Woman #18, Batman ’66 Meets Wonder Woman ’77 #8, Justice League/Power Rangers #3

The talk of the past week has been all about the new Wonder Woman movie. Again. Although, to be fair, we have had a rather impressive new poster (above) and a rather shiny new trailer to mull over.

Lots to discuss in that, obviously, although Diana flying, Dr Poison et al have all been hinted at elsewhere:

  1. Pretty much everything revealed about the plot chimes with what was revealed by IMDb last week
  2. At the very least, Diana has a secret and it seems to involve the ability to shoot energy out of her bracelets, much to her own surprise
  3. Fan favourite Artemis, the former Wonder Woman and newly revealed as bi current star of Red Hood & The Outlaws, makes an appearance
  4. She’s played by none other than Ann Wolfe, who’s probably the best fighter in the history of women’s boxing
  5. Diana thinks London’s hideous. Then again, it’s 1917/1918 and she’s probably already had to sail past the still-working wharfs before getting to Tower Bridge, so she probably would think that.

Elsewhere, Greg Rucka and Liam Sharp’s run on Wonder Woman is currently part of an exhibit at the Israeli Museum of Caricature and Comics in Holon, Israel. And if you’re a big buyer of cereals, now’s the time to switch to Cheerios in the US, since they feature a whole bunch of DC comics and artwork, including Diana as drawn by Neal Adams.

And on TV, NBC’s Powerless not only revealed Themyscira’s (current?) time zone…

Themyscira's time zone revealed on Powerless

…it also hinted that the technology used in Diana’s invisible plane is being made available to the manufacturers of children’s toys.

The box for the toy Invisible Jet

Invisible jet toy under construction

Can’t imagine that ending badly.

After the jump, a look at the latest DC comics to feature our Diana: Wonder Woman #18, Batman ’66 Meets Wonder Woman ’77 #8 and Justice League/Power Rangers #3. But not in that order.

See you in a mo…

Justice League Power Rangers #3

Justice League Power Rangers #3
Plot
The Justice League and Power Rangers agree to team up to fight Lord Zedd’s giant creatures. Unfortunately, Brainiac is helping Zedd and he’s able not only to take over the Power Rangers’ giant robot dinosaurs, he steals their communicators and coins, turning them into regular teenagers again. 

Only one thing for it – use the Large Hadron Collider to create a hole to the Power Rangers universe to fight Zedd and Brainiac on home territory.

What does Diana do?
Punch things a lot…

Diana punching

…say ‘Great Hera’ and save the Power Rangers when Brainiac takes over their vehicles.

Rescuing Power Rangers

It’s also pointed out that whatever version of Wonder Woman this is (maybe the Rebirth one, but who knows) once again has ‘the wisdom of Athena’, just like in the olden days…

The wisdom of Athena

Batman '66 meets Wonder Woman '77 #8

Batman ’66 Meets Wonder Woman ’77
Plot
Batman, Wonder Woman and their sidekicks escape from their quicksand prison with a little help from both Talia al Ghul and Wonder Woman’s teenage sister Drusilla (aka Wonder Girl):

Wonder Girl arrives

After Drusilla and Ra’s al Ghul are revealed to be equally matched swordfighters, it’s left to Diana to repay the favour:

Diana intervenes

When Ra’s tries to escape on a boat, first Batman and then the Amazons try to stop him – and it turns out that Diana’s not the only one who wears that swimsuit:

The Amazons in their swimsuits

Then everyone goes off to celebrate and dance the Batusi:

Wonder Girl dances the Batusi

Extra notes
What’s really surprising about the issue, apart from the lovely nods to Wonder Woman continuity, is the air of finality it has for Batman ’66. So far, this strip has been set either way before or in the Batman ’66 and Batman timeline. But by the end of this issue, Batman is revealing his true identity to both Diana and Catwoman:

Batman reveals his true identity

(Interestingly, the strip here suggests that the reason this Batman is so lacking in darkness compared to his other comic book selves is that he was inspired by his meeting Wonder Woman as a child, rather than by a bunch of bats in a cave.)

Meanwhile, Talia is imprisoned by the Amazons and Catwoman seeks asylum from patriarchy with them, rather than return to Gotham and prison:

Catwoman seeks asylum

And while the story seems to be over at first, the final page suggests not only that there are more issues to come, but that we’re going to be seeing what happens 11 years after Batman ’66 in proper Wonder Woman ’77 territory. What will have become of Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson by then, I wonder?

What happens in 11 years' time?

Wonder Woman (Rebirth) #18

Wonder Woman (Rebirth) #18
Plot
A year after the events of issue #16, Veronica Cale’s managed to resurrect her friend as Doctor Cyber…

Doctor Cyber is drawn

…who then keeps Diana busy…

Diana is busy

…so that she doesn’t notice that Barbara Minerva has become… Cheetah!

Barbara Ann is now Cheetah

Extra notes
What’s most important about this issue is actually outside the main plot. Although knowing exactly how Cheetah became Cheetah in Rebirth continuity is fun to watch, we knew most of the details already. Plus Dr Cyber doesn’t seem that much different from Cyborg in this continuity, just a bit more virtual, so it’s not that exciting seeing her in action for the first time.

No, firstly, we get an exact statement about Diana’s feelings towards the gods in the Rucka/Rebirth continuity:

The gods are real

They have my faith

Which ones does she love? Maybe we’ll learn that later.

BTW, when we go into double-speech bubble territory at the end, it’s because they’re speaking Amazon – the observant will notice on the first page that Diana still hasn’t mastered English, with present continuous tense proving surprisingly tricky for her still (wisdom of Athena, huh? That’s literally the easiest tense in the entire English language):

Emerald College, Oxbridge

Also worth noting here is

  1. It’s now 20 months since Diana left Themyscira
  2. Diana is fatalistic – she acknowledges that her story might not have a happy ending
  3. In the DC Universe, there is actually a place called Oxbridge in England.

Secondly, we learn a little more about Phobos and Deimos are up to:

Phobos and Deimos read a bedtime story

Sounds like after Ares was defeated by Diana and the gods, the gods imprisoned him under Themyscira. Now the dreadful duo want to rescue Ares from his prison so they can do nasty things to the world. But to do that, they have to know where Themyscira is.

Lastly, it’s actually the first issue where it’s possible to feel sorry for Veronica. Well, when you consider what’s happened to her daughter, which is actually heart-rending…

Peanut

…and what she ends up doing to people to get her daughter back…

Poor Veronica

As Diana says, attracting the gods’ attention isn’t a thing you want…

Disclaimer: Owing to the small fortune it would take to buy every single DC comic each week, this is not a guaranteed rundown of all the comics that feature Wonder Woman. If you know of any I’ve missed, email me or leave a comment below and I’ll cover them the following week

Author

  • Rob Buckley

    I’m Rob Buckley, a journalist who writes for UK media magazines that most people have never heard of although you might have heard me on the podcast Lockdown Land or Radio 5 Live’s Saturday Edition or Afternoon Edition. I’ve edited Dreamwatch, Sprocket and Cambridge Film Festival Daily; been technical editor for TV producers magazine Televisual; reviewed films for the short-lived newspaper Cambridge Insider; written features for the even shorter-lived newspaper Soho Independent; and was regularly sarcastic about television on the blink-and-you-missed-it “web site for urban hedonists” The Tribe. Since going freelance, I've contributed to the likes of Broadcast, Total Content + Media, Action TV, Off The Telly, Action Network, TV Scoop and The Custard TV.

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