If Disney's Beauty and The Beast taught me anything, it's that a lot of people WILL prefer the monster over the man (doesn't hurt that he looks like proto-Beast Boy)
I wish someone would write a silver age homage that has the title, Wonder Woman marries Lois Lane!!! or Wonder Woman marries A Lesbian!!! (Sarcastic gasp)
I had a similar premise for a sci-fi spoof that was supposed to be a heavily edited Italian film. The lead female character dumped her boring boyfriend to explore outer space. But throughout the journey her ex chases after her hoping to win her back. Intentionally he disguises himself in terrible alien costumes, but it fools her enough to get laid every time. You'd think she'd start to recognise the only body part he can't put a disguise on.
@@B.B.Digital_Forest I would really like to see that film. Many people reading this will be tittering over your reference to "the only body part he can't put a disguise on", but those people have clearly not seen the variety of novelty condoms on the market. No, obviously, the only part of his body which he would be completely unable to disguise but which he would ardently desire to expose to her would be...his tongue.
I'm reminded of people who hoped, while *_Crisis on Infinite Earths_* was being published, that post-Crisis Wonder Woman would simply have been around since the 1940s, and be the widow of a long-dead Steve Trevor.
When I read this issue, I also read the letters page, which had a letter from a 9 year old girl who claimed to have an IQ a few points short of genius level, and to have published a book of poetry, including a poem about Wonder Woman (who thanks her for the honor)! Out of curiosity, I googled her name from the letter, Mary Karr (it's not cyber-stalking if you have a web page and wikipedia entry!), and learned that that kid went on to become a famous and prolific poet and essayist who is a prof of eng lit to this day! While we can't give WW all the credit for her success, it's nice to know that she fulfilled her intended purpose as an inspiration for girls everywhere...
@@phonybeautrain6520 Mostly because they didn't want to bring down Superman... though fans often speculated this (and the much beloved Kingdom Come made it a reality as did other Elseworld's/not elseworlds).
@@GabePuratekuta Dini wasn't the only fan of WonderBat.. it was an often plugged idea and there was actually a run of JL after Morrison left that they started pursuing that.. and many people feel that's a perfect pairing as well.. forgetting that Bruce has dozens of female paramores and children with several.. Also a lot of this came about from Perez getting rid of Steve Trevor and leaving Diana with no love interest (one of the many missteps in his run that lead to a lot of issues for Diana that still exist to this day).
I wonder if they're aware that she saves a lot of other people as well, or are they like those people in streamer's chats who think that they're the only ones there?
@@HyattHyatt3179 They're definitely the people in streamers' chats that think they're controlling player 2 when said streamer personifies the character as them.
Kanigher's Wonder Woman is a trip. Especially when you realize he's the same guy who wrote all those intense Sgt. Rock war stories. He's clearly aiming for a younger audience here, and approaches the plots with a sort of "fairy tale" logic. But as you point out, he also includes a lot of mocking humor that makes it seem like he's contemptuous of the whole enterprise. He also had a somewhat prickly relationship with his audience; in a bizarre meta-fictional sequence in #158, he shows a mob of fans protesting outside his office. And yet, he stayed on the series for a couple of decades, so he must have been enjoying it on some level.
A lot of Kanigher stories are very stream of consciousness - a thing happened, then another thing happened, then another thing happened, oh we're running out of pages, the end. At times it feels like it was written by an AI from wish.
Agreed he held Wonder Woman's fanbase in contempt, given the dimissive patriarchal way he wrote the character...quite frankly I think the only thing that kept Wonder Woman going in the Silver Age, is the Andru-Esposito artwork.
Now there's a splendid thought: Wonder Woman and a company of Amazons going to war against an invading army of satyrs bent on conquering Paradise Island, told by Kanigher in the best Sergeant Rock style....
I was gonna say that Wonder woman in this issue feels like Lois Lane, but Lois would have probably try to marry all of them, including the mosnter to make Superman jealous
One of the things I find fascinating about this time period is how often Wonder Woman fights an evil doppleganger. Sometimes it's a robot. One time, it was a giant robot. But almost every other issue, Wonder Woman is fighting someone who looks like Wonder Woman. I put this down to the fact that Wonder Woman doesn't have great recurring enemies, but in this era, it always feels like she is her own worst enemy.
Between that and how many times she's shrunken. Off the top of my head: -The whole Atomia stuff that Sasha already discussed -Being shrunk for a robot flea circus -A comic called "The Shrinking Formula" (remade in the 70s with the infamous tweezers cover) -A story where she's shrunk and captured into a bottle -One where she willingly lets herself be shrunk to help some leprechaun friends -One where she forces a liquid onto herself to shrink and escape capture from Mouse Man -A Justice League comic where she and the league are shrunk into a subatomic universe, including a panel where they are ankle tall to The Atom And that's not counting comics where she is in giant worlds and such so she just appears tiny.
I can't believe Wonder Woman is Tentaclist. Sure, the fact that he'd kidnapped her or just that she doesn't want to are perfectly adequate reasons to turn down a proposal, but she had to go with "You've got too many arms"!
I find it interesting that Manno compares Steve to Don Juan. While Steve and Bird-Man are just dismissive of their.... "rivals", Manno just confidently goes "Yeah, Steve is hot.". And, let's not go to Paradise Island. 'Tis a silly place.
I love the sheer insanity of this era of comics. WW has gills suddenly? Sure. Inexplicable island falls from out of sky? Yeah why not. Random gryphon attack? That’s fine. The fact all the characters treat the madness like it’s normal makes it even better.
I lot of people compare the structure of Kanigher's Wonder Woman stories to that of a fairy tale. But I feel like the better comparison would be to old, cell animated cartoon shorts. These cartoons (like the original Bugs Bunny or Mickey Mouse cartoons) almost never had scripts. They didn't even really have storyboards in the modern sense. Instead, they had "gags." Gags were visual jokes lasting from 30 seconds to roughly two minutes. It could be something like "character slips on a bar of soap" or "character gets into a boxing match with his own jacket." The animators would come up with a premise, just as a way to direct these gags towards a specific theme, setting or concept. Then, anyone on the animation team could submit a gag. If a gag was particularly strong, but didn't get picked, they would often save it and use it in another short. This feels very much like how Kanigher writes a Wonder Woman story. He comes up with a couple of ideas for scenes (lassoing a bolt of lightning, fighting a Sphinx, fighting King Kong) and then contrives a story so that he can string together these disconnected moments. It's a style of writing that lends itself somewhat better to comedy than it does to more "straightforward" fantasy adventure stories like Wonder Woman. I think if he had played everything a bit more tongue-in-cheek then it would have worked better.
The story feels very much like a product of its time, as well as an attempt to fill in issue with a story that was just ready to go, and they just kinda like plugged wonder woman into it, because it was very little that was specific to her like the invisible jet. I mean, I can see where it’s kind of sweet that she would drop everything to help somebody when she just proved that she’s very antithetical to people coming onto her fairly strongly . Basically saying that she’s not opposed to the idea, but that everybody is going about it the wrong way, but then the monster needs to act like less of a dick. I don’t know. Love your videos, and I always look forward to seeing what kind of hair is going to be on display today, I really love it every time
Poor Steve Trevor can't catch a break. I think I'm in Steve's corner in the quest for Wonder Woman's affections. Why? Because he saw her first? Because he has a better pet name? Because writers are often horrible to Steve? Because he's not feathery or clammy? I don't know. He needs to work on that proposal though. In fact, they all do. Someone needs to start a "School of Courtship and Propositioning" and enroll them all tout suite. Loved the vid, your voices, your humor, your analysis ... all the things!
I seem to recall this story being revisited in one of the Sugar & Spike segments of the Legends of Tomorrow anthology book. Those segments featured the now-grown toddlers working as private investigators whose clients were all superheroes and their cases all involved some element from classic goofy Silver Age stories. (The Sugar & Spike segments were written by the late Keith Giffen, so of course they focused on Silver Age goofiness.)
Mannos the tentacles of fate lol. I was honestly waiting for Louis to manifest herself there when the monster turned handsome going " cursed handsome man you say? Don't mind if I do!"
At first, going in, I thought this was going to be a story where Wonder Woman is surrounded by guys who look good on the outside (when they haven't turned into large mollusks ) but are terrible on the inside. Then, we would get a guy who looks horrible on the outside but is good on the inside, even if it was run at the speed of a hummingbird on a a caffeine high. Then, it turns out the monster has self-loathing issues. OK, that can still work. . . . Except . . . it turned into not respecting boundaries and trying to fix a broken person and still manages to end on a note of looks mattering more than inner qualities. Points for Hippolyta being a fanfic writer and Wonder Woman inviting the guys she wants to understand she's not going to marry them to the wedding, where they still don't get it. Also, I liked the completely random sphinx. We need more completely random monster attacks with no back story, tragic or otherwise.
3:05 no wonder everyone in the letters wanted Steve Trevor dead! 😂 He was awful, arrogant and entitled! The behavior of all three of her love interests in this book is so creepy and borders on sexual harassment. On a less serious note: Ah yes! Nothing says “true love” like not hitting someone, but not hard enough to kill them!
The Silver Age apparently didn't treat our Diana well. Also noticed the title was something out of a 50s B-Movie. "I Married A Teenage Monster" or something.
Wow, I can see why people would hate this. This feels like it should have turned out to be a dream or hallucination. Maybe a play on the BTAS "Perchance to Dream", where the villain keeps trying to make Wonder Woman fall in love and be happy, which is why all the love interests have Steve's face. That would also explain Wondergirl and Wonder-Tot being there. There's the gem of an idea here, especially playing with ideas of forced social norms vs Wonder Woman's radical feminism.
Birdman and Manno the Merman surely have more appearances if you count their younger selves, where they were romantic interests of Wonder Girl (Wonder Woman as a girl), not Wonder Woman, and thus were not meant as rivals to Steve Trevor. If I remember correctly, Merboy and Birdboy were the first versions of these two love interests and they encountered Wonder Girl a few times and then were later used in grown up Wonder Woman stories later.
@@LinguarumFautor Well, my headcanon approach to them if I could reboot Wonder Woman would be for Merboy to actually be young Aquaman and Birdboy to be a young Hawkman (visiting Earth with his father, whose spaceship is up in the clouds). Then, Wonder Woman would have a unique connection to those Justice League members which improves on her usual connection to none of the League members (except when they try to force that "Trinity" idea). Superman & Batman are friends. Flash and GL are friends. GL and GA have a connection. GA and Hawkman have conflict. But usually, Wonder Woman is... just there. This idea would give her some character moments in JLA scenes.
I’ve been doing a lot of research and I find it super fascinating how obsessed DC is with the solar system planets and their respective kingdoms in the golden age, especially in Wonder Woman. The Jovian metal creatures, Desira, Celerita, Ceezahr Kaan of Pluto, King Ulala of Uranus, and the Moon Beast are all examples
I had this cover in a really good Wonder Woman classic covers calendar and got to enjoy looking at it for a whole month. Yes, this cover does "make the rounds." Fun to actually know da tale. Thank you, o' keeper of the lore.😁
So all of this feels like a crazy valentine's day episode of a sitcom that the main character will wake up in the end and say:"thank god it was just a dream". In this case"thank Hera". I prefer to remember Diana for the plane she flew than this 😅
Silver age Wonder Woman and Kanigher lead to Wonder Woman being treated as a property no one wanted to write and is why Diana, to this day, still has no really strong direction, cast, or city of her own.. The sad thing is too.. Robert Kanigher could really write. He was a fantastic writer. He just.. clearly didn't give a rats ass about Wonder Woman (which to be fair, he was assigned Wonder Woman and that became a trend.. of writers being FORCED to take Wonder Woman, not openly wanting to write her).
Donna Troy: "I cannot believe you almost married that monstruos creature, sister!" Diana: "Yeah...At least it wasn't Terry Long, anyway..." Donna Troy: "Yeah..."
It seems like consenting & mutually respectful relationships in comics weren't invented until the mid 1980's, and weren't widely implemented until the early 2010's. At least that's my take on history. 😜
Read Elongated Man. Ralph Dibney and his wife Sue had a good relationship back in the 1960s, based on the Thin Man movies, I believe. Of course in the 90's DC murdered Sue to give Batman angst in a mini series.
The Comic Code wanted the comics to be more about family values... Even thought I don't see how having every women having like a hundred failled weddings is supposed to teach 60s family values...
If you told me this was written by King I wouldn't be surprised. He Tries so hard to do well, only to come up short, for me. His love for the classics often doesn't translate through my filter. Gotham year one was a good example of this. He loves the pulp, but he doesn't modernise it well. It's really more.of a regurgitation. But to each their own.
I wonder if this was the inspiration for Bird-Person, LOL! Also, nice to know this was around the time DC editorial just kinda forgot that Wonder Tot and Wonder Girl ARE Wonder Woman at younger times in her life, which is how WG ended up joined the Teen Titans...So that worked out well in the long run!
Not so much DC editorial as Kanigher himself. Initially he would give this ridiculous rationale about splicing together film of wonder woman at different ages in order to make them appear to be together in a story, but after a while he forgot and just had them interacting normally. In fact by the time Teen Titans was created Wonder Girl and wonder tot had been officially retconned away from wonder woman completely. They were literally fired from the book by Kanigher himself *in the comic* because he wanted to revamp it into a more golden age style. DC editorial should have been coordinating the usage of characters from one series in another, so they definitely dropped the ball there, but Kanigher was editor of wonder woman's comic as well as the writer, so he still gets a lot of the blame.
Back in the 1970's there was a fanzine writer, Carol A. Strickland, who published print fanzines, this was pre-internet about Wonder Woman and also would write about other female heroes, I also recall her writing about the Legion of Superheroes which was considered DC's version of the X-Men at the time. I remember her writing fan fiction about the WW family even giving Wonder Girl and Wonder Tot names.
The whole Kanigher era is rough. There are some great ideas but most of them never get fully developed. And while it wasn't common for Silver Age comics to go that deep if you look at Batman & Superman comics from the same era there is definitely strong storytelling around villains and supporting cast. This always struck me as a "Written for the Cover" story where they had the cover and had to construct a story around it. Have you discovered Mouse Man yet? One of her most boring yet full of potential villains from this era -- unlike the Angle Man who is so dull that I forget he was a Silver Age villain.
The kookiness of Wonder Woman #155 could've easily been explained as a concussion dream of Steve Trevor, but instead Robert Kanigher opted to end it with zero resolution.
To go by those stars round Steve's head he probably had a concussion from the desk incident. If they reprinted this one it would say at the front 'contains fishist, birdist and drylandist dialogue. Which happened at the time but is represented here...' etc.
You think that she would marry him just to teach the other three guys a lesson about their behavior and make them see their mistakes. They would apologize and she would call off the the wedding which would make the monster angry and attack, which would prompt the three guys to work together to subdue him. They then hit it off as friends and decide to go have a beer together completely forgetting about Wonder Woman who simply looks to the viewers and says the infamous line..."Men." Oh and as for the monster, his real bride shows up. Apparently she had a problem with her dress and needed to get it fixed which calms the monster, they get married with Wonder Woman being the brides maid...The End. But maybe I'm over thinking it.
Some have mentioned that this is around the time period where the Wonder Girl stories go from being "imaginary" to real. They flopped around between the "younger version of Wonder Woman" and "Donna Troy" so much it's impossible to tell where Wonder Girl really truly began.
I think it's funny how you pointed out that we should just leave this monster man alone, cause it does kinda illustrate how these stories don't even benefit men in their weird sexism. No one should replicate anyone's actions in like this entire issue, all of them are kinda disrespecting each other's boundaries. Which I guess is what can make it bemusing in a way.
One of the best CC episodes! Lmao Sasha's comments and voice overs are great. Lol. So Diana does not care about a man's lower half? Favorite Sasha Quotes: "Mano has seen too much henti, and so have I." "Don't do anything that Steve or Mano or Birdman or the eventual Monster do" (Me: "Can't change what has already happened☺️")
"It shouldn't be erased". Are we sure about that? Why are all the men she knows so "frisky" all of a sudden? How did her mom just piece together what happened to the monster? I'm ugly and grumpy. Why don't a island of beautiful women try to cheer ME up? Where the hell did that sphinx come from? How long did Wonder Woman feed him? Did he move or is he still next door? This is going to haunt me.
I looked through your past videos, but couldn't find out whether you have read and reviewed The Brave and the Bold # 63, a team-up FROM this era (The Wonder Fam is in it briefly) with Wonder Woman teaming with Supergirl. It's cheesy, but fun.
So is the intent of the comic supposed to have all the characters come off like sexist creeps or is this just supposed to be normal and its Wonder Woman who is meant to be perceived as playing hard to get, I honestly can't tell.
After watching this and the video about the Lois Lane "imaginary story" comics, I can't help but think of _Betty and Veronica_ and how they want to get Archie as their boyfriend, but someone said Archie doesn't really want either of them!
I feel like you could do an interesting nod to this using Wonder Girl and Beast Boy and maybe Hawk Man, Aqua Man, and some other non-super guy to stand in for Trevor.
Loved this issue im still awaiting her battle with batgirl over batman in brave and bold 78 hint hint but love the manno and birdman deep delve love to silver age goodness ❤ 😊 btw love a deep delve on that bob haney accidentally took wonder girl out of wonder woman issues and made her a separate entity in showcase 60 and in the teen titans Donna troy was introduced
Do you think the monster ever became a "dreamboat" again?
If Disney's Beauty and The Beast taught me anything, it's that a lot of people WILL prefer the monster over the man (doesn't hurt that he looks like proto-Beast Boy)
Lol I remember thinking Belle looked disappointed at that reveal as a child.
I wish someone would write a silver age homage that has the title, Wonder Woman marries Lois Lane!!! or Wonder Woman marries A Lesbian!!! (Sarcastic gasp)
....no, destined to rock the "mustard greens afro" forever!!!!!
Super hero therapy ! There's something in there, something very meta, going through their trauma ...
If you told me Steve Trevor, Manno, and Birdman were all the same person transformed through Silver Age machinations I would have believed you
And that would have been an interesting idea for that character.
They are all Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen.
I'm agreeing very loudly.
I had a similar premise for a sci-fi spoof that was supposed to be a heavily edited Italian film. The lead female character dumped her boring boyfriend to explore outer space. But throughout the journey her ex chases after her hoping to win her back. Intentionally he disguises himself in terrible alien costumes, but it fools her enough to get laid every time. You'd think she'd start to recognise the only body part he can't put a disguise on.
@@B.B.Digital_Forest I would really like to see that film.
Many people reading this will be tittering over your reference to "the only body part he can't put a disguise on", but those people have clearly not seen the variety of novelty condoms on the market.
No, obviously, the only part of his body which he would be completely unable to disguise but which he would ardently desire to expose to her would be...his tongue.
You just have to admire the shade of Wonder Woman inviting her would-be suitors to her wedding, and them hitting back by attending the wedding naked.
"Before you're an old maid"
"Steve, i'm 2,000 years old."
“Well, before you look like one then” -Steve probably
@@HatosukeWataridori It reads a bit like those old anti suffragette posters where women would just ruin everything for no reason.
I'm reminded of people who hoped, while *_Crisis on Infinite Earths_* was being published, that post-Crisis Wonder Woman would simply have been around since the 1940s, and be the widow of a long-dead Steve Trevor.
When I read this issue, I also read the letters page, which had a letter from a 9 year old girl who claimed to have an IQ a few points short of genius level, and to have published a book of poetry, including a poem about Wonder Woman (who thanks her for the honor)! Out of curiosity, I googled her name from the letter, Mary Karr (it's not cyber-stalking if you have a web page and wikipedia entry!), and learned that that kid went on to become a famous and prolific poet and essayist who is a prof of eng lit to this day! While we can't give WW all the credit for her success, it's nice to know that she fulfilled her intended purpose as an inspiration for girls everywhere...
It's a good thing she had a high IQ with points to spare because this issue probably tipped a lot of children into the moron section of the scale.
That's some fun trivia!
Good for her.
I'm glad the issue featured one person I don't hate! 🤣
Now I'm looking up Mary Karr. If I can find that poem she wrote, I will share it with my poetry group.
"Wonder Woman Marries A Monster."
So silver age superman.
At least the Silver Age was kind enough to spare us from SupesXWondie that was somehow the style at the time of the 52 era...
@@phonybeautrain6520 Or Paul Dini's "Wonderbat".
Pretty much.. at this era, Kanigher was basically just copying what was done in Superman.
@@phonybeautrain6520 Mostly because they didn't want to bring down Superman... though fans often speculated this (and the much beloved Kingdom Come made it a reality as did other Elseworld's/not elseworlds).
@@GabePuratekuta Dini wasn't the only fan of WonderBat.. it was an often plugged idea and there was actually a run of JL after Morrison left that they started pursuing that.. and many people feel that's a perfect pairing as well.. forgetting that Bruce has dozens of female paramores and children with several..
Also a lot of this came about from Perez getting rid of Steve Trevor and leaving Diana with no love interest (one of the many missteps in his run that lead to a lot of issues for Diana that still exist to this day).
I’m starting to see why the Amazon’s hate the men of this universe
Too much simping.
I love how "Wonder Woman saved me/didn't kill me" equals "She loves me" who can argue against that logic? 🤣
I wonder if they're aware that she saves a lot of other people as well, or are they like those people in streamer's chats who think that they're the only ones there?
@@HyattHyatt3179 They're definitely the people in streamers' chats that think they're controlling player 2 when said streamer personifies the character as them.
Kanigher's Wonder Woman is a trip. Especially when you realize he's the same guy who wrote all those intense Sgt. Rock war stories. He's clearly aiming for a younger audience here, and approaches the plots with a sort of "fairy tale" logic. But as you point out, he also includes a lot of mocking humor that makes it seem like he's contemptuous of the whole enterprise. He also had a somewhat prickly relationship with his audience; in a bizarre meta-fictional sequence in #158, he shows a mob of fans protesting outside his office. And yet, he stayed on the series for a couple of decades, so he must have been enjoying it on some level.
A lot of Kanigher stories are very stream of consciousness - a thing happened, then another thing happened, then another thing happened, oh we're running out of pages, the end. At times it feels like it was written by an AI from wish.
Agreed he held Wonder Woman's fanbase in contempt, given the dimissive patriarchal way he wrote the character...quite frankly I think the only thing that kept Wonder Woman going in the Silver Age, is the Andru-Esposito artwork.
Now there's a splendid thought: Wonder Woman and a company of Amazons going to war against an invading army of satyrs bent on conquering Paradise Island, told by Kanigher in the best Sergeant Rock style....
I can see why the Amazons all decided to live in an island, holy hell
I was gonna say that Wonder woman in this issue feels like Lois Lane, but Lois would have probably try to marry all of them, including the mosnter to make Superman jealous
Lois and Diana should just marry each other. It's the one thing they haven't tried yet.
One of the things I find fascinating about this time period is how often Wonder Woman fights an evil doppleganger. Sometimes it's a robot. One time, it was a giant robot. But almost every other issue, Wonder Woman is fighting someone who looks like Wonder Woman. I put this down to the fact that Wonder Woman doesn't have great recurring enemies, but in this era, it always feels like she is her own worst enemy.
Between that and how many times she's shrunken. Off the top of my head:
-The whole Atomia stuff that Sasha already discussed
-Being shrunk for a robot flea circus
-A comic called "The Shrinking Formula" (remade in the 70s with the infamous tweezers cover)
-A story where she's shrunk and captured into a bottle
-One where she willingly lets herself be shrunk to help some leprechaun friends
-One where she forces a liquid onto herself to shrink and escape capture from Mouse Man
-A Justice League comic where she and the league are shrunk into a subatomic universe, including a panel where they are ankle tall to The Atom
And that's not counting comics where she is in giant worlds and such so she just appears tiny.
In order to have a great enemy, one has to be well-defined. PLus, back in the day, Diana actually reformed some enemies.
There was a period in the Post-Crisis era where her female adversaries wanted to be here or surpass her.
Why does this sound like some Totally Spies fetish thing
@@mechashadow I mean, have you SEEN a lot of the early days stuff with Wonder Woman?
I can't believe Wonder Woman is Tentaclist. Sure, the fact that he'd kidnapped her or just that she doesn't want to are perfectly adequate reasons to turn down a proposal, but she had to go with "You've got too many arms"!
She should've married Amoeba Man!
"Mom can we get Steve Trevor?"
"No we have Steve Trevor at home."
The Steve Trevor at home.
The dual hypocrisy from this comic could've been seen as a theme, but I don't think that was never the author's intentions.
I find it interesting that Manno compares Steve to Don Juan. While Steve and Bird-Man are just dismissive of their.... "rivals", Manno just confidently goes "Yeah, Steve is hot.".
And, let's not go to Paradise Island. 'Tis a silly place.
Maybe Manno should start courting Steve instead...
Lol Steve can do better than Manno
Wonder Woman seems like an empty vessel? Well, she is made out of clay. (I guess "Wonder Homunculus" just doesn't have that alliterative zing)
I imagine that in the main Silver Age continuity, there was no falling castle so she successfully took the vacation.
I love the sheer insanity of this era of comics. WW has gills suddenly? Sure. Inexplicable island falls from out of sky? Yeah why not. Random gryphon attack? That’s fine. The fact all the characters treat the madness like it’s normal makes it even better.
Ah yes Tom King being petty for the sake of being petty while also flexing hes “in the know” what a surprise
I lot of people compare the structure of Kanigher's Wonder Woman stories to that of a fairy tale. But I feel like the better comparison would be to old, cell animated cartoon shorts. These cartoons (like the original Bugs Bunny or Mickey Mouse cartoons) almost never had scripts. They didn't even really have storyboards in the modern sense. Instead, they had "gags." Gags were visual jokes lasting from 30 seconds to roughly two minutes. It could be something like "character slips on a bar of soap" or "character gets into a boxing match with his own jacket." The animators would come up with a premise, just as a way to direct these gags towards a specific theme, setting or concept. Then, anyone on the animation team could submit a gag. If a gag was particularly strong, but didn't get picked, they would often save it and use it in another short.
This feels very much like how Kanigher writes a Wonder Woman story. He comes up with a couple of ideas for scenes (lassoing a bolt of lightning, fighting a Sphinx, fighting King Kong) and then contrives a story so that he can string together these disconnected moments. It's a style of writing that lends itself somewhat better to comedy than it does to more "straightforward" fantasy adventure stories like Wonder Woman. I think if he had played everything a bit more tongue-in-cheek then it would have worked better.
Oh god, Lois is spreading.
Phrasing...
@@uranuslad9855get you mind out the garter
Goodnight everybody!
The story feels very much like a product of its time, as well as an attempt to fill in issue with a story that was just ready to go, and they just kinda like plugged wonder woman into it, because it was very little that was specific to her like the invisible jet.
I mean, I can see where it’s kind of sweet that she would drop everything to help somebody when she just proved that she’s very antithetical to people coming onto her fairly strongly . Basically saying that she’s not opposed to the idea, but that everybody is going about it the wrong way, but then the monster needs to act like less of a dick. I don’t know.
Love your videos, and I always look forward to seeing what kind of hair is going to be on display today, I really love it every time
Poor Steve Trevor can't catch a break. I think I'm in Steve's corner in the quest for Wonder Woman's affections. Why? Because he saw her first? Because he has a better pet name? Because writers are often horrible to Steve? Because he's not feathery or clammy? I don't know. He needs to work on that proposal though. In fact, they all do. Someone needs to start a "School of Courtship and Propositioning" and enroll them all tout suite. Loved the vid, your voices, your humor, your analysis ... all the things!
He looks like a mix between a Skrull and the Broccoli aliens Dark Phoenix killed.
I seem to recall this story being revisited in one of the Sugar & Spike segments of the Legends of Tomorrow anthology book. Those segments featured the now-grown toddlers working as private investigators whose clients were all superheroes and their cases all involved some element from classic goofy Silver Age stories. (The Sugar & Spike segments were written by the late Keith Giffen, so of course they focused on Silver Age goofiness.)
You're talking in this video to us. You must want to . . . MARRY ALL OF US! derp-da-derp.
Mannos the tentacles of fate lol. I was honestly waiting for Louis to manifest herself there when the monster turned handsome going " cursed handsome man you say? Don't mind if I do!"
This story felt like a fever dream
At first, going in, I thought this was going to be a story where Wonder Woman is surrounded by guys who look good on the outside (when they haven't turned into large mollusks ) but are terrible on the inside. Then, we would get a guy who looks horrible on the outside but is good on the inside, even if it was run at the speed of a hummingbird on a a caffeine high.
Then, it turns out the monster has self-loathing issues. OK, that can still work. . . .
Except . . . it turned into not respecting boundaries and trying to fix a broken person and still manages to end on a note of looks mattering more than inner qualities.
Points for Hippolyta being a fanfic writer and Wonder Woman inviting the guys she wants to understand she's not going to marry them to the wedding, where they still don't get it. Also, I liked the completely random sphinx. We need more completely random monster attacks with no back story, tragic or otherwise.
3:05 no wonder everyone in the letters wanted Steve Trevor dead! 😂 He was awful, arrogant and entitled! The behavior of all three of her love interests in this book is so creepy and borders on sexual harassment.
On a less serious note: Ah yes! Nothing says “true love” like not hitting someone, but not hard enough to kill them!
The Silver Age apparently didn't treat our Diana well. Also noticed the title was something out of a 50s B-Movie. "I Married A Teenage Monster" or something.
Wow, I can see why people would hate this. This feels like it should have turned out to be a dream or hallucination. Maybe a play on the BTAS "Perchance to Dream", where the villain keeps trying to make Wonder Woman fall in love and be happy, which is why all the love interests have Steve's face. That would also explain Wondergirl and Wonder-Tot being there.
There's the gem of an idea here, especially playing with ideas of forced social norms vs Wonder Woman's radical feminism.
Birdman and Manno the Merman surely have more appearances if you count their younger selves, where they were romantic interests of Wonder Girl (Wonder Woman as a girl), not Wonder Woman, and thus were not meant as rivals to Steve Trevor. If I remember correctly, Merboy and Birdboy were the first versions of these two love interests and they encountered Wonder Girl a few times and then were later used in grown up Wonder Woman stories later.
Oh god, They have simped for her for that long !?
I thought Merboy’s name was Jerro, not Manno.
An update could use Merman and Birdman’s peoples as other mythic nations near Paradise Island.
There's more than one merboy lol it's a mess
@@LinguarumFautor Well, my headcanon approach to them if I could reboot Wonder Woman would be for Merboy to actually be young Aquaman and Birdboy to be a young Hawkman (visiting Earth with his father, whose spaceship is up in the clouds). Then, Wonder Woman would have a unique connection to those Justice League members which improves on her usual connection to none of the League members (except when they try to force that "Trinity" idea). Superman & Batman are friends. Flash and GL are friends. GL and GA have a connection. GA and Hawkman have conflict. But usually, Wonder Woman is... just there. This idea would give her some character moments in JLA scenes.
You mean that Wonder Woman dated the internet content created Birdman?
Out of all the weird, insane silver age stories I've seen and read, this is the weirdest and most insane!
I’ve been doing a lot of research and I find it super fascinating how obsessed DC is with the solar system planets and their respective kingdoms in the golden age, especially in Wonder Woman. The Jovian metal creatures, Desira, Celerita, Ceezahr Kaan of Pluto, King Ulala of Uranus, and the Moon Beast are all examples
I had this cover in a really good Wonder Woman classic covers calendar and got to enjoy looking at it for a whole month. Yes, this cover does "make the rounds." Fun to actually know da tale. Thank you, o' keeper of the lore.😁
So all of this feels like a crazy valentine's day episode of a sitcom that the main character will wake up in the end and say:"thank god it was just a dream". In this case"thank Hera". I prefer to remember Diana for the plane she flew than this 😅
Surprised Lois Lane didn't marry that guy before Wonder Woman.😂
She was probably busy marrying someone else..!
Hypolota's Wonder Woman fanfiction addiction is really bad in this, making up that backstory for the prince
Silver age Wonder Woman and Kanigher lead to Wonder Woman being treated as a property no one wanted to write and is why Diana, to this day, still has no really strong direction, cast, or city of her own..
The sad thing is too.. Robert Kanigher could really write. He was a fantastic writer. He just.. clearly didn't give a rats ass about Wonder Woman (which to be fair, he was assigned Wonder Woman and that became a trend.. of writers being FORCED to take Wonder Woman, not openly wanting to write her).
Donna Troy: "I cannot believe you almost married that monstruos creature, sister!"
Diana: "Yeah...At least it wasn't Terry Long, anyway..."
Donna Troy: "Yeah..."
Major league "ouch"
It seems like consenting & mutually respectful relationships in comics weren't invented until the mid 1980's, and weren't widely implemented until the early 2010's. At least that's my take on history. 😜
Read Elongated Man. Ralph Dibney and his wife Sue had a good relationship back in the 1960s, based on the Thin Man movies, I believe. Of course in the 90's DC murdered Sue to give Batman angst in a mini series.
What the hell was the Silver Age's obsession with marriage?!
The Comic code gave everyone a case of the "not-gays".
@@samuelterry6354 F**king prudes, man..
The Comic Code wanted the comics to be more about family values...
Even thought I don't see how having every women having like a hundred failled weddings is supposed to teach 60s family values...
they had to show the end resualt of comic code approved hertrosexuality
@@robertmccarthy2254 To be fair, Heterosexuality seems a lot more fun in those comics... You get to meet so many weirds people
If you told me this was written by King I wouldn't be surprised.
He Tries so hard to do well, only to come up short, for me. His love for the classics often doesn't translate through my filter. Gotham year one was a good example of this. He loves the pulp, but he doesn't modernise it well. It's really more.of a regurgitation.
But to each their own.
I wonder if this was the inspiration for Bird-Person, LOL! Also, nice to know this was around the time DC editorial just kinda forgot that Wonder Tot and Wonder Girl ARE Wonder Woman at younger times in her life, which is how WG ended up joined the Teen Titans...So that worked out well in the long run!
Not so much DC editorial as Kanigher himself. Initially he would give this ridiculous rationale about splicing together film of wonder woman at different ages in order to make them appear to be together in a story, but after a while he forgot and just had them interacting normally. In fact by the time Teen Titans was created Wonder Girl and wonder tot had been officially retconned away from wonder woman completely. They were literally fired from the book by Kanigher himself *in the comic* because he wanted to revamp it into a more golden age style.
DC editorial should have been coordinating the usage of characters from one series in another, so they definitely dropped the ball there, but Kanigher was editor of wonder woman's comic as well as the writer, so he still gets a lot of the blame.
I haven't laughed so hard at one of these comics in a while. This is perfect silver age unintentional comedy
Back in the 1970's there was a fanzine writer, Carol A. Strickland, who published print fanzines, this was pre-internet about Wonder Woman and also would write about other female heroes, I also recall her writing about the Legion of Superheroes which was considered DC's version of the X-Men at the time. I remember her writing fan fiction about the WW family even giving Wonder Girl and Wonder Tot names.
The whole Kanigher era is rough. There are some great ideas but most of them never get fully developed. And while it wasn't common for Silver Age comics to go that deep if you look at Batman & Superman comics from the same era there is definitely strong storytelling around villains and supporting cast. This always struck me as a "Written for the Cover" story where they had the cover and had to construct a story around it. Have you discovered Mouse Man yet? One of her most boring yet full of potential villains from this era -- unlike the Angle Man who is so dull that I forget he was a Silver Age villain.
This is hilarious! Bird man's got chicken legs. Craig the Broccoli man works.
Bro got lost on his way to a Doom Patrol book and was upset he couldn't foster Beast Boy
The kookiness of Wonder Woman #155 could've easily been explained as a concussion dream of Steve Trevor, but instead Robert Kanigher opted to end it with zero resolution.
To go by those stars round Steve's head he probably had a concussion from the desk incident.
If they reprinted this one it would say at the front 'contains fishist, birdist and drylandist dialogue. Which happened at the time but is represented here...' etc.
damn straight!
Got a good one to cover. Batman/Santa Claus Silent Knight. A 4 issue mini series where Batman and Santa team up against Krampus.
Did the monster have a previous run in with Lois “handsome?” Lane? Cause that would explain a few thing?
Now I'm wondering why we never got a Guillemo del Toro directed Wonder Woman movie.
You think that she would marry him just to teach the other three guys a lesson about their behavior and make them see their mistakes. They would apologize and she would call off the the wedding which would make the monster angry and attack, which would prompt the three guys to work together to subdue him. They then hit it off as friends and decide to go have a beer together completely forgetting about Wonder Woman who simply looks to the viewers and says the infamous line..."Men." Oh and as for the monster, his real bride shows up. Apparently she had a problem with her dress and needed to get it fixed which calms the monster, they get married with Wonder Woman being the brides maid...The End. But maybe I'm over thinking it.
Wonder Tot sounds like a frozen potato snack
So Superman and Wonder Woman both got Silver Age merperson love interests? Where's Batman's aquatic girlfriend then?
Wonder Woman would probably be happier with Comet
Wow! Lassoing lightening is in continuity! I take back some of the insults I hurled at WW1984.
Some have mentioned that this is around the time period where the Wonder Girl stories go from being "imaginary" to real. They flopped around between the "younger version of Wonder Woman" and "Donna Troy" so much it's impossible to tell where Wonder Girl really truly began.
Ahh what a sweet story, the lesson at the end is especially great; when men treat you horribly, just make better food for them woman! 😤
i hate it -but i love when you retell it o us and do the different voices, i never get tired of that hahaha
I love these (including Lois' marriages) in a "so bad they're good" kind of way..! They're just so over the top!
I knew a lady who had a bumper sticker that said, "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach... AND UP."
He looks like Beast Boy’s evil cousin or something.
Wonder Woman and the Monster Prince make a Lovely Couple; Don't you think so too Sasha?
Name for a green skinned monster 🤔💡Bruce Banner !!! Keep Up The Outstanding Work Sasha 🖖🏾
LOL always love your takes on these comics
Now I'm not saying Kyle Rayner is the best fit to marry Wonder Woman, I'm just saying I've never seen a refrigerator on Paradise Island
I think it's funny how you pointed out that we should just leave this monster man alone, cause it does kinda illustrate how these stories don't even benefit men in their weird sexism. No one should replicate anyone's actions in like this entire issue, all of them are kinda disrespecting each other's boundaries. Which I guess is what can make it bemusing in a way.
One of the best CC episodes! Lmao
Sasha's comments and voice overs are great. Lol.
So Diana does not care about a man's lower half?
Favorite Sasha Quotes: "Mano has seen too much henti, and so have I."
"Don't do anything that Steve or Mano or Birdman or the eventual Monster do" (Me: "Can't change what has already happened☺️")
"It shouldn't be erased". Are we sure about that? Why are all the men she knows so "frisky" all of a sudden? How did her mom just piece together what happened to the monster? I'm ugly and grumpy. Why don't a island of beautiful women try to cheer ME up? Where the hell did that sphinx come from? How long did Wonder Woman feed him? Did he move or is he still next door? This is going to haunt me.
"Wonder Woman falls for a Redditor"
He's too skinny to be one imo
My head canon is that Wonder Woman secretly had her own extra dimensional being messing with her like Superman and Batman both have.
I looked through your past videos, but couldn't find out whether you have read and reviewed The Brave and the Bold # 63, a team-up FROM this era (The Wonder Fam is in it briefly) with Wonder Woman teaming with Supergirl. It's cheesy, but fun.
Just let Diana be with Cheetah and be happy.
I second this a thousand percent.
6:40 Hokusai is drawing hard in that corner.
HEY IT'S MR MONSTER also wonder woman is made of zeus and in greek mythology it doesn't matter if your a monster only how your diet is
What drugs was Robert Kanigher on when he wrote these comics?
Yes.
And where can I get them? Dayum.
The writing from that WW era isn’t necessarily my fav but DAMN Andru’s art always knocks it out of the park.
I remember seeing this in a the all new Batman and the brave and the bold comic issue 16 ‘love at first mite’ story
Please do an episode on Wonder Tot and other little kid variations of characters.
So is the intent of the comic supposed to have all the characters come off like sexist creeps or is this just supposed to be normal and its Wonder Woman who is meant to be perceived as playing hard to get, I honestly can't tell.
Suffering Sappho lol why isn't that her version of Superman going Great Rao! I love it so much
After watching this and the video about the Lois Lane "imaginary story" comics, I can't help but think of _Betty and Veronica_ and how they want to get Archie as their boyfriend, but someone said Archie doesn't really want either of them!
Some real Pepe LePew energy.
I was really hoping it would have ended with it turning out that Cupid was actually making everyone crazy.
This came back in the Sugar And Spike Investigators comic miniseries.
Someone get james gunn on the phone we have found our wonder woman movie !!!!!
The thing I miss most about this era of WW is the exclamations. When was the last time she shouted "Suffering Sappho"?
How about reviewing one of the Wonder Woman vs Supergirl battles? Perhaps Wonder Woman #177?
Manno looks the most desperate.
I love Sasha's take on these old tales and their social mores.
If you didn’t have to jump off a cliff knowing you could die, no one could match Lois.
Well, this... is a... story...? At least it had blonde Hippolyta.
Wow, they even say she was minding her own business... 🤣 "Suffering Sappho!" indeed.
I feel like you could do an interesting nod to this using Wonder Girl and Beast Boy and maybe Hawk Man, Aqua Man, and some other non-super guy to stand in for Trevor.
Loved this issue im still awaiting her battle with batgirl over batman in brave and bold 78 hint hint but love the manno and birdman deep delve love to silver age goodness ❤ 😊 btw love a deep delve on that bob haney accidentally took wonder girl out of wonder woman issues and made her a separate entity in showcase 60 and in the teen titans Donna troy was introduced