On this episode of Peace Bound and Down: A Wonder Woman Podcast, Sean is joined by David Gallaher, author of The Only Living Boy and The Only Living Girl, to discuss Wonder Woman Vol. 2, issue 21! The gods are ready to leave this world behind and need Diana’s help to do it. How will the Amazons react to being cut loose from their gods? How will Diana react to being asked to destroy Mt. Olympus?
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Bringing a little peace to man’s world each month.
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Another show, hurrah!
I liked the illustration of what Comic Time is like for us, when David said ‘a couple of years ago I worked on Convergence GL Corps’ – that was published in 2015. Such an underrated event.
Regarding Wonder Woman #21, it was presented as an important issue, but really, the Greek gods’ departure had little impact on the rest of the DC Universe. It was useful in showing Diana what a useless bunch the vast majority of the the gods were, with even the female patrons admitting they had neglected Diana’ and her sisters. If they had any sense, rather than abandon the few worshippers they still have the gods should have decamped around Pat’s World, built mini-Olympuses and gathered a few million suckers to boost their power and… who knows?
Don’t tell anyone, but I actually felt for young Vanessa this issue – she has been through a hell of a lot since Diana came into her life, and it was touching how worried about her friend she was after Mindi died.
Do you think it took John Costanza as long to letter this issue as it did George Perez and Bob McLeod to draw it? Soooooo may words.
As regards a secret question, one world ending that touched me was that in the 5YL Legion of Super-Heroes #38 – remember, an ecological chain reaction was destroying the world and we followed efforts to save as many lives as possible. Rather than a single big bang we got a lyrical meditation on the slow, inevitable death of our world.
I was interested in hearing David talk about Marvel having a bit of a rule while he was there of having a downtime story every six issues after a big arc. I’m surprised, I never noticed that as a general line-wide thing. I much prefer having moments of character throughout a big storyline, rather than action all the way for five or six issues, then 20 pages of skating and baseball. I mean, I love Day in the Life issues, but only occasionally, character moments should be constant, and action stories can be single-issues too.
Also, I thought the nation readers cycle out after five years – I know David said three – died about 1975 when kids like us just wouldn’t damn well go away.
I was wondering why David seemed so keen to bring Green Lantern Arisia into the realm of Wonder Woman, but I did some Googling and found some character from a telly cartoon with a similar name.
And still on matters Legion, nope Sean, the Tenzil spotlights are in the same place in the Omnibus as they were in the original series.
Here’s my secret question;
Let’s say you could get some art featuring Wonder Woman character but artist doing mainly does pro wrestling related art Wonder Woman is new for him so he needs you to choose a pro wrestler to stand beside that character.
Example: silver swan and cm punk running at viewer ,
Or Wonder Woman being teamed up with
Hercules from the wwf aka WWE standing back to back .
I was a little underwhelmed by this issue, but after this episode, I began to think about it in a different light. The notion of someone being or feeling disconnected from the object of their faith is intriguing. It can be quite disorienting, I’m sure. This is still not my favorite story in this run, but I can see that there is a little more there than I first thought.
As far as affecting comic book deaths, I will mention to X-Men family characters. I’ve mentioned before that I was/am a big fan of Doug Ramsey. Oh how I hated his death back in the original New Mutants series. When I met Louise Simonson at a convention years later, I think I startled her by saying, “So I finally meet the person who killed one of my favorite characters!” I quickly reassured her that I had gotten over it. Maybe, some day, I’ll get her to sign that issue “To Super Captain, Sorry not sorry. Louise Simonson.”
The other mutant is Colossus. He sacrificed himself to activate the cure for the Legacy Virus. This was in 2001 and, by that time, I’d been reading X-Men comics featuring Colossus for 20+ years. That final page drawn by Salvador Larroca showed Peter lying dead on the floor with the lines from his first appearance in Giant-Size X-Men #1. “My heart tells me to stay Papa–but my conscience tells me otherwise. I must go, Papa.” And then, the following issue details how Kitty Pryde takes his ashes to Russia and scatters them over his beloved homeland.
Finally, on the television front, there is the two-part episode “The Big Move” from Good Times. James Evans (John Amos) is killed in a car accident. The kids grieve openly, but they question their mother’s behavior when they see her laughing and having a good time following the funeral. After everyone leaves, however, she is cleaning up and finally snaps smashing a punch bowl to bits on the floor. The sight of Florida Evans overcome with grief and shouting “Damn! Damn! DAMN!” is one of those iconic scenes of 1970s TV.
That Good Times episode is a great pull! I remember how much that episode messed me up back in the day. So good.
There were ample ideas in this issue that were interesting to me on reflection. The themes of death and rebirth that are present in theologies and mythologies. The pain of that process. The power of faith. I’m not sure it would be a favorite issue for me, but there’s things to think about for sure.
I’m a little surprised there was little mention of the opening page, where Perez firmly establishes for modern readers that Amazons do not sleep alone. Of course, it was baked into the Amazons from the beginning of Wonder Woman’s adventures, but easy to forget or downplay as the years went on. But George puts it right on the page, in defiance of American society in the 80s, which honestly was not kind to LGBTQ+. Looking back on it with my 2020 eyes, I’m really glad it’s in this comic.
Sean, you know by now that I *stink* at answering secret questions, but I’ll throw out that a memorable character death in comics from Ned Leeds of all people from Spider-Man vs Wolverine. Here’s one of the primary suspects in the ongoing “Who is the Hobgoblin” storyline, and he’s murdered off panel in a one-shot special, where Peter finds his body in a West Berlin hotel room! Stunning moment, and honestly Peter’s reaction was portrayed perfectly. He’d know Ned for years, and sends him on his ill-fated mission into East Berlin to get justice or vengeance or just answers. Even though it gets a little undone back in Amazing Spider-Man, this haunts Peter for years, and it stuck with me as well.
Thanks for another great episode!
Oh shoot, I forgot another little note. Seeing Heracles and Hermes together always reminds me of that DC Comics Presents issue with the inset story that featured Diana getting his “W” top for the first time. Oh, what number was that … hold on … #41! The Superman/Joker main story. It was just an oddball issue I happened to buy, don’t really remember why. Anyway, Diana goes to Paradise Island to discuss wearing the new top, and Hercules and Mercury are there being jerks. To see such different versions of them here is refreshing, and then immediately creepy with hinting that Hermes has more than a paternal interest in Diana. Sigh.
I dived down a rabbit hole since krull was mentioned so i figured out a an away for to check out the movie in new way. With out ruining.
The nostalgia. Marvel made comic adaptations of the movie you can get either a two issue adaptation. Or the marvel special that has both issues in one and krull has two video games an Atari 2600 game and arcade game .
You’d do better (and probably pay less) by tracking down a copy of the novelization, Like most good movie adaptations to novel form in the era, it was written by Alan Dean Foster and manages to make the plot into something reasonably compelling and comprehensible. He also did Star Wars (when it didn’t need “A New Hope” stuck on), Alien (five of them, actually), Outland, Clash of the Titans, Black Hole, Last Starfighter, Alien Nation, and rather a lot of others – and in almost every case, produced a book that was at least on par with the cinematic original if not better. And that was alongside a career of writing his own original scifi and fantasy novels, including two long-running series. Finally slowed down now that he’s nearing 80 (this November, in fact) but he spent decades rivalling old time pulp authors for annual output.
21:44 Hey now. Krull was not at all a low-budget film by the standards of 1983. Production costs were in the 27-30 million dollar range, which was very expensive for the time. They had money to burn compared to a real low-budget movie that might have had $500,000 or less to work with, maybe reaching $5 million for a really well-funded indie. Mind you, it still earned back less that $17 million worldwide and was rightly considered a flop – but it wasn’t low budget, and has gone on to be a minor cult classic despite its flaws. If nothing else the Beast’s fortress has some very effective (and creepy) set design.