#01000101

Wonder Woman's most common enemy in all these comics isn't Greek monsters or cheetah ladies or evil Peter Dinklage, but a series of generic, interchangeable giants. They show up, they act smugly, and they get humiliated by our protagonist. There aren't any recurring characters, and the size of these giants varies wildly, as do the magical realms they come from. The more continuity-minded reader could draw the conclusion that each appearance of these giants are an entirely different race of hugeinoids from an entirely different hugerealm. And they all hate Wonder Woman.

The early silver age of DC had an attitude to continuity that could best be described as a drunk fan at a nu-metal concert screaming "I DON'T GIVE A FUUUCK!" before slipping on a pool of vomit. It's perfectly fine that all these giants are theoretically different but basically identical, this is a totally different issue from the last time giants showed up. It's cool that the mermaids in Wonder Woman are different from the ones in Superman, or the ones from Aquaman, nobody cares. It's fine that we don't mention anything that happened in the Justice Society, we don't give a fuck!

Later, DC would get so far into continuity that it built an entire parallel universe to shove all their continuity run-off into, and occasionally mine it for crossovers. But we have a long way to go until we get there.

The second story of #109, "The Million Dollar Pigeon," sadly does not involve any actual pigeons. Pigeons are sweet, beautiful, birds, and I think Wonder Woman would love pigeons. The plot of this issue is a fairly typical "expose the hero's secret identity" plot. Some crooks put together a fake sweepstakes, giving away one million dollars to the real identity of Wonder Woman. The plot isn't just to get Wonder Woman to reveal herself, but to tie her up dealing with impersonators trying to cash in.

The average woman in this world is absolutely insane. For clarity's sake, both the woman lifting two other women with one hand, and the woman writing her name in solid concrete are ordinary human women. We later see women trying to prove they're wonder women by jumping over moving cars, fighting sharks, and holding up collapsing buildings. I don't know if I want a million dollars that badly.

The criminals' plot is outright ludicrous, and the resolution even more so. Once Wonder Woman reveals herself as Diana Prince, she goes on a drive with Steve Trevor to discuss their relationship. The crooks dump knockout gas on her jeep, wheel it up with a cargo helicopter, load it onto a spaceship that they just happen to have, I guess, and shoot her off the planet. This is probably the least you want to do to to get rid of Wonder Woman, but it does require you to have a multi-stage orbital launch vehicle just lying around.

Wonder Woman gets out of this jam by remote controlling her plane to fly up and rescue them, which requires both Diana and Steve to go into hard vacuum. Steve only survives because Diana is giving him mouth-to-mouth, and you know what, I like that. It's a sweet moment. She's kind of a goddess, right? I can excuse the physics for that.

This plane scheme also fools both the criminals and Steve into thinking that Wonder Woman and Diana Prince are two different people. The crooks get a look at the plane and realize that Wonder Woman must have flown up and rescued both Diana and Steve. This despite the fact that Wonder Woman's plane is famously invisible, and you can see right into the dang thing and see that Diana Prince isn't in it. Steve is also fooled by this despite being inside the plane, but he's suffering from severe oxygen deprivation and probably has brain damage that will ruin his military career. But they got to smooch in space, so it all works out.

The final Wonder Woman story for this year is #110, "The Bridge of Crocodiles," and it's a story that I wish I had nicer things to say about. It's a full-length story, which I feel is an ideal length for telling these kinds of superhero adventures, it features the first female antagonist in this generation of Wonder Woman, and it has a pretty good moral about the treatment of women. However, its not only a complete mess, but it's full of old-timey racism, too!

The whole thing feels like it was written by one of those storytelling games where everyone writes a sentence, covers up the sentence before theirs, and passes it on to the next person. The narrative focus switches like the writers were using a random encounter table. I know, I've been that kind of DM.

First there's aliens attacking. Then the aliens want their princess. Then there's a ship in danger from an iceberg. Then Wonder Woman has to fight a giant swordfish. Then Steve gets hypnotized and flies the plane into the jungle. Then we finally meet the princess and she's a sexy lady. Then the princess hypnotizes Wonder Woman so she can only move by hopping up and down. Then she's gotta fight a jaguar while not being able to move. There's just so much in this story that doesn't need to be there. It is almost painful to read.

Then we get to act three where, as promised, it gets racist! They're doing the typical "indigenous people worship the white person as a god" thing. She does actually have magic so it's not quite as bad as some examples, but still! The princess reveals that despite being a princess, there were thousands of princesses on her home planet and she was treated as a numbered commodity instead of an individual. She came to earth to look for that recognition.

There's some kind of bullshit challenge where Wonder Woman wins easily despite still not being able to move, and when she loses, the princess is sentenced to walk the bridge of crocodiles. Despite being the title, we don't actually see it until the second-to-last page. Wonder Woman rescues the princess and sends her back to her home planet, giving her culture a message about recognizing the individual. Also she was a robot the whole time.