College Days: Wonder Woman.

Verdict: Wonder Woman has a college degree.

This one is tricky...

In the Golden Age--any age, really-- Wonder Woman is from a faraway land that has lots of education but not 'college' per se (and certainly nothing that awards a 'degree').  It goes without saying that in any iteration Wonder Woman, raised with a classical education on Themyscira, is very well educated, certainly beyond the level of a 'bachelor's degree'.  But, in the Golden Age, she actually got by with the favorite method of Golden Age heroes: she cheated.  Because there is little the princess of truth enjoys more than lying her star-spangled pants off.

In the days when South America was, like, a whole other country.

Rather than going through the messy and tedious folderol of getting herself credentialed in Man's World, Wonder Woman simply took the place of someone else who was already credentialed: the REAL Diana Prince.

It's even faster than DeVry.

Yeah; Diana BOUGHT her degree, quite literally.  Because honesty is an alien concept to her, especially when it would stand between her and The Man She Loves.  Now, in fairness: Diana DID have the knowledge to become a nurse. We knows this for a fact because she says "I'm a trained nurse." Oh, wait; I forgot; she lies.   BUT... she invented the Purple Healing Ray.

Which she named 'the purple healing ray' because, unlike Batman, Wonder Woman is not about branding.

If, in five days, you can invent a ray that brings people back from the dead, well, I'm willing to concede that you are probably going to make a pretty good nurse.  

But what about later? When she worked at the War Department? And the Pentagon?  Did she get those jobs as a war nurse?  Or when she became an agent at the Department of Metahuman Affairs?  Or when she was a U.N. tour guide?  

I mean, you don't think they let people without college degrees open mod boutiques, now, do you?

Or in the movies where she's obviously doing prestigious museum work, that must require degrees and experience?  Does she just keeping finding people with the right credentials named "Diana Prince" and buying their IDs from them?

No; at some point, Diana went to the trouble of earning proper credentials (including a college degree) to do whatever job(s) she has.

I mean, it's not like Diana hasn't had TIME to go to college.  

You do know I could post about a thousand more of these pics, right?

Wonder Woman pretty much spent the entire Golden Age at Holliday College with the sisters of "Beeta Lambda Phi" (sic).  There is simply no way that she (and the college) didn't take advantage of that by enrolling in a few classes here and there.  WW surely didn't, ya know, matriculate with a class or anything, but there is no way Little Miss Self-Improvement didn't get a degree or eight in her spare time over the years.   But that's why my verdict was that 'she has a college degree' rather than 'went to college.'  

I mean, can't you picture the panels on the Untold Tale where she corrects all her professors on history, and science, and, well, everything other than ice cream, because she's the g-d Wonder Woman? Of course you can.

Remember, it's been pretty consistently established that (unlike Batman and Superman) she basically has zero social life in her civilian identity; no friends, no family, no commitments.  She didn't spend ALL her free time with a Stereotypical Blind Chinese Sensei/Sage.

Not without snapping his neck, anyway, for being a bossy mansplainer.

SO, although Wonder Woman did not 'go to college' per se, she definitely found a way to get a degree or two along the way, simply because it's the 'have it all/ do it all' kind of thing she would do. PLUS... she would want to inspire young women to do the same.  

Because women deserve greater aspirations than being a fashion model!

Pantsuit Prince and the Inscrutable Ching

Because nothing says 'holiday hatred' like...

Pantsuit Prince and the Inscrutable Ching!

"Even blind I can see how desperate you are, Diana.  And, frankly, it makes you really bitchy. Well... bitchier.  No human being in their right mind would try and set you up with someone and be responsible for the resulting carnage and misery.  Fortunately, we have machines for that now. " 

"You want me to use a computer-dating service? I'm surprised you even know what dating is, you sexless old husk."

"Yo mama wouldn't be.  Trust me, Diana; you just need a really good ...date."

"Ugh. Since you'll never shut up it otherwise, I'll fill this in and submit it.  With your information instead of mine. And you'll never even know." 

"I mean, I assume Amazon young are spawned asexually like fish eggs or some such, since you have no men to father children.  I mean...it's not like you're HUMAN, after all."

"You do NOT want to know about sex on Paradise Island, old man; trust me."

"Surprise, princess.  I got you a horde of sword-wielding maniacs to battle for Christmas."

"Oh, Ching! You DO care!"

Starting Work Early

What with her role in the forthcoming Superman (et al.) film, I've been thinking a lot about Wonder Woman lately.  In fact, I've been reading Wonder Woman Unbound, a good new history about the character.  

I have quibbles with some angles the author occasionally takes in order to make his points (such as defending Wertham's analysis of Batman and Superman to make his condemnation of Wonder Woman seem worse), but anyone who actually takes the trouble to chart the statistics on how much bondage there was in WW comics versus her contemporaries' deserves kudos.

Spoiler: It's a lot.

I've learned more than a few things from this book already, and it's made me reexamine some parts of comic history. For example, author Tim Hanley has made me realize that quite possibly we owe the continuing existence of super-heroes to Dr Wertham, since their resurgence in the Silver Age was prompted in part by his evisceration of the popular horror and crime comics they superseded. 

Another thing I've learned is the brutality with which the mad man-babe Bob Kanigher devasted Wonder Woman's "Mod Era" cast in the process of returning her to her mythological roots.

"Without my magic bracelets,
what can I use to protect myself from sniper fire?
Oh! Hello, I Ching...!"

Steve Trevor, in fact, gets killed twice (don't ask).  And the disturbingly gratuitous death of an expy of former Wonder Woman editor Dorothy Woolfolk is, at best, in bad taste:

Ah, 1970s pop-culture New York City.

Hanley rightly points out that war-hardened Kanigher was a prolific writer, not a careful or well organized one.  He was repetitive, forgetful, and indelicate.  But his writing was not without poetry...

One of its unsung,
unknown, faceless millions is
starting work early.


With this heartless haiku, Kanigher used an unnamed sniper, who dies immediately by falling off the building and whose motives are never examined let alone explained, to begin the destruction of the Mod Era. Note well, modern readers; the cruel killing off of supporting and near-main characters was not an invention of the post-Crisis world.

What haiku can you compose reflecting on this, the return of the new original Wonder Woman?

JLA FORTNIGHT: Black (Canary) Widow

Meanwhile, at "the beginning of the end" for the Secret Sanctuary Era of the Justice League of America...

As mentioned in our last post, after Red Tornado's disastrous arrival, Black Canary arrives to Earth-1. Like all Golden Age Heroes worth their salt (and associated with the Justice Society), when the Silver Age arrived Black Canary was determined to live on the parallel world of Earth-2. UNTIL...

a disastrous team-up between the JLA and JSA, where her husband got killed. For no particular reason (although I will blame Red Tornado), the JLA and JSA join forces to fight the usual Ersatzian Threat. You know, some cosmicky extra-dimensional, one-shot villain, with vague motivations. This time, apparently, the moon was in the seventh house, because they fought Aquarius, the Living Tiki Mug.

He really needs to be wearing a paper umbrella behind his ear.

The JSA Snowglobe is still the most popular purchase at the Earth-2 Gift Shop.

Aquarius (again, for no real reason) kills Black Canary's husband Larry with a giant lint ball.

"HA! Foolish human! You've fallen into my lint trap!"

Actually, Larry voluntarily jumped in front of the giant lint ball to save Black Canary's life. The lint ball was about to crush HER instead, because she was stuck to the ground in front of it. And just why was Black Canary stuck to the ground in front of it....?

Green Arrow's stickum-shaft, that's why.

C'mon; you didn't really think I'd posted that just for fun, did you...?

Oh, and, to be honest with you; that's NOT a ball of lint. It's a ball of cosmic power from Starman's rod. Yes, let's repeat that. Black Canary's husband was crushed to death by a ball of power from the cosmic rod of her ex-lover because she was glued to the ground with her legs open by the stickum-shaft of her future lover, Green Arrow. Top that, Scott Lobdell.

This is kind of ironic, since Larry was always a classless jerk, a shiftless freedloader and skeevy gumshoe who was a millstone around Canary's neck.

What a charmer. No wonder Green Arrow looked good to her.

Of course, what happens afterwards is even more ironic: she takes up almost immediately with another classless jerk, the self-righteous blowhard and skeevy crimefighter who's the reason her husband is dead.

"We're both crippled, Green Arrow; you by your ridiculous facial hair...me by my 20 lb. Tammy Wynette wig."

You see, once Larry is dead, Black Canary does what any grieving widow would do...

LEAVES HER UNIVERSE ENTIRELY.

Panel 1: "This entire universe reminds me too much of my husband."
Panel 2: A panel that reads very, very badly out of context.

In the process of migrating to Earth-1, Black Canary--somehow--acquires a superpower: -superscreaming.

Actually, if you pay attention to the story, you notice that Black Canary's power is NOT generated by her voice. It's psionic; the 'canary cry' is something that she generates with her mind, not her voice. It's more sensible, I think, and something I'd like to see reasserted when she is reintroduced as part of the Earth-2 JSA in the New 52.

Black Canary gains superpowers right after Wonder Woman loses hers. This is perfect timing, because now she can join the JLA to take the place of Wonder Woman, who having lost her powers, quits the group, and takes up a new hobby:

hating I Ching.


"What in Hades did you drag me to a carnival for, old fool? Can't you see I'm not dressed for it? Oh, that's right; you can't."

"To teach you the simple childlike delight of laughter, you brain-dead cow. Now LAUGH, wench, LAUGH."


Coincidentally, this blissful little scene of Wonder Woman and I Ching snipping at each other is the beginning of another nail in the coffin of the Secret Sanctuary era, which I like to call...

"RACE WAR TO THE STARS!" So, stay tuned.