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seriousfic (seriousfic) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-04-04 11:17:00

When Wondy Was Crack: Mars, Satan, slave girls, and spanking
I feel like I'm going to quickly run out of words to explain how mindboggling cracky Golden Age Wonder Woman was, to the point where I'm surprised the paper it was printed on wasn't classified as a hallucinogen, but a picture is worth a thousand words.

Don't say it. We're all thinking it, don't say it. Let's move on.

But why is Mars swearing by Hades? Hades is his brother. That's like me swearing "By Steve, this is a good bagel!"

IT WORKS.

So Steve receives sealed orders, not to be opened until he's in the air with a plane and pilot assigned to him. Yeah, that never ends well.

Makes you pine for the quiet dignity of spinning around in a circle really fast, doesn't it?

Thanks for hooking your homeboy up with magical healing potions, Diana. Way to help the war effort.

So much to love here. The eye-popping flirtatiousness of that third panel, Etta proclaiming "Woo woo!" over Diana's death-like coma, Diana's awesome explanation for her death-like coma, the fact that Diana has a picture of herself framed on the wall... it's like a perfect storm of Golden Age Wonder Woman. Of course, the afterlife sucks in the Wondyverse, what with anyone killed in a war then being enslaved by Mars, but I suppose people don't have it much better over in Hades.

No, don't ask yourself why no one recognizes Diana IN COSTUME. INCLUDING HER SWORN ENEMY. It just... it won't help.

...you know, I was going to say something about the undead tallship that travels thru space, cleverly labeled 'Mars Convict Ship', but then I saw the "go up" strips on the sails and I realized it made perfect sense.

...you're enjoying yourself, aren't you Diana? Naturally, she saves the day by knocking Tiva past the flames and onto safe ground. Then she ~~plays more bondage games~~ is forced into another cruel torture.

Okay, so Mars rules on Mars, which coincidentally was named after him by Earth astronomers, while Satan is his slave, and Satan comes from Saturn, which supports life, but he worships Mephistopheles, unless that's another name for Mars, and they all ride horses...

...

You know what? BUNNY.

Aww, wok at his wittle nose!

So screaming "For Aphrodite and the Amazons!" clues Mars in that Wonder Woman is, in fact, an Amazon. I guess the wisdom of Athena and a buck fifty will get you a cup of coffee. Well, a really small cup of coffee.

...you guys all saw that third panel, right? I mean, it wasn't just me, was it?

Okay, so having been clued in by that "joke" (really? That's like laughing at Dane Cook. I'm not saying she deserves it, but that's not how you not get a beating), Wondy rescues Steve and escapes back to Earth, as is her custom.

I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY ABOUT LORD CONQUEST'S RELATIONSHIP WITH HIS WIFE. NOTHING!

(Post a new comment)

	(Anonymous) 2009-04-04 12:28 pm UTC (link)
	Hades is Mars' uncle. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	seriousfic 2009-04-04 12:55 pm UTC (link)
	See, the great thing about Greek myth is that doesn't mean Hades isn't also his brother. I just really think the burden of proof should be on you here. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	xlineartx 2009-04-04 01:30 pm UTC (link)
	Hades was first generation Olympian. His siblings were Zeus, Hera, Demeter, Poseidon, and Hestia. Ares is second generation Olympian. His parents were Zeus and Hera. His siblings were Hephaestus and all of the children Zeus fathered with other ladies. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	seriousfic 2009-04-04 01:35 pm UTC (link)
	Okay, but Persephone married Hades. She was Zeus's daughter, as Ares was Zeus's son, thus, Ares and Hades are stepbrothers. Never bet against incest in a Greek myth fight. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	xlineartx 2009-04-04 01:39 pm UTC (link)
	Brothers-in-law. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	tazicat12 2009-04-04 08:55 pm UTC (link)
	Persephone is Demeter's daughter. Her father is, to my knowledge not mentioned. This makes her Hades' niece, and Aries'cousin. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	seriousfic 2009-04-04 09:11 pm UTC (link)
	I checked Wikipedia and it says Zeus is her father, at least in some myths. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	interrobamf 2009-04-05 09:40 am UTC (link)
	I don't think anybody's related to a ram. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	icon_uk 2009-04-05 06:42 pm UTC (link)
	True, but with the Greek pantheon and their polymorphous ways, could you be 100% SURE of that? (Reply to this) (Parent)

	icon_uk 2009-04-04 04:38 pm UTC (link)
	Actually, no PLUTO is Mars' uncle. Hades is ARES uncle... I hate it when they can't even getting the freaking pantheon's straight. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	yonmei 2009-04-04 12:35 pm UTC (link)
	SO MUCH AWESOME. ded from LOL (Reply to this)

	sir_razorback 2009-04-04 12:50 pm UTC (link)
	"That's like me swearing "By Steve, this is a good bagel!" " If your brother was Steve Rogers, I could understand that. :p (Reply to this) (Thread)

	darklorelei 2009-04-04 07:57 pm UTC (link)
	Hey, I'm half-tempted to start using it myself! (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	ashtoreth 2009-04-04 09:49 pm UTC (link)
	If I swear by my father, I'd have to run around saying, "IN THE NAME OF DICK" and "GREAT DICK!" and stuff, but it just seems incestuous. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	seriousfic 2009-04-04 09:49 pm UTC (link)
	You don't do that already? (Reply to this) (Parent)

	besamim 2009-04-04 01:38 pm UTC (link)
	My God, if you looked up "crack" in the dictionary, you'd see a panel from this story. Pick one, any one. For me the funniest bit was, "Don't worry if I seem dead." As for Etta's "woo woo" catchphrase, I thought that was what she said only when she was happy about something. Now I suspect she has some sort of tic. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	alessandra_lee 2009-04-04 07:44 pm UTC (link)
	Or she was excited by the prospect of not-quite-necrophilia. Because we all know what she did to Wondy while she was sleeping. I mean, she's on top of her when she wakes up. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	meatwhichdreams 2009-04-06 12:15 am UTC (link)
	Lovely delicious WOO WOO crack. I believe perhaps she says it when she feels any extreme leap of emotion, or perhaps when she thinks of candy, which admittably would cause Etta a surge of happiness, so I've just double proved my point there, haven't I. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	janegray 2009-04-04 01:54 pm UTC (link)
	So much crack XD (Reply to this)

rab62
2009-04-04 01:58 pm UTC (link)

I always love posts about the original Wonder Woman and the great commentary on same, and this is a choice one, but there is one little thing niggling at me. Please understand the following is not directed at this post in particular, but a general tendency I see a lot of.

There seems to be an assumption by modern readers looking at Golden Age crack that the creators responsible were entirely naive and oblivious to the connotations of their work and had no concept of double meanings or suggestive innuendo, and were blindly displaying their private obsessions and hangups for the world to see. (Much like Mr. Garrison writing the unintentionally homoerotic romance novel in that episode of South Park.) And in a lot of cases, that's probably true. But William Marston was arguably one of the smartest people ever to write comics, and he had a pretty thorough classical education. And, yeah, he was into serious kink -- and was totally comfortable with his unconventional lifestyle, not someone in denial or repressing impulses in such a way that they'd sneak into his work unbidden.

There's a good chance Marston was a little more hip and clued-in than we sometimes give him credit for being. I expect at least some of these cracky bits are him saying "comic books work best when they're totally lurid and outrageous, so I'll crank it up to 11!" Some may even be him privately thinking "I can't believe I got away with that, next script I'll go even wilder to see how far I can go before they stop me." Every quote I've ever read from the guy suggests that he loved the idea of comics and was having fun writing them. I'd like to think he'd get a good laugh out of us still looking back at these stories and finding them delightfully mad.

Quick pedantic note: the symbol on the sails of the Mars convict ship aren't "go up strips" but the broad arrow worn by British prisoners in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Which makes sense for a ship of prisoners, no? Well, as much sense as an ancient Greco-Roman deity employing an 18th century double-masted ship design, anyway...

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	seriousfic 2009-04-04 02:10 pm UTC (link)
	Oh, believe me, I think Marston is the most "I see what you did there" man alive (errr, dead). I mean, LORD CONQUEST'S WIFE? That's about as subtle as those Archie sex ed scans that were just posted. And I will say for a man that's basically writing Author Appeal, he did a much better job than, say, Reginald Hudlin. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	jlbarnett 2009-04-04 02:23 pm UTC (link)
	everyone knows this about Marsten. The thing is even in this more... let's say open age, people wouldn't think of putting this in a mass produced book. The crack isn't so much that he thought of it, but that he wrote it down (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	thandrak 2009-04-04 04:42 pm UTC (link)
	Indeed. With Marsten, the crack is not in the subtext, it's in the logical leaps and bizarre conclusions. Also, that nobody else picked up on it. Or if they did, they didn't care. If he were writing today, he'd be some strange fusion of Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. And awesome. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	colonel_green 2009-04-05 05:36 pm UTC (link)
	I've always thought a modern-day Marston would be something akin to an intellectual Jim Balent. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	thandrak 2009-04-05 07:02 pm UTC (link)
	I was thinking of Alan Moore's more sexual works. Lost Girls, or Promethia. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	randyripoff 2009-04-04 10:02 pm UTC (link)
	In Gerard Jones Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book, it's pretty much set in stone that Marston knew exactly what he was doing. He expected big sales to men of the comic, and best I can tell, he was right, as apparently (once more from the book) the vast majority of the readership was adult men. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	silverzeo 2009-04-04 04:35 pm UTC (link)
	Call me crazy, but I see Rosie O'Donald as Mars's "ambassador of peace." (Reply to this)

taggerung301
2009-04-04 06:52 pm UTC (link)

o_O

this is just . . . I mean . . . really . . . wow . . . I don't . . . God almighty . . .
the crack in this comic has caused me to overdose
I'm pretty sure if I had read this as a kid, I would have been even more mentally unstable and out of touch with reality than I am now

oh, and why is the chubby red head always saying "Woo, woo"? Does anyone know? Or is that just another great comic mystery?

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	jlbarnett 2009-04-04 07:54 pm UTC (link)
	It was a sort of mimickry of a radio character known for going "hoo hoo" I've seen her do it a few times as she rams into someone so I always thought it could also work as her making train noises as she runs over someone. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	icon_uk 2009-04-05 06:46 pm UTC (link)
	Perhaps based off of Lou Costello's signature "Woo woo woo" when startled? (Reply to this) (Parent)

	freeman333 2009-04-04 08:48 pm UTC (link)
	Good Lord, Etta even thinks "woo-woo" when she communicates telepathically. And, uh...I'm a little surprised no one said anything about that panel when Diana comes back from her coma. Was Etta caught in the middle of something there? "Diana, you're alive! Damn--I mean, woo-woo!" (Reply to this)

	randyripoff 2009-04-04 10:03 pm UTC (link)
	I miss mental radio. I'd love to see them bring it back. (Reply to this)

psychop_rex
2009-04-05 01:36 am UTC (link)

Wait a minute - the TABLETS contain the Purple Healing Ray? How exactly does that work? I suppose you could rephrase that as 'have been exposed to energy from', which makes a bit more sense, but no - it CONTAINS the Ray. When you swallow it, do you glow purple until it's fully digested or something?
Oh, and - NICE customized desk, Mars. Completely pointless and impractical (talk about an easy surface for papers to fall off of), but thematically, it couldn't be better. I expect Aphrodite has one, too, shaped like... er... well, I'm sure you can all imagine.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	seriousfic 2009-04-05 01:47 am UTC (link)
	I expect Aphrodite has one, too, shaped like... er... well, I'm sure you can all imagine. If you think that's something, you should see the pencil sharpener. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	psychop_rex 2009-04-05 03:22 am UTC (link)
	Okay, that was funny. I am chuckling. (Reply to this) (Parent)

ceru
2009-04-05 10:36 am UTC (link)

You know, I've really come to prefer Marston's Wonder Woman over all others. Seriously. It doesn't waste any time trying to inject a sense of plausibility, or geo-political realism, or trying to frame a bunch people dressed up in colorful spandex, punching each other, as possessing the gravitas and mythic stature of the figures of ancient religions. It just lunges ahead with unabashed enthusiasm and no apologies. It's hugely fun, and works in a way that the all the later attempts to reinterpret the profoundly cracky and illogical premise of Wonder Woman totally don't.

Marston's kinkiness reminds me of Alan Moore's kinkiness--it's coming from a guy who's totally in touch with his sexuality, and has arrived at this state of mind in conscious and rational way: whatever he writes, he knows full well what he's doing. He's weird, but internally coherent. And I find that preferable by far to the pitfalls and traps of more repressed or less honest creators whose unresolved issues with women keep surfacing in their comics, or whose sexual objectification and overtones are unintended.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	rab62 2009-04-05 12:45 pm UTC (link)
	Yes, this. It took me so many more words to say it less well than this does. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	khaosworks 2009-04-06 05:03 am UTC (link)
	I think the "up arrows" on the sails are meant to show it's a convict ship. If I recall correctly, arrows were used on convict uniforms to show their prisoner status, much like stripes were associated with them later. (Reply to this)

	ex_agata254 2010-01-28 07:32 pm UTC (link)
	Despite the fact it's an original Wonder Woman I really got used to her latest image =) Don't get me wrong, but this one seems to be too clumsy and slow... As for the bunny, it's the prettiest and the most fancy creature I've ever seen! sex toy is the most fun you can have without laughing (Reply to this)