InsaneJournal

Bronze Age Wonder Woman
These are from Wonder Woman: The Greatest Stories Ever Told, which I heartily recommend it to all Wondy fans. It opens with a nice long Golden Age story featuring a villain named Eviless, bizarre gadgets, outrageous outfits, and a lot more bondage than most Golden Age Wonder Woman stories. (Yes, I said "a lot more bondage than most Golden Age Wonder Woman stories".) There's also a story from the George Perez era.

These are the only scans from this book I'm posting; I'm hoping to entice y'all to buy it. ;-) They're from Wonder Woman #286, published in 1981.



They didn't explain just what these terrorists were after, but I'm including these panels because there aren't that many Jewish characters in comic books, at least before the late 90's. Ironic considering that most of the superheroes who are cultural icons, generally known to people who aren't serious comic book fans, were created by Jews - in fact, Wonder Woman is the only major exception I can think of. (There's a good book about this, though aimed at a fairly young audience: Up, Up, and Oy Vey!: How Jewish History, Culture, and Values Shaped the Comic Book Superhero. My only real criticism of the book is that the author keeps dissing Wonder Woman.)

Come to think of it, the George Perez story in this collection also deals with a Jewish character, Diana's publicist Myndi Mayer.


Now that I'm done being psyched at seeing a Jewish character in a comic book, I'm going to nitpick the details. I'm not going to complain about how the kaddish prayer was phoneticized, because the author probably got it from a book and I'm not even satisfied with the way it's done in the prayer books used in my own synagogue. What I am going to nitpick about is that it's the wrong prayer. You say kaddish for someone who is already dead. Religious Jews are supposed to recite a Hebrew prayer as their last words, but it's the Sh'ma ("Sh'ma Israel, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Ehad"), not kaddish.

I was going to say that Gentiles should consult a Jew before writing about us doing Jewish stuff, but I looked it up and apparently the writer, Robert Kanigher, was Jewish. Evidently, like many of us, his Jewish education wasn't very extensive.

/pedantry

Now for the funny bit:



Okay, I do think it was awfully nice of her to stand up for a performer who was being heckled, but it hardly inspires me to nominate her for public office.