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mosellegreen (mosellegreen) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-07-30 11:55:00

Entry tags:

char: etta candy, char: giganta/dr. doris zeul, char: wonder woman/diana of themyscira, creator: william moulton marston, era: golden age, publisher: dc comics, title: wonder woman

The introduction of Giganta
THIS IS ONE OF THE CRACKIEST WW STORIES EVER.

The story reveals Marston's usual lack of compunction about deus ex machina and, shall we say, casual grasp of science. Remember that he was a psychologist, with more than a hint of the huckster about him. His editor revealed years later that "if I had let him put in all the symbolism and stuff he wanted to, the stories would have been even weirder." The mind boggles.

This story was 36 pages long, so there are lots of scans, 9 pages worth. Good thing, because I didn't want to have to drop any of them.

Also, you can see Silver Age Giganta here.

So this is what he does when he's not hanging out in Sigourney Weaver's refrigerator.

The rampaging gorilla, who has not heard of Binti Jua, wreaks much havoc, unwisely choosing to do so with the niece of Wonder Woman's boyfriend tucked under her arm, before Wonder Woman shows up and puts her back in her cage.

I'm just bemused at Steve's assuming he's the one who needs to agree to this.
Should I be pedantic enough to mention that humans did not, in fact, evolve from gorillas? That we and gorillas have a common ancestor? Or shall we take that as read?

The Evolution Machine turns the gorilla into a junoesque Rita Hayworth.

"We must remove her bonds"? Why? She's in a Wonder Woman comic; she'll just get tied up again.
Notice the WWII slogans at the bottom of the page again. That one is my favorite.

Yes, because only cave people have unstyled hair and unbuttoned shirts. Or do you have a sudden craving for roast duck with mango salsa? Think you can handle getting insurance from Geico.com?

Ah, comic book science.

If I had Giganta tied up and brought before my throne, I can't say that having her executed would be the first thing that came to my mind.

Since it turns out we have a few Etta Candy fans out there, I promised I'd keep an eye out for good Etta panels. I liked her "Igga wogga wump" there.

The Evolution Machine can beat the most extreme makeover any day.
Notice also that at some point, the machine has changed from an "Evolution Machine" to a time machine.

"Golden Age inspection"?

Do I even need to comment on this?

The Golden Age queen well-meaningly orders Wonder Woman to free her, which Wonder Woman does because... um... hell, maybe because the blonde queen is hot so it's fun to take orders from her. Giganta promptly runs off, finds some malcontents to join and makes a lot of trouble with them. The end result:

Bondage conquers all!

Poor Steve. He just can't get a break.
If you're wondering why Hippolyte is there, remember that she is immortal and queen of the Amazons. Of course, she didn't recognize her daughter because her daughter hasn't been born yet, but whatever.
Also, Wonder Woman needed Giganta to discover that her lasso was electric? Shouldn't she already have known that?

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	aaron_bourque 2009-07-30 04:17 pm UTC (link)
	This is all one story? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	mosellegreen 2009-07-30 04:19 pm UTC (link)
	Yep. (Reply to this) (Parent)

fungo_squiggly
2009-07-30 04:19 pm UTC (link)

While I disagree with the attitude some activists have that animal lives are somehow more sacred than people's lives, I can't help but think that Steve is being a bit of a bastard with his insistence that the gorilla die. But I guess that attitude was a bit more common back in the day.

Also, yeah, all kinds of wonderful crack here. When did Giganta actually first become a giant, anyway?

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	fredneil.livejournal.com 2009-07-30 05:17 pm UTC (link)
	The gorilla nearly killed his niece, so his reaction doesn't seem odd. However, I am wondering why he didn't realize he was talking to hitler then. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	bluefall 2009-07-31 12:45 am UTC (link)
	When did Giganta actually first become a giant, anyway? Superfriends. In the comics, not until Jimenez. I'm less interested in Steve's insistence on killing the gorilla and more in why the professor thinks that's a solution to the problem. Dead or human, either way the zoo's out a $5000 gorilla. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	darklorelei 2009-07-30 04:35 pm UTC (link)
	There is no professor, there is only Zool! (Reply to this)

	filkertom 2009-07-30 06:15 pm UTC (link)
	"Binding with the Lasso of Aphrodite doesn't hurt the girl - it's good training for her!" I'll bet. (Reply to this)

	comicoz 2009-07-30 06:24 pm UTC (link)
	The slogans at the bottom of the pages are great. "You can walk to school and store! Saving gas wins the war!" on the sixth and "Tin Cans in the Garbage Pile are just a way of saying 'Heil'!" on the second to last. (Reply to this)

	skywaterblue 2009-07-30 06:34 pm UTC (link)
	I know this is just a stupid fandom poll, but I can't believe Wonder Woman is LOSING. Someone get on it? (Reply to this)

	tavella 2009-07-30 07:58 pm UTC (link)
	I love Etta in this, especially suggesting the kite for electricity. And who doesn't like Wondy and her "You are sweet, Steve honey, but I got better things to do than keep house for you" attitude at the end? (Reply to this)

	galateus 2009-07-31 12:25 am UTC (link)
	So Golden Age Giganta's thing is that she's just a really angry political dissident who starts fights for no reason? Awesome. That's much cooler than the DCAU Giganta who was pretty much just Grodd's inseparable warrior-girlfriend. (Reply to this)

	jlroberson 2009-07-31 01:51 am UTC (link)
	That is among the very worst GA racist stereotypes I have ever seen, and I was a SPIRIT fan once. (Reply to this) (Thread)

psychop_rex
2009-07-31 03:43 am UTC (link)

To what are you referring - the 'tree people'? If so, I'm not sure that really follows - I mean, yes, Marston did use plenty of stereotypes in his comics, unfortunately, but these guys are supposed to have been devolved to caveman level - and yes, they're dark-skinned, but otherwise, is it really offensive to show cavemen acting as cavemen were supposed to have acted, i.e, brutal and superstitious?

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jlroberson
2009-07-31 06:34 am UTC (link)

Their ENEMIES are the Cave People.

I don't have to go any further than how they look. Visually they're glaring, textbook "primitive African savage" stereotypes. It's obvious. All that's missing is the "mushmouf". Oh wait, look at their whole lower jaw. And the color of their skins. And the deep black shading. And the hair. And, oh, everything. Come on, really. This couldn't be more obvious. "Umgug?"

And part of that kind of stereotype WAS that they were less well-evolved than Westerners/whites. I'm not sure how that's a difference, in fact it makes it even worse.

Here's a test. Show this to an African-American friend and ask them if they think it's racist and if they're supposed to be black:

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

psychop_rex
2009-07-31 07:37 am UTC (link)

I admit that I don't actually have any African-American friends I could show it to - the area I live in has a largely white and latino population, so I don't think that test will work. (I DO have one good friend who's African American, but I've lost touch with her and don't have her E-mail address.) Anyway, while I agree that they're obviously supposed to be some variety of African tribesmen, to my mind they fit into a different sort of stereotype - that of the cannibal tribe. (There's nothing specifically saying they're cannibals, but the whole necklace-of-teeth and leaf loincloth look is unmistakable.) Basically, this is one of the hoariest cliches in all adventure fiction - if you've got a jungle or jungly area, it will be chock-full of angry natives waiting to eat you or sacrifice you to their god. (It even showed up in 'DuckTales' once, and that was in the late '80's.) These are the same guys that show up in old Tarzan movies - it doesn't matter where the hell in the world you go, these stories say, you're bound to run into them, whether it's Africa, South America, New Guinea - hell, even New Zealand, according to one movie I saw. Is it offensive? Sure - but it's SUCH a cliche that it honestly doesn't phase me much at this point. Yes, the 'less evolved' thing is a factor, I agree, and that's certainly offensive - but when you get right down to it, these are supposed to be two separate tribes of cavemen, evolution machine of no evolution machine. For me, what's far more offensive is seeing racist depictions of modern day people. I mean, it's one thing to say 'your ancestors were savages' - so were everybody's, if you go back far enough - it's another thing entirely to say 'your people are savages right NOW'. Both are offensive, but the latter is significantly more so, in my opinion. You're not likely to run into your aboriginal ancestors while walking down the street, after all.

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psychop_rex
2009-07-31 03:51 am UTC (link)

So, let me get us straight - this machine evolved the world to 'the Golden Age, when the world was perfect'? So according to this, humanity has actually already achieved perfection some time in the dim past, and we've... umm... been de-evolving since then? Since pre-Roman times?
Marston, your ability to ignore elementary logic astounds and delights me.
Also, I love the caveman-language he came up with. "Ig oop holem-kim crak!" "Ita glama goo!" "A granda bumwump!" And of course, the 'whatever that means, I mean it!' scene. Etta, you're an inspiration to us all.

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dr_hermes
2009-07-31 05:27 am UTC (link)

Wasn't that the classical view of history, as seen back in ancient Greece? The world is deteriorating from one Age to the next, as people go downhill. I forget the sequence. Golden Age, Heroic Age, Iron Age?

Actually, that seems echoed in the usual divisions of comic book history. Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age.

As I recall, the idea of progress is fairly recent and for most of history, people thought things used to be ducky and we're going downhill fast.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

psychop_rex
2009-07-31 07:06 am UTC (link)

Hrrrm... If I remember my Greek mythology, it wasn't quite that simple. First there was the reign of Chronos and the Titans, during which humanity did not exist (were we to take this literally, I suppose this might have been the era of dinosaurs). Then the gods took over, and Zeus had Prometheus create the human race out of clay. This was a short era of humanity, as Prometheus did the whole stealing fire thing, which pissed off Zeus enough that he sent Pandora down with her box and unleashed evils upon humanity. The clay-humans didn't stand up to them very well, and quickly became so corrupt and terrible that Zeus went 'whoa, there, these people suck; I'd better wipe out the whole bunch'. So he sent a flood to wipe out humanity - all except Prometheus's son and his family, who had had advance warning from him, so they built what was basically an ark, and rode out the flood until things were high and dry again. They then recreated humans out of stone, so that they would be more evil-resistant than the earlier model, and things basically progressed from there up 'til the present day.
So I'm not sure precisely how that translates - it's more like 'bad good bad good' than anything precisely linear. There WAS a 'Golden Age' of sorts back before Pandora, but from what I remember, it was hardly an age at all - just a year or two until Zeus took a look down at the world and went 'whoa, these guys have fire! PROMETHEUS, YOU BASTARD; I"M GONNA OVERREACT!'

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dr_hermes
2009-08-01 02:37 am UTC (link)

I was remembering more like this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_Man

Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age, Heroic Age, Iron Age. Everything going progressively downhill, people being less noble and weather worse, no good music anymore, hey you kids get off my lawn. It's a basic human view of the past that turns up all over. My guess is it's a psychological expression of childhood being wonderful and secure compared to having to get out and work for a living.

Greek mythology (well, almost any mythology) is such a cobbled-together mess of various stories from different eras and regions, contradicting each other and not even consistent themselves despite our efforts to figure it out. Hey! It's like comics....

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psychop_rex
2009-08-01 05:16 am UTC (link)

Well, yeah, there are obviously different versions - that Wikipedia entry had barely anything in it with which I was familiar. Still, I have at least three compilations of Greek myths in my bookshelf, and most of the time they agree with one another, so while I'm not saying that Wikipedia is WRONG (although I've come across a number of entries in it which are more than a little sketchy), I think I prefer to trust my version. Mind you, I'm not saying that there wasn't a Golden Age, Silver Age, etc. - it's just that the placement of them tends to differ from source to source.

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