Friday, October 21, 2016

Get us out from under

Today, according to no less an authority than the United Nations (which we all know will go down in history as the seemingly benign yet ultimately malevolent precursor of the One World Government run by the cabal of Lizard People who drink human blood and fill the atmosphere with mind-control gas) is ... WONDER WOMAN DAY!!!

2016 is in fact the 75th anniversary of Wonder Woman's debut, and from here on out I will resist the urge to provide detailed historical context because, honestly, I deem it neither necessary nor advisable. I mean, it's Wonder Woman. Everyone knows her, she has instant name and visual recognition, and yet ... once you get past the stuff everyone knows (Amazon princess, invisible jet, bracelets, lasso) there is an almost immediate drop-off into extremely deep esoterica which is arcane and convoluted and more often than not self-contradictory (and that includes the behind the scenes stuff about her creation and stewardship by various writers and artists every bit as much as her labyrinthine fictional biography). Suffice it to say that however impressive you may find it that a fictional character would achieve popularity with the public and hold onto it for seven and a half decades and counting, it's orders of magnitude more amazing when you consider how many variations, re-inventions and utterly bananas developments Wonder Woman has endured in all that time.

When I was a senior in college my friends and I played a lot of Justice League Task Force, which despite the bureaucratically tinged name was actually just a classic (dumb) button-masher fighting game for the Super Nintendo. I remember Wonder Woman being a particularly fun character to play. Here is a screenshot from that game featuring the Themysciran champion kicking Aquaman in the head. Good times.

Happy anniversary, Wonder Woman. Assuming the Lizard People allow any human literature to survive the Great Epochal Molting, I look forward to enjoying your centennial by re-reading old Justice League comics via my cerebral implants.

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