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Monty's Marathon Diary: Brilliant Nazi Disguises

Primetimer

By Primetimer
in Wonder Woman [V]

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StatMom

StatMom

Am I crazy, or was there an episode involving... cloning Hitler? And somehow they tried (did?) to clone a fully grown Hitler right into his clothes. Or was that some childhood fever dream? Maybe it was Six Million Dollar Man. Or the Hulk. I don't think it was Dukes of Hazzard, but Boss Hogg had all kinds of crazy schemes, so I can't say for sure.

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StatMom

StatMom

I can only be gratified that my brain did not create this scenario. I guess when part of the show is set during WWII, you're bound to have some Nazi/Hitler storylines, but they sure didn't hesitate to go to that well.

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Latverian Diplomat

Latverian Diplomat

FWIW, the ultimate resolution of "Judgement from Outer Space"

the aliens give us fifty years (IIRC) to get our act together and try again,

is a straight lift from Have Spacesuit will Travel, which included a similar plot line way back in 1958. Nothing wrong with that.

 

I'm not sure if the show was responsible, but in the comics at this time there was a resurgence of interest in telling WWII stories about Wonder Woman (and shortly, other heroes). Including a popular antagonist (Baron Blitzkrieg). He would have been an interesting (but expensive?) element to add to the show.

 

This was back when there was an Earth 2 with the original WWII era superheroes from the 1940's comics parallel to the Earth 1 with the heroes of what was then the present. This was about ten years before DC decided that was too hard to understand and spent 30 years "simplifying" their multi-verse in the most convoluted way possible. 

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Kat

Kat

 I had misremembered that the "Bushwackers" episode took place in the 1970s not the 1940s era of this show. Must be the little black orphan kid's AFRO that was throwing me off. That "beef commitments" line never fails to bring me to tears of laughter though.

 

 

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DeathQuaker

DeathQuaker

Latverian Diplomat, I have a vague memory that not only did the TV series result in a resurgence of "Earth 2 Wonder Woman" but also helped bring back standard classic Wonder Woman (although there were also other influences on that like Ms. Magazine. The early 70s she was the "mod" Emma Peel rip-off with no superpowers, and was loosely the inspiration for the much maligned Cathy Rigby Wonder Woman TV movie that pre-dated this series (that "Wonder Woman" also had no powers). I might have the details wrong but IIRC that was the general gist of it.

The Roy Rogers episode is entertaining in an utter goofball way and yes, I recall how utterly incongruous it felt. I like the trousers though. :) (Though perhaps they should have been blue and star-spangled).

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millennium

millennium

Latverian Diplomat, I have a vague memory that not only did the TV series result in a resurgence of "Earth 2 Wonder Woman" but also helped bring back standard classic Wonder Woman (although there were also other influences on that like Ms. Magazine. The early 70s she was the "mod" Emma Peel rip-off with no superpowers, and was loosely the inspiration for the much maligned Cathy Rigby Wonder Woman TV movie that pre-dated this series (that "Wonder Woman" also had no powers). I might have the details wrong but IIRC that was the general gist of it.

The Roy Rogers episode is entertaining in an utter goofball way and yes, I recall how utterly incongruous it felt. I like the trousers though. :) (Though perhaps they should have been blue and star-spangled).

 

Cathy Rigby???   Perish the thought.

 

It was Cathy Lee Crosby who did that weird, one-off Wonder Woman movie with the former game show model, Anitra Ford.

 

(You never realize what a trashbin your brain is until you discover you can churn out facts like this.)

FWIW, the ultimate resolution of "Judgement from Outer Space"

the aliens give us fifty years (IIRC) to get our act together and try again,

is a straight lift from Have Spacesuit will Travel, which included a similar plot line way back in 1958. Nothing wrong with that.

 

I'm not sure if the show was responsible, but in the comics at this time there was a resurgence of interest in telling WWII stories about Wonder Woman (and shortly, other heroes). Including a popular antagonist (Baron Blitzkrieg). He would have been an interesting (but expensive?) element to add to the show.

 

This was back when there was an Earth 2 with the original WWII era superheroes from the 1940's comics parallel to the Earth 1 with the heroes of what was then the present. This was about ten years before DC decided that was too hard to understand and spent 30 years "simplifying" their multi-verse in the most convoluted way possible. 

 

I liked Earth 2.   I remember Justice League of America team-ups with the old and new versions of heroes.    It really wasn't terribly difficult to understand.   No more so than two different dimensions.    I hate what DC did to its universe in the last twenty years.

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Latverian Diplomat

Latverian Diplomat

(edited)

I liked Earth 2.   I remember Justice League of America team-ups with the old and new versions of heroes.    It really wasn't terribly difficult to understand.   No more so than two different dimensions.    I hate what DC did to its universe in the last twenty years.

Me too. They did have a bunch of other universes, but Earth 1 and 2 were really the only ones that readers would be likely to stumble across (and Earth-S for Shazam! fans, I guess). And nothing as hard to keep track of as "Zero Hour on Infinite Crisis Countdown to Flashpoint."

 

Every time DC tries to reinvent itself, most of the "new" ideas don't work so well. Meanwhile shows like the Justice League Cartoon, or Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and even the Arrowverse to some extent have a lot of fun picking out whatever elements of 70 years of writing look like fun to play with.

 

I will say, I liked the latest reboot of Wonder Woman, which just made her a straight up demigoddess, and introduced more Greek mythology. But I haven't followed it closely and I heard it's had some struggles since a promising start.

Edited by Latverian Diplomat
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millennium

millennium

Me too. They did have a bunch of other universes, but Earth 1 and 2 were really the only ones that readers would be likely to stumble across (and Earth-S for Shazam! fans, I guess). And nothing as hard to keep track of as "Zero Hour on Infinite Crisis Countdown to Flashpoint."

 

Every time DC tries to reinvent itself, most of the "new" ideas don't work so well. Meanwhile shows like the Justice League Cartoon, or Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and even the Arrowverse to some extent have a lot of fun picking out whatever elements of 70 years of writing look like fun to play with.

 

I will say, I liked the latest reboot of Wonder Woman, which just made her a straight up demigoddess, and introduced more Greek mythology. But I haven't followed it closely and I heard it's had some struggles since a promising start.

 

I started reading comic books as a kid circa 1972.   Earth 2 was like a window to the past.   About the same time, DC began publishing "GIANT" editions of titles like Batman, Detective, Superman, and Action -- they'd carry a new modern story, but the rest of it would be reprinted stories from the 40s, 50s and 60s.   I loved those, because as kid in 1972 I had nowhere else to read that stuff.   Earth 2 stories and Justice League/Justice Society crossovers fit very nicely into that mix.   Another thing I liked about Earth 2 is it had characters for whom there was no Earth 1 counterpart -- Dr. Fate, for example.

 

I left off reading comic books regularly when I entered the adult working world.   For years I have wanted to get back into it, but I find the DC world forbidding now with altered histories, retconning, and that whole Crisis mess that I can't even comprehend tackling.

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millennium

millennium

So apparently in an early bid to drum up support of the coming Wonder Woman movie in a few years, Wonder Woman is for once the center point of one of those huge DC-universe changing crossover events:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/article/johns-fabok-say-wonder-woman-leads-the-charge-in-darkseid-war

 

I'm so out of the loop re: Darkseid.   I wouldn't even know where to begin.  To make matters worse, I never liked or connected to the New Gods, even way back in the 70s.   It was all too Jack Kirby for me (I was never a fan of Kirby's style.   I realize it's sacrilege to say so, but there it is.)

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Latverian Diplomat

Latverian Diplomat

(edited)

So apparently in an early bid to drum up support of the coming Wonder Woman movie in a few years, Wonder Woman is for once the center point of one of those huge DC-universe changing crossover events:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/article/johns-fabok-say-wonder-woman-leads-the-charge-in-darkseid-war

 

 

I'm so out of the loop re: Darkseid.   I wouldn't even know where to begin.  

This is the trap the two big companies of the comics industry have created for themselves. The crossover events generate sales among the small, static (rapidly aging) audience that already buys a lot of their comics, even though the "events" are usually terrible stories. But casual fans who might be interested in following a book or two if it were good, find descriptions like the one Kromm linked to, indecipherable or offputting.

 

What draws in the new readers they really need are good runs on books that do something interesting and standalone. Like Ultimate Spiderman, the current run of Thor, and the new Ms. Marvel (Kamela Khan).

Edited by Latverian Diplomat
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AndySmith

AndySmith

(edited)

Wonder Woman in slacks and a Target top? No, no ... Just no!

 

If anyone can make it work/look good, its Linda Carter.

 

DC definitely did need to streamline it's continuity in the mid-80s because some of it was just totally and utterly ridiculous. For the most part, it wasn't hard to follow with regards to the big picture. However, lots of the details (like, say, the whole Black Canary continuity debacle) were just one big giant mess.

 

And much like Dynasty's Moldavian Massacre cliffhanger, the problem wasn't with the actual story itself, but with the follow-up. Crisis on Infinite Earths was a really, really good series that accomplished what it set out to do. But DC's lack of a co-ordinated follow-up with regards to the many reboots of it's characters (Superman, Wonder Woman, and Hawkman especially) and not thinking through on how those reboots would affect other titles (like the Justice League, Teen Titans, and Legion of Superheroes, among others) is what really led DC into a never-ending spiral of toxic continuity and perpetual reboots. DC really should have done the New 52 concept in 1986.

Edited by AndySmith
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DeathQuaker

DeathQuaker

Cathy Rigby???   Perish the thought.

It was Cathy Lee Crosby who did that weird, one-off Wonder Woman movie with the former game show model, Anitra Ford.

 

 

Sincere apologies, millennium! Major brain fart on my part. You are right, Cathy Lee Crosby. Obviously I tried to drive out most of the details of that tv movie from my mind as much as possible.

 

 

DC definitely did need to streamline it's continuity in the mid-80s because some of it was just totally and utterly ridiculous. For the most part, it wasn't hard to follow with regards to the big picture. However, lots of the details (like, say, the whole Black Canary continuity debacle) were just one big giant mess.

 

And much like Dynasty's Moldavian Massacre cliffhanger, the problem wasn't with the actual story itself, but with the follow-up. Crisis on Infinite Earths was a really, really good series that accomplished what it set out to do. But DC's lack of a co-ordinated follow-up with regards to the many reboots of it's characters (Superman, Wonder Woman, and Hawkman especially) and not thinking through on how those reboots would affect other titles (like the Justice League, Teen Titans, and Legion of Superheroes, among others) is what really led DC into a never-ending spiral of toxic continuity and perpetual reboots. DC really should have done the New 52 concept in 1986.

 

 

Well, they should perhaps have done the "total reboot" concept in '86--I agree that probably would have eliminated a lot of the continuity confusion that COIE brought and Zero Hour and Infinite Crisis etc. failed to fix-- but I hope it wouldn't have looked anything like what the New 52 looked like.

 

One thing to remember that there's always some more technical reasons hiding behind these "reboots" -- "Crisis on Infinite Earths" was to clear up a lot of continuity confusion and strained writing (like the Black Canary thing you mentioned--that was a character well-served by Crisis), certainly, but there was also an underlying need to tie old, separate *properties* into one universe. E.g., the Shazam family was from Fawcett Publications, which DC bought out, and was kept in a separate universe, but they wanted to cross those characters over into the main DCU, so part of the purpose of Crisis was also to fold Fawcett and other properties into the main universe. Likewise, the New 52 allowed them to fold Wildstorm characters into the main DCU. It still is to "combine continuities" but it's to help them manage their characters and trademarks, not just make things easier for readers. And so as long as DC buys out other properties and needs to restructure things, these "crises" might continue to happen.

 

Going back to topic... as corny as it can be, one of the things that Wonder Woman TV gets right is they don't get too complicated with Wonder Woman's background. She's an Amazon, she wears an American flag bathing suit, she's a nice person and she kicks butt when she has to. No over-influence of the gods (the mythology is there but stays in the background), no weird made-of-clay stuff (been a WW fan my whole life but never a fan of the "Amazon Galatea" concept), no daughter of any god. Just she's the best of the Amazons, let's move on with the story now. DC could learn from this simplicity.

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AndySmith

AndySmith

but they wanted to cross those characters over into the main DCU, so part of the purpose of Crisis was also to fold Fawcett and other properties into the main universe.

 

Characters werre crossing over all the time any way, and some (like the Quality heroes, I believe) were already incorporated anyway into various worlds. So it isn't like it really affected having different characters meet up, it just made it a bit easier since you no longer had to explain people were from a differnet world or whatever. It made more sense to that from a storytelling perspective, not a corporate perspective.

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millennium

millennium

(edited)

If anyone can make it work/look good, its Linda Carter.

 

DC definitely did need to streamline it's continuity in the mid-80s because some of it was just totally and utterly ridiculous. For the most part, it wasn't hard to follow with regards to the big picture. However, lots of the details (like, say, the whole Black Canary continuity debacle) were just one big giant mess.

 

And much like Dynasty's Moldavian Massacre cliffhanger, the problem wasn't with the actual story itself, but with the follow-up. Crisis on Infinite Earths was a really, really good series that accomplished what it set out to do. But DC's lack of a co-ordinated follow-up with regards to the many reboots of it's characters (Superman, Wonder Woman, and Hawkman especially) and not thinking through on how those reboots would affect other titles (like the Justice League, Teen Titans, and Legion of Superheroes, among others) is what really led DC into a never-ending spiral of toxic continuity and perpetual reboots. DC really should have done the New 52 concept in 1986.

 

That Black Canary thing ... last time I looked in on the Canary, she was a florist Dinah Drake by day and ass-kicker in fishnet tights by night, working with her boyfriend Oliver Queen/Green Arrow and his bad-attitude goatee.  

 

When the character was introduced in the Arrow TV show as Sarah Lance, and then as Laurel Lance, I went to Wikipedia to see What-DC-Did-Now and discovered that Black Canary was now her own mother or her own daughter ... or something.  

 

Kudos for working the Moldavian Massacre into this discussion!

 

And yeah, Lynda Carter (in my opinion) is one of the most beautiful women of the 20th century.

Edited by millennium
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millennium

millennium

(edited)

Well, they should perhaps have done the "total reboot" concept in '86--I agree that probably would have eliminated a lot of the continuity confusion that COIE brought and Zero Hour and Infinite Crisis etc. failed to fix-- but I hope it wouldn't have looked anything like what the New 52 looked like.

 

One thing to remember that there's always some more technical reasons hiding behind these "reboots" -- "Crisis on Infinite Earths" was to clear up a lot of continuity confusion and strained writing (like the Black Canary thing you mentioned--that was a character well-served by Crisis), certainly, but there was also an underlying need to tie old, separate *properties* into one universe. E.g., the Shazam family was from Fawcett Publications, which DC bought out, and was kept in a separate universe, but they wanted to cross those characters over into the main DCU, so part of the purpose of Crisis was also to fold Fawcett and other properties into the main universe. Likewise, the New 52 allowed them to fold Wildstorm characters into the main DCU. It still is to "combine continuities" but it's to help them manage their characters and trademarks, not just make things easier for readers. And so as long as DC buys out other properties and needs to restructure things, these "crises" might continue to happen.

 

 

See, I read this and want to clap my hands over my ears and cry "La la la la la la, I can't HEAR you!"   I want my old DC universe back, I can't deal with all these changes.   Comic books shouldn't feel like work.

Edited by millennium
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DeathQuaker

DeathQuaker

I totally agree millennium, at least as far as not making comic books feel like work. I do think some of the changes were good--I will always prefer Helena Bertinelli to Wayne, even though the latter was my "first" Huntress, for example--but they could never do it cleanly.

 

OT: (But BTW, Dinah Drake Lance never dated Oliver Queen; her guy was Larry Lance and her daughter, Dinah Laurel, dated and even--just before the New 52--was married to Oliver for awhile. Maybe I'm misremembering, but pre-Crisis Dinah Laurel was some sort of weird clone of Dinah Drake Lance whereas afterward she was just plain her daughter.)

 

But again, that's why the relative simplicity of Wonder Woman TV is refreshing. :) There's things to be learned from this show, as goofy as it is.

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DeathQuaker

DeathQuaker

I'm absolutely certain Dinah Drake never dated Oliver Queen in any continuity. She was always with Larry Lance, going back to the 40s. (In the New 52, it's "Kurt Lance.") But we are going off topic. But Dinah Laurel Lance did date Oliver pre- and post-Crisis. I suggest consulting with various Wikis to confirm. 

 

But we are going off topic. How about that lady in the star-spangled-panties? Just how useless IS Steve anyway?

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AndySmith

AndySmith

I did. Dinah Drake did Oliver Queen/Green Arrow. After her husband died, she crossed over from Earth-2 to Earth-1, joins the Justice League, and begins dating him. Then the whole cluster fcuk of a story where her she dies and her memories get transferred into the body of her daughter, Dinah Laurel Lance. Dinah Drake dies, Dinal Laurel Lance is the new Black Canary (and when you think about it, getting her mother's memories is just...icky on so many levels). It's all in the Wikis.

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MDKNIGHT

MDKNIGHT

"It was Cathy Lee Crosby who did that weird, one-off Wonder Woman movie with the former game show model, Anitra Ford."

And you know who played the villain?  Ricardo Montalban.

 

I did my own rewatch of the seasons of Wonder Woman a while back and I liked the WWII first season the best although there is something to be said about the time capsule for the 70's that is Leif Garret playing twins and the Disco episode.  Of the WWII eps  my fave was covered last week; the one with the female  Nazi Olympian capturing WW and basically being TALKED out of being a Nazi by WW because the guys she worked for were such pigs.  It was so deliciously over the top I really enjoyed it. 

 

When I watch the Roy Rogers ep I think about how Lance Kerwin would wind up doing James at 15 and eventually spiral into drugs and I shake my head. It  is sort of like watching the remake of Parent Trap with Lindsey Lohan.   

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