Dear Watchers: an omniversal comic book podcast

Welcome to Dear Watchers in Omniversal comic book podcast, where we do a deep dive into the multiverse.

We are traveling with you through the stories and the worlds that make up The Omniverse, a fictional reality we all love. And your watchers on this journey are me. Guido. I don't haven't seen it. Last week I had an illiterative g. I don't have one today. Uh, I don't know. Garmin?

Gorgeous.

Garmin Bozia? No, I prefer Garmin Bozia. Guido for David Lynch. Twin Peaks fans out there.

1 second. Uh, that's better. I just had to take off my magic. Girdle all that holiday weight. So. It's me, Rob.

Uh, okay.

And before we get into today's episode, gita, what's new in our little section of the multiverse?

Well, we are here, and we are a little bit of a companion this week to last week's episode. So for some more context, we encourage you. If you didn't listen to last week's episode 78, go back and listen, because not only do we cover the same Earth we're covering today for the first time. So we go into a lot of detail about the project in the background, but also we're covering this Earth in the detail that we are with these two episodes to celebrate Stan Lee's centennial birthday from a few weeks ago now. And so go back and listen. Last week, we do a tribute to Stan, and we go really deeply into the project we're covering today. We'll give a quick summary today for those who didn't listen to last episode, but I'd say go listen to episode 78 and continue to find us on social media. We're now on all platforms. We're on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and Hive and everything. And follow us and do what you can to spread the word and communicate with us, talk to us. We like to interact online, so please do that.

Yes. And if you are joining us for the first time, we have three sections origins of the Story. What inspired this other reality? Exploring multiversity. We dive deeper into our alternate universe and pondering possibilities. We examine the impact or what's followed and coming in the future. And with that, Dear Watchers, welcome to episode 79, and let's check out what's happening in the Omniverse with today's alternate universe. And today, we are asking the question, what if Stan Lee created Wonder Woman for DC Comics? Wait, Stan Lee didn't create Wonder Woman for DC Comics? What the heck did I just say?

But just imagine, I know I did this last week, but it worked so well. So you should listen to last week's episode. As I mentioned, we have our tribute to Stan, but we have a really deep background on this project. But real quick summary, we are looking at Earth Six, the just imagined Earth where Stanley recreated a whole bunch of iconic DC Comics characters, created new origins, made new characters, part of a new world. Earth Six that he told over the course of twelve issues. This came out between 2001 and 2002, and we give a whole background on the project, which was mainly a collaboration with Michael Uzlan, Batman producer in last week's episode 78. But today we are going to stay on Earth Six and the Just Imagined books. Last week we talked about our background with those books yes.

Which I had never read and I really enjoyed. And why don't this week we talk about our background with the featured character in today's issue, a, uh, character we have very bizarrely, never really covered in depth on, uh, this podcast.

I swear that's not true, but I keep a really careful database of everything we cover, and I don't see anything but listeners. If any of you remember us covering Wonder Woman and Sensation Comics, please tell us, because I thought I remembered making Rob read it, but maybe not.

Yes, well, so we're going to correct that right now by asking each other what was our background with Wonder Woman. Keto, you know much more about this character than I do.

I do. It's a weird one, though. It's an interesting one for me. I have always loved Wonder Woman, but it's just my attraction to kickass women. And I loved her for a long time, but I couldn't even really articulate why I think so I've read her comic non stop. I've never stopped reading Wonder Woman. Well, there might have been a time when the Finches were writing it that I didn't follow everything, but I've never stopped reading it. Since the late ninety s, I have gone back and read everything from crisis onward. Bronze Age Wonder Woman, I haven't gotten too much into. We covered a little bit with Tim Hanley a few weeks back on our Bombshells episode and it's just not great. So I haven't gotten too into Bronze Age Wonder Woman. I've read her 70s when she becomes Agent Diana Prince run, and then I've read some Golden Age just to get some context. I've read lots of history books about the creation of her because I do think it's fascinating. And her creator is fascinating, but yeah, I'm a huge fan of the character, but I hate saying this, but she doesn't have iconic runs, and I don't know whose fault it is, but she has the George Perez post crisis that is the only iconic run. But she doesn't have these stories like Death of Superman. Nightfall, superman red, superman blue. Uh, she doesn't have these moments that I could have handed to you, Rob, and said like, here, read this great Wonder Woman story. She really doesn't. And her origin is very convoluted because it's been rebooted very deeply at the crisis points and reconciling that with was apolita the World War Two Wonder Woman. Was Diana, the World War Two, wonder Woman. Is she the child of Zeus? Was she made of clay? All of these things are really hard to reconcile as a new reader, I think. But the current run, by the way, just an aside, the current run is great, and I think it is going to become an iconic run for her. Becky Clooney and Steve Conrad are doing amazing stuff for her. But yeah, so I've always been a huge fan. I wouldn't say I'm an expert. I'm just a huge fan who knows her last 30 years of publication history, and of course, love the Linda Cardifiers and have seen all of the Galgadap movies and have consumed everything Wonder Woman in the animated movies with her. I've watched all that kind of stuff. How about you?

So this was not a character I knew, of course. I knew who Wonder Woman was, and I knew the bracelets, I knew the Lasso of Truth and all that, the invisible plane, all those kind of things. But it was not a character I ever read. I think a lot of that was because of gender reasons. I was not wanting to read the female character. And I loved the women in The X Men, but the X Men were part of a team. So there was something about the solo, standalone woman that I wasn't reading.

But you had to undo the misogyny built into you.

Exactly, yes. And that took decades. But I think the other thing was and this is probably also because of misogyny, but a lot of these characters I got into through their non comics forms. And when I was growing up, Batman and Superman had their animated seriess. Batman had these big movies. Superman had had these big movies. Then Superman also had Lois and Clark on TV. And I even watched the Batman original Adam West series all the time. But Wonder Woman didn't have those. She had the Linda Carter series. But I never saw that until years later. Sometimes it was on TV and it was like the Incredible Hulk TV show to me. It was like, very boring.

It was so much better.

No, I know, but when I was a kid, it was like you're expecting something more exciting. And it was not. But then the biggest thing was she did not have that animated show. She did not have that live action TV series, those movies, uh, all those things that you could get into. And I do think it part of the issue is we're going to be talking about it in a second is that her origin, I know, has shifted a lot. And on, um, the last episode of this podcast, we talked about Batman's origin, which is literally two pages in the first comic, and yet everyone knows it. And it's never changed, ever. And it's cemented in stone. And you could ask anyone, and they know about the pearls and the alley and all that. But Wonder Woman, it shifted all the time. And even her powers often seem to shift. Like, sometimes she can fly, sometimes she's as strong as Superman. Sometimes she's not as strong. Sometimes it's all about the bracelets and the lasso and other times those aren't. So that all that also seems to, ah, constantly change. So I guess for me, um, as an outsider, it's almost hard to get into because, as you said, where is the starting point?

Yeah. But most importantly, the patriarchy has destroyed this character from being the icon that she should be. And we're trying to fight against that now. So let's get onward with our fight against the patriarchy.

Yes. So we're going to go back to the fabulous forties with our first issue of today and our origins of the story.

Right now on this very show. You're going to get the answer to all your questions.

Our amazing story begins a few years ago. Thank you, Stan.

That Stan's voice again. Yes.

Before we get to you, Stan, I know you always want to jump in and say something, but first we're going to talk about All Star Comics number eight from January 1942. And that story is called Introducing Wonder Woman.

Yes. This is written by William Moulton marston penciled by Harry G. HG. Peter Inked also by HG executive Editor by MC Gaines, possibly Sheldon Mayor. Really important to add in here, too, that it is now pretty well established that William Moulton, Marston HG Peter and then Elizabeth Holloway marston and William and Elizabeth's partner, Olive Byrne, all co created Wonder Woman. They all were developing the story together and of course they are all uncredited and that has not changed to this day. But it is very well established at this point that HG Peter as the artist and William, Elizabeth and Olive Burn cocreated Wonder Woman together. We read this because it is the origin of Wonder Woman. Unlike actually Batman, which we discussed a bit last week, they do start with her origin as a backup story in All Star Comics. It's only a few months later that she gets her first feature in Sensation Comics, which then continues in Sensation and then ultimately her own title. So this we read as her origin. And it is quite literally just an origin?

Yes, it is.

With a ton of prose texts. It's like you're reading an Amazon history book.

Oh, yeah. Mhm not the most exciting, but yes, this was my first time reading this. Gito, had you read this before?

Yes, definitely. I've read the key Golden Age issues of hers, this being one of them. And what did you think? You seem to not have enjoyed it.

I did not really enjoy this. As you said, there's a lot of text. The basis of it is the classic story that we do know where Steve Trevor is fighting in the war lands on Amazon Island, and it's not here. They call it Avazonia, I think they call it in this issue.

They might not have.

They definitely are not calling it the thermoscia, that's for sure. But he lands there. And of course, uh, they nurse him back to health, and then they need to get him back to the mainland, and Diana wants to bring him back, and of course they can't. And then she does become Wonder Woman. But, yeah, as you said, there's lots and lots of text I'm just looking at somewhere. Literally, the people probably occupy the lower quarter of the panel, and the rest is all copy.

There are giant speech bubbles.

Yes. And on top of that, though, the art is not we talked about last week with, uh, the Batman origin story and how striking some of the art in that was. And here the art I don't know, it just did not I guess it's very much of its time. I mean, the best thing, it looks.

Like a comic strip, actually, uh, like a daily comic strip in a newspaper. It's a very structured and everyone looks very much the same, and there's not a lot of action or expression or variation in it. So I get what you're saying that that, uh, makes it not flow well, as does the huge amount of text. But what I will say is, and I'll argue now a little bit with what we both said, but you primarily said out loud about her iconic origin is there are pieces here that I think most people know, because you also get the fact that she has to compete to be the one to take Steve. And she does this without her mother knowing who she is, and that it culminates in the bullets and bracelets. And so those pieces are very Wonder Woman. I think the issue is, like you said, that origin hasn't been repeated quite the same amount of times that Batman's or Supermans has been. But I do think most people who like Wonder Woman know those elements. And they're all here from the very beginning.

Yeah, I was wondering how the Amazons have guns on their island, or why they have their own guns there to do bullets and bracelets.

Well, they're extremely technologically advanced, even.

Yeah. But they seem very anti gun man's world.

Yes, they do like peace. But I think one of the cool things and, um, I'll share this as an aside, but it relates to what you said. One of the people who's written Wonder Woman strongly is Gail Simone. And I think the way Gale Simone wrote her, and she started writing her as a guest in Birds of Prey before she wrote her title, is that Batman is sort of the dark cynic violence is an answer approach. Superman is the light, moral cop, like, super tight about his morals. Violence is never an answer. It's possibly ultimately necessary, but it's not the answer. Wonder Woman is this sort of fusion of the two, where she's almost a warrior for peace. She's someone who will do what needs to be done, but her goal is peace. It's interesting I think that's true for the Amazons too. Right. They're warriors, but sure, I agree. They probably don't love guns, but they're like, we will do whatever it takes to maintain the equality and peaceful world we want to.

And she's of Earth, but not of Earth, while Superman is an actual alien, and Batman is, of course, just a normal guy, right? That she's an Earthling, but she's also not an Earthling at the same time. And we kind of get that even in this origin story, where Hippolyte has to actually consult the gods about like, should I get involved in this war? I don't think I hate that.

And I really hate that they say, yes, you need to get involved because you need to protect America. I'm not so sure Aphrodite gives a shit about America. Uh, that's a weird one.

They're all white ladies on, uh, Amazonia, right? In this one, too.

Yes, at this point, yes.

And they're all either blonde or black hair, which to kind of your point is it's hard to tell who's who. The biggest thing are the costumes, which are definitely varied. Like when you watch a Sci-Fi movie from even like the they're all getting onto all the ladies are getting onto a spaceship and they're all wearing like these little mini skirts and stuff, like.

The pulp magazine covers tonight in the corsets and the bras.

And the Nepalita has got like these cone bras, this kind of Madonna cone bras. I was saying to you, it's very also like a share 80s outfit, but also meets like Slave Leia from Return of the Jedi. And she's the only one striking there. And then there's this whole thing about and I'm sure they've gotten rid of this term, but I mentioned it at the beginning, the magic girdle, which seems to be very key to Wonder Woman's powers. She doesn't even have the last. The lasto is not even here.

No, the last o is not all introduced yet. But no, the magic girdle does stay for a lot of the retelling of the origin because it has to do with the conflict between Hippolyta and the gods, and in this case, Hercules, although that's been redone a little bit at times, where she fights with other men who took over. But the magic girdle has stayed pretty much important. And I think it's widely believed. Obviously it was chosen because there's lots of sexuality in the early Wonder Woman. And uh, magic girdle sort of speaks to, of course, the women's allure and how magic aphrodite creates it. It's all about love and attraction.

Yeah. And undergarments it's stuff like you can't quite see, too. So it's like a mystery to men.

It's like an invisible plane. Yeah, sure.

That's not in the first, uh, issue either.

No, that is not either. So, yeah, I think, uh, I agree, the execution of this is not the strongest or the most enjoyable as a modern reader, but I think it's a really cool origin and uh, especially when you're remembering it's 1942. There are a few really important comic book heroes that we don't talk a lot about because some of them are public domain and they don't get retold a lot. But Wonder Woman is quite unique, I think, in terms of being really a superhero in this sense. And it's a cool introduction to, of the Greek pantheon gods and the way that's going to play into the mythology. So I like revisiting it. But yes, it was not easy to get through.

Well, let's hop in that invisible plane and uh, fly into the two thousands, the early offs if you will, and explore some multiversity.

I am your guide through these vast new realities. Follow me and ponder the question what if?

And today we are discussing just imagine Stan Lee's Wonder Woman issue number one from January 2002. And that story is simply called Wonder Woman, with a backup story called on the street.

So this is written by Stan Lee. Penciled by Jim Lee, inked by Scott Williams, colored by Alex Sinclair. Lettered by Bill Oakley. The backup plot is by Michael Uslan and Stanley as they all have been. The penciller, though, on this one is Gene Colin, inked by Tom Palmer, colored by Laverne Kinservski, lettered by Bill Oakley, edited by Mark Carlin, who also edited the main story, I should say. And a little bit on Jim Lee because as mentioned in last week's episode where we went to Earth Six, they used the Marvel method. So the artist collaborator is really, really important for the construction of the story. In this case, Jim Lee. Uh, there's a great letter that Jim Lee writes at the end of the issue because he makes a joke about how they have the same last name, of course.

Yeah, well, they think they're related.

Um, but interestingly, Jim and Stan have never worked together at this point. So Jim of course, gets his start at Marvel in the 80s, does hugely iconic work relaunches uh, X Men, quickly leaves Marvel in the abrupt image departure in the early 90s, then sells Wildstorm, his image studio, to DC in the late ninety s and becomes a part of DC. And starts working with DC. Eventually becomes the editor and uh, taking on a huge creative role. But at this point it's 2002. He's just for a few years been at DC because of the Wild Storm purchase, but he again had never worked with Stan before and talks a little bit in that about using the Marvel method to do this and how much fun it was to get to work with Stan on that. Even though they weren't in a bullpen, they got to fax and phone back and forth about the story that they were constructing. So we should probably do a quick summary of the Just Imagine Earth Six Wonder Woman because as we saw last week with Batman, it is a completely different character that we need to know who she is.

Yes.

So we are in Peru now, and we are dealing with the Peruvian and specifically the Inking gods. And in particular, we're looking at the creation of Cusco and Manko CAPEC, who comes out of Lake Titicaca to construct Cusco and ends up being the person who leads to the powers of Wonder Woman, who's also known as Maria Mendoza. So do you want to jump in and tell us what happens with Maria Mendoza?

Yeah. So Maria Mendoza is living in Peru and there is a local kind of gangster crime lord who is pilfering the land, trying to steal all these artifacts and selling them back. He has Maria's father basically under his thumb. And her father is a local judge, and her father's not kind of fight back against him, but then he eventually does. And our crime lord kills Maria's father. And Maria basically escapes the crime lord with the help of Steve Trevor, who is an American archeologist who's kind of over there and is actually trying to fight, trying to steal, trying to hide the artifacts and ship them back to the States.

He works for the evil company, although it turns out he's a spy, but.

He'S trying to keep them away from the evil crime lord. But then our villain does get the artifacts and basically they contain this kind of ancient evil which fills his body and he becomes kind of this creature, this superpowered villain. But at the same time, also in these ruins, the sun god spirit enters Maria and she becomes well, she specifically.

Finds the topak yori uh, golden staff. And that's what gives her the powers, is the top AK yari. And she's not Wonder Woman. It turns into the bracelet on her wrist.

Oh, yes. So, yeah, she then battles our villain, killing him kind of in the world. And then she can just unlike kind of our Diana Prince version, she can kind of change back. And she doesn't look exactly the same. So Maria looks a lot different than the Wonder Woman, who's a lot more kind of godly version of that. And then at the very end, we have Maria kind of starts to work for a newspaper or TV newspaper. It's a little unclear, I guess, and meets kind of a new potential love.

In William M. For William, of course, I would imagine. And she's going to protect her identity. And William is, of course, trying to figure out who Wonder Woman is in the news. And then in the backup, I'll add, because the backup for last week, we didn't really need to talk about it. It didn't add much to the story. But what's fun in this backup is we actually meet Diana Prince because in this world, Diana Prince is not Wonder Woman. So Diana Prince, it turns out, is working and is the person who is getting the artifacts shipped to her from, uh, what's his name? Steve Trevor.

Steve Trevor, who's killed, we should say, too. He does get killed.

Yeah. And what's fun is in the backup, and then we'll talk more about Wonder Woman. But in the backup, he has sent her the two new artifacts that will imbue powers. And of course, uh, two of them are their Hawk Man, Hawk Woman little icons. And so it's a fun sort of hint that if they were to use these runes because she's working with Carter Hall acid place. So if they were to use these runes, diana Prince could be Hawk Woman, and Carter would be Hawk Man. So fun little backup there about adding to the world, but focusing on Maria and Wonder Woman, who gets named by the news person because he thinks she's a Wonder Woman. But what do you think of this issue?

So I really liked this a lot as well. And if you listened to the last, uh, episode, I really liked that one also. And one of the things we said there was Stan didn't go to Creep. It's not in Elsworld. Stan created a whole new character. But that character, the Batman character that we discussed last week, contained, there was a lot of similarity. Of course, the parents get killed, and he becomes the Bat, he becomes a millionaire. So there's similarities. Even though the character is very different here, I feel like it is an entirely new character that he created. In fact, I feel like if you put a new name on this character, it could exist as its own character without being Wonder Woman. And in fact, I really enjoyed it.

I think that part is true, that she could be someone else and she could still exist. But what I think, like we said last week, that Stan sort of boiled down what is Batman? I think he did that with Wonder Woman. I think, again, this speaks to I didn't realize what would be a recurring theme in our discussion of Wonder Woman, which is just the fact that she doesn't have the cultural icon status. At least her narrative doesn't. Her image does, I'd say, but her story doesn't. So I think the pieces he took are just not resonating with you. So he took that like, her powers come from the gods. That's a really important part of Wonder Woman's story. It's not in the origin we read in the Golden Age, but it becomes an important part of her story. So he kept that her powers come from the gods. He kept that she's part of an indigenous community that sort of is coming into clash conflict, uh, with the outside society. So she's trying to maintain the culture of her people and her gods and her religion and her ancestry, and there are these people trying to exploit it. So I think there are pieces of this story that are essentially Wonder Woman, but I agree, it is still so different that she could have been the creation of some new Ink in character, which would have been really cool. I mean, she's Peruvian, right? She's Latinx, South American. She's inken. She's indigenous. There are so many important reasons that it's also just so cool that he constructed Maria Mendoza in this way. Uh, the design, too, of the character is so cool. Uh, we talked about Batman last week, and he's sort of ugly, and it's a very different design, and it serves the story purpose really well. But I don't want an action figure of him. I want an action figure of I think she's so cool with the sort of light streak in her hair that matches the light staff that she has with all the glittering gold armor around.

Her pants, white pants, and the new skirts.

So it's a very cool design that.

She looks ready for battle, as opposed to kind of the classic Wonder Woman look, which I know is shifted, but kind of if you go super classic, I don't know, not necessarily striking fear either into the heart of the person she's battling. But if you saw this person and that's where it kind of does share with the Batman design that we kind of talked about, where classic Bruce Wayne Batman. Not necessarily the most scary thing, but the Batman designed for Stan's comic. Very scary here. Not scary, but, like, intimidating, as opposed to maybe the kind of red, white, and yellow Wonder Woman that we all kind of know.

Yeah, mhm.

And I was reminded Guido and I'm sure you picked up on this as well, two of your all time favorite characters were constantly coming up in this. One, I was reminded of Shera a Bunch, because the transformation part of why.

I love Wonder Woman is my love of Shira.

But here even more so because that kind of really becoming this statuesque warrior kind of physique here, as opposed to.

And the gold and white also.

Even white. M gold and white.

Shira's outfit is gold and white.

So mhm and then the character and the storyline that we're really exploring on our Spinoff podcast, University, where we're talking about Alan Moore and J. H. Williams, the thirds Promethea. Lots and lots of Prometheasque references here in this issue. Yeah.

And Promethea is out two years before this. This is in development for a while, but it's possible there's an influence there because you're right. Promethea being, uh, an Egyptian deity that becomes this thing that can inhabit people. And the gold costume and the armor with the Caduceus staff. So there are a lot of quite literal similarities. And, I mean, Prometheus is at Wild Storm, so we know Jimmy knew everything that was happening because it was at his imprint. It was coming out under his comic brand at DC. So, yeah, there could be some M influence there. I would not call it a copy, of course.

No. But as wonder. Woman. Maria says it feels as though I've done this many times before, which is a key part of the Prometheus character, where there's all these other versions and they kind of all live in the.

Current host of uh, over time, this entity has existed. And yeah, you imagine here that, uh, what she becomes has also existed.

And there's also a little bit of elements that we see in Prometheau too, where she just can't at least where we are currently in our reading, um, is that she just can't become the character at any time. And this is kind of hinted at here. She has to wait for a heroic moment to kind of become Wonder Woman. She just can't turn it on and off, at least at this point in her power. So it's not just like, oh, Superman just goes into the phone booth and changes his outfit. Here. Something kind of has to happen in order for her to make the bracelet work for her.

Yeah, you imagine there could be a lot more backstory you get with, uh, the power of the god she has and why it happens the way it does and all of that for sure.

Yeah.

So this is fun. I really liked getting to reread this and meet Maria Mendoza again. And we won't talk about this Earth being revisited now, because we'll get to more of that in just a moment.

Yes. So let's start our magic bracelets and begin to ponder some possibilities. Will the future you describe be averted? So, if you listen to our last episode, this won't probably be a surprise, but Keto, what are we, uh, talking about for our pondering possibilities?

Well, again, so as I mentioned last week, earth Six has been seen briefly in Infinite Frontier, and most recently, Dark Crisis, Big Bang. Prior to that, it was indexed in Grant Morrison's Multiversity event. So the two huge multiversal events at, uh, DC in the last ten ish years, it has shown up as a canonical multiverse. But we really haven't gotten continued stories. It was only for Stan's 100th birthday, for his centennial, that just a few weeks ago, DC actually published a special issue revisiting Earth Six and telling a few sequel stories. So what's the issue that we read?

It is Tales from Earth Six, a celebration of Stan Lee. Issue number one from December 2022, though the COVID date is February 2023, and it is called To New Beginnings.

And this is written by Stephanie Williams. Penciled and inked by Bellyn Ortega, colored by Jordy Bel air lettered by Becca Carrie and edited by Britney Holzer And uh, this is again one story in, uh, the anthology issue that we just mentioned. And in this story we see Maria. Maria is still working at the national exposure, but she's now become an editor. It starts off with a really fun moment in which she's being cat called and talks about how not a day goes by when men are not exhausting, but a beam is falling from the scaffolding. She goes into a porta potty to transform into Wonder Woman and stops it. She goes to dinner with William, who she is working with, and she's now an editor to celebrate her being an editor. She then has to battle at dinner. Frosting, who is a person who has taken on a sort of cyborg thing that turns people into icicles, uh, because she isn't able to give her child Christmas presents because she lost her job and has a sick child. And Wonder Woman tells her that she has a parent who loves her, what she thinks is enough. And then she goes back to her apartment with William and sort of reflects on the fact that she isn't going to ever be able to share that she's Wonder Woman, but it doesn't matter because they're the same person, and maybe he can learn to love both. So a little bit of, uh, love triangle, lois Lane, Clark Kent, Superman thing that we are familiar with in this story. What did you think of it?

Yeah, I thought this is really fun. Like the Batman story we talked about last week. It's brief, but really fun. And I think what you just said definitely was the biggest thing I picked up on. And maybe this has been part of Wonder Woman's story in the past, but yes, so much of the Superman Lois Lane dynamic. Here where we get William, who's a reporter or journalist, and her changing and keeping it a secret and kind of even a dinner. It's that classic kind of Superman thing where suddenly she's gone. And he even says later, oh, you missed Wonder Woman's big entrance. So it's just a lot of fun in that kind of throwback feel that I feel like you don't often see because now everyone knows everybody's secret identities, it seems. So I love this kind of throwback element.

Yeah, it is fun. And it reverses the roles, of course.

Of mhm superman.

Lois Lane. So it adds that dimension. That could be interesting. So I agree. That's fun. I also think I love Stephanie Williams. We got to talk to her a little bit at New York Comic Con, and maybe one day she'll be on our show. We talked to her about that. She wrote a lot of nubia for the Wonder Woman world recently, and so I think she understands it. But in this case, I think she gets a fun voice for Maria Mendoza that I don't think Stan's writing had for her. Um, no, we both liked the Stan issue, but it didn't have a voice. Maybe because he's not a woman or whatever. For whatever reason, Stephanie Williams was able to give Maria a bit of a fun voice. She's a little fun, a little snarky. She's got a little more character here. And that was really fun to see. When she goes to change in the porta Potty. She says, like, that's disgusting. There's fun moments with her as a human being that make her a real fun to see.

But I think where there is that little stand sprinkled in is that kind of sense of realism of her being tackled on the street where she has to change isn't glamorous, it's a Porta Potty. Our villain, who's really only in about three panels of this, but he's only a villain because they've lost their job, and they've lost their job at Christmas time. So that kind of real worldness, that kind of grounds it. That's where I see the stam in this story.

Yeah. Um, in terms of the villain that you mentioned, I don't know if Stephanie Williams is trying to call back to something in the DC universe, earth Zero, or Prime Earth, or the Earth that we know. I'm not really sure. It's this sort of cyborg outfit with a top hat, and she's turning people into icicles. So, of course, there are lots of people with cold powers. Frostine, of course, is the name of Queen Frost Dean in Candyland. Um, so I don't know if there's another character that this is sort of a riff on in the way that the Batman story in this anthology has Hal Jordan in it, or if it's just a new invention that they added to this story. But it is fun, and it's it gives you the moment. What I think Wonder Woman stories, when they're written well, give you is her compassion and her love. I think that's what makes her really interesting. And so to give her a villain, if you will, who is struggling economically to care for her family. So you both have a mother maternal, uh, connection as women, but you also have this care and compassion that she can extend to this villain. It's so brief. We don't even know what happens to the villain at this time. Uh, but we do see Maria Wonder Woman sort of hugging her and so taking care of her. She might end up bringing her to jail, I don't know.

And it's contrasted with maria at the restaurant is ordering lobster bisque, and William is ordering the most expensive bottle of champagne there. So this kind of juxtaposition of the haves and have nots, and why do they deserve to have this while this other person is not even able to give a Christmas present for their kid? That's also a really nice comparison there.

Yeah. So it tells a meaningful story, I'd say. So anything else on this revisit of Maria?

No, just I think this has made me want to see this character more.

Yeah. So you would read another, uh, Maria Mendoza Earth Six Wonder Woman story.

Definitely. I think especially with Stephanie Williams voice in the character.

Mhm. Yeah, I agree. So before we move on, just like last week, I think it's really remarkable that we're having the same conversation two weeks in a row last week it was that Stan creates the first black Batman, and 20 years later, there is the first black Batman. And the same thing happened here. So in 2020, in future state, we meet Yara Flora, who is Wonder Woman in that story. She's now since taken on the mantle of Wonder Girl, but basically is Wonder Woman. She's the child of an Amazon and a Brazilian god. She's part of a third tribe of Amazons that we meet that come out of Brazil and South America. She's the first Latinx indigenous, brown skinned Wonder Woman to wear that mantle. And so here we are with Yara Floor in books today, 20 years after Stan creates Maria Mendoza. It's really fascinating to me that DC, I have to say, has been inspired by the just imagined universe to create these more diverse characters, because they could have created an ex Batman and a black Wonder Woman in future state, but they didn't. They created the same identities that Stan chose to tell these different, more inclusive stories. So I find that fascinating, and especially in Yara Flora, there is stuff about the Amazon and about the rainforest and what that means in terms of inheriting her culture and the god's power her powers have to do with water. So there's an ecological thing and all of that's in Stan's conception of Maria, about protecting culture and protecting the earth and trying to honor this Inkin, in that case, heritage. So it's really fascinating to me that that happened. Uh, what do you think that we're having this conversation again?

Yeah, like we said last week, I think these characters can both exist. It would be great to see Maria and Yara meet, uh, and talk about that shared background that they have. And that's a privilege that white characters have been having taken for granted. That we take it for granted all the time that two men, or even two women to a lesser extent, but definitely in terms of race, are able to meet. So having two Latinx people with similar powers, with similar backgrounds, I'd love to see that story as well, though, from.

Two totally different indigenous culture.

Totally.

That's the other cool thing is it speaks to the diversity of that identity, right? We collapse mhm so much, even into a, uh, South American Latinx identity. Being from Brazil and being Inken from Peru, totally is totally different. So that would be really interesting story. And I do hope that now that the multiverse seems pretty stable, that we can find characters.

And like we were saying last week, where we have Jace Fox, who comes from a, uh, life of privilege, being the son of Lucius, right, versus our main character of Wayne, who had lost his father and then loses his mother. But at the same time, they both share this identity as black men and as people who were wrongfully accused. But again, like, you just kind of said that there's also these differences. It's not, um, a one size fits all depiction. So to get more in depth into that kind of minutiae, I think would be amazing to see on the page.

Well, and in this case, Yara, uh, who is an awesome character and a brilliant design by Jordy Bel Air and Joel Jones, who co created her. She grew up as an Amazon, so she lived her life as a Wonder Woman, if you will, whereas Maria becomes Wonder Woman. So, again, you could tell interesting stories. I think, with the difference between someone who has lived their life in this role and someone who's taken on this role, and it is actually only a part of their life, they balance the two. Yara flora doesn't have a day job, at least yet in the comics. Um, there are some fun things to explore.

And Jordy Bel Air was the colorist on this issue, so there a connection right there.

Jordy does colors for a huge number of the comics that come out every single week and is incredible. So, yeah, it's amazing to me that Yara could have been inspired by Maria, but that they both exist. I do want to ask before we close, since this is our first Wonder Woman before we totally wrap up, does this trip through the multiverse, did you learn anything new about Wonder Woman as a character? What do you understand now about Wonder Woman? I think it is as much time thinking about her.

Yeah, I think it is that Gail Simone aspect that you mentioned, that she has, uh, a foot in both worlds, which I think so do Batman and Superman in a way, because Superman, of course, grew up with an Earth family. Batman doesn't have superpowers and yet is a superhero. But I think it's maybe even more explicit with Wonder Woman that she is of Earth, and yet she's also a god at the same time. So I think that intricacy to that character is something I had not really thought of and something I'll think more of when I see the character next. And I'd love to see a new on screen depiction. I know there's a lot of flux with DC right now, but I'd love to kind of see, uh, a new version of her, like we've seen new versions of Batman and Superman on film or in television. It's not something we haven't really seen Wonder Woman on TV in a bit. So that would still be something amazing, a new way to explore that character.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, I loved Gal Gadot's, uh, presentation of Wonder Woman, even if it was in larger source material that I think was flawed, both Justice League, Batman, ever Superman, and the Wonder Woman movies. But I am very happy for a new one to come along and bring to life some of these characteristics that we love about our wonder. She's a Wonder Woman, so that's a wrap. Dear watchers. Thank you for listening. I have been wondergido and I have.

Been wonder rob and the reading list is in the show notes, and you can follow us, uh, on all social media platforms at deer watchers.

And, ah, leave a review wherever you listen. As always, please. We'll be back soon for another trip through the multiverse.

And in the meantime, the words of OATU keep pondering the possibilities.