Though DC’s big reboot has already been sprung on us, I had one more image in that poster style that I had to try. Might as well complete the trifecta, right?
So this time out, it’s Wonder Woman. If you’ve read my previous posts on these golden age characters, I realized I kind of unconsciously set up a progression; I mentioned that I liked Superman, but later confessed I liked Batman a little more. So you might be expecting me this time out to say I liked Wonder Woman the best. But you’d be wrong.
Sorry to say, I really wasn’t all that into Wonder Woman as a kid. I appreciate the strip much more now as an adult than I did back then, for its historic significance as well as some of the aspects that are unique to it (the fantasy elements, the mythological, etc.). Perhaps the golden age art (by H.G. Peter) looked a little heavy-handed and crude to me in some ways as a kid. Looking at it now, I have more of an appreciation for it (It feels at times like a sort of cartoon version of an Albrecht Dürer engraving).
Wonder Woman is an interesting concept that seems to be a tough one for writers and artists to get a handle on. And even if they manage, it seems hard to get a handle on it such that it will engage people and get them to buy the book (Which is probably the more important point). Many approaches have been tried with varying degrees of success, and some don’t get tried at all. But Marston and Peter must’ve had a handle on something when they created her. She’s survived this long and managed to become part of our collective pop culture mental landscape, recognizable even to non-comics readers. I think that’s worth a little salute here.
A confession: this poster is a loose homage (which I acknowledged in how I signed it) to an original poster by Ludwig Hohlwein. In studying his work online, I stumbled across one poster that just seemed a natural to adapt for a Wonder Woman image. It all but cried out for it. So that is what I did!
