Publisher: Dynamite
Writer: Andy Mangels
Artist: Judit Tondora
Colourist: Roland Pilcz
Release Date: OUT NOW!
Price: $3.99
Wonder Woman ’77 Meets The Bionic Woman #2 Now there is a team-up to set the pulses racing of any fan of 1970’s TV.
Of course, Jaime Sommers, aka, The Bionic Woman was very much a creation of the 1970’s; created as a female counterpart for Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man, they had their own series of team-ups ending with the bionic duo eventually getting married (everyone say ahhhh!).
Wonder Woman has a much longer history. Debuting in 1941, she was the creation of William Moulton Marston, well know sexual free-thinker who lived happily in a menage a trois and openly advocated bondage and submission as a “respectable and noble practice”. Not exactly the sort of background you would expect for the creator of comic books’ premiere feminist icon but it could explain some of the more overt bondage scenarios present in some of Wonder Woman’s earliest stories – look them up if you don’t believe me.
By the time we get to 1977, Wonder Woman has moved on through several creative phases, just emerging at the end of the sixties from her non-powered, mod boutique-owning, pant suit wearing phase courtesy of Mike Sekowsky – not his proudest moment but when you’re a middle-aged man trying to come to terms with the groovy-ness that was the 1960’s what else could we expect from him really.
Now, courtesy of Dynamite and Wonder Woman ’77 Meets The Bionic Woman #2 we can re-live the decade that gave us glam rock with two of TV’s foremost female super powered legends. Nostalgia aside, it’s a wise move to keep Wonder Woman ’77 Meets The Bionic Woman #2 grounded in the past since an update in the twenty-first century would only get mired down in the constant, frantic regeneration that is a perennial feature of DC comics characters at present.
Teaming up to fight a sinister cabal, (is there any other kind?) known as CASTRA, who have just killed Joe Atkinson, director of the Inter Agency Defence Command (I.A.D.C.) who also employ Wonder Woman in her secret identity as Diana Prince, Wonder Woman and The Bionic Woman set out to retrieve some stolen missiles unaware that the sinister villain of the piece, Dr Cyber who is also a female, proving that anything the boys can do, evil cyborg lunatic females can do better, is about to secure the services of the last player needed to further her creepy fembot making plans.
Judit Tondora gives us perfect replicas of Lynda Carter and Lindsay Wagner and I love the way all the captions are drawn in the same style used in the TV shows. Jaime Sommers’ fangirl response to meeting Wonder Woman is pitched just right, never becoming too gushing and giving her plenty of the action to prove that she can hold her own with any costumed superhero you care to throw her way.
It’s obvious how Andy Mangels spent his childhood because his love of his subject matter shines through in every word. This is escapist entertainment of the highest order and as far as Wonder Woman ’77 Meets The Bionic Woman #2 is concerned, you can truthfully say: “they just don’t make ’em like that anymore”.
Except, of course, they do and Wonder Woman ’77 Meets The Bionic Woman #2 is the proof. Enjoy.
Reviewer: Gary Orchard
Reviews Editor: Steve Hooker