After the Crisis on Infinite Earths hit, Wonder Woman was one of the characters whose history got restarted over again. With that, she was recast as a new arrival to the world, an innocent babe in the woods. With a new history came a new supporting cast. One such member of it was one Myndi Mayer. A publicist from Diana's new stomping grounds of Boston, Massachusetts, Mayer was a vivacious woman with a keen business sense, and set out to make Wonder Woman an international sensation.
The comic we're going to look at here is the tale of how this pugnacious publicist...met her end. This is Wonder Woman #20.
The cover is really awesome, because it's so unique. A Perez piece, it basically resembles that of a newspaper front page, announcing the death of Myndi Mayer. You got Wonder Woman and her friend Julia Kapatelis with police officers Indelicato and Shands on it, like they had just emerged from a police station to a crowd of reporters. The bottom shows the suspects in the crime. Miss Mayer made her fair share of enemies in her time, and any one of them had to motive to take her out.
"Who Killed Myndi Mayer?"
Writer: George Perez
Penciler: George Perez
Inker: Bob McLeod
Colorist: Carl Gafford
Letterer: John Costanza
Editor: Karen Berger
Executive Editor: Dick Giordano
The story begins with a trio of Chinese men running for their lives in the streets of Boston. Someone, or something is in hot pursuit of these men. They run into the someone chasing them. They fire at their pursuer, but the bullets bounce off silver shining bracelets. The figure's hands crush their guns like they're tissue paper. And the men themselves get tossed into garbage cans.
One of the men comes at the figure with a pair of sai. But this man is no Raphael. Another one of the men tries to flee, but gets caught by a golden lasso. The man begs the figure not to hurt him, he'll squeal. An angry Wonder Woman demands answers from him.
Officers Ed Indelicato and Mike Shands are in an office, which has become a crime scene. The two men look over a corpse. Who was that corpse? One Myndi Mayer, publicist to the stars. She was also Wonder Woman's publicist. Now, she's missing her face, splattered all over by someone's gun.
Indelicato is snapped out of his reverie. Mayer didn't go without a fight. Her letter opener had blood in it, and her purse was empty. Robbery gone wrong? Maybe not. There's traces of cocaine on her desk. It was called in by a cleaning lady. She saw a bearded white guy wearing a jacket with the words "Common Sense" written on it enter the building after hours. He seemed really upset about something.
Indelicato and Shands visit Mayer's secretary, Christine Fenton. The blonde isn't surprised Meyer's dead. She figured it was only a matter of time before Mayer got herself killed. Shands produces a police sketch.
Fenton recognizes the sketch: One Steve London, former art director. He had been fired a week earlier. They found the man at St. Eligius Hospital, as he was being treated for a knife wound. Naturally, they take him in for questioning. He also appeared to be a bit hungover. London admits he was there, but he just wanted to talk to her. He didn't even own a gun. Besides, killing her wouldn't have gotten him his job back.
He then tells the cops about a board meeting that Mayer had called. The cops had the official minutes, but London was able to flesh things out. Mayer looked burned out. Her coffee was clearly liquored up, and her nose was red. He brings up Skeeter La Rue, a man who many at Mayer's firm hated.
Look at that face. That's a face you just want to punch. Mayer's publicist firm was going through some troubles. They lost a bunch of accounts and they were the target of 153 lawsuits. Just about everything, from embezzlement to reckless endangerment. Heck, I would not be surprised if indecent exposure was among the lawsuits, too. Also, I can imagine the disaster that was the Wonder Woman fair in Wonder Woman #15 (April 1988) did not help things very much. Anyway, Myndi is not the forgiving type. She wanted heads. And Steve London was one of those heads she collected. Since then, he'd just been reeling from the shock of it. He does point out another victim of Mayer's head-collecting: Deni Hayes, London's assistant. She wasn't a member of the Myndi Mayer fan club, either. She also shared London's hatred of Skeeter.
Last night, the two of them decided to do something about their troubles: Get good and drunk. And get drunk they did. They got so drunk they blacked out. All London remembers is hearing Deni say something about Mayer and Skeeter that enraged him. London then breaks down and starts sobbing, saying he couldn't have killed Mayer.
In Chinatown, Diana pays a visit to To-Choi Industries. She asks Mr. Choi about the whereabouts of Skeeter La Rue, as he works for him. However, Choi denies that La Rue is in his employ. Diana presses, but Choi just tells her to leave, or he'll have her arrested for trespassing. Choi's bodyguard, a big hulk of a man, tries to escort Diana out. It goes as well as you think.
Choi moves to call the cops, but Wonder Woman catches the man with her lasso. Since Choi won't give her the truth voluntarily, she'll use the lasso to cajole it out of him. He tells her he's in a small warehouse in Bedford and gives her the address. She then uses an Amazon nerve technique to send the crime boss to Dreamland. With that, she flies off.
Ed Indelicato is typing into a typewriter. Yeah, the narration of this story is done in the vein of a book that the inspector is writing. London's goose is seemingly cooked. The murder weapon was found, and London's fingerprints were on it. It seems like an open-and-shut case. But Indelicato's instincts say otherwise. Nothing's ever that neat. There's something more to this...
However, Deni Hayes's testimony is not helping much. Hayes found something out about La Rue. She had broken into his office, and gone through his files. There were some oddities in the records, and she discovered that La Rue has been using Mayer's firm to peddle cocaine. Mayer herself is one of the customers. In fact, ol' Skeet has been using his cocaine connections to take over Mayer's firm. Some of the clients found out, and that's when everything went nuts.
London insists that it's the cocaine messing with Mayer's head, but it's more than that. It was the disaster that was the Wonder Woman fair in Wonder Woman #15-16 (April-May 1988). During that mess, the police managed to capture some masked crooks, but they were simply a distraction so that the Silver Swan could make off with the real target: A sack of computer chips. Prototype custom chips worth a fortune. It was a part of a big smuggling scheme to raise money for a new cocaine shipment. Deni told Meyer about it, but Mayer saw it as an attempt at blackmail.
Deni told London that Myndi was laughing about it. This sets the man off, so he stormed out of the bar. However, Deni just said that in a drunken stupor, and wasn't able to stop him. She was left at the bar to puke on the bartender.
And with that, it seems they found their man. Steve London killed Myndi Mayer in a drunken rage. But there still was some pieces missing to this puzzle, so Indelicato and Shands decide to do a check on Skeeter La Rue. Turns out the Southerner was really a New Jersey man named Michael Boyd, lifelong criminal. Indelicato then gets a visitor.
The inspector is spellbound at the sight of the beautiful Amazon, accompanied by her friend Julia Kapatelis and Christine Fenton. She had just come back from an adventure in Greece when she got the news. But this is no waking dream. Diana wants some answers about Myndi's death. We then switch scenes to Bedford at night, focusing in on the warehouse. Skeeter La Rue, or should I say Michael Boyd, is feeling a bit paranoid. He's convinced someone's in the warehouse. His guards think he's crazy as they checked around and found no one. He orders them to check around again, so they follow orders...and run into an ambush from Diana. Boyd tries to flee, but Wonder Woman is able to catch up to him.
Earlier, Diana wants to know who killed Myndi. Indelicato tells her about the case, feeling that he couldn't say "no" to her. He notes that Diana was the only one who showed any sort of actual sadness about it. Christine Fenton finds it hard to believe Mayer was a drug smuggler, as well as London being a killer. However, Captain Ablamsky and the DA believe it. Fenton and Kapatelis suggest another way to get the truth: Diana's magic lasso.
Captain Ablamsky is understandably disbelieving about it. A magic lasso that can make people tell the truth? Come on! I mean, Ablamsky can believe a speedster, a flying super-strong man, a space cop with a powerful ring, but a magic lasso that can make people tell the truth?! That's for fairy tales!
There's also another problem: A legal problem. You see, a DA could argue that London is trying to save his own skin by using the lasso as a ruse to suddenly "remember the truth". Not to mention...no defense attorney with an ounce of competence would allow someone to just wrap a rope around someone because they claim it can magically reveal the truth. Diana implores Ablamsky to let London make the choice for justice. However, Ablamsky is not talking about justice, he's talking about the law.
Ultimately, Ablamsky does relent. However, the public attorney talks London out of it, just like Ablamsky predicted. Deni Hayes goes to speak to the Amazing Amazon. However, Indelicato still has one lead left: Mr. Michael Boyd. But Boyd up and fled the coop. He also got a visit from a rep for the coroner. They found something in Myndi's autopsy...
Indelicato is typing about this case (He's working on a book) on his typewriter when he gets a call from Shands. They found Boyd. And he's dead.
Wonder Woman is in the warehouse with Shands, where she explains how she got here. Deni Hayes had given her some names from Skeeter/Michael's files. She tracked them down and her search led to Boyd. Using the lasso, she found the truth: Boyd killed Mayer. He said that he had to, because she would ruin his drug-pushing operation.
Mayer had confronted the man in her office, furious her agency was being used as a smuggling front. Boyd asks her if she's been drinking again. She is heartbroken about this, as she loved him. Boyd pulls a small bag of cocaine out of his pocket and remarks that she loved his product, not him. He tosses it on her desk, taunting her. Her cocaine habit is the reason she won't turn him in.
She screams she is done with the junk, and demands he get out. If he returns, she'll raise all kinds of Cain on him. Boyd wasn't worried. She needed him, and he knew it. Choi, thought, was not so confident. He thought Mayer was out of control, and Boyd was tasked to, as the old Mob saying goes, rub her out.
That night, Boyd went to Mayer's office after hours, armed with a shotgun. Mayer was sitting at her desk, just staring at nothing. Her eyes were red and glassy. It was like she was catatonic. Boyd shot her in the face with his gun. He then ransacked the office to make it look like a robbery. It was at that time an angry and drunk Steve London stormed in.
Boyd grabbed Mayer's letter opener and stabbed London after the two struggled. This explains London's injury. Indelicato can guess the rest. London made the perfect patsy. Boyd wiped his fingerprints from the letter opener and put it in Mayer's hand. He did the same thing with the gun so London's prints would be on it, then tossed the gun in a dumpster. Nice and neat. Mayer's dead, London gets pinned, and Boyd would be brought somewhere safe. Or maybe taken to be eliminated himself.
But there's still one question. How did Boyd end up dead on an electric fence. After all, it's not Wonder Woman's style to throw people into electric fences. Diana admitted she let her guard down over her being upset about Myndi. Two guards rushed in as she was untying Skeeter. While she was occupied, Boyd tried to flee. He ended up running into the fence before Diana could catch up to him.
Wonder Woman laments about Myndi's death, how she believed the publicist could have beaten her demons, but Boyd stopped that from happening. However, there's one last sad twist. Shands and Indelicato got the coroner's report, and...
Boyd's gun didn't kill Myndi Mayer. She actually died from a cerebral hemorrhage...caused by the alcohol and cocaine in her system. Yeah. Evidently, the bag of coke was too much temptation for her, and she was already dead before Boyd shot her. Diana is understandably shocked, and wonders why this happened. Sadly, no easy answers could be given. Keep in mind, Diana at this point was still relatively new to Man's World, and something like suicide (well, accidental in Myndi's case) could have never occurred to her. She still was rather innocent, after all. All Ed Indelicato can do is stare at a picture of Meyer, comparing her to, as he writes himself, "...a beautiful bird that just wanted to keep flying higher. Until she ran out of sky."
This comic is really good. The mystery seems open-and-shut, but it does provide some good twists. It's a tragic tale of a woman who is brought down by her own fallibility. I liked that the narration was done in the style of Ed Indelicato's writing a book. It helped give an almost noir feel to the story. Bittersweet ending, Indelicato's descriptions of Wonder Woman, it does all contribute to the noir-esque feel of it all. Myndi Meyer had her fair share of enemies, but she was the ultimate instrument of her destruction. The irony of it all. I love that. This was a tale that showed that even in a world of heroes, tragedies like this can still happen.
I think it may have been the inking, but I admit, when I read this book for this review...I thought another artist did it for a while there. It did feel a bit...off. It still was good, it just felt a bit...off. That's the best way I can think of to describe it.
This issue would not be the end of Myndi's story, though. Wonder Woman Annual #1 (1988) would give us more details about Myndi's life in the form of her recounting her life in a video will, showing there was a lot more to the flamboyant businesswoman than many realized. This tale was Perez's favorite work on Wonder Woman.
This story is really great. If you want to read it, I recommend hunting down the trade paperback Wonder Woman by George Perez Vol. 2. Thanks for reading this review! If you liked it, please spread it around! And if you want to give some additional support to this blog, please drop a tip in my Digital Tip Jar! Any amount is appreciated! Next time, I'm still in a bit of a DC mood, so we will take a look at a tale focusing on a pair of Brave and Bold Silver Age superheroes. See you next time!
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