Wonder Woman #219 (September 1975)

It's that time again! It's time to rejoin Wonder Woman on her journey to rejoin the Justice League! It's September, so that means our dear Diana is gong to deal with labor number nine. Last time, we joined the Amazing Amazon as she battled Felix Faust and an ensorcelled Statue of Liberty. It was a crazy story, but I figured it was forgivable as magic was involved. But now Diana deals with a new threat: A dimension that seemingly hates women. So, how does she deal with this? Let's find out as we look at Wonder Woman #219!

The cover is a Dick Giordano piece, depicting a bound Wonder Woman asking a group of men to kill her. It's an intruging cover, and when I first saw it, I was quite curious as to how this came about.

"The World of Enslaved Women!"

Writer: Martin Peaks

Penciler: Curt Swan

Inker: Vince Colletta

Letterer: Unknown

Colorist: Unknown

Editor: Julius Schwartz

The story (this time being narrated by Elongated Man) starts with the Invisible Jet racing to save a woman about to be run over.

Wonder Woman is able to stop a potential tragedy by using her lasso to tie the truck to a nearby lamppost. Another epic rescue by the Amazing Amazon!

However, the woman herself has a very...odd reaction to Wondy saving her life.

Sheesh, no good deed indeed. Wonder Woman uses her lasso to get the woman to go home. She then reports to the U.N. Crisis Bureau in her civilian identity of Diana Prince. The U.N. is hosting an international feminism conference...and two of the prominent guests have vanished: Bonita Doolin of Ireland and Minna Golden of Israel. They literally disappeared in public view. Blinked right out of existence. Thanos is up to something...

Anyway, Tracy Morgan gives Diana a list of the American guests at this conference. Her job, should she choose to accept it, is to make sure they don't vanish. And of course, being a Wonder Woman comic in the 70s, Morgan has to make a chauvinistic remark about her being able to handle. No wonder Morgan became a supervillain later on.

Ralph Dibny notices that one of the women on the list is a world-famous tennis player named Betty Jo Kane...who faced off against the infamous Willy Wrigley in a "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match.

If you don't get the reference, allow me to explain. You see, Betty Jo Kane is a pastiche of Billie Jean King. King was regarded as one of the finest female tennis players in history. In 1973, she participated in a "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match in real life, too. She faced off against 55-year-old Bobby Riggs, whom she defeated. The match has been marred by controversies regarding Riggs supposedly throwing the match because of debts, and criticism of the age differences between King and Riggs, but it is still seen as a major event in women's tennis, with King helping pave the way for women's tennis superstars like Steffi Graf, Monica Seles, and the Williams sisters.

Wonder Woman and Elongated Man were at that match when Miss Kane...up and vanishes. The disappearance threatens to cause a riot, but the Amazon is able to calm the crowd down with the help of her magic lasso. Looking to find some clues to the tennis star's sudden exit, Diana finds a receipt from a beauty salon called "Consciousness III". This confuses Diana, as in her mind, a supposedly liberated woman like Betty Jo Kane would never go to a beauty salon as that would be seen as...sexist? What?

What, Betty Jo can't just want to get all dolled up once in a while? Anyway, Wonder Woman learns from a newspaper that another name on the list, Margaret Matthews, is attending the opening of another Consciousness III salon. Matthews is the wife of the attorney general (we can assume of New York, as Diana's work at the time, and we may assume that Mrs. Matthews is rather famous herself). Anyway, sensing a link between the salon and the disappearance, Diana Prince suddenly finds herself in the mood to get a bit of a makeover.

Diana hears a scream and goes to check it out. Luckily, it was only that the salon's shampoo gave the lady what looks like She-Hulk hair. The attendant presses a button on his razor and she disappears. he also uses a hidden communicator in it to announce that his bosses have got their target. Diana demands to know what the employee did, but he refuses to answer and a fight breaks out. Naturally, our heroine is able to handle herself...despite her taking a bottle of shampoo to the head and getting suds in her eyes. It's here that Diana joins the ranks of vanished prominent women. Luckily, Ralph is taken along for the ride so he can record this. It turns out that the missing women were transported to a world on another dimension.

Welcome to the world of Xro. On this world, men rule and names have no vowels in them. Women here on this world are basically nothing more than slaves. One day, two of these slave women stumble into a laboratory, where they learn of Earth...and its feminist movement. Remember, this is a comic from the 1970s. The two slaves get some inspiration: travel to Earth, learn from this movement, then fight for their freedom.

The slaves make it to Earth, but it turns out there was a side effect of it. Somehow, their minds were altered, reversing their emotional responses. An example of this is shown when one of the slave women is crushed and killed by a falling statue. The other woman, instead of being horrified and saddened, finds it hilarious instead. Despite this, the surviving slave is able to return to Earth and incite a rebellion.

Xro's government has trouble putting down the rebellion. However, they get a brainwave: If women from Xro get mentally altered by traveling to Earth...maybe the same is true in reverse. Maybe if they bring prominent Earth women to Xro to speak in rallies, their reversed mentality will cause them to convince Xro's women to end their rebellion and re-submit to male rule. They try to enact their plan.

The leader of Xro, named Mchsm, is quite happy that Diana is here, though. You see, Diana has her magic lasso with him, and the leaders of this world think they may be able to use that to further make the women submit back to being slaves again. Diana says that she's happy to hand it over. However, presumably to her Amazonian physiology, she's not completely compliant. The guards distract her with a bit of bullets and bracelets, allowing one of the men to get her lasso and bind her with it. Marston would be proud of the guard's binding work.

Wondy uses some trickery to free herself, as well as the other Earth women kidnapped by Mchsm. Outside, the female mob is bursting their way in, out for blood. Mchsm refuses to admit he's beaten. He'd rather die than live in a world where he gets told what to do by a woman, so he ignites his building's self-defense mechanism. Yup, he's going to make everyone go kablooie.

Wondy gets the Earth women to the teleporter, back to the Conciousness III salon. However, the salon is about to go up as well, maybe because of the teleporter. One flight on the Invisible Jet Airlines later, and the women are arriving at the U.N. conference. After Diana used her lasso to make them forget that Diana Prince and Wonder Woman are one and the same, of course.

Ralph completes his report, while explaining a plot hole: Men are presumably immune to the emotion-switching effect of traveling between Earth and Xro. I don't know.

Basically, the Elongated Man feels that Diana has earned the right to rejoin the Justice League. And with that, there's one final piece of business to take care of. With Batman unavailable due to the events of Detective Comics #444-448, someone has to monitor Diana's tenth labor. Out of the Leaguers present (Superman, Flash, Atom, and Hawkman), the Mighty Mite and the Winged Warrior have not monitored the Amazon yet. Which will get the job? Well, there's only one fair way to decide it: Grab a coin, and call it in the air, gentlemen.

Yeah, this story was...not that good. It really wasn't. The art was the saving grace of this story. The story felt like a first draft that needed some heavy editing. I did get a good laugh out of this one part: Green Arrow flipping out over Ralph buying a video-tape machine. That is hilarious considering the existence of camera phones these days. I did notice the gag of the leader being named essentially "machismo", and one of the slave women being named "Stnm", as in Gloria Steinem. Yeah... Really, the best thing about the comic is the art. Curt Swan turned in some good art for the issue. It was nice to see him back.

 

If you really want to read this for yourself, I recommend tracking down the 2012 trade paperback Wonder Woman: The Twelve Labors. Thanks for reading this blog entry! If you liked it, show it off! Take care of yourself and each other. Stay safe, stay healthy, stay home, and wear a mask! Join me next time when I look at the first issue of a title that helped premier a new team of heroes, with a dark twist...