This blog should be sub-titled: a journal of my life in geek.
I get my geek on with things about which I am geeky: comic books, Baseball, Ultimate, science fiction, my favorite bands, books I have read and loved, and Jungian psychology to name some of the most frequently traversed subjects.
I began this project simply as a way to count my T-shirts. I own a lot of T-shirts. But how many do I have? Do I have 365? We shall find out.
When I started this blog, I thought about how each T-shirt means something to me. I bought it for a reason, after all. I set myself the task to post an entry about a new T-shirt every day as a way to simply write something every day, a warm up for writing fiction, which is my passion. Writing is like exercise. Warm ups are good for exercise. But after completing a month of blogging about T-shirts, I have learned that this blog serves as a journal; it documents my life in geek, sort of a tour of my interests in pop culture. The blog serves as a tool for self-inventory, for assessment and analysis of self and the origins of self, for stepping through the process of individuation in catalogues, lists, and ranks.
The blog also made me aware that I have some serious gaps in my T-shirt ownership, and I am in the process of collecting some new T-shirts for several of the great popular culture icons that I truly love. Stay tuned.
I was also a bit surprised that people checked out my blog and continue to check it, read it, and even comment on it. I am very appreciative of this readership. Please feel free to share your thoughts in my comments section. I will respond.
Also, please note that I have moved the original introductory text to the side bar. And now, I present to you the most recent entry of 365 T-shirts: a journal of my life in geek. Thank you for reading.
(Second Update - 1310.24. First Update - 1306.05 Originally Posted - 1304.25.)
TODAY'S COUNT: 18 blog posts remaining in the T-shirt year!!
OFFICIAL BOILERPLATE TEXT OF THE LAST TWENTY POSTS COUTNDOWN: Hi. Thanks for reading. I am posting this "boilerplate" text everyday for the last TWENTY posts in the T-SHIRT blog year, which started on March 22, 2013. I will close out daily transmission on March 21st, day 365 of my T-shirt blog-tastic extravaganza spectacular. I will give myself a short hiatus of total non-transmission or publication for an as yet undetermined period of time, though I am estimating about two weeks. After my blog vacation hiatus, I will resume T-shirt posts on a regular basis, also as yet to be determined (weekly? Twice monthly?) to finish blogging about all the T-shirts that were not featured in the blog year. At some point, once I feel I am rolling along nicely, I will begin regular posting through my main blog: SENSE OF DOUBT. T-shirt posts will direct to the T-shirt blog from SENSE OF DOUBT. I will continue to post THE WEEKLY COMIC LIST, the features of occasional T-SHIRTS I AM WEARING THIS WEEK, book reviews, comic book reviews, and other popular culture nonsense as I have been for a year now but all will go up at SENSE OF DOUBT and some will direct back here to 365 T-SHIRTS. Ultimately, I will begin Internet publication of my fiction, primarily the comic book satire episodic story called POP! among other projects. So, in summary, 365 T-SHIRTS will continue though intermittently. SENSE OF DOUBT will host my main blog presence and fiction writing as well as links to any T-shirt posts shared here. I hope you will continue to follow me in my journey as a writer and a content provider. Thank you for your kind attention and time you have spent with me on this and/or any other day this year. I am humbled and blessed by your readership. - chris tower, blogger, originated 1403.02
T-shirt #347 - Unknown Superhero T-shirt - Yellow Star on Black - DC Comics - circa 2000
I have no idea what this shirt is supposed to depict.
I know that this is a DC Comics character, probably a superhero, and I know that the T-shirt was printed and sold in the year 2000. I tried some searching to discover the true identity of what this shirt is meant to resemble, and I have found nothing.
The Internet may be powerful, but one comes up with very little useful imagery searching for "DC Comics 2000 yellow star on black T-shirt." Given the logo, it's possible that this is one of the many variations of Starman. But all such searches produced no results. Given that the shirt is fourteen years old, a general search for DC Comics shirts produced no useful results either.
I just looked through this list at the following link and found nothing to match this shirt.
This is a ridiculous statement on many levels. The link above is a retort to a debate on many comic book boards by a blogger (Manuel Carmona) who disagrees with the argument that Kirby would not be relevant today. So apparently the jackass (or jackasses) are the people on the message boards arguing about Jack Kirby. It's inane arguments like this one that keep me from frequenting comic book message boards. Back in the day, I used to frequent Compuserve comic book message boards and subscribed to Yahoo Groups for various comic book groups, and eventually I left this all behind because debates of this kind would drive me completely nuts.
We would not have modern comics as they are today without Jack Kirby, so arguing his relevance to today's comics predisposes he already existed to drive the comic industry to its current state. I could move to dismiss the argument just based on this faulty reasoning.
Saying Jack Kirby would not be relevant TODAY and his comics would not sell also assumes that if Kirby were working today, he would be producing comics in the styles of the 1960s and 1970s. This is also a ridiculous assumption because if Kirby were a current creator of the present his work would do what it did in the past, which is to innovate and make more dynamic the characters, stories, and situations that he tackles. He would also be able to produce an enormous amount of work even more efficiently and brilliantly.
This specious argument is also like saying that Shakespeare would not be relevant and sell plays today. These creators are products of their time and advanced their work beyond the quotidian dreck churning about the in the frothy canals of the time period. The genius of these creators would rise to the surface and be self evident no matter what time period they worked in, and they would find ways to innovate the current status quo.
I just added the rss feed for TRUTHFUL COMICS (the right thinker blogger above) to my reader. We need more right thinking people.
JLA and Avengers -
art by the Maestro -
George Pérez.
CLOSE UPS OF MY AVENGERS PRINT
I have shared pictures of the 41st Avengers print by George Pérez and Tom Smith before. But here's some close up shots. A wee bit of glare from the glass, which adds a nice ghostly effect.
1963 - COVER GALLERY
Speaking of Jack Kirby, Alan Moore and various artists did a take-off a few years ago on Marvel Comics circa 1963 (mainly the work of Jack Kirby but also Steve Ditko and others). These are brilliant and FUN comic books, smartly conceived and executed.
I have been meaning to share about them for a while now. Today is about pulling things out of my T-shirts Blog folder to fill up content since I cannot write about the shirt as I do not know what it is.
Read more about these comics via the following links. The Tor and CBR links are particularly good.
The other night during my reading time in bed when I started the Warren Ellis/ Mike McKone graphic novel of Avengers: Endless Wartime, I had one of those brain fart moments about which I am a little embarrassed. The book starts with an introduction by Clark Gregg, the actor who plays Agent Phil Coulson in the Iron Man and The Avengers movies and now on the TV show Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Gregg was writing about his introduction to comic books. First, he explained that he had been a mad thing for Science Fiction (SF) reading Bradbury, Asimov, and Dick in the early 1970s. I have an aside about these authors, but I will save it (see below). He said that during this time his brother brought home an issue of Iron Man drawn by Jim Starlin.
Huh?
I thought to myself "when did Jim Starlin EVER draw Iron Man?"
I could not remember any run of issues with Starlin on the art for Iron Man, a book I read regularly in the 1970s. I had a subscription for a couple of years after I asked my parents for comic book subscriptions as Christmas or birthday presents, alleviating the need to pick up issues at various stores around town, which meant that I was not asking during each car ride to stop at the liquor store that had a comic rack, Louie's Pipe Shop, the Michigan News Agency, or if I could head over to the magazine and book department when we were in Meijer buying groceries.
But Starlin on Iron Man??? I assumed that this "actor," who was trying to pass himself off as a comic geek did not know what the fuck he was talking about, and no one bothered to fact check his little preface. After all, I KNEW Iron Man, and this fraud, whose fraudulent nature was further emphasized by his choice of SF authors, had obviously also tried a lot of drugs in the 1970s.
But I had a handy computer on my night stand, the ever useful Google Nexus 7 tablet. I quickly searched "Jim Starlin Iron Man," and to my shame, I found one of my favourite Iron Man comic book covers (see left). But this was not Starlin's first work on Iron Man. He originated the character of Thanos in Iron Man #55. Starlin drew issues 53, 55, and 56 of Iron Man in 1972 and 1973 and contributed to issue 54 along with one of my favourite artists of all time: Gil Kane. I wrote of my love of Gil Kane among others in my list of favourite 1960s comic book artists in T-shirt #83 the X-Men Logo.
I have been threatening to create a list of favourite 1970s artists, which would surely include Jim Starlin as well as George Pérez. One of these days I am going to do that.
But back to Starlin. Okay, so I am obviously getting old. Or rather, my comics are all packed in boxes, which I have not looked at in many years. I have not SEEN that issue of Iron Man in maybe 20 years or more. I remember issue #100 well as it sat on top of a stack of comics for a long time while I was grounded and not allowed to read comics. I was not allowed to do anything but homework, which is a different story, and one that I may not tell on the blog.
Anyway, regardless, I am ashamed at my faulty memory because like Clark Gregg (who is no fraud and seems like a cool guy), I was also a HUGE Starlin fan.
Just a cool side note, in doing a little research here, I have discovered that Jim Starlin's home town (or possibly current town) is Detroit, Michigan.
I met Jim Starlin when I worked at Marvel Comics' Epic Comics division in 1985 for my college internship. Epic was publishing Starlin's Dreadstar. I was impressed that Starlin's scripts came in on handwritten sheets of yellow legal paper, the same paper that I used for my writing. I thought professional comic scripting would be typed. I managed to get my hands on Dreadstar as well as many other Epic Comics before making my temporary move to New York City. I read all the published issues of Dreadstar, which at that time numbered about 20 or so issues. I would rank this reading experience as one of my top five comic book reading experiences of all time. There's nothing like reading a comic book novel, which at the time, 1984, had not yet really been invented (though Dave Sim was hard at work on one).
Like Clark Gregg, who may be about the same age as I am, I was obsessed with Starlin's character Adam Warlock, while I was in junior high. Gregg's description of himself is an accurate description of me and my behaviour: "So obsessed, in fact, that when I recently dug up an old middle school notebook, the pages were so dominated by sketches of Adam Warlock that the school work was crammed into a few rumpled sheets in the back. Which is, of course, how one ends up with a career in the arts."
I want to delve into greater depth about Jim Starlin and his Warlock character on my blog, but I am going to have to find the right shirt. Believe it or not, but not only do I not own a Warlock shirt, I cannot find any shirts devoted to Starlin's Warlock character.
Nevertheless, Jim Starlin is one of the heavy hitters of comics past and present, and if you like comics and do not know this, then check out the link below of "Comics You Should Own," and at the very least find DREADSTAR. Yes, it is Star Wars inspired, surely, but it's so much more than a Star Wars knock off.
Starlin is hinting that he has completed a 100 page Marvel project due in 2014 featuring his rendition of Thanos. See the link above.
This is exciting news for several reasons. One is that Starlin invented Thanos. Another is that the big bad villain seen at the end of the Avengers movie is Thanos, though few but the most well read viewers (well read of comics) know this fact.
Also, Marvel just finished a huge crossover event that featured Thanos and left him in much the same state as Starlin did at the end of a major story arc in 1977 for Marvel Comics.
Here's a page from Starlin's Iron Man run. TODAY'S T-SHIRT
But I feel I have strayed too far from the cool new T-shirt: Stark Industries Research and Development.
Yes, this is a NEW T-shirt, and so it brings my total new t-shirts since I started this blog to 30 shirts. I had four new shirts arrive in the mail Wednesday, and I have a stack of four other new shirts that have been aching to be photographed and featured, some since this summer. What a blessing to have such a long lead time! And yes, the shirts themselves ache. Have you never been around a shirt eager to be featured on my blog? Well, let me tell you. That's how they are. Practically jumping up and down of their own accord: "Pick me! Pick me!"
I like this shirt very much because it is one of those faux logos, the kind of shirt that employees of Stark Industries Research and Development would wear if Stark Industries Research and Development existed.
SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS: Bradbury, Asimov, and Dick????
Back to Clark Gregg and the subject of Science Fiction writers as promised. Why are these the three most often mentioned SF authors from the 1960s-1970s period? Were they really the most often read authors?
I balk because it seems to me that these three authors get named most often not because they were the most widely read SF authors or the best SF authors but because these are the three that one is supposed to name. They are the "name brand" authors.
Though Heinlein gets mentioned often, why not Arthur C. Clarke? By the time Gregg referenced (1972-73), Clarke's 2001, A Space Odyssey had come out to coincide with the Kubrick film. Or what of Frank Herbert? Dune came out in 1968, and though it was not immediately a best seller, if one wandered into a SF section of a bookstore progressive enough to have one in 1972 or just trolled the fiction racks, one would likely find a copy.
I had heard of Philip K. Dick because he was mentioned prominently in my copy of The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, one of my favorite and most often read and reread books of all time. This encyclopedia listed Dick among the progenitors of a New Wave of Science Fiction with psychologically rich stories by Dick, Alfred Bester, Fritz Leiber, Philip Jose Farmer, and even Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End, all of whom were part of a 1950s bevy of writers that gave rise to the New Wave of the 1960s and 1970s, in which they continued to write, joined by JG Ballard, John Brunner, Ursula LeGuin. Harlan Ellison, Brian Aldiss, Poul Anderson, and Michael Moorcock.
Whew! Long damn sentence.
Though the passage does not mention them, I would add Larry Niven, Samuel R. Delaney, Gordon Dickson, Harry Harrison, Clifford Simak, Norman Spinrad, and Roger Zelazny. There are others I am leaving out. Those are just off the top of my head.
Sue me.
Back in those old days of the 1970s, we learned about SF authors by word of mouth, by tracking authors published in SF magazines, and by looking through the shelves or racks of the book store or library. The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction was a rare and amazing animal and opened up my world of SF to many of the authors I listed simply because I read that book back to front multiple times and and wrote a research paper in high school (which I regurgitated in college) on the subject of Science Fiction. Sure those authors that Gregg named are all good, but Bradbury never won a Hugo (he has since won retroactively for Fahrenheit 451). Dick won in 1975. And Asimov won in 1973, for The Gods Themselves, which is around the time Gregg mentioned when Starlin's Iron Man comics came out. But still, there are plenty of other authors. Good God man!
I remember a guy named Jack that when I first met him worked at one of the three Tom Sawyer's Book Raft stores in Kalamazoo, later managing the one closest to Richland. He bought and renamed the Book Raft when the local owner sold the franchise. It stayed open until Jack got in trouble for not paying back his sales tax, and the store closed shortly before the East Towne Mall shut down around 1990. Jack introduced me to many authors, and though Dick was mentioned on occasion (and I owned a copy of Ubik, which I had not yet read), Jack introduced me to some of my favorite authors who are not on the list above, such as Keith Laumer and Edmund Cooper, whose books my father and I both read, and which I collected with religious fervor. In fact, family trips out of town meant that I could arrange to visit at least one store that specialized in Science Fiction and/or comic books, as such things did not exist in Kalamazoo. I once walked 18 blocks from wherever the Washington DC Metro train dumped to find a specialty SF bookstore while my family saw the Washington Monument and other sites. In London, I rode the tube into the city's West End for comics and SF books while my family saw the Tower of London and Buckingham Palace.
So, my point being: THERE ARE MORE AUTHORS IN SCIENCE FICTION THAN PHILIP K DICK, ASIMOV, AND BRADBURY!
It just makes me crazy when people don't know how many other great books are out there by other great authors without the "name" recognition.
This is a point I intend to circle back to regarding SF writers. I have a whole shirt to dedicate to the subject that I bought at the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle. Stay Tuned.
I was going to review AVENGERS: ENDLESS WARTIME but after my little rant about Science Fiction writers, I think that's quite enough content for now. AVENGERS: ENDLESS WARTIME can wait. Isn't this supposed to be my light content week?
WEEKLY COMICS LIST
This list does not contain all the comics for the week. When I went to Fanfare Wednesday, a day earlier than usual, I found out that some of the shipment had been delayed. I may have an update this weekend. I am planning to review both Inhumanity and Velvet as those are the two I have read so far. Notice how the back log has shrunk.Catching up! I will return to a discussion of these comics in a future entry when I also get around to reviewing AVENGERS: ENDLESS WARTIME.
COMICS FOR 1312.04 Inhumanity #001 Velvet #2 Green Arrow #26 Guardians of the Galaxy #009 The Superior Spider-Man #023 Young Avengers #013 Iron Man #019 Daredevil: Dark Knights #007 Fearless Defenders #012 Batman: Detective Comics #26 Green Lantern #26 Secret Avengers #012 Indestructible Hulk Annual #001 The Amazing Spider-Man #700.1
BACK LOG
Cataclysm: The Ultimates Last Stand #002 God is Dead #4 Trillium #5
COVER GALLERY
I went a bit nuts with the Iron Man covers as this is my only Iron Man themed shirt as of now, though I may have to change this. Though I grabbed the first issue Gene Colan cover and the excellent Adi Granov art that I already had on file (from the Warren Ellis Extremis run), the assortment of other covers came up as I was searching for Starlin's Iron Man art and deliver an interesting variety of artists, including George Pérez, Starlin, George Tuska, Gil Kane, and the last being very early art of John Romita, Jr.
I did discuss Iron Man previously when I reviewed the Iron Man 3 film in T-shirt #99: Moby. Given that I wrote about Iron Man when I was sharing a shirt for Moby, all bets are off. I can write more about Iron Man at any time. Beware.
Before I am accused of being a chauvinist or worse a misogynist, I have many favorite women superheroes, one of whom I already wrote about early on in the blog (and at great length): T-shirt #28 - Batgirl.
Because of the male domination of the industry, there are not many T-shirts featuring logos and icons for the women characters. Technically, my Hawkman T-shirt (#49) can also apply to Hawkgirl/Woman and was mistaken for Hawkgirl's costume symbol the other day by a well-meaning student of mine. And many uniform shirts, such the X-Men Logo, The Fantastic Four Logo, and the Hydra Logo would all apply to the women characters as well as the men.
Though other shirts would apply to both male and female heroes, like yesterday's, as there are women in the X-Men, there are very few shirts available and thus few featured that sport women's logos or characters. In addition to the aforementioned T-shirt #28 - Batgirl, I featured Death twice -- T-shirts #224 and T-shirt #225 -- H.R. Watson from Paul Pope's THB in T-shirt #160, Elektra in T-shirt #84, the wonderful Love and Rockets comic and characters as shown in T-shirt #19, and technically, for readers of Nowhere Men, T-shirt #26, is dedicated to a woman character. I had not read any of Nowhere Men when I bought the "Science is the new Rock 'n' Roll" shirt. I just liked the slogan. The volume one trade is awaiting my purchase at Fanfare, though I already featured the shirt without originally mentioning the comic book at all. I later added a postscript directing readers to a review of the comic in that entry after I realized I had written the whole entry without naming the comic book source material at all.
Because of the dearth of women's logos in shirts, I have only specifically featured women in comics via the shirt itself seven times (if the Nowhere Men shirt counts) and this shirt will make eight, but I have written about women in comics repeatedly; listing all these instances would be too time consuming. Just click the Comic Books category and scan through the entries. Some of my current favorite comics feature women prominently, such as Lazarus, Velvet, and Mind the Gap, also I have featured such characters as Madame Hydra, Snow White (from Fables), and the X-Men's Psylocke in T-shirt #218. Oops. Since her picture is actually on the shirt, this brings my shirt feature count to eight shirts, so NINE counting this one. :-) I could count the image of the woman on my Optic Nerve T-shirt (#98), too, I guess. There's no rule that the characters must all be superheroes, so that brings my count to ten with today's.
I have written many times on the subject of women and subjects related to women. In fact, most of the people at my fantasy Dinner Party are women: Suzanne Vega, Margaret Atwood, Erykah Badu, Laurie Anderson, and Marisha Pessl. I have recently written about my adoration of Veronica Mars (T-shirt #240), who would be at The Dinner Party if she were a real person and BUFFY, of course, in T-shirt #170. Also, it seems that I kind of forgot about my "Women" category, as it only has one shirt, featuring Katie Holmes, T-shirt #93. I could go on and on. Many shirts have featured women in some way or content about or created by women, such as one of my favorites in T-shirt #161 with TED talk videos by Susan Cain and Jill Bolte Taylor. And I have not even featured the two feminist shirts I own yet. So stay tuned.
So, there's plenty of women featured on the blog even if there are not that many logos specifically for women superheroes or images of women superheroes on shirts. But today's post is about Wonder Woman.
Something about Wonder Woman always kept me at a distance. And I am not sure I know what it is, though I will advance a couple of theories here today. I adore Wonder Girl, Donna Troy, who was and is one of my favorite heroes in comics, along with Batgirl, from a very young age. In fact, my favorite piece of fan fiction, which I am worried I lost a digital copy of when I purged floppy disk when helping my parents move, was a story loosely based on a thirtysomething episode but instead featuring Dick Grayson (Robin/Nightwing) and Donna Troy (Wonder Girl) as a married couple at Christmas time. This would be my ideal Christmas blog post if I could find the digital copy of the story or if I wanted to devote the time to re-type it. Many of the women characters in the Legion of Superheroes are my favorites. I adore Catwoman, Misty Knight, Black Widow, Mera, Pantha, Hellcat, Tigra, and the Scarlet Witch. So, it's no dislike of women that puts me off Wonder Woman.
Possibly, my current feelings about Wonder Woman are colored by how under-whelmed I am by the current Wonder Woman comic book by Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang. Really, there's nothing wrong with the new Wonder Woman comic, and I know many people love it. I have had the debates with fellow readers in Fanfare. The art is gorgeous. I do not have a problem with Cliff Chiang's art. In fact, I quite adore the updated versions of the gods and their images. Very well done. I like the story emphasis on Wonder Woman's posse, which for a time included Hermes (until a falling out) and has consistently featured the New God Orion. Issue #22 did a very good job capping the ongoing storyline about Wonder Woman protecting the baby Zeke. I rather like this review of issue #22, even though I liked the issue more than many of the previous issues. My biggest issue with the comic is that I was not engaged, and I think that the reason for this is the lack of emphasis on Wonder Woman's character. A large cast is a great idea, and I like a large supporting cast for a book like this one, but Azzarello does not manage it well. It's the same problem I had with 100 Bullets. This was a brilliant book for the first thirty or so issues, but as his cast expanded, Azzarello took too much reader engagement for granted, and I would pick up the book and not know what the fuck was going on.
This person seems to sum up how I have been feeling about the new Wonder Woman comic
I was inspired to feature today's shirt and some Wonder Woman content because the students of my mythology class are doing a project on Wonder Woman and so I dug out the book featured below and had some substantive discussions last week about the character's origin, history, and current portrayal.
This may be contradictory for me to claim to not be a huge Wonder Woman fan and then show the hardcover history by Les Daniels, which is a great book, as well as many comic books. But I maintain that I am just not the biggest Wonder Woman fan, though this changed during two of the comic's runs: the one by George Pérez starting in 1987 (known as volume 2 issues 1-62 essentially) and the William Messner Loebs run following George Pérez (issues 63-100) with art by Lee Moder and others and covers by the amazing Brian Bolland. I have liked others on the book (such as the art of Mike Deodato and Terry Dodson) but those two runs of the book are definitely my favorite with the George Pérez run being the clear winner. More on George Pérez in a subsequent section.
My main reason for not claiming to be a huge Wonder Woman fan is she seemed bigger than life and out of my league. There's a great deal of projection and fantasy to being a comic book fan. Surely, my affection for Donna Troy, Wonder Girl, is as much about her character as it is about my attraction to her type and my fantasy imagining of being involved with her if the comic book world were real or if she were real. Hence my story about the Dick Grayson-Donna Troy happy marriage. I always identified with Dick Grayson, and this I could see myself as him and as such WITH Donna Troy. I could never see myself with Wonder Woman just like I cannot project myself into a relationship with a super model (and really, I don't want to). Maybe it's because Wonder Woman is too ideal and so she doesn't seem like a real woman, just like those strutting, long-legged super models are too idealized and do not seem like real women. Clearly, I am more interested in the real women. Donna Troy feels more real.
I like Wonder Woman, but I would rank other women characters above her if I were to make a list.
Also, the sado-masochism of the Wonder Woman comics seemed to contradict the feminist roots of the book, despite the creator's claim that women are superior to men and one day will rule the world. Check out the "Female Bonding" article by Pereira and the THanley WW-Beyonce post in the links below. Even after the Comic Code lowered its boom on WW, there were too many submissive, bondage, and strange psycho-sexual stories about Wonder Woman that did not "feel" right, as evidenced best about my first Wonder Woman comic (see farther below), which I bought or was given at the age of six and was clearly a formative influence on me.
Nevertheless, Wonder Woman served as a feminist icon, especially for Gloria Steinem with her launch of Ms. Magazine in 1972. I have not problem with that identification. I just don't think the comic lived up to its feminist identification until George Pérez came along.
A very cool documentary about Wonder Woman: LINK HERE.
MY FIRST WONDER WOMAN COMIC
This is the cover of my first Wonder Woman comic, issue #176, published in June of 1968. This comic over disturbs me like so many of the Wonder Woman comics from the Golden and Silver Ages mainly because I do not like seeing women in submissive, confined, or inferior positions, and I did not like it from a very young age (I was six when I got this comic). On the other hand, comic books in which Catwoman or Poison Ivy has Batman trussed up like a hog for slaughter were a different matter entirely, but that's a story for another time.
SIDENOTE: I have been trying to find the earliest issue covers each time I write about a major superhero. Look for me to collect all these covers of my earliest comic books in a single blog post (okay, maybe two) in the near future.
I did not buy another Wonder Woman comic or have one given to me for quite some time. Shortly after issue 176, Wonder Woman entered a stupid, "mod" period.
Then again, others hated it. Stripped of her powers, Wonder Woman became more interested in shoes and hat boxes and fashion than saving the world. It was idiotic. Okay, yeah, she's a secret agent, but still... it's dreck.
I would not buy another Wonder Woman comic for six years: March of 1974.
Though I am not the world's greatest Wonder Woman fan, I am a huge fan of George Pérez, and when he took over and re-launched Wonder Woman in 1987, I was completely devoted. I loved it. I bought every issue. I bought the poster. I hung on the edge of my seat, drooling over every image. every gorgeous page. I already devoted much love to George in T-shirt #144, when I also shared some of the beautiful George Pérez Wonder Woman art.
George Pérez's wonderful Wonder Woman comic is not only my favorite comic from this time period, but one of my favorite super hero comics series of all time. For someone who did not and does not count himself as a huge Wonder Woman fan, I feel that this is quite an achievement.
George Pérez is just brilliant. As I noted, I wrote about George before, and I am honored to count him among my Facebook friends.
George Pérez is one of my favorite comic creators of all time, and I think it's time I give him his own category.
George Pérez's Wonder Woman comic came at a time when DC was re-vitalizing its heroes after the Crisis on Infinite Earths, which George Pérez also drew with Marv Wolfman at the writing helm. With comic books like The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One as well as John Byrne's relaunch of Superman (which is one of the good things he has done in my opinion), it was time for Wonder Woman to also see a new vision as one of the top three (supposedly) Franchise heroes for the company.
Much of the following will be paraphrased from Les Daniels' book Wonder Woman the Complete Story as seen in the picture above. I will cite the quotes though the not the paraphrases.
Smartly, George sought the input of women, from his wife Carol, to his new editor Karen Berger (almost solely responsible for DC's success with the Vertigo line), Jenette Khan, and even Ms. Magazine publisher and noted feminist Gloria Steinem. George said he "wanted to make her [Wonder Woman] a nice person. I probably went a bit overboard where the action was sacrificed because of that, but I was trying to make a her a peace character. It's a contradiction in terms---having a crime fighter who's a peacekeeper" (Daniels, pg.169).
One thing that George Pérez did that I admired greatly was to return Wonder Woman to her roots as a character born of GREEK MYTHOLOGY and to eliminate the references to Roman mythology creeping in since the 1940s. "William Moulton Marston had no doubt mixed the two cultures deliberately, using the more familiar Roman names for figures he wanted readers to recognize immediately (Mars) and less familiar Greek names for figures he wanted to disguise (Aphrodite)" (Daniel, pg. 169-170), Pérez rejected the idea that a love goddess would have been the leading patron of the warrior Amazons. He also jettisoned the Marston idea that "women would tame men through erotic enslavement" (Daniels, pg, 170) as a core concept in the book.
Pérez also did away with Wonder Woman's "Kryptonite," her weakness that when she is shackled she loses her powers. Pérez dealt with this issue head on in episode #19. Though he showed Diana bound on the cover, he did so because the point of the story is that she breaks out of the chains.
George Pérez stated about his work on the book: "I was trying do a humanist, rather than a strictly feminist, view of the character. I didn't want her to come out as confrontational" (Daniels, pg. 170).
He succeeded brilliantly. It's great to see all the comic covers for the George Pérez run in the Comic Vine pages. There's a fair amount of content both on George Pérez's wiki page and the Wonder Woman Wiki page on Pérez's run on the book and the stories he created, especially the events leading up to the DC crossover The War of the Gods and later the final story with Donna Troy's character. And somewhere, I own the poster shown below, though I do not think my copy is in very good condition as it was taped to the wall of my bedroom for maybe as many as 20 years.
So, is this enough content?
Two last things. I was not overly thrilled with Wonder Woman re-design as seen here, though some of the Deodato art was very cool in those issues (even though the re-design images here are by Bolland).
It's also interesting to see fan art, such as these faux Rolling Stone covers. I am not a fan of over-sexualizing Wonder Woman, though these images are clearly meant to be swipes of images from actual Rolling Stone covers, which is mildly interesting as surely we would have such issues devoted to super heroes if they really existed.
VIDEOS
This blog entry would not be complete without some videos. Find below a clever faux-movie trailer for a Wonder Woman movie that a fan cut together from various films, including the unaired Wonder Woman TV pilot. It's a pretty good mash-up. Following that video, I share a pretty good origin video with comic book clips, and then two clips from the 1970s Wonder Woman TV show with Lynda Carter, which, YES, I watched religiously. I was especially found of Debra Winger as Wonder Girl, as I am a big fan of Wonder Girl, so I had to include a clip from that show.
Wonder Woman Movie Trailer
Fan edited trailer from the TV pilot?
Superhero Origins: Wonder Woman
Fan made composite from comic book stories.
Wonder Woman & Wonder Girl
From the 1970s TV show with Lynda Carter and Debra Winger
OFFICIAL BOILERPLATE TEXT OF THE LAST TWENTY POSTS COUTNDOWN: Hi. Thanks for reading. I am posting this "boilerplate" text everyday for the last TWENTY posts in the T-SHIRT blog year, which started on March 22, 2013. I will close out daily transmission on March 21st, day 365 of my T-shirt blog-tastic extravaganza spectacular. I will give myself a short hiatus of total non-transmission or publication for an as yet undetermined period of time, though I am estimating about two weeks. After my blog vacation hiatus, I will resume T-shirt posts on a regular basis, also as yet to be determined (weekly? Twice monthly?) to finish blogging about all the T-shirts that were not featured in the blog year. At some point, once I feel I am rolling along nicely, I will begin regular posting through my main blog: SENSE OF DOUBT. T-shirt posts will direct to the T-shirt blog from SENSE OF DOUBT. I will continue to post THE WEEKLY COMIC LIST, the features of occasional T-SHIRTS I AM WEARING THIS WEEK, book reviews, comic book reviews, and other popular culture nonsense as I have been for a year now but all will go up at SENSE OF DOUBT and some will direct back here to 365 T-SHIRTS. Ultimately, I will begin Internet publication of my fiction, primarily the comic book satire episodic story called POP! among other projects. So, in summary, 365 T-SHIRTS will continue though intermittently. SENSE OF DOUBT will host my main blog presence and fiction writing as well as links to any T-shirt posts shared here. I hope you will continue to follow me in my journey as a writer and a content provider. Thank you for your kind attention and time you have spent with me on this and/or any other day this year. I am humbled and blessed by your readership. - chris tower, blogger, originated 1403.02
Okay, so I don't know what this shirt is supposed to replicate.
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