Wonder Woman #9

WONDER WOMAN VOL.1 #9 (1944)
by William Moulton Marston & Harry G. Peter

Wonder Woman doesn’t have many old classic villains, so for the time being this will be the last Golden Age Wonder Woman review. Let’s go out with a blast with the first Giganta!

We begin with Steve Trevor’s niece getting into trouble with a gorilla at the zoo.

The gorilla takes the kid to Holliday College, where “Professor Zool” is giving a lecture about something that kind of resembles evolution.
I didn’t know Marvel’s High Evolutionary had a DC equivalent.

Also Steve Trevor is a dick to animals.

The professor’s machine turns Giganta into a woman. Complete with a magical rope that knows how to cover up the naughty bits!

It’s fair to say the artist has a type.

Things you rarely hear Wonder Woman say.

Thanks for the translation, comic.

Giganta may turn into a villain, but all the trouble of this story is 100% Wonder Woman’s fault.

Yep. It’s going to be one of those stories.

Professor Zool’s machine is so powerful that it affects the local fauna as well!

It figures that a Wonder Woman villainess would not be a feminist.

She allies herself with “the Tree Men”, and I have NO IDEA where they came from. Are these regular people re-evolved by the professor’s ray?

I guess they ARE supposed to be transformed regular people, since Wonder Woman says the entire world has been affected. But there’s absolutely zero consistency on HOW people are affected!

Steve Trevor doesn’t seem to have changed at all.

Don’t worry, I’m sure Wonder Woman knows exactly what to do in this situation!

Well at least we get Wonder Woman beating up and riding a T-Rex out of this.

Well that didn’t last long!

But Wonder Woman manages to free herself, and even recovers what’s left of the professor’s machine.

Best technobabble of the Stone Age.

They power up the machine thanks to a lightning bolt captured with a kite, and they turn the entire world into paradise!!!

But wait, we haven’t actually reached the future! This is still the evolutionary past… because apparently pre-history evolved into “the golden age”? And now we need to go beyond that!?
In addition to seeing the words “golden age” in a Golden Age comic book… WTF!?!?!?

What improvement? THEY LOOK EXACTLY THE SAME!!!

I swear I don’t even know what’s going on anymore. Please note that WE HAVE NOT TRAVELED THROUGH TIME. This is apparently part of natural evolution!!!

I’m trying to follow the plot and give you a summary, people, I’m really trying. But I’m at a complete loss here.

A 1943 story pushing for equality? I didn’t see that coming.

This might shock you, but Giganta is not very bright.

Didn’t expect to see Wonder Woman being set on fire. Then again I didn’t expect ANYTHING I saw in this comic… well, except Wonder Woman being tied up, of course.

Oh, that’s nice, the Queen of the Golden Age chooses free will. YOU STILL HAVEN’T TOLD US WHO THE F##K SHE IS!!!

So the moral of the story is “some women like men, some women like women”? I see what you did there, William Moulton Marston.

But Giganta screws up with the “evolutionary machine” again, and SOMEHOW this means we’re in Ancient Greece now.

This is an equal opportunity book. Men can get kinky as well!

And now we meet Wonder Woman’s mother before Wonder Woman is born! Make up your mind, comic, is that stupid thing a time machine or not!?

SOMEHOW this leads to Wonder Woman fighting Achilles in the Trojan War. WTF?!?!?

We finally end this nonsense with more nonsense.

Seriously, THAT is how the story ends!!!

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Historical significance: 0/10
This Giganta has less than a half dozen appearances in the Golden Age.

 Silver Age-ness: 10/10
As crazy as it gets, but like the Ares issue this is so absurd that even the Silver Age wouldn’t go THIS crazy.

Does it stand the test of time? 0/10
I am legally obligated to tell you that time has put a restraining order on this comic.

How close is this to the modern character? 0/10
This is BARELY a Giganta story, and she’s utterly unrecognizable for modern readers.
The Silver Age version of Giganta was still a gorilla-turned-woman, but that’s when she gained the power to grow giant-size.

Giganta wasn’t exactly a big (pun intended) Wonder Woman villain, but she gained popularity by appearing in the Super Friends cartoon.

Her being born a gorilla was a bit too silly for post-Crisis, so she was completely re-imagined as doctor Doris Zuel. Her Super Friends-inspired costume is by far her most iconic look…

…but to be honest I prefer the look she had in the late 2000s.

 The leopard bikini shows up regularly, but I can never take her seriously with that. There are several compromises that evoke that look with good effect.

The Doris Zuel version has for all intents and purposes completely replaced the original Golden Age version… except in the animated Justice League, where her origin is being a gorilla super-evolved by Flash villain Gorilla Grodd!