Tuesday, November 11, 2014

One Panel, Many Questions!

As we are looking at Wonder Woman's origin story in All-Star Comics #8 (1941) today, I thought one particular panel called for a little bit of extra attention.

Hippolyte is having a contest amongst the Amazons to see who will become Wonder Woman and represent Paradise Island in man's world. After showing us one contest (the foot race), the rest of the icosathlon is summarized like this:

Questions, I have questions...

**So we know the first event--a foot race, paced by a deer. We know the tie-breaking 21st event, Bullets And Bracelets.

So what are the other 19 events? Thoughts are welcome in the comments section.

**Diana wins the first event--she outruns the bloody deer!--but after 20 events, she is tied with Mala, each of them having won 10 events.

So in which 10 events is Diana only the second best Amazon?

**Who is this almost-as-good-as-Diana Amazon? I'm not all that familiar with Wonder Woman history. I know that Mala had a couple of small Golden Age appearances, and a token Silver Age showing. But is she embittered because she was one lousy bullet shy of becoming Wonder Woman herself? Did she love Steve Trevor, too? What became of her? Or, maybe, she realized that the "Masked Maiden" was really her friend Diana, and she let her win...?

**If they did Bullets And Bracelets as the first event, maybe they could have winnowed the competition down more quickly...

**You know, nowadays the Amazons could really rake in the cash selling the TV rights to this competition to ESPN...

4 comments:

Wayne Allen Sallee said...

Let me think on this.

Jonathan Sargeant said...

Hot dog eating?

The Mutt said...

First the spankings and then the oral sex.

Anonymous said...

Mule-wagon racing?