The Amazing Amazon...Wotta Woman by Dave Goode

I have to say as a kid back in the Silver Age I never bought a Wonder Woman comic book. I'm not saying I never read one. I did. But only when nothing else was available. But this super-hero loving kid wasn't spending 12 cents on a Wonder Woman comic book. Not when there were alternatives and there were.And I'm quite sure that other "little boys" from that era felt the same. Wonder Woman was a "comic book for girls". And if I wasn't reading a Justice League of America comic book in which Wonder Woman was appearing I had no use for the Amazing Amazon. That is until Lynda Carter came along to play the part on television in 1975.

There had been a Wonder Woman television pilot shot during the Batmania era. But the less said about this the better. And then there was a made-for-television movie starring Cathy Lee Crosby in 1974. This flick seemed to be based on the Wonder Woman comic books that were published from 1968 to 1972 when Wonder Woman was stripped of her powers and fought crime as an Emma Peel type character. The pilot movie for THE NEW ADVENTURES OF WONDER WOMAN was a tongue-in-cheek retelling of Wonder Woman's origin from Sensation Comics No.1 written by William Moulton Marston and illustrated by Harry G.Peter. And truthfully this was one of the most faithful adaptations of a comic book story put on screen. And Lynda Carter was perfectly cast as the Amazon princess fighting evil in the man's world.

Sometimes though I imagine a 1940s big screen Wonder Woman movie starring MGM's MILLION DOLLAR MERMAID Esther Williams.With maybe Van Johnson as her love-interest Steve Trevor. Miss Williams had all the same qualities that made former Miss U.S.A Lynda Carter so perfect in the role. Tall,statuesque and with a sweet sexiness that's hard to define. Plus Miss Williams who had set multiple regional and national swimming records in her late teens was a lot more athletic.

Here's a video by my buddy Vance Capley drawing Wonder Woman in the original costume she wore back in  Sensation Comics No.1 back in 1942.