Why?
The Mod Girl era of Wonder Woman is one of my favourites. The depowered Diana become something like a female Batman, relying only on her intelligence, abilities and training for her heroic activities. So at the end of the short lived Mod era I sort of expected some great story to explain why she has reverted to her old costume. Alas this story was not it. Diana has been following the teachings of I-Ching since being the mod girl, but at the beginning of this issue he is killed completely randomly by a sniper. Diana goes to hunt down the sniper, and in the ensuing battle the two fall out of a window. He falls to his death and Diana lands on some sort of stone gargoyle built into the building’s facade, which saves her life, though she is now amnesiac. Diana is taken to the hospital but feels an overwhelming urge to return to Themiscara which is explained in a strange way:
Diana steal a military plane to fly there (this was the golden/silver age Wonder Woman that couldn’t fly.) Some fighters are scrambled to go after her and they shoot her down into the ocean, and then of course this happens:
She finally makes it to the island, where her mother hooks her up to a memory bank (complete with memory electrodes) and Diana remembers everything which is pertinent to her (though “memory channels” 3 and 5 are omitted). She is once again appointed Wonder Woman and is ready to go forth and do good in man’s world again, until she is challenged by a rogue amazon who also wants to be Wonder Woman. This battle ends in a draw and then Diana is put on the amazon submarine (?) to be transported back to New York City. She is let out at the United Nations, where some random guy offers her a job.
Does that all sound like a story that a 4 year old might tell you? It sort of did to me - there was this guy that was shot in the back and then this other woman flew in a helicopter to fight the bad guy, and then she fell and lost her memory, and then she stole a plane and fought a shark and got to an island and got attached to a memory machine and then remembered almost everything and then had to fight another lady and then got a ride on a submarine and then got a new job from the first guy she met (I have nothing against 4 year olds – they are actually really cute!) I was expecting something monumental or at least interesting, but this hodgepodge story is almost a slap in the face to the much cooler mod girl years. It would have to wait until the George Perez reboot in the 80s until we got a good explanation why Diana wears her trademark costume.
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