A MORRISON MONDAYS 85th anniversary salute to the Amazing Amazon! By BILL MORRISON You wouldn’t know it to look at Wonder Woman, but this Wednesday, October 21, she will turn 85 years old! To celebrate the anniversary of her first appearance in All-Star Comics #8, I dug out a drawing I did when Princess Diana was only in her 60s and colored it up especially for 13th Dimension! Even casual fans of the Princess of Paradise Island will probably recognize the source of my inspiration for the drawing, the Aurora Wonder Woman model kit from 1965. My drawing was done on Duo-shade board, an old graphic arts product that many comic artists used to use to create shading lines and cross hatching in their drawings through a chemical process. Nowadays, artists can create the same effects digitally, which is why they haven’t made Duo-shade since 2007. I was curious to see how it worked, and chose Wonder Woman as the subject for my experiment. When I was a kid, a high percentage of my weekly allowance was spent on Aurora model kits, and I built and painted nearly all the monster and superhero models they offered. Wonder Woman was one of my favorites, and I especially loved the Murphy Anderson box art of Diana binding a giant octopus with her Golden Lasso of Truth. My original model is long gone, but I kept the box all these years. It’s a classic image of an iconic character who’s only become more popular as the years have rolled by. In 1965, she was a comic book superstar, but not much more. Today her resume includes a hit live-action TV show and multiple blockbuster feature films, along with starring roles on several animated series and loads of merchandise. So, happy anniversary to the Amazing Amazon, and may your adventures go on for decades to come. Random thought: I wish Aurora had done a 1970s Comic Scenes reissue of the kit, complete with a comic story that explains the situation depicted in the model, like they did with Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, etc. I’ve always wanted to know what information Wonder Woman was trying to coax out of that octopus with her lasso. Maybe some dirt on Aquaman? Or possibly the phone number of the Sea King’s agent, so she could call and ask...
The former DC honcho chronicles the competition, from the late ’60s to the mid ’70s. — Former DC chieftain Paul Levitz’s new behind-the-scenes history of Marvel as it segued from the Silver Age to the Bronze Age — Marvel Explodes: From Bullpen to Big Business — is out now from Bloomsbury. We invited Paul to share 13 THINGS he learned while researching it. To find out more about his cryptic references — read the book! Right on. — Dan — By PAUL LEVITZ When you dig into a period of history, even one you lived, you learn things. Some could go into print, others not… 1. That Len Wein and Marv Wolfman were at the Worldcon in Washington when Roy Thomas came down there to ask them to replace him as the editors of Marvel Comics… and I was wandering that convention too, driven down there by Len and Marv’s close friend, Mark Hanerfeld. We hadn’t started playing poker together regularly by then, but I was surprised I didn’t even know they were there. Worldcons weren’t the massive events that comics conventions have become. 2. That there’d been original material in Li’l Folks for a couple of issues, much less that it was created by a young African-American cartoonist with loads of talent who would go on to… disappear. 3. That the same Marvel staffer who would go on to create Blue Bloods also wrote for The Sopranos. 4. That it was Lin Carter (or more likely his agent) wanting to be paid decently that allowed Conan the Barbarian to become the wonderful comic it did. 5. That Roy originally wanted John Buscema to do Conan but the cost of the license fee allegedly kept him from the assignment (sounds like an excuse to me, given how tiny the fee was, but Martin Goodman did watch his pennies). Guess that worked out well, both in the short and long run. 6. That not only Len and Marv but also Gerry Conway got their first Marvel credits in the short-lived Marvel mystery titles. 7. Who were the witnesses to Len and Dave Cockrum’s plotting session for Giant-Size X-Men #1 and why. 8. The extent of pushback on Don McGregor’s Black Panther for featuring all people of color on the covers. 9. That Jim Salicrup started his Marvel career as a...
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