Gods and Monsters: Wonder Woman #1

Let me guess! Wonder Woman leaves Paradise Island to live in Japan?

I was up in Seattle visiting "friends" the last couple of days. I thought I'd get back into the blogging routine by reading a Gods and Monsters book. I hope I still remember how to make jokes. If you saw my trivia team's performance at the Geeks Who Drink trivia night, you'd be pointing out that I definitely still know how to make jokes. We tied for second with all of the teams that did not come in first or last. We failed at the tie-breaker because the way they do the tie-breaker is stupid. The question was about Broadway and I wrote down "Cats" faster than anybody else but we still didn't win. Possibly because I should have written Andrew Lloyd Webber. But at least I scratched out my first guess, "Madagascar," which was written before the tie-breaker question was asked just in case I was having a psychic moment. My trivia team's name was Snake Titty because somebody had written "Snake Titty" on the chalkboard in the men's restroom and it made me angry. That's just bad science!

The team that won were a bunch of know-it-all assholes. Probably. I hope they died.

So anybody in the Portland area who wants to become a member of Snake Titty and who also wants to do all of the work in getting a team together for Geeks Who Drink events should contact me. Also you should be able to answer all of the questions that I can't answer (which will be most of them). I also have a tendency to not pay attention when my teammates are writing down the obviously wrong answer because I'm saying something tremendously witty. Sometimes I erupt into physical violence.

Snake Titty. Except for the guy giving the thumbs up. That was the quizmaster. My grown-up schoolyard rival has the blue hair. The Non-Certified Spouse is across from her. Making the peace sign is the Non-Certified Spouse's cousin and the saboteur that ruined our chances for outright second place before skedaddling out of there. I suppose she should get credit for all the answers she did give us but I won't forgive her for erasing that correct answer to replace it with a wrong one just before the game ended! Teammate Mark is a shadowy monster on the run from his past and could not be photographed, so he took the picture. And I am the one pointing at my face as if to mime, "Look. This is me. I am this person. This one."

This issue of Gods and Monsters begins with Wonder Woman emerging from a BOOM Tube in India in 1962. So it's as close as DeMatteis and Timm could come to the original origin story without just completely ripping it off.

The uniform Wonder Woman is wearing on the cover that I mistook as a Japanese crime fighting costume is just a Jack Kirby outfit. Totally understandable mistake. Wonder Woman is Bekka of New Genesis. She's going to be extremely popular because people are just naturally drawn to Bekka and want to have sex with her for no comprehensible reason at all. I want to have sex with her and I know she's just printed on a page and I also don't know how to have sex. I mean, with a fictional character. I totally sex with real people all of the time, or at least during the times when it is possible. You know those times. The proper ones. Sexy, sexy times.

Bekka meets a statue of Ganesha and she imagines it saying all of the things she needs to hear. After her delusion, she feels much more comfortable with her completely random decision to accidentally arrive on Earth. But now she has to learn all about her new home! She's lucky to have a teensy, tiny Mother Box which can act as her Wikipedia since Wikipedia didn't exist in 1962. Back then if you wanted to find out some information about something, you had to find a set of Encyclopedias or an almanac or an old blind black woman. If you had access to all three of those things, you could learn anything you needed to know about life and the world around you.

Bekka quickly learned that Earth was beautiful and savage. It was like New Genesis and Apokolips but combined together! Was that what Jack Kirby was getting at? Was he writing an allegory for the human heart at war with its own selfish desires and uplifting charities? What was he writing about when he created The Demon? Man's lustful nature and his obsession with his own cock?

Bekka discovers the proper time for doing it: on the brink of Armageddon. Is that why people are constantly predicting the end of the world? So they finally have the proper time to do it?! Oh boy! That means I'm going to have sex on the Jewish Day of Atonement this month! Woo hoo!

Bekka decides it's time for her to stop watching the goings on of her new home and time to become a part of it. So she gets into her fancy New Genesis duds and goes out to battle crime! Her first battle leads to a bunch of dead people instead of a bunch of hugged people, so I think she's doing Wonder Woman all wrong. But she does cry so she might be on the right path. You'd never see Batman or Superman cry. That's the main difference between Wonder Woman and her Justice League cohorts, just after her boobies.

Bekka discovers the hippie movement which teaches her about love since they invented it. They also invented having sex at even improper times and with the improper number of partners. Bekka teaches them about "bringing down the party" and "bad vibes" and "how big a stick can fit up one person's bottom." She's all, "Drugs are bad! Don't do drugs!" But the guy who makes the drugs who isn't a bad person at all and probably the protagonist of this story is named Doctor Psycho and he's all, "I make good drugs! The best! Don't you ruin my business, you jerk! I think we might wind up having an adversarial relationship!" But Doctor Psycho has a friend named Guitar Joe who thinks Bekka would be an awesome addition to the farm and the loads of improper sexual relationships going on up at the farm, especially the ones that include his penis.

Yes. Naivete is the answer to cynicism. As long as you don't mind all of your answers being completely wrong. Which, if you're naive, you really don't! Which is why so many people believe in an omnipotent creator!

Eventually Bekka decides that the commune isn't being run correctly so she begins to teach people how to do things her way. Instead of taking drugs, they used "crystals" for their mind-bending trips. Instead of the women pleasing the men, the women pleased themselves and told the men to get the fuck off of them for once and haven't they ever heard of contraceptives?! Plus Bekka discovers that Doctor Psycho is a super villain. He drugs her because he wants everybody to be free but she wants to be free to stop him from making everybody free in the particular way he wants to free them. I'm not sure which one of them is being hypocritical and fascist.

Bekka and most of the other hippies left Guitar Joe and Doctor Psycho's commune to set up their own farm called New New Genesis. Everybody was all, "Why two news?" And Bekka was all, "No reason!", and then winked at the reader with a huge wink. Then one of the hippies was all, "Who is she winking at?" And one of them was all, "She must have taken some crystals." But soon enough, they all saw what Bekka's crystals could really do when Doctor Psycho's army of burnouts attacked the new commune. They were led by Guitar Joe hopped up on one of Bekka's crystals. But using the power of the crystal, Bekka transformed everyone back to their normal, hippie selves and saved the day. Then she said, "I have to become a super hero instead of dropping out!" And her new friends said, "No! Don't go! Are you sure you must?" And Bekka was all, "You bet your bippy! *HUGE WINK AT THE YOUNG AUDIENCE READING WHO ARE THINKING 'WHAT IS A BIPPY?!'"

And that's the end of the Gods and Monsters One Shots! I guess I'm prepared to read the Gods and Monsters Justice League three issue series. I hope I get around to reading it before I forget that Batman is boring old Man-bat, Superman is probably Zod although that wasn't expressly stated in his comic book, and Wonder Woman is a New God. It's all so super exciting because it's so different! The only problem I have with this story is that it portrayed Doctor Psycho in a better light than Wonder Woman. I'm always going to root for the guy who makes LSD and used to work for the MKUltra project and who's goal is to free everybody from the status quo! I don't need some anti-drug alien coming down to Earth and telling me I shouldn't take drugs unless they're her drugs and that I shouldn't drop out but should accept things the way they are and just try to make individual lives better within the fucked up bullshit system that is fucked up and total bullshit. Go Doctor Psycho!