I’m reading an anthology of Wonder Woman comics from the fifties at the moment, an anthology put together to highlight the… wackier side of the Amazon’s legacy. Creator William Moulton Marston passed away from cancer in 1947 and so in the fifties, the candle was passed to writer Robert Kanigher who, with artist Harry G. Peter, gave us a Wonder Woman with a more madcap edge (and less of a focus on bondage, tbf). Kanigher seems to have been weirdly obsessed with making up stories for how Diana had acquired the accoutrements of her alter-ego, such as the bulletproof bracelets, tiara and lasso, to the extent of making up different versions of the stories that gave no regard for continuity.
Then, in 1956, in a tale about how she acquired her invisible plane, he gave us this gem.
Since the moment I read this, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. And if you’re wondering why the fascination, you need to stop reading, step back and think about it for a moment. The Waterfront Gang, presumably some band of nefarious underworld mobsters of the sort that WW routinely faced off against in her early days, have taken over… a Ferris Wheel. And turned it into an “armed fort”.
It is INSANE.
I mean, read any comics from the period and it’s clear that, far from the continuity-obsessed creators today who grew up loving comic books and want to build on a legacy and explore the boundaries of the medium, most guys (and let’s face it, it was guys) who wrote comics in the 50s and 60s had more of an anything-goes perspective, either from a who-gives-a-shit-it’s-for-kids mindset or because they had genuine mental problems.
But this panel is INSANE.
A gang of mobsters took over a Ferris Wheel. And look at them! They’re not using the fairground to launder money, or as a cover for a bootlegging operation; they’re not capitalising on the money-making opportunities. They just got on the Ferris Wheel, made it their base and started shooting shit up. Including, if you look at the angles, each other. What the hell is their endgame here? How did this idea even get off the ground??
“Hey boss, I found us a great new hideout!”
“Oh yeah? What is it, an abandoned warehouse down by the docks?”
“No…”
“You take over a new speakeasy?”
“No, boss, it’s better than that.”
“So, what is it?”
“We should take over the Ferris Wheel! Think about it. We can all sit in the little bucket seats, going round and round. Any given moment, 75% of the crew are too high for anyone to do anything about! We can see the cops from a mile off! We can just start mowing people down! It’s perfect! And what’s more, the Funucci Family have taken over the Ghost Train – they’re makin’ mugs of us!”
I mean, what the actual hell is any of this about? I’d argue that almost any scenario played out in a comic book, you could find, somehow, some kind of tenuous internal logic for. But this… this is just batshit insane. I genuinely now want to write a short story about this. The gang that took over a Ferris Wheel and turned it into an “armed fort”. I’ve no idea why Wonder Woman isn’t more weirded out by these guys.
It might genuinely be my favourite single panel I’ve ever read.
I love comics, I should add. It looks like I’m mocking (and I really am), but I dig both the rich, complex world of modern sequential art and the eh-this’ll-do approach of some of the classic era, and everything in between. I love that this exists and I love, especially, that kids in the fifties would have had no reaction to this other than “Woah, cool!” In fact, I don’t know if there are any plans for Gal Gadot to take up the bracelets and lasso again, but whenever another Wonder Woman movie or tv show is on its way, I’m going to petition for her to face off against a bunch of guys on a Ferris Wheel. Because this panel is GLORIOUS.
James Kinsley 