#ww 22

[ckret2]

Workaholic (22)

This one's dedicated to the dude who felt the need to comment on yesterday's fic JUST to tell me that Miki isn't canonically in love with Godzilla.

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Miki was silent and breathless as Godzilla came into view. Water cascading down his sides; his dark hide glistening in the late afternoon sunlight; his massive, powerful muscles flexing as they heaved him from the sea. She tried to focus on his face, tried to see his wild eyes, to see the bizarre animal brilliance that was clear every time she saw his face—

"Miki?"

Her gaze snapped from the TV in the corner of the restaurant to Koji. She was momentarily mortified, as though he was the psychic who could read her mind.

Koji turned to see what she'd been looking at and sighed. "We finally get time for a date and he's on the move again? It's like he's doing it on purpose."

The thought made Miki's heart pound faster. Her gaze dropped to the sukiyaki pot between them.

After watching a few more seconds, Koji said, "Hey, do you think we should call and ask if we need to go in?"

Miki shook her head. "He's swimming parallel to Japan for now. Usually he'll keep heading north. He's probably not going to make landfall in Japan."

"Mm." Koji turned back around. "You should stop watching it, then." (Her gaze dropped to the pot again.) "You spend too much time to be healthy thinking about Godzilla. A woman your age should be focused on..." He saw the look she was giving him, shrugged, raised his chopsticks and mumbled, "It's just—you really should take more breaks from your work."

She was sure she could hear the subtext: You pay more attention to him than to me. We're supposed to be dating. Miki likes Koji, but... she didn't think they'd be dating much longer. And she didn't think the thought saddened her as much as it should have.

They silently went back to their meal.

Miki's eyes drifted back to the TV.

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((Screenshot of the original handwritten page below! Reblogs & comments are appreciated. Previous #writing warmup posts are on my blog & crossposted to AO3))

[fyeahwilliammoultonmarston]

So Gell has successfully freed the prisoners, captured Wonder Woman and the queen, the story seems to really be heating up. And then it just ends. Seriously, Wonder Woman does a back flip or something which somehow makes Gell drop the magic lasso, and just like that the rebellion is over. It feels like they just ran out of room on this one. A disappointing end to a disappointing issue.

[fyeahwilliammoultonmarston]

Our final story, like the previous one, seems to have been written at least with some input from Marston. It deals with one of his favorite topics--jealousy, here personified by a Holiday girl with a very Marston-name, Gell Osey. As her name suggests she gets jealous of everyone, literally everyone. In the above panels she’s mad that she didn’t get picked to work on the professor’s rocket to Venus and very jealous of the girls who did.

[fyeahwilliammoultonmarston]

Owing to the usual supervillain stupidity Wonder Woman is eventually able to save the day and capture the Saturnites. The story for Wonder Woman #28, which is traditionally cited as the last comic Marston ever wrote, actually begins right where this one ends. Something that Marston rarely did, so even on his death bed the man didn’t lose his ambition.

[fyeahwilliammoultonmarston]

Wonder Woman’s Amazon brain is strong enough to break through the Saturnic hypnotism the Saturnites use to mask their presence.

[fyeahwilliammoultonmarston]

The second story starts slow but it does eventually pick up, and the presence of a lie detector early on strongly suggests Marston is writing this one. The story is also notable for an early refrence to the then new United Nations, which would go on to play a major role in the WW mythos.

The villain is Mephisto Saturno, the rogue from Saturn, who this time is trying to not only get revenge on Wonder Woman but also provoke another war. This time he’s figured out how to make his soldiers invisible, which makes it very hard for Steve and General Darnell to fight them.

[fyeahwilliammoultonmarston]

Wonder Woman: The Dark Ages

Before beginning our regular read-through I wanted to take a moment to give you some backround info into what was going on behind the scenes at this point. Issue #22 marks a major change for the Wonder Woman comic stylistically, for the first time the comic will feature three unrelated stories instead of one big one divided into three chapters. This wouldn’t have been shocking for readers at the time since several other titles used a similar format. The reason for this abrupt change was likely William Moulton Marston’s declining health. After a bout of polio left him partially paralyzed in 1944 he would learn he had skin cancer a few years later.

With his poor health preventing him from maintaining his many projects, it seems Marston was forced to relent somewhat in his aggressive oversight of his creation and turn more control over to his ghost writers. The three story approach meant that now the individual stories for the main comic would be the same length as the Wonder Woman stories for Sensation Comics and Comic Cavalcade. Meaning Marston could produce scripts at his own pace without worrying about publishing schedules. The scripts would simply be assigned to the next comic that needed them while his ghosts filled in the cracks.

Because of these changes the comic would suffer a severe dip in quality for issues #22-27. Several stories are borderline unreadable. Exactly who wrote what is unclear, but in addition to Marston the two most likely suspects are:

Joye Murchison-A former star pupil of Marston’s whom he hired as an assistant writer after her graduation. The first woman to write Wonder Woman. She would’ve already been writing WW scripts for years by the time of this new policy.

Robert Kanigher-A DC company man originally brought on as an assistant editor to Sheldon Mayer, in this capacity he may have been called upon to produce material to keep the comics on schedule. He would be appointed WW’s main writer after Marston’s death.

Sheldon Mayer, HG Peter, as well as Elizabeth and Olive have also been suggested as possible ghosts over the years, with varying degrees of plausibility.