Superman Through the Ages! Forum

The Superman Family! => Other Superfriends => Topic started by: JulianPerez on July 27, 2006, 11:10:41 PM



Title: A Wonder Woman writer defends a Cuba book?
Post by: JulianPerez on July 27, 2006, 11:10:41 PM
Recently in Miami, there were calls to ban from Miami-Dade County public schools a book about Cuba, which prompted a lawsuit by the ACLU.

That's not the weird part, though.

Have a look here:

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15111698.htm

The U.S. District Judge that ruled in the ACLU's favor? He has the EXACT SAME NAME as DC Bronze Age writer Alan Gold.

Alan Gold, the guy that took over Wonder Woman right after Martin Pasko did his "Twelve Labors of Wonder Woman."

So, the question is, did the Amazing Amazon play a role in the recent deliberations? It's hard to tell. With her revealing costume, she'd fit right in on South Beach, and with her height, people might mistake her for a drag queen.

I am reminded of a line from Wonder Woman's seventies television theme:

    She -
    Makes a hawk a dove
    Stops a war with love
    Makes a liar tell the TRUUUUTH!
    [/list]

    Oh, but it gets even weirder, though.

    This is not the first time that a person with the same name as a Wonder Woman writer has been involved in the history of Cubans in the United States, strangely enough. A sugar trader in New York in the 19th century significant to Cuban and Cuban-American history was named William Moulton.

    My brother and I always joked that Wonder Woman might be Cuban. After all, the island she comes from is in the Carribbean, and she certainly looks the part; amusingly, actress Lynda Carter has a resemblance to a glamorous and eccentric great-aunt of mine, at least when she was young. She was on hand to visit the Shah of Iran when he came to Cuba in the 1950s, and she was married four times, once to a Chinese millionaire and another to a prince in Indonesia, and her son now runs a shark-diving company on Florida's West Coast.

    Even apart from Wonder Woman and guys with names identical to her creators, Cuba has had a role in comics. Antonio Prohias, creator of "Spy vs. Spy" for MAD Magazine, is a famous Cuban immigrant. And it was on a cruise to Cuba that Major Wheeler-Nicholson rid himself of what became DC Comics.


    Title: Re: A Wonder Woman writer defends a Cuba book?
    Post by: Kurt Busiek on July 28, 2006, 05:32:56 AM
    Quote from: "JulianPerez"
    The U.S. District Judge that ruled in the ACLU's favor? He has the EXACT SAME NAME as DC Bronze Age writer Alan Gold.

    Alan Gold, the guy that took over Wonder Woman right after Martin Pasko did his "Twelve Labors of Wonder Woman."


    Actually, that was Len Wein.

    No, wait...lemme try that again.

    Alan Gold wasn't a Bronze Age writer, except in the most technical sense of the word, and he didn't take over WONDER WOMAN right after the "Twelve Labors."

    Alan was a childhood friend of Marv Wolfman's, who was working in educational publishing before he was hired as an editor at DC Comics in 1984, and worked there a couple of years before going back to educational publishing.  He edited WONDER WOMAN #309-329, as well as THE LEGEND OF WONDER WOMAN, RED TORNADO, 'MAZING MAN, SPANNER'S GALAXY and others.

    His comics writing, if I remember correctly, was limited to a couple of dialogue jobs over other writers' plots when books were really late.

    The "Twelve Labors of Wonder Woman" story ran in WW #212-222, and was written by Len Wein (see!  See!  He's always in there somewhere!), Cary Bates, Elliot Maggin and Marty.  Nobody took the book over from Marty right afterward -- Marty wrote the last five chapters of the "Labors" storyline, and then stayed on the book, writing or co-writing nine of the next ten issues -- the exception was a fill-in by Elliot.

    What you may be remembering was that Marty's last two issues on the book, #231-232, were written from a plot outline by Alan Brennert, who went on to do some much better comics (plus great TV and prose writing).  After that, the series was written by Gerry Conway for a while.

    Alan Gold didn't have anything to do with WONDER WOMAN until years later, though.

    And, uh, is it really that odd that there are others out there named Alan Gold?  Neither name is an uncommon one -- there's an Australian novelist named Alan Gold, a former Canadian Supreme Court justice, and plenty of others, I'm sure.

    kdb