Wonder Woman '77 meets The Bionic Woman - a Dynamite Comics/DC Comics mini-series

As a child in the '70s, I grew up watching both Wonder Woman (starring Lynda Carter) and the Bionic Woman (starring Lindsey Wagner).  Both shows featured strong leading ladies as heroes who were both super and lovely to look at, and both shows lasted only three seasons.  Coincidentally enough, both shows changed networks during their run - Wonder Woman's first season aired on ABC, then switched to CBS for its second and third seasons, while the Bionic Woman's first and second seasons aired on ABC, then switched to NBC for its third season.  Regardless of how short-lived they may have been, and regardless of switching networks, I absolutely loved both shows and both leading ladies.

As an adult, I have been fortunate enough to have met both Lynda Carter and Lindsey Wagner, and both are as nice and real in person as they are on the television shows, and both of them not only acknowledge their work, but are proud of the work they did in the shows.  Yet, in all these years, I can honestly admit I never really thought about the two of these heroes meeting.  So, when Dynamite and DC Comics announced a crossover mini-series, I got excited.  I mean, c'mon - what fanboy of the '70s wouldn't geek-out at the chance to see these two super-women team up for an adventure!

Simply titled Wonder Woman '77 meets The Bionic Woman, this six-issue mini-series offers up everything that a great comic should be - strong leading characters, a fantastic story with nasty villains from both shows, a perfect pace to keep the story going, yet highlight both characters equally, and enough easter-eggs and guest-stars to make you squeal with excitement as you read each issue!

Writer Andy Mangels brings Diana and Jaime together in the most natural of ways - a meeting of the national security organizations - the IADC, the OSI, the NSB, the FBI, and the CIA.  This, of course, means we get treated to appearances by Steve Trevor, Oscar Goldman, Eve Welch, Joe Atkinson, and Jack Hanson.  The organizations are gearing up to ferret out a new para-military organization known as "Castra."  The first issue ends with a bang, with the first casualty - Joe Atkinson!

Mangels takes readers (and fan boys!) on a fun jaunt down memory lane, as we learn that the cabal includes villains such as Captain Radl (from Wonder Woman), Dr. Franklin (from the Bionic Woman), Dr. Thiago Solano (from Wonder Woman) with Gloria Marquez, now calling herself Dr. Cyber (from Wonder Woman), Dr. Orlich Hoffman (from Wonder Woman), and Carl Franklin (from the Bionic Woman) - along with a whole new slew of Fembots (from the Bionic Woman)!  With all of these villains teaming-up for a new world-domination plan, it's a good thing Mangels doesn't leave Diana and Jaime to face these evil-doers on their own.  He brings back Druscilla a/k/a Wonder Girl - - we get reintroduced to Tina, the girl with powers - - there's Max, the bionic dog - - along with Queen Hippolyta, Nubia, Callahan, Fausta ... and on page 8 of issue 4, we see "Joanna," who Diana refers to as the mistress of the dance on Paradise Island, who called her dance the "Dance of the Zephyr Winds" (uhm, seriously - is there any child of the '70s that did not pick up on that direct Isis reference - Joanna Cameron was the actress, and "Zephyr winds that blow on high, lift me now, so I can fly!" was her cry to fly).  Oh, Mr. Mangels, I can say without a shadow of a doubt, that you have made this fanboy's decade with this book!!!!

There are a number of fun surprises throughout the story, and it's great to see a team-up where the two heroes don't fight first and then become friends.  Let's face it, that gets old real fast.  Instead, Diana and Jaime hit it off from the start, and it brought a smile to my face seeing how Jaime reacts to the Invisible Plane, and later to Paradise Island.  The amount of continuity from the two shows brought into this series definitely reveals how much of a fan Mr. Mangels is of these two series.  And the ending - well, let's just say there's clearly more story to be told - I just hope he gets the chance to tell it!

The art is by Judit Tondora, with whose work I am wholly unfamiliar.  However, she manages to get the actors' faces pretty good throughout all six issues - with the exception of the Bionic Woman, Jaime Sommers.  Wonder Woman pretty much comes across as Lynda Carter in every panel, and all the supporting cast resemble the actors who portrayed them in both shows.  But Jaime, for some reason, never actually comes across as Lindsey Wagner, and I'm not sure why.  Did that bother me?  Not so much - it was a little surprising at first, but as I got more and more into the story, pretty soon the fact that Jaime did not look like Lindsey Wagner at all became a non-issue.

This book is a DEFINITE MUST-READ for anyone who grew up watching these two ladies on the television each week (or even for those youngsters today who watch the shows in rerun, or on Hulu, or Netflix, or wherever).  With beautifully rendered covers by a variety of artists, to the fun-tastic fan-loving story inside, each issue is a true treasure, and I will be keeping fingers and toes crossed that Dynamite and DC give the go-ahead for a sequel (wouldn't it be great to see the Six-Million Dollar Man brought in, as well as perhaps the Christopher Reeve Superman! egads!!!).

RATING:  10 star-spangled swimsuits and white jumpsuits out of 10 for the absolutely best cross-over story I have ever read, and probably ever will read!

Short Lived Comic Series #3 - The Bionic Woman (Charlton)

I can remember back in the mid- to late- 1970s seeing at grocery and convenience stores various comics published by a little company known as Charlton Comics.  They had characters I did not recognize (Judo Master, Captain Atom, Vengeance Squad, etc.) and, well, to be honest, their books just didn't have the flashy pizzazz that Marvel and DC comics did at the time.  To me (at that time), they appeared to be nothing but cheap knock-offs.

Now, looking back, I realize how wrong I was!

Charlton put out some very unique and actually fairly decent titles at the time.  I have since read the E-man series by Joe Staton and thoroughly enjoyed the humor in the series.  I've read some of the Blue Beetle issues and found them to also be pretty good.  And just recently, I finished reading the short-lived 5-issue run of The Bionic Woman by Charlton.

I remember watching The Bionic Woman as a child, and I absolutely loved the show.  Jaime Sommers rated right up there with Wonder Woman (another show of that era that I couldn't get enough of).  I tried watching that horrendous remake on NBC some years back, but it just didn't cut the mustard.  I did buy and read the entire series published by Dynamite Comics recently (both the Kevin Smith-related version, as well as the Season Four mini-series), and while they were enjoyable, they still didn't have the feel of the '70s television show.

This 5-issue run by Charlton, however - well, quite frankly, it felt closer to the original show tha any of the others.  Charlton doesn't seem to have been big on crediting their creators, and doing a search on the internet, I can't seem to find anywhere the identity of the author of these tales (although I did find that Jack Sparling provided the art for the series), so I'm not really sure who to thank for these entertaining tales.

The first couple of issues sported two illustrated tales, with a one or two page prose story at the end. The last few issues lengthened the illustrated story to just one tale per issue and a short prose story at the end.  The series maintains not only Jaime's involvement with the OSI, but also highlights her career as a teacher, as several of the tales center around her students.  One of the stories actually finds a student being kidnapped (along with Jaime), while another finds her as a substitute teacher in order to get close to a student's father who is holding government plans.

The author captures her personality pretty much dead-on, and the artist, while not exactly able to depict Lindsay Wagner, does manage to give us glimpses of the actress here and there (although he never does manager to depict Rudy Wells very well).  The stories are a close match to the television tales, with the exception of issue 4, which dealt with a man who created his own android female (perhaps this was a spin on the Fembots stories from the TV show - which, by the way, are still today my favorite episodes). The story was far more sci-fi than reality-based like the other issues of the series.

It's a shame the series only lasted five issues, but from what I can find online, it came to an end because Charlton pretty much ground to a halt at that point with publishing new material.  Truly a shame, as there was a lot of potential with this series and the character, even after the television show was cancelled.

RATING:  8 bionic sound effects out of 10 for giving me brand new tales of one of my favorite female television heroes.