Andy Mangels is quite possibly the world’s biggest Wonder Woman fan. He is also a prolific author, having written prose fiction, non-fiction articles & books, and comic books for numerous publishers, among them DC, Marvel, Dark Horse and Image. However, until now Mangels has never actually written any Wonder Woman stories. At long last he can finally cross that off his bucket list with the publication of Wonder Woman ’77 Meets The Bionic Woman, a six issue miniseries co-published by Dynamite Entertainment and DC Comics.
The second half of the 1970s was a bit of a watershed moment for women in telefantasy, with two high profile series featuring female leads airing. Wonder Woman starring the amazing Lynda Carter is rightfully regarded as one of the all time best adaptations of a comic book series for television. The Bionic Woman may have been a spin-off of The Six Million Dollar Man, but Jaime Sommers, portrayed by Lindsay Wagner, immediately established herself to be as brave and competent as her male counterpart.
Over the past two years DC has been publishing Wonder Woman ’77, which is set within the television continuity. Dynamite, meanwhile, has released several Bionic Woman miniseries since 2012. In retrospect, it was a natural fit to do a comic book series teaming up these two television heroines.
Wonder Woman ’77 Meets The Bionic Woman, initially issued as a six issue miniseries, is now collected in trade paperback. Joining writer Andy Mangels are interior artist Judit Tondora, colorist Roland Pilcz, letterers Tom Orzechowski, Lois Buhalis & Kathryn S. Renta, and cover artist Cat Staggs. The collected edition features a painted cover by the ever-amazing Alex Ross.
Set in 1977, Wonder Woman ’77 Meets The Bionic Woman opens with the government agencies the Inter-Agency Defense Command and the Office of Scientific Intelligence meeting to discuss a new terrorist threat, a sinister cabal known as Castra. Of course, with the IADC and OSI working together, their two top agents, Diana Prince and Jaime Sommers, are soon paired up. Jaime very quickly deduces Diana’s secret identity, and before long Wonder Woman and the Bionic Woman are fighting side-by-side against the forces of Castra.
It is eventually revealed that Castra is headed up by some of Diana and Jaime’s old enemies, who have pooled their resources to have another go at the world domination thing. It’s been a few years since I watched the Wonder Woman show on DVD, and even longer since I saw reruns of The Bionic Woman on TV, so at first I was having some trouble recalling most of the rogues gallery making up Castra’s hierarchy. Fortunately in issue #3 Mangels has the various ne’er-do-wells recounting their past exploits to one another, complete with footnotes referencing the original television episodes, which helped bring me up to speed.
Mangels clearly possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of all things Wonder Woman. He includes a great many references to the TV show, as well as working in nods to various characters & concepts from the rich mythology of the comic books. He does the same for the Bionic Woman, somewhat obliquely referencing a number of episodes from the series. You can pretty much understand the majority of Mangels’ story without needing to know what he’s specifically referencing. Having said that, while I was reading went back & forth between Google and Wikipedia in an effort to figure out a number of them. I later found out that Comic Book Resources had compiled a fairly comprehensive list of the miniseries’ Easter Eggs.
Wonder Woman ’77 Meets The Bionic Woman is an enjoyable story. I will admit, I was somewhat underwhelmed by the first two chapters, which felt overly heavy with exposition, and numerous different characters were introduced at a rapid succession. Beginning with issue #3, though, Mangels seems to have found his groove, and the rest of the miniseries a really fun, exciting romp.
One of the things to keep in mind about genre television 40 years ago is that the technology really didn’t exist to be able to bring super-powered villains to life with any believability. Instead both Wonder Woman and the Bionic Woman faced a succession of Nazis, mad scientists, killer robots, spies, terrorists and mobsters, along with the occasional low-rent alien invasion.
Mangels sticks with this relatively grounded ethos for the Castra conspiracy in Wonder Woman ’77 Meets The Bionic Woman, albeit with the approach that he’s not bound by a television budget. Instead of half a dozen thugs or a handful of android assassins, Mangels has Diana and Jaime teaming up with the Amazons of Paradise Island to fight an entire army of bad guys.
I also appreciated the quieter character moments in the miniseries. Mangels did a nice job establishing the friendship between Diana and Jaime, as well as developing a number of the inhabitants of Paradise Island. We seldom saw the Amazons on the TV series, so it was nice to have them get fleshed out here. This is where I felt the callbacks to past episodes were most effective, because they helped to illustrate Diana’s passionate beliefs in both sisterhood and the possibility of redemption.
Additionally, I was happy that Max the Bionic Dog made an appearance. I loved Max on TV. He was adorable and funny. I would always laugh when he would use his bionically-enhanced jaws to bite through chains and other stuff, complete with the iconic “Deeneeneeneenee” sound effect. I tell ya, with that set of chompers, the OSI must have needed to give Max steel-plated bones to gnaw on!
The artwork by Judit Tondora is, for the most part, very nicely rendered. She does a good job laying out the action sequences, as well as depicting the quiet conversational moments. There is a real beautiful quality to Tondora’s work on this miniseries.
I imagine one of the more difficult aspects of drawing Wonder Woman ’77 Meets The Bionic Woman would have been the likenesses. These can be tricky. Sometimes when an artist is working on a licensed property, the trick is not to draw a point-on photorealistic rendering of the actors, but to instead capture the personalities of their characters. Of course, depending upon the owner of the property, the artist may be required to draw as photorealistic a depiction as possible, which isn’t always the best way to go. Tondora clearly had her work cut out for her, since practically every character in this miniseries previously appeared on television.
The quality of Tondora’s likenesses on this miniseries is of a somewhat variable quality. The two best depictions she does are of Lynda Carter as Diana and Lindsay Wagner as Jaime, which is very fortunate, since they are the main characters.
I felt that perhaps some of Tondora’s efforts on the supporting characters and villains were a bit less effective. While she does a fair enough job at capturing the likenesses of Lyle Waggoner, Richard Anderson, Martin E. Brooks, Fritz William Weaver and John Saxon, the amount of detailed required to render them and the others in panel after panel often causes them to stand out a bit awkwardly amidst the action. I am of the opinion that photorealistic depictions are sometimes more suited to cover artwork than interior sequential illustration. I suppose it really depends upon the specific artist.
Really, my only major criticism of the artwork is that it was printed from Tondora’s uninked pencils. This is a regular issue I have with Dynamite, as well as a few other publishers. Some artists, no matter how detailed & finished their pencils are, really do need to be inked. Unfortunately publishers who are looking to cut costs have opted to jettison the inking stage, often to the detriment of their published books. As good as Tondora’s work is on this miniseries, I feel it could have been even better if she or a compatible artist had been allowed to ink it.
The cover artwork by Cat Staggs was quite good. My two favorites were issue #1 and #6. The others were nice, although I the coloring on them was somewhat overwhelming. Sometimes I feel Staggs’ artwork is more suited to black & white or grey tones than full color.
Wonder Woman ’77 Meets The Bionic Woman, like most other Dynamite series, was released with a number of variant covers. The nice thing about “waiting for the trade” is that you get all of those variants collected together. In addition to the Alex Ross variant which is used for the TPB cover, there are also some nice alterative cover images by Andrew Pepoy, J Bone, Aaron Lopresti, Bill Sienkiewicz and Phil Jimenez.
While I did have some criticisms concerning Wonder Woman ’77 Meets The Bionic Woman, on the whole I found the miniseries to be an enjoyable read with good artwork. Mangels does leave a couple of his subplots unresolved at the end, setting the stage for a possible sequel. Hopefully he and Tondora will have the opportunity to reunite on a follow-up miniseries in the near future.
In My Not So Humble Opinion 