This Wonder Boy video has been a labor of love. I really need to show y’all some of this labor. With that in mind here’s the script as it sits now for the first proper video.
Kayleigh has seen the test video, I’ll be getting that up later this weekend.
World Map
The year is 1940. The world at large is in another war stretching far beyond simply border disputes or squabbles between a couple nations. It’s basically all out fighting throughout Europe.
Even in places without direct fighting it’s hard to get away from what’s happening everywhere else. Here in the good ole U S of A a large portion of the population still wishes to mostly let Europe fight this war for themselves. After all it’s not coming over here right? We’ve taken some measures such as being selective who we sell weapons and supplies to, but for the most part at this point the United States is just sitting back with an attitude of “Not my backyard, not my problem”. Officially at least.
Other Character Portraits
On the comics front things are starting to get pretty interesting.
- Superman is kept out of things because his creators didn’t want to have readers see him so easily handle the opposition, see that not happen in the real world, and get discouraged. He ends up reading the wrong eye chart at his physical and failing. He gets to stay home but does his part as a reporter and uncovers plots and plans from dastardly enemies. As was common for the time, Lois was sure to give him plenty of shit which he kind of deserved because he was holding back.
- Batman is an interesting case. He came onto the scene mere months before World War II officially started in 1939 but well after the world (or at least the people who didn’t have their heads buried in the sand) knew it was coming. He teamed up with Superman for fundraising efforts and I just can’t stop thinking about the hilarity of that. Seriously, the most powerful being on the planet and a billionaire playboy philanthropist going around encouraging people to buy war bonds. I have to just let this one go or I’m *really* going to go off the rails.
- Captain America wasn’t even around yet, not debuting until 1941. He came out of the comic womb punching Hitler in the face. Probably because he was afraid that if he didn’t, Jack Kirby would punch Hitler instead and then for good measure punch Cap for not doing it himself. On a serious note though Cap did debut about a year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
- Other lesser known characters such as Hop Harrigan would go on to join in the fight, but after the war they didn’t really have a place so they fell into obscurity. Hmm, where have we heard that story before?
Cover
Wonder Boy as we’re looking at him first appeared in National Comics #1, dated July of 1940. You might think that I’ve already given you all of the context needed to move on. If so, you’d be wrong.
National Comics was published by Quality Comics and yes that does sound ridiculously like a publisher being published by a different publisher. Quality Comics was founded in 1937 under the name Comic Favorites Inc and went on until 1956 when they sold the trademark to the characters and titles to some little company that would go on to do a few big things. You may have heard of them. Detective Comics Comics.
But before that Quality Comics was putting out, well, quality comics. With characters such as The Spirit and Plastic Man under their belt they were certainly in a position to be a powerhouse in the comics industry.
So why I am telling you all of this? Oh yeah, they also had this little character named Wonder Boy.
Content Warnings
- 1940s casual racism
- Mass death
Reminder of the Things We’re Looking For
- Mucky muck
- castle made of clouds
- Nastyman
- Powers
- Flight
- levitation
- mind bullets
Page 1
In what is definitely not a Superman rip off we’re introduced to Wonder Boy. He’s from outer space. He has the strength of a thousand men. He conveniently gets aimed toward Earth, although that part can be explained a bit by the fact that we’re on Earth and we’re telling the story. And of course American scientists are convinced that they’re the center of everything so we should brace for impact over here. But someone in Mongolia notices the ship flashing across the sky as well. Presumably the rest of the world didn’t notice a thing.
The ship hits Chicago. It’s casually mentioned that many people are killed. But not Wonder Boy since if he was dead the comic would be over now and we wouldn’t have anything to talk about.
Page 2
Letterers across the globe cringe as words are needlessly split across lines. Adults just assume that the kid wandering around talking about being from another planet must be an orphan now because his parents must have died in the crash. Wonder Boy is put into an orphanage but can’t play with the other children because he’s too strong and can’t control himself. He ends up keeping to himself and this lonely hermit lifestyle somehow doesn’t lead to lifelong depression and anxiety.
Meanwhile in Mongolia a high priest of something (seriously, we never find out what) says that the ship crashing here must be a sign that they should invade Europe. Presumably this is something he wanted to do anyway and he uses the crash as an excuse to convince everyone else.
I’m not sure if you’ve seen a map lately, but Mongolia is here, and Europe starts about here. Not exactly a land based assault that you could pull off without getting some people mad at you along the way.
Page 3
Good thing Europe knows it’s coming, and that Europe is a single unified army. Wonder Boy thinks that everyone killing each other is stupid and he’s not wrong. When he mentions to the adults that he wants to go help the fighting they just laugh him off like this is the first they’re hearing of it.
Instead of being sad and thinking that they’re right to laugh at him, Wonder Boy just casually jumps over a 20 foot wall and swims across an ocean. Things just didn’t go like this back on his old planet. He goes partly out of spite. No work on how much caffeine was involved.
Page 4
Wonder Boy gets across the Atlantic, North, and Baltic seas, then runs across Europe. Or flies maybe? I don’t know it says speeds and he’s totally off the ground so maybe he’s levitating across Europe and we finally have something that connects to the song. Nobody questions him as he wanders into the leadership tent of the Western Army probably because they don’t know who’s really in charge here. Impressed by Wonder Boy’s ability to commit such open espionage the leaders decide to not only trust him with a very important message for the front lines, they don’t even put it in an envelope!
Not surprisingly Wonder Boy reads the message, and being that American force in a foreign land he thinks that he knows better than the people there and delivers the message that he wants instead. But hey, he did pick up a tank that had flipped over in the mud. I guess that’s cool.
Page 5
The front lines don’t question things at all when Wonder Boy tells them that the plan is to attack despite knowing better for themselves. They also don’t notice as he slips away and goes straight to the enemy.
Wonder Boy obviously has the power of translation because he talks to the Mongolian army. Surprisingly they are not shown to immediately torture and kill Wonder Boy since this is obviously a comic meant to say that America is the best and everyone else is the worst and anyone we don’t like is the enemy. Also Wonder Boy beats them all up and takes away all of their weapons because America is the best and everyone else is the worst and anyone we don’t like is the enemy.
We get some light racism here via word choice and honestly I’m surprised that it took this long and that there isn’t more of it.
Wonder Boy makes himself a target and the Mongolians shoot at him because we’re supposed to see them as child murdering monsters.
Page 6
Wonder Boy laughs at the Mongolian army for not being able to kill him and runs away. They don’t chase him because reasons I guess. He eventually meets up with the Western Army and everyone starts listening to his orders instead of the orders of their commanding officers that they’ve been following this whole time.
The geniuses that gave Wonder Boy the message to pass along decide that he needs to be punished, so they send an entire troop of soldiers out to get him. But when a victorious Western Army is coming back with Wonder Boy instead of staying to protect the territory that they just defended everyone just kind of wanders back like it’s no big deal.
The leaders who were going to punish Wonder Boy decide that stupid decisions with favorable outcomes are fine after all and don’t punish him. Instead they decide that all of Europe will honor him as the greatest war hero of modern times and bow before his superior qualities, a feat soon overtaken by Jack Churchill and his bagpipes, longbow, and broadsword.
Inevitably the United States will take credit for Wonder Boy.
Epilogue
So what did we learn here? Not much. We have a quick and dirty basically nothing origin story for Wonder Boy. No castles, I guess mud *could* be mucky muck. No recurring villains at all since this is just the first story, but certainly no Nastyman.
We’ll see in future adventures if any other connections come up.
