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This issue returns to the 'Giant' format and as well as the lead story contains another two Golden Age reprints, one using the original HG Peters artwork and the other re-inked. The main story is also dedicated to Doctor William Marston himself, the creator of both Wonder Woman and the Lie Detector, which features in the story itself.
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Synopsis: |
The story begins with Oliver Queen, alias the Green Arrow, addressing someone unseen while hooked up to a lie detector. He says to the unseen man that he thinks he may be losing his mind because for a while he had forgotten who he was. When the man shows him a photo of a woman surrounded by archers aiming at her and asks him who she is, Green Arrow replies that it is Wonder Woman. He knows this because he was there when the photo was taken, although he is still unsure whether it had all been a dream. Nevertheless, he begins to recount his tale...
He had been assigned by the Justice League to watch Wonder Woman in action and, dressed in the normal clothing of Oliver Queen, had gone to the UN in order to shadow the Amazon Princess in her Diana Prince guise. He arrives to see Diana attending an assembly meeting and he wonders when and if anything unusual is likely to happen. Just then a messenger hands Diana a note and she quickly leaves, arousing Green Arrow's curiosity.
As he follows her to the lift, careful to keep himself concealed, he suddenly sees a figure approach her and is shocked to see that it is - Green Arrow! She greets the impostor and he walks her into the elevator. Green Arrow tries to rush over before the doors close in order to warn her but he is too late, so he watches the floor indicator to see which level the elevator stops on.
Meanwhile, the phony Green Arrow is speaking to Diana, telling her that she must change into 'Supergirl' and save 'those poor Pacific Islanders from that volcano'. Confused, she asks why he thinks she is Supergirl and he admonishes her for trying to dupe him. He shows her a rubber tipped arrow and asks her to use her heat vision on it. She begins to tell him that she will judo throw him if he does not reveal his true identity, but as she does so she sees the arrow tip begin to melt.
When the
lift finally stops on the 32nd floor he rushes out, telling her as he goes that
she had melted the arrow like he had asked her to. He bids 'Supergirl'
farewell and reminds her to help the Pacific Islanders again, before disappearing
down the corridor through the smoke created by the burning rubber tipped arrow.
Diana quickly finds a secluded corner and transforms into Wonder Woman, intent on discovering the real identity of the fake Green Arrow. But the impostor has not left, but has instead changed his own attire to that of a policeman, preparing to further confuse his quarry. He tells the approaching Amazon that he has just seen a man in a Green Arrow suit running down the hall...
In another elevator, Oliver changes into his Green Arrow costume and heads for the 32nd floor. But as he steps out he finds himself not in another corridor of the UN Building but in the middle of a mediaeval castle courtyard! He wards off an attack by archers and continues to fight his through the other people on the 32nd floor, who believe themselves to be Pirates on ship, Roam soldiers in the barracks of an ancient Fort and even cowboys brawling in a Wild West saloon!
During the struggle, Green Arrow falls out of a window and plummets downwards, realising he is still at the UN in New York. He manages to fire one of his arrows with a line attached and stops his descent, wondering if everyone is suffering from a mass hallucination, hypnosis or some sort of time travel?
Meanwhile the 'impostor' continues to use his powers to encourage the fighting. When Wonder Woman discovers the various secretaries, reporters and diplomats brawling in the corridors for no apparent reason, she intervenes. Quickly, she realises that they are all suffering from different delusions and deduces who the culprit must be - the Duke of Deception! (The Duke was once an aide to Mars, the War God)
Back on the ground, Green Arrow looks up in time to see Wonder Woman leap from a window and onto her invisible jet. By now, the entire UN Building has become affected by the Duke's deceptions and Green Arrow decides he should go back inside to help stop the chaos, only to find himself back in the stone age as a caveman!
On board the invisible jet, Wonder Woman is using her mental radio to scan everyone's minds, trying to find the one mind not clouded by deception. At last the face of the Duke appears on her screen and he invites her to find him...
Meanwhile, as Green Arrow apparently battles a Mammoth, his delusion finally disappears and he finds himself once more in the UN Building. Above, Wonder Woman lands on the roof and races down the stairwell to the top floor where she confronts the Duke, surrounded by various monsters and creatures.
She declares that they are
all illusions and uses her lasso to ensnare him, demanding that he dissolves
his wizardry. He appears to submit but behind the unwitting Amazon, one of the
creatures transforms into the real Duke and he snatches her lasso from her.
His deception having worked, he then uses chains to bind her hands, reminding
her that she loses all her powers when shackled by a man!
Green Arrow, meanwhile, has changed back into his normal attire so as to blend in with the other people in the building, who seem to have regained their senses again. Suddenly, he vanishes before their eyes, materialising inside a cage together with Morgan Tracy, the UN Troubleshooter and some top ambassadors. He sees that they are situated inside an arena, where the Duke of Deception dressed as a circus ringmaster stands. He informs them that he has brought them here to witness Wonder Woman be insulted, dragged about and ultimately destroyed with the dignity befitting a 'mere female'.
The still bound Amazon refuses to rise to his taunts but he conjures up half a dozen archers who surround the Amazon Princess, preparing to fire. He tells her that her brave words will not make up for her reduced powers against his bowmen. Green Arrow, Morgan Tracy and the others watch in horror as they fire upon Wonder Woman, who is a sitting target. But she is not as helpless as it may seem, and even though her hands are tied together, she still manages to use her bracelets to deflect the deadly arrows.
She then leaps over the ring of archers so that they end up firing at themselves, only to see them disappear into nothingness - another illusion! The Duke addresses his 'guests' again and while he does so, Wonder Woman realises that she reacted without thinking, proving that she had not really lost her powers at all. The chains are just another illusion, meaning that she has actually been bound with her own lasso. She cleverly tries to use the loose end of the golden rope to ensnare the Duke once more.
But as she does so, multiple Dukes appear before her, challenging her to choose the correct one. She chooses the one she thinks is the real Duke, but she is wrong and the actual Duke slips away. He decides that she had been too close to capturing him so he declares that he will tie her with more conventional shackles this time, as well as change the scenery.
Instantly, Wonder Woman finds herself in an Operation Theatre, bound by chains to a bed of nails! The Duke, dressed as a surgeon, tells her that this time she has not only lost her strength, but also her lasso as well, which she sees hanging on the wall behind her. Continuing to taunt her, he sharpens the nails while Wonder Woman tells herself not to cry out in pain, as these nails are not real - even if they feel genuine! Enjoying his torture of the Amazon Princess, he rests his elbows on her stomach, then uses his hands to push her down even more onto the bed of nails.
Mean while, Green Arrow and the
others now find themselves in the observation gallery of the Theatre, helpless
as Wonder Woman is tortured by the evil Duke and knowing that their own salvation
rests with the helpless Amazon below. The Duke then informs her that he will
now create an illusion in her mind that she is dead - and this one will be a
self fulfilling prophecy!
She replies that the only reason he is doing this is to compensate for his failure as the War God's top aide. He retorts that she is talking drivel, but she asks why he has changed from having been 'a self-assured, logical plotter', to a 'less than sane Mad Hatter, shuffling people through a patternless tea party'; 'once a super villain - now a bitter old has been'.
Her plan works, as the Duke suddenly becomes unsure of himself, enough to break his concentration and to make Wonder Woman's bonds dissolve away. She then leaps from the bed of nails and makes a grab for the Duke, who tries to disguise himself as various animals. But she eventually ropes him with her lasso and demands to know why he had tried to drive everyone at the UN insane. Compelled by the power of her lasso, he confesses that he wanted to drive them mad so that he could make himself their master, at which point he would have then plunged the world into war - thus making the War God himself bow down before him. Disgusted with him, she then transports him to a place 'where Aphrodite can deal with you'.
Oliver finishes recounting his story to the unseen man, who turns out to be an unmasked Bruce Wayne, though dressed in his Batman costume. As he looks at the photo once more, the image dissolves into a photo of Wonder Woman simply standing in the UN Building on her own. He tells Bruce that it never occurred to him that photos could only depict real life - and not the Duke's deceptions. Bruce tells him that he has used hypnosis to make him think he could see a photo of her surrounded by Archers in order to prove Oliver was the real Green Arrow. If Oliver had still been under the influence of the Duke, any hypnosis would not have affected him. And if he had actually been the Duke himself, he would not have been able to fake his story to the lie detector.
Green Arrow thanks him, relieved he now knows who he really is again - with no more deceptions!
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Other stories and articles featured in this Issue: |
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