Wonder Woman – Volume 1 – 247

Synopsis - Main Story

Somewhere in the sprawling city of New York lies a secret Government installation. Inside, Lt. Truman is making his way to the command centre carrying the file on Steve Trevor. As he goes he takes another look at the photos in his hands; one showing Steve Trevor with Wonder Woman and the other depicting Steve Howard with Wonder Woman. He is convinced there has to be a connection. He knew Steve Trevor to be one of Army Intelligence’s most trusted agents but after he died on assignment his body had vanished without trace! If there was some reason why his body had been snatched then the military needs to know as far as Lt. Truman is concerned.

Arriving at the command centre, he is greeted by Major Bradley. Truman presents the photos to his superior and says that he believes there is a link between Trevor and Howard. Major Bradley has also come to the same conclusion based on the information they have obtained from a bug planted in Diana Prince’s apartment (see previous issue). Bradley and Truman both agree that in the name of National Security they must grab Steve Howard for further questioning!

Elsewhere, Steve Howard is waiting in Diana’s apartment for Wonder Woman’s return. He just makes out the shape of the invisible plane as it approaches and sees her leap from it, while using her lasso to transform out of her costume in mid air. As she enters through the skylight she is already dressed in her civilian clothes as Diana Prince. She apologises to him for having had to postpone their previous evening together due to her mission and as they make their way to work, there is a noticeable uneasiness between the couple. Steve is frustrated that they are not able to spend time together when they want to and she is becoming ever more certain that he is not the same man as the Steve Trevor she once loved.

As they step out onto the sidewalk, Steve hails a taxi but the car that pulls up is no taxi. Lt. Truman gets out and holding them at gunpoint, orders Steve to get into the car so that they can take him for questioning. As Diana protests the soldier warns her not to report anything in order to ensure that Steve is returned safely. She decides that she will let them drive off and then swiftly follow the car as Wonder Woman.

Seconds later she is back on the rooftop and is leaping on board her waiting robot plane. But her movements are being watched by an unseen stranger and suddenly a bolt of energy hits her plane before she has a chance to climb inside. To her amazement, her plane begins to turn inside out before her very eyes! Instantly she finds she is unable to mentally control the plane in its new configuration and it begins to plummet downwards.

Thinking quickly, she realises that she will have to give her commands ‘inside-out’ in order for it to respond. She orders her craft to land on a nearby heli-pad by sending out the mental command “On…land…roof…plane…top!” It works and the jet touches down out of harms way, but she concedes that she will have to abandon it for now until she can find a way to reverse the transformation.

A helicopter pilot parked on the rooftop heli-pad, who has watched the proceeding events, points her in the direction that the energy ray originated from, commenting that she was lucky that she was not inside the plane at the time. As she thanks him and leaps towards the suspect building she knows that the ray had been meant for her and that she does not want to know what it is like to be turned inside out!

She smashes through the window of the tenement across the street to confront her attacker. She is momentarily startled by what she sees and asks the figure before her to identify himself. He replies that he is called Inversion – the Inside Out man! He tells her that he was once a normal human just like she but due to an accident, a miscalculation did to him what he has just done to her plane.

She grabs him by his protective suit and demands to know why he tried to stop her following Steve Howard. He tells her that he knows nothing about Howard and that he only wanted to stop her because he desperately needs information. She retorts that he is talking nonsense because being a member of the Justice League, there are more conventional ways of contacting her than by trying to shoot her out of the sky!

As she speaks, he manages to remove a spear like device from his belt and pointing it at her, tells her that he does not want her help – he wants her as a target! With that he opens fire and she instinctively protects herself using her bracelets. There is a small explosion and as the dust settles Wonder Woman holds the gun and looks down onto the fallen Inversion.

She asks him what he is up to and why he is trying to blast her with the device she now has in her hands? He replies that it is a Teleporter – or at least it is supposed to be! But it is a failure just like he is. He then proceeds to explain that before the accident he had been trying to invent a matter transmitter but had not tested the finished product sufficiently before trying it on himself. When he activated the remote control switch, intending to transport himself from one side of the lab to the other, the ray instead twisted his atoms, turning them and pulling them inside out!

His internal organs were now on the outside of his body, no longer protected by his skeletal structure. He quickly donned a pressure suit in order to protect himself and started on a quest to fix the Teleporter and correct himself. But months past with no success until one night his instruments detected transporter energy across the city. Using his binoculars he spied Wonder Woman upon a rooftop, materialising in what he deduced to be the Justice League Transporter tube.

Hearing this story, Wonder Woman says to Inversion why, if he needed to use the JLA transporter, he simply did not ask to use it? He replies that she misunderstands his intentions and that he has no wish to return to his former configuration – instead he wants the whole world turned inside out! With that, the device in Wonder Woman’s hands explodes and as she slips into unconsciousness momentarily, she realises that the device had been booby-trapped all along.

When she comes to again she finds her hands bound behind her back with her own lasso and Inversion firmly holding the other end. He tells her that he knows she is powerless when bound by a man and orders her to summon her plane. She thinks to herself that his brain has obviously been turned inside out and has become warped somehow. But she has no choice in obeying his commands and using the same backwards style as before, orders her plane to return to her.

They climb onboard and Inversion tells her to fly to the JLA transporter. Seconds later they arrive and he commands her to explain how to activate the device and not to alert any of her Justice League colleagues. Once he is sure how it works, he climbs into the transporter tube and dematerialises, intent on capturing the circuitry of the transporter in the JLA satellite and alter it to his needs. Once gone though, his influence over Wonder Woman vanishes and she quickly dons her Amazon spacesuit in readiness for what happens next.

Up on the JLA satellite, the Elongated Man is on monitor duty and sees that someone is about to materialise in the transporter tube. But the system automatically scans every person that uses the device and when it detects unauthorised usage, it instantly returns the individual to where they came from. The Elongated man does not even have time to see who it is!

Back in New York, a surprised Inversion finds himself back where he started and the Amazon informs him that in his absence she has altered the transporter to her ownneeds. With that she presses a button and he dematerialises once more. This time however, she has slowed the process down so that his atoms are held in limbo for a longer period on their way back to the satellite.

Racing against time, she boards her distorted plane and heads to space, relying on her spacesuit to protect her from the vacuum now that her inside out plane no longer does. As she approaches the JLA Satellite however, its automatic defenses fail to recognise the strange configuration of her ship and opens fire. As she is flung out of her craft and into space, the Elongated Man sees the events on the monitor screen and realises that it is Wonder Woman. He quickly dons a space suit and stretches out of the satellite to grab the stranded Amazon Princess.

Bringing her back inside, she races to the transporter tube as it begins to hum to life again . She removes a power cell from the console and the device shuts down. The Elongated Man asks her if she realises what happens to anyone caught in the beam when the transfer is interrupted? She replies that she does – and that she has trapped Inversion’s atoms in the power cell!

Returning to Earth, Wonder Woman attempts to use the equipment in Inversion’s tenement together with the Justice League transporter to correct the configuration of her plane and of Inversion himself. As she works, she remarks to herself that the JLA were right not to make the transporter technology public knowledge or else the world might be full of Inversions.

After hours of preparation, she activates the device and succeeds in turning her plane back to normal but finds to her dismay that Inversion’s atoms are still inside the power cell, disintegrated and twisted. She decides the only other place that might have the scientific potential to save him is Paradise Island.

Less than an hour later she is making her way towards her homeland in her now restored plane and thinks to herself how she hates to fly there while Steve is being interrogated back in New York. However, Paradise Island may be the only hope of saving Inversion and his ‘human’ life is in more immediate danger than Steve’s.

She muses that her home is a symbol of sacred human life and of freedom, not only for women but for all humankind. It is ironic because before the creation of Paradise Island as a haven, all her Amazon sisters had been in chains.