Yeah, I had recently re-read WONDER WOMAN #1 and I donât believe I had ever paid any any attention to that before.
Very cool.
Iâm a huge tennis fan, and love the history of tennis â and got a real kick out of seeing Arthur Ashe and Jimmy Connors show up in the second issue of THE OTHER HISTORY OF THE DC UNIVERSE.
So I knew well who Alice Marble was, from her tennis accomplishments, I just never knew she had any involvement with Wonder Woman?!
Oh god, that is so cool. So, so cool.
And from the article.
In the early days of World War II, Marble was approached to be an athlete endorser of the then quite new Wonder Woman comic book. Instead, Marble became an associate editor of the popular series in its earliest days while William Moulton Marston and Harry G. Peter were still helming the title. During her time on the book, Marble created âWonder Women of History,â an ongoing feature which highlighted brilliant and inspiring women throughout history who she felt embodied the same ideals as Wonder Womanâempowerment, justice, peace and compassion.
âWonder Women of Historyâ ran for twelve years beginning in the very first issue of Wonder Woman, with Marble personally credited until Wonder Woman #17. Each story was told from the perspective of the titular heroine Diana, and she even signed her name at the end of every tale. âWonder Women of Historyâ included entries on many vital and often ignored women, from Sojourner Truth to Clara Barton to Kit Coleman to Anna Pavlova, celebrating womenâs achievements from the political to cultural. The stories also ran in many installments of Sensation Comics.
Learn something everyday.
Alice Marble is awesome.
And Wonder Woman too. [insert smiley face]
EDIT:
And quickly on tennis history.
One of my favorite books was The Goddess and the American Girl.
Better known and more admired in the 1920s and '30s than any politician, movie star, or royal family member, Suzanne Lenglen, lionized by Frenchmen as âThe Goddess,â and Helen Wills, called âQueen Helenâ or simply âThe American Girl,â revolutionized tennis with their power and grace and beauty, and in the process virtually invented the concept of celebrity athlete. This superb dual biographyâthe first of either player to appear in Englishâfollows their careers from the time they first set foot on a tennis court through their ascent and descent on the international circuit.
Suzanne Lenglen was introduced to the game at age eleven by her father, an overzealous French businessman who is credited with adapting tennis to womenâs play. âPapaâ Lenglen trained his daughter rigorously and throughout her career was her mentor and coach, providing sips of cognac at key moments and watching her every move with a stern parental eye. Lenglen, known by her trademark white ermine cape and diamond-studded headband, became the first non-English-speaking woman to win the Wimbledon singles championshipâa title she held six times between 1919 and 1925. But to her fellow Frenchmen she was more than a great athlete: she was a symbol of resurgent French pride after the costly bloodshed of World War I, a national hero on the level of Joan of Arc.
Helen Wills beat Lenglenâs Wimbledon record although she lost the only match in which they came face to face. In 1938, Wills set a record of eight Wimbledon winsâunparalleled until Martina Navratilova tied it last year (in 1987). Wills dominated womenâs tennis as few athletes in any sport have done, winning every singles match she entered from 1926 to 1933. Like Lenglen, Wills was introduced to tennis by her father and played a âmanâs game.â But there the similarities end. Whereas Lenglen was homely and prone to nervous fits, Wills was a great American beauty whose coolness on the court earned her the name âLittle Miss Poker face.â She was Americaâs heartthrob, a âCalifornia girlâ whose health and good looks defined the American âNew Woman.â
Engelmann brilliantly brings to life not only the women, their families, and friends, but the whole international sports world of the era. Filled with anecdotes about tennis clubs and the famous of the dayâincluding Charlie Chaplin, Joseph Kennedy, and Bill Tildenâit is at once sports history, social history, and entertaining biography.
And from part of the New York Times reviewâŚ
Most tennis buffs, if asked about the greatest rivalry in the womenâs game, would undoubtedly cite Chris Evert versus Martina Navratilova. On the contrary. ââThe Goddess and the American Girlââ argues that more than a half-century ago - before television ruled sports, before tennis stars were millionaires - Suzanne Lenglen of France and Helen Wills of California were the most ballyhooed rivals the sport ever produced. Amazingly, their âârivalryââ consisted of one single match, played under chaotic conditions on the French Riviera in 1926. Whatâs controversial about the book is its bookâs implication that Lenglen and Wills could lay claim to the twin titles of the best female players in history.
Larry Engelmann, who teaches history at San Jose State University in California, builds a persuasive case for both arguments in this overlong, overdue dual biography. It is a measure of the tennis worldâs collective amnesia that both women have been largely forgotten, even though, in the 1920âs and 1930âs, they were bigger headliners than Jack Dempsey or Babe Ruth.
Lenglen, the ââGoddessââ of the title, is considered the greatest player yet by some tennis writers who saw her. A flamboyant character on and off the court, she was revered and feted by kings and film stars all over the globe. At home on the Riviera she was a high-strung empress, who screamed at bad line calls, gulped cognac between games and suffered nervous breakdowns. ââShe was the first female athlete to be acknowledged as a celebrity outside her particular sport,ââ according to Mr. Engelmann. She died young and tragically at 39, of anemia, just two days after Helen Wills won an amazing eighth Wimbledon singles titleâŚ
Itâs was a really good book.
And I guess that was about '88 when I read it.
Wow⌠time sure flies.
