Summary: After foiling a kidnapping plot, Wonder Woman quickly befriends the target of the operation—Princess Audrey of Kasnia—and, following a wild night of partying to celebrate her last days as a single woman, she is shocked to discover that Audrey's husband-to-be is none other than Vandal Savage. Although initially posing as a descendant of the Axis leader, he quickly shows his true colors after marrying the princess and claiming Kasnia's throne, unveiling a new weapon as part of his latest bid for world domination: an orbital rail gun capable of launching meteors at any earthbound target. Now, Wonder Woman and Batman must restore the Royal Family to power while Flash, Green Lantern, and J'onn J'onzz attempt to disable the orbital weapon before Savage is able to launch a meteor at Paris.
JL
Roll Call: Wonder
Woman, Batman, Green
Lantern, The Flash, J’onn J’onzz
Featured Character:
Wonder
Woman
Villain:
Vandal
Savage
Cartoon Network on “Maid of Honor”: “After Wonder Woman befriends a jet-setting Kasnian princess, she finds herself enmeshed in a complex plot of intrigue and betrayal masterminded by the Justice League’s old enemy, Vandal Savage" (courtesy of Cartoon Network).
Dwayne McDuffie on “Maid of Honor”: “[Because Bruce Timm is a major James Bond fan], what we did was take Vandal Savage and turn him into a Bond villain. He’s wearing that ‘60s narrow jacket-type collar—the Dr. Evil or Blofeld-type outfit. And his plan is he’s going to throw a big rock at Earth from orbit; he steals a satellite and so on. It was a total James Bond riff.
“The fun for me, though, was the Princess Audrey character, who Wonder Woman befriends. It was just a lot of fun to allow someone who seems that trivial to discover her own depth. That was the kind of thing we wanted to do with Wonder Woman over time as she was fairly naďve on our show. So that was sort of the start of her travels. One interesting tidbit is people kept saying to me, ‘Oh, wow, Princess Audrey is Paris Hilton,’ but I have to tell you: I had no idea who Paris Hilton was when I was writing this story. As far as I’m concerned, Princess Audrey was Audrey Hepburn" (courtesy of RetroVision CD-ROM Magazine).
Bruce Timm on “Maid of Honor”: “We’d kind of done the naďve, new to Man’s World princess for the first season, and realized that would get old real quick. So we wanted to take that to the next step. We thought of different possibilities—giving her a secret identity or a job, but none of that was really gelling. But then, taking a cue from the comics where they kind of play her as this ambassador to the world, we thought it would be kind of cool to get her out of her Amazonian armor and get her all dressed up really nice, elegant and explore a different aspect of her.
“It
also gave us an opportunity to further explore the mild flirtation between her
and Batman from a different angle, where it’s actually Bruce Wayne flirting
with her at the beginning of the show. There’s
a great bit—my co-producer James Tucker was laughing his head off when we were
editing the show—when Bruce Wayne starts off flirting with her on the dance
floor. Later he shows up in her
hotel room in his Batman gear and basically gives her a hard time about going
out and partying and hob-knobbing with the rich and famous.
James started laughing, ‘What a psycho this guy is.
Make up your mind, Batman.’
“The
interesting thing about Vandal Savage—and this goes to the overall
season—somebody pointed out that […] in the three stories he’s appeared in
[we’ve seen him] in the past, the present, and [in] ‘Hereafter’ we see him
in the future. So we’ve seen the
entire life story of Vandal Savage within the scope of three stories.
He’s actually a Golden Age character, from All-Star
Comics; I think he was a JSA villain" (courtesy of RetroVision CD-ROM
Magazine).
Bruce
Timm on James Bond references in “Maid of Honor”:
“There’s tons of 007 nods in ‘Maid of Honor’ […] from, ‘Wayne…Bruce
Wayne’ to Savage’s Blofeld-esque Mao jacket" (courtesy of Toon
Zone).
Dwayne McDuffie on “Maid of Honor”: “My master’s degree is in Physics. I cheated a bit but not much, certainly less than I did with people who can fly. The current medical belief is that a ‘regular’ human can survive unprotected in space for about three minutes. Here’s a link to a popular article on the subject. As far as recovery time goes, I think Flash is tougher than a regular human, we know he has enhanced healing.
“The rail gun was in geo-synchronous orbit l-7; the asteroid field was artificial and had been gathered there for use by the rail gun. Also, neither Superman or Green Lantern could have stopped the meteor, they’re not nearly powerful enough. By my rough calculations, a rock that size falling at terminal velocity would have carried potential energy equivalent to a mid-sized nuclear weapon. Note that waves from a miss were sufficient to destroy an entire Aircraft Carrier; note also that Green Lantern once saw a similar weapon destroy a moon. Vandal Savage wasn’t kidding around; he did have the most powerful weapon on Earth.
“[…] Yikes, did I say three minutes? That should have been ninety seconds. Still, that’s twice as long as I had Flash out there, and he certainly would not burst like people do in bad science fiction movies. I made one big mistake; Flash shouldn't have been cold, the vacuum of space would have preserved his body temperature. If anything, he should have been sunburned from the unfiltered UV radiation. On the Internet, you can find plenty of links to more technical discussions of surviving in a vacuum. Here’s a fairly jargon-free one from NASA that includes information about a real guy actually surviving in a near-vacuum for fifteen seconds.
“The rail gun I stole from comic books I wrote in 1992 (Shadow Cabinet #0 and Hardware #1). I first read about the idea in a science book in grade school (Arthur C. Clarke essays maybe?). See what you can learn watching (and writing) cartoons?" (courtesy of Toon Zone).
DarkLantern on Flash’s space walk: “Flash can survive in space a little longer than an ordinary human…at least Barry Allen could. He fought the villainous Black Hand for several minutes in a complete vacuum in issue #259 of his magazine. He even commented later [that] he wasn’t sure if his body could survive with no air pressure, ‘But years of super-speeding must have toughened me’" (courtesy of Toon Zone).
Dwayne McDuffie on regrets and “Maid of Honor”: “I thought Princess Audrey’s chilling last line to Vandal Savage [in ‘Maid of Honor’] (basically promising to eternally torture him) should have been the end of the episode. Batman and Wonder Woman bantering about dancing should have come before. I couldn’t convince my bosses on that one though" (courtesy of DwayneMcDuffie.com).
Images
Screen Grabs from "Maid of Honor"
Commentary
Commentary coming soon!
Images
courtesy of Toon
Zone.