The Non-Adventures of Wonderella deftly skewers tropes both comic book and mundane in a weekly Saturday strip. Fighting for truth, justice, and product endorsements, Wonderella herself would much rather be at home with a Jack and Coke watching American Idol. Unfortunately for her, a girl has to make a living and her superpowers are the pretty much the only job skill she has.
She can’t fly, though.
The comic has been published weekly since September of 2006. The vector art is vibrantly colored and cheerful, with a complete full page story every time. Wonderella herself began as combination Wonder Woman/Superman parody. Creator Justin Pierce has said “I started out Wonderella to make an off-the-clock superhero who was an average woman instead of some 24/7 warrior… though somewhere along the line, ‘average woman’ became a cross between Elaine Benes and Zelda Fitzgerald.” In early strips big name heroes like the Flash and Batman were mentioned as off screen characters, but Wonderella’s own super powered cast of colleagues grew, as well as a regular rogues gallery that is one of the real draws of the series.
The real charm lies with the fact that while she is often self absorbed and would rather not be bothered, Wonderella’s genre-savviness is often her greatest weapon. She has a real world logical streak that doesn’t mesh with her super powered universe, which is probably contributes to her drinking problem. Her own sidekick, Wonderita is more of a teenage stalker and useful hostage for villains than any real assistance. The other heroes she fights alongside are catty and competitive, and she generally gets along better with, and sometimes briefly dates, the villains and villainesses she fights agains. Her mother, the original Hitler-Punching Wonderella, is a super powered Lucille Bluth who didn’t give her daughter much of a choice to be anything other than her successor. She’s an everywoman with a lot of baggage, but Wonderella might not be the hero her world wants, but she’s probably the hero they need.
