'Wonder Woman '77' is back and groovier than ever

Brian Truitt | USA TODAY

Marc Andreyko jokes he might have some brain damage as a kid from spinning around and around to change his clothes just like Lynda Carter in the 1970s Wonder Woman TV show.

At least there are still several fond memories of the time period and the live-action superheroine in the writer's head, because he's putting them to groovy use by continuing her adventures for a hip new generation.

DC Comics' digital-first series Wonder Woman '77 premieres Thursday and is inspired by the classic TV take on the comic-book Amazon Princess and her alter ego, government agent Diana Prince. Chapters will be available for download weekly on the DC Comics app, Readdcentertainment.com, ComiXology.com, Google Play, Kindle Store, Nook Store, iBooks and iVerse ComicsPLUS.

And like Jeff Parker's fellow digital series Batman '66, which dives back into the Adam West 1960s show, the old-school Wonder Woman's new star-spangled stories will be collected in print, as well.

"It's fun and there's no 'wink wink, nudge nudge' to it at all and it's not too cool for the room," says Andreyko, who also writes DC's Batwoman comic. "It's being really faithful to why Lynda Carter's Wonder Woman has endured for almost 40 years now."

For extra authenticity, DC got the license for the likenesses of both Carter and co-star Lyle Waggoner (who played love interest Steve Trevor), and Wonder Woman's magic belt, bulletproof bracelets and golden lasso are in full effect during the first Wonder Woman '77 story line drawn by Drew Johnson: The heroine has disco fever when she visits a nightclub — patterned after Studio 54, naturally — to track down an escaped Russian spy.

There are no jive turkeys allowed here — Andreyko says he's fully embracing the culture and fashion of the era without being too kitschy or reverential. When Steve Trevor hits the discotheque, for example, "his shirt's unbuttoned down to his navel and he's wearing a neck kerchief."

In the '70s "you had all those great music, great clothes, crazy hair, great slang and you didn't have cellphones and the Internet, which have ruined storytelling," he adds. "It's great to have things like busy signals and answering machines and rotary phones. For kids today it's probably going to feel like I did watching Little House on the Prairie."

In addition to Trevor from the TV series, Andreyko is also utilizing Ira, "the then-modern-day cutting-edge computer that's about as big as a house," the writer says, but he's also using Wonder Woman '77 as a chance to reimagine the character's classic supervillains from the comics as they would have looked on the show. He teases that the first story line offers "a logical character who would appear at a '70s disco."

The show started when Andreyko was 6 "so I don't know if I appreciated any deep subtext or anything," he says with a laugh. Yet at a young age, he took note of Carter's elegant, graceful performance that was also respectful to the comics, and it offered a different kind of live-action icon than the darker The Incredible Hulk series or the '60s Batman. "As a kid you realized it's a little left of center," he says, "even if you don't understand camp at that point."

Plus, Carter's character was a figure of authority, the theme song was awesomely catchy and there were a lot less fisticuffs than one would think for a prime-time superhero show, according to Andreyko.

"Wonder Woman tended to use other ways to defeat the bad guy as opposed to the obvious punching," he says. "That did register on a subtextual level as a kid. You didn't have to go down to the bad guy's level to defeat the bad guys."

Bringing that aspect to digital comic panels is challenging but in a good way, Andreyko adds. "Wonder Woman will use physical violence and strength when she needs to, but it's never, ever, ever in her top 10 choices. It's fun to write stories that don't instantly go to the 'let's punch each other silly.' "

Wonder Woman is going to have another big pop-culture moment with Gal Gadot playing the heroine in next year's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice movie and her own solo film in 2017. Even with many, many comic run by various creators over the years and various cartoon appearances, though, it's still Carter whom fans think of when someone mentions Wonder Woman.

"For a show that isn't being currently re-run on television anywhere, it's really loomed large," says Andreyko, who binged all three seasons of the TV series plus the Cathy Lee Crosby movie pilot before starting to write Wonder Woman '77.

Watching Carter again reminded him that she is "quintessential Wonder Woman. She's caring, she's loyal, she's devoted to her cause, she's smart and it's definitely all of the attributes of Wonder Woman you'd want. And there's no corniness and old-fashionedness to it."