Wonder Woman (Volume 1) with a cover date of December, 1944.
Synopsis for "The Slaves of the Evil Eye"
Diana hears Steve Trevor telling a woman that he has obeyed, but by the time she enters his office his visitor has vanished and Steve insists she's the first woman he's seen at the office that day. While she searches his office for clues he spots a masked woman entering a car from the window, and Wonder Woman leaps to pursuit. Just when she has the masked figure in her grip her quarry slips away, leaving their cloak in her hand. In the cloak pocket she finds the secret defense plans being prepared in case the Saturnian Empire breaks the new treaty and arms their merchant ships, which Steve has no recollection of retrieving for anyone. Diana is able to trace the cloak to the act of the stage magician Hypnota the Great, and convinces Steve to attend with her.
Hypnota spots Steve trying to leave the theater and takes control of his mind to get him to agree to come up on stage so that they may hypnotize him, Wonder Woman tries to interrupt but the magician escapes through a trap door and knocks her out when she follows, ordering those hypnotized during the show to shoot the Amazon. Steve is able to resist this order, and free himself of the mental control to help subdue the magician's other victims but Hypnota escapes by having their assistant Serva dress as them and get caught.
Under the compulsion of the magic lasso Serva explains that Hypnota's act was originally all tricks and slights of hand, but after a training accident where Serva shot him with real bullets where there were meant to be blanks Hypnota developed the ability to control other's minds. In paranoia and anger Hypnota ordered the doctor and nurses who had been part of the operation to save his life to forget about it and destroy all medical records, and refused to believe that Serva shot him accidentally, turning his former trusted friend and assistant into his mind-controlled slave. Diana takes Serva to her apartment, but Hypnota finds them and gives Serva further orders to report back to him once she's located Wonder Woman.
After securing Serva at Holliday College Diana goes with Darnell to visit the Saturnian Ambassador, and a U.S. Army Bomber attacks their car. Wonder Woman discovers that the pilots had been paid to steal the plane and assassinate the ambassador and that their employer had successfully ordered the pilots to forget their identity. The ambassador muses that the ones behind the attacks must want to break the trade treaty and start a war by making it appear that the army had attacked him, and are thus likely slave smugglers as no other humans had anything to gain from such a war, nor anything to lose from the treaty. He also reveals that at least one earth based slave smuggler is still in business. Slipping their ships past official patrols they sell human slaves at Saturnian Empire slave markets and when the victims are discovered by the Empire and freed they act oddly docile and seem to have been brain-washed to remember and want nothing but their enslavement. Diana realizes the slave smuggler must be Hypnota, and that capturing him is a far more pressing matter than she'd thought.
Appearing in "The Slaves of the Evil Eye"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
Antagonists:
- Hypnota (First appearance)
- Serva (First appearance)
- Emperor of Saturn (Flashback only)
- Eviless (Flashback only)
Other Characters:
- Dr. Keene (Flashback only)
- Dr. Frood
- Count Dendum, Ambassador from Saturn
- Hale University Hockey Team
Locations:
- Washington, D.C.
- The Daly Theatre
- Hypnota's Estate
- Holliday College
- White House
- Saturnic Embassy
- Greenlands Sanitarium
- Saturn (Flashback only)
- Hale University (Mentioned only)
Synopsis for Wonder Women of History: "Julia Ward Howe"
Appearing in Wonder Women of History: "Julia Ward Howe"
Featured Characters:
Notes
- Published quarterly by Wonder Woman Publishing Company, Inc., with "A Superman Publication \ DC" on the cover. Next issue, this will change.
- Last issue for William Moulton Marston as writer.
- This issue is reprinted in 'Wonder Woman Archives Vol. 5'.
- Chapters:
- Part 2: "The Unseen Menace"
- Part 3: "The Slave Smugglers"
See Also