I honestly couldn’t say who was my first crush, the beautiful Joanna Cameron as Isis from the Saturday morning adventure series of the same name, or luscious Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman. I wouldn’t hit puberty for years. I’m talking, I was, like, five freakin’ years old. But looking at those two ladies stirred certain primal biological urges in my prepubescent anatomy. (It still does.) Suffice it to say, I loved Wonder Woman.
To get a little biographical, I was raised by a single mother who didn’t drive. My elderly grandfather drove us into town once a week to get groceries. That was it. Otherwise we never went anywhere. Downright Waltons-esque, isn’t it? With this being the case, I never got to go to the movies, not until years later. I didn’t get to see STAR WARS when it first came out. I knew all about it, because STAR WARS was everywhere. My mother bought me the action figures. I knew, then, who Darth Vader was. He was the first figure I’d picked up at the local five-and-dime. Imagine the thrill I got when Darth Vader showed up on an episode of WONDER WOMAN!
It wasn’t really Vader. It was a monster called the Zardor (or Sardor), who worked for some evil space aliens. (They were so evil, they wore Christmas tree garland on their helmets!) But the Zardor looked like Darth Vader, enough that my child’s mind had no doubts it was him. And he was scary, man! He had claws! And he beat Wonder Woman in a fight! I knew how superhumanly strong Wonder Woman was, so if Darth was able to beat her, that was something!
How I’d love to see a retooled version of the Zardor show up in a future WONDER WOMAN movie. How I’d love to see it get its own action figure. If it never does, though, that’s kind of okay. I already have several Darth Vader figures, after all.