Wonder Woman #201

Issue Details

Synopsis

Diana and I-Ching visit Jonny Double’s office to find him gone, a smear of blood on the floor, and two Asian assassins inside. Both killers perish in battle with the twosome, but one lives long enough to gasp out, “Fist of Flame”. I-Ching identifies the Fist of Flame as a giant ruby “said to drive men mad with greed”, and the assassins as members of a mountain-man sect devoted to worshipping it. Later, Diana receives a note telling her to get the Fist of Flame if she wants to see Double alive again. Diana sells her boutique to raise money for the trip. On the way she and I-Ching see a beautiful and strangely familiar woman on the same flight as themselves. In Tibet, Diana and I-Ching locate the Flame Fist cultists’ mountain and see the gem itself, embedded in the forehead of a Buddhist statue. Diana fights her way past the cultists and grabs the gem, only to find herself attacked by Catwoman, who was the woman in disguise in the plane, and who is also in search of the gem. Catwoman kayoes Diana, but is mesmerized herself by the Fist of Flame’s hypnotic power. Both women awaken in another chamber, suspended above a flaming pit by ropes, and supplied with swords with which to fight each other. The cultists tell them that the survivor of their battle will serve them. Diana manages to save both herself and Catwoman, and the cultists’ leader dies fighting them. The two women snatch the Fist of Flame, free I-Ching, and run from the cultists’ temple. Along the way, Catwoman tells them that she had hired Jonny Double to find the Fist of Flame, but a rival gang, led by I-Ching’s daughter Lu Shan, learned of her plans. Abruptly, Diana, Catwoman, and I-Ching phase out of their world, and rematerialize on the world of Nehwon, where they look up to see Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser before them.