In "Our Lives Together," I spotlight some of the more interesting examples of shared comic book universes. You know, crossovers that aren't exactly crossovers.

Today, we look at Wonder Woman just happening to choose a particularly busy day to get some advice from Superman.

Wonder Woman #88 is best remembered for its striking Brian Bolland cover that just happened to capture Superman during his long hair period, so it hasn't exactly aged well as a timeless cover, but that's not Bolland's fault, he gave it his all on the cover and it really stands out.

In fact, it stands out so much that I don't really know how many people actually know what happened in the story itself!

The story was part of a two-parter by Christopher Priest, John Ross and Ray Kryssing that helped resolve a plot from earlier in William Messner-Loebs' run on Wonder Woman. I might actually spotlight this one in the future for another column, but suffice it to say that Wonder Woman was going through some awful dreams that were making her erratic in her day to day actions, so she turned to Superman for some advice on how to deal with it all. At the same time, she wanted to know that if she ever were to go completely over the bend that Superman would be there to stop her and, if need be, put her down.

The interesting thing about DC Comics at the time is that unlike now, when superheroes seem to hang out with each other constantly, the big names rarely interacted with other back then. For instance, when talking to each other, Wonder Woman notes that this is not only the first time that she's had a heart to heart with the Man of Steel since he came back from the dead (where he died in Superman #75 and then made his official return in Superman #82) but since Superman had gotten ENGAGED in Superman #50!

She explains how her dreams unsettled her enough that she basically went out looking for trouble and was sure to find it...

Before Superman can comfort her too much, Doctor Fate shows up and pulls Wonder Woman away from the conversation...

Of course, Doctor Fate later turns out to be Circe in disguise, but that's a whole other story (literally). Okay, but the interesting thing to remember about this story is WHEN Wonder Woman came to get some advice from Superman! It was right in the aftermath of Lex Luthor almost blowing up Metropolis in "The Fall of Metropolis," where Luthor had used old alien torpedos to blow up most of the skyscrapers in Metropolis (he actually tried not to do the attack at the last minute but one of his flunkies went through with it against Luthor's wishes).

When we first meet Wonder Woman in the issue, she's battling a robot and we see that she is helping out, well, you know, Superman!

As the editorial box, we can see how this thing was handled in Superman: Man of Steel #35. That issue might sound familiar to regular readers of CSBG...

Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='Superman's way too busy day...']

As I wrote about the other day, Superman: Man of Steel #35 (by Louise Simonson, Jon Bogdanove and Dennis Janke) was actually part of TWO crossovers already! It was the first part of "The Fall of Metropolis" and it was also the first part of the DC Comics/Milestone Media inter-company crossover, "Worlds Collide"!

And then it also had to fit in Wonder Woman's visit into the story, too!

We see the beginning of the fight between Superman and the robot and we then see Wonder Woman's visit cut into the story SUPER quickly...

The implication of the story, by the way, is that Superman got rid of the robot, went off to have that heart-to-heart with Wonder Woman that we saw and then raced back to hug Keith, an orphan who was a regular fixture in Man of Steel, after the robot murdered Myra, the head of the group home where Keith lived...

That's quite a roller coaster ride of emotions!

Boy, they sure did ask a lot of Louise Simonson in that one comic book!

If anyone else has a suggestion for a fun usage of shared continuity, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!