Wonder Woman

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Wonder Woman fights not with fists or firepower, but with love. That was the strange premise her creator insisted on. In an October 1940 interview with Family Circle magazine, the psychologist William Moulton Marston argued the comic book medium had unfulfilled potential. His wife Elizabeth had a sharper idea. When Marston pitched a new kind of superhero, she answered him simply. "Fine," she said. "But make her a woman." The character that followed first appeared in All Star Comics #8, published the 21st of October 1941. She would become one of the first DC superheroes and one of the strongest. But why would a man who invented the polygraph build a hero around a Lasso of Truth? Why did so many of her early stories show her breaking free from chains? And how does a princess sculpted from clay keep getting reborn, decade after decade, in entirely different forms?

• 2. A Psychologist's Propaganda

  ›

  "Frankly, Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who, I believe, should rule the world." Marston wrote those words about his own creation. He was an outspoken feminist, a polyamorist, and a firm believer in the superiority of women. His day job had made him famous already. He invented a systolic-blood-pressure-measuring apparatus that proved crucial to the polygraph, the lie detector. That work convinced him women were more honest than men in certain situations and could work more efficiently.

  In a 1943 issue of The American Scholar, Marston laid out the gap he wanted to close. "Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power," he wrote. The remedy, he argued, was a character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman. He designed her as an allegory for the ideal love leader, the kind of woman he thought should run society.

  Marston also believed in something darker and stranger. He described bondage and submission as a "respectable and noble practice." He built a deliberate weakness into his hero, governed by a fictional rule he called "Aphrodite's Law." If a man chained her Bracelets of Submission together, her Amazonian super strength drained away. Peace, he wrote, would come only when people full of unbound force learned to enjoy being bound, when the control of self by others felt more pleasant than the assertion of self.

• 3. The Women Behind The Design

  ›

  Olive Byrne wore bracelets on both wrists, and Marston drew his hero's wristbands directly from them. Byrne lived with Marston and his wife Elizabeth in a polyamorous relationship. Both women are credited as the inspiration for the character's appearance. The idea reached publication through Max Gaines, a comics publisher whose attention Marston's Family Circle article had caught. Gaines hired Marston as an educational consultant for National Periodicals and All-American Publications, two of the companies that later merged to form DC Comics. With the go-ahead from Gaines, Marston scripted the debut himself. The character he developed was meant to model that era's unconventional, liberated woman.

• 4. Breaking Free

  ›

  Many of Wonder Woman's earliest stories show her escaping bondage, a deliberate counterpoint to the "damsels in distress" trope common in 1940s comics. Created during World War II, she fought Axis forces alongside a parade of colorful supervillains. Her most frequent early foe was a German baroness named Paula von Gunther, joined by evil deities like Mars and the Duke of Deception, and villains such as Hypnota, Doctor Psycho, and Cheetah.

  The origin tale itself turns on a moment of disguise. In her first appearance, Diana enters an Amazon tournament secretly as "Contestant Number 7," defying her mother Queen Hippolyta, who had forbidden her to compete. The final trial demands she deflect bullets with her bracelets. Diana succeeds flawlessly, then removes her mask. Hippolyta realizes the winner was her daughter all along and acknowledges that Diana truly deserves the title of Amazon Champion. The prize was a mission: return Captain Steve Trevor, whose plane had crashed on the island, to Man's World.

  Her secret identity arrived by chance. Coming to America, Wonder Woman met a wailing army nurse who looked identical to her. The nurse wanted to join her fiancé in South America but lacked the money. Wonder Woman gave her the money she had earned in exchange for her credentials. The nurse's name was Diana Prince, and so the alias was born. Over time, her stories shifted away from wartime espionage toward deities and monsters from Greek mythology.

• 5. Powers Of The Gods

  ›

  "Beautiful as Aphrodite, wise as Athena, swifter than Hermes, and stronger than Hercules." That epithet, revealed in Wonder Woman #105, captured how her powers came to be understood as gifts from Olympian deities. In her original Golden Age origin, her mother Hippolyta sculpted her from clay and the Greek goddesses granted her superpowers. The Golden Age version had strength comparable to the Golden Age Superman. She could bench press 15,000 pounds even before receiving her bracelets, and later hoisted a 50,000-pound boulder above her head. She ran easily at 60 mph in one early appearance.

  The Post-Crisis rewrite assigned each gift to a specific goddess. Demeter blessed Diana with strength drawn from the earth spirit Gaea. Athena granted wisdom, mastery of over a dozen languages, and military prowess. Artemis gave the Eyes of the Hunter, including telescopic vision and the ability to communicate with all animals, even dinosaurs. Hestia granted sisterhood with fire and the "Fires of Truth" that run through her lasso. Hermes gave speed and flight at speeds approaching half the speed of light. Aphrodite bestowed beauty and a kind heart.

  The arsenal stayed constant across eras. She carries the Lasso of Truth, a pair of indestructible bracelets, and a tiara that doubles as a projectile. Batman once called her the "best melee fighter in the world." The modern version is known to use lethal force when she deems it necessary, a trait that set her apart after the Post-Crisis reboot.

• 6. Reinvention By The Decade

  ›

  Wonder Woman #179, dated November 1969, stripped its hero of everything. Diana surrendered her powers, costume, and title to remain in Man's World rather than follow the Amazons to another dimension. She acquired a blind martial arts mentor named I-Ching, ran a mod boutique, and fought crime in jumpsuits. This phase drew directly from the British spy thriller The Avengers and Diana Rigg's portrayal of Emma Peel.

  The Silver Age, under writer Robert Kanigher, had already deepened her mythological roots, blessing the infant Diana in her crib with the gifts of the gods. The Bronze Age pulled her back. Wonder Woman #204 returned her powers and costume, and in the same issue a crazed sniper killed I-Ching. DC president Jenette Kahn later ordered a fresh look. Artist Milton Glaser, who designed DC's "bullet" logo in 1977, created a stylized "WW" emblem that replaced the eagle on her bodice and debuted in 1982. The series was canceled with issue #329 in February 1986, written by Gerry Conway, which depicted Steve Trevor's marriage to Wonder Woman.

  The 1985 Crisis on Infinite Earths reset everything. George Pérez, Len Wein, and Greg Potter rewrote her as an emissary and ambassador from Themyscira, the new name for Paradise Island, charged with bringing peace to Patriarch's World. Pérez gave her an athletic look emphasizing her Amazonian heritage. The relaunch was a critical and commercial success and became the foundation for modern Wonder Woman stories.

• 7. Three Wonder Women

  ›

  In 2011, following the Flashpoint storyline, The New 52 made Diana the natural-born daughter of Hippolyta and Zeus, abandoning the clay origin. Writer Brian Azzarello and artist Cliff Chiang gave her a red-black-silver costume and the role of the new God of War. The clay origin was explained away as a cover story to protect her from Hera's wrath. Some changes proved controversial, including a storyline depicting the Amazons as raiders who had children with male sailors.

  DC Rebirth in 2016 undid much of that. Writer Greg Rucka split the relaunched fifth volume into two alternating storylines, "The Lies" in odd-numbered issues and "Year One" in even ones. "The Lies" revealed that the events making Diana Queen of the Amazons and God of War had all been an illusion created by a mysterious villain. "Year One" served as an all-new origin meant to return her to classical DC roots. Her revised look added a red cape, light armor with pteruges and shin guards, plus a regular sword and shield.

  The clay origin came home with Tom King's run, whose first issue launched the 6th of September 2023, with art by Daniel Sampere. King fully restored the clay origin and used it as a parallel to the birth of Diana's daughter, Elizabeth "Lizzie" Marston Prince. In issue #14, after failing to resurrect a recently dead Steve, Diana creates a baby out of clay, combines her and Steve's life essences, and calls on the now-Olympian Hippolyta to bring the child to life, just as the goddesses once did for Diana. By this point the title carries three Wonder Women in current continuity, after Diana blessed her mother Hippolyta and her Amazon sister Nubia to share the role.

• 8. An Icon In Many Worlds

  ›

  October 21 is Wonder Woman Day, marking the anniversary of her first appearance. The character has been adapted into television, film, animation, apparel, merchandise, video games, and toys. On screen she has been played by Linda Harrison, Cathy Lee Crosby, Lynda Carter, Megan Gale, Adrianne Palicki, and Gal Gadot. Her animated voice has come from performers including Shannon Farnon, Susan Eisenberg, Maggie Q, Lucy Lawless, Keri Russell, Rosario Dawson, Cobie Smulders, Rachel Kimsey, and Stana Katic.

  The comics imagine her in radically different worlds. In Superman: Red Son she becomes a Soviet ally in the Cold War, fighting against an American Batman. In Kingdom Come, written by Mark Waid and Alex Ross, she is a hardened warrior in a black costume carrying a sword. On Earth-11, the Gender Reversed Earth, she appears as Wonder Man. The Absolute Wonder Woman series, written by Kelly Thompson and illustrated by Hayden Sherman, imagines a Diana raised in Hell rather than Themyscira, given to the imprisoned witch Circe and taught magic. It began publication on the 23rd of October 2024.

  Her origins keep circling back to a single image: a queen who longed for a child and shaped one from clay. Kelly Sue DeConnick's Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons, made for the character's 80th anniversary, ends with Hippolyta forming a clay baby girl, blessed by seven goddesses and reincarnated from the soul of a child she was once ordered to abandon. The girl is named after the moon goddess, Diana, destined to continue her mother's fight for women's justice.