Wonder Woman Unbound (40 page)

^†
Wonder Woman began costarring in a new series in October 2013 titled
Superman/Wonder Woman.
The two heroes are dating in the new DC universe, and the book is about their adventures as a superpowered couple. Wonder Woman gets second billing, and the book may as well be called
Superman’s Girl Friend Wonder Woman.

^‡
These aren’t all the Bat-books and Super-titles, just the longer-running ones. Also, the chart doesn’t show miniseries; with miniseries, this chart would be an eight-page foldout and the Wonder Woman books would still be barely noticeable at the bottom. Off the top of my head, while I can think of maybe five or six Wonder Woman–related miniseries that came out in the past twenty-five years, I can also think of five or six Batman-related miniseries that are coming out this
month.

*
A 2009 direct-to-DVD animated film starred Keri Russell as Wonder Woman. It premiered poorly but has sold steadily since. Gal Gadot will play a live-action Wonder Woman in the
Man of Steel
sequel in 2016, in a tertiary role behind Superman and Batman. A solo Wonder Woman film has yet to be announced.

†
They’re not married anymore, though. DC Comics relaunched their entire line in September 2011, and the Clark/Lois marriage never happened in the new universe, along with several other notable marriages like Barry Allen (the Flash) and Iris West, and Oliver Queen (Green Arrow) and Dinah Lance (Black Canary). Everyone’s young and single now. It’s a happening scene.

*
She became Oracle, a computer whiz who coordinated communication and information for most of the DC heroes. She starred in
Birds of Prey
for years before recovering and returning as Batgirl in DC’s recent relaunch, written by, wait for it, Gail Simone.

*
As with most deceased comics characters, Steph was later brought back via retcon. Dr. Leslie Thompkins, a close confidante of Steph’s and family friend of Batman, had faked Steph’s death to teach Batman a lesson about employing teenagers as sidekicks. She became Batgirl in 2009 in a new series by Bryan Q. Miller and Lee Garbett. The series didn’t light up the sales charts, but it sold steadily and was a critical favorite. When DC relaunched its superhero line in 2011, Barbara Gordon returned as Batgirl and Stephanie Brown disappeared from the DC universe, much to the consternation of fans. After more than two years of heavy campaigning by fans, Steph returned as Spoiler in
Batman: Eternal
in spring 2014.

CONCLUSION

Wonder Woman, Known but Unknown

S
uperheroes have been in the news regularly throughout the Modern Age. In terms of comics, events like the death of Superman or President Obama appearing in
Amazing Spider-Man
received global coverage and resulted in huge sales for the books. On the big screen, superheroes have been setting box office records for more than thirty years. Comic book heroes are used to headlines like S
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Wonder Woman has received press attention in recent years too, with eye-catching headlines like:

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Entertainment Weekly
didn’t even mention Wonder Woman by name in that last one, an exclusive announcement about Wonder Woman and Superman getting together. Notice that it’s not DC R
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either. Wonder Woman’s big headlines haven’t been momentous events so much as a series of fashion changes, failed projects, and a romance where she takes a backseat role. She’s faded into the background in comics, and she hasn’t done anything particularly newsworthy in a long time.

And yet, despite these past few mundane decades, Wonder Woman is everywhere. On
The Big Bang Theory,
Sheldon Cooper had to dress as Wonder Woman after losing a bet to his archnemesis, Wil Wheaton. On
30 Rock,
Liz Lemon sang part of the
Wonder Woman
theme song in a recordable birthday card for her boss, Jack Donaghy. On
The Simpsons,
Homer mentioned that he wouldn’t mind Wonder Woman tying him up in her lasso. Wonder Woman is a cultural touchstone, and she is referenced often.

Everybody knows of Wonder Woman, but not many people know much about her. It’s common knowledge that Superman is Clark Kent and that he’s from the planet Krypton, and most people know that Batman is Bruce Wayne and he lives in Gotham City. But it is unlikely that many people could tell you that Wonder Woman is Diana Prince and she’s from Paradise Island. To most, their knowledge of Wonder Woman is limited to memories of Lynda Carter’s spin change and bullet-deflecting bracelets. Wonder Woman is well known and beloved, but few have little more than a passing familiarity with the character herself. She’s a powerful, vibrant woman in a sea of male superheroes, and for this she is loved, as she should be. But there’s so much more to Wonder Woman.

That Wonder Woman is the most well-known female superhero is more than enough for legions of fans. Because most people don’t know much about her outside of a generic concept of “female superhero,” Wonder Woman becomes a blank slate to which we attach our own modern ideas. When a woman wears a bedazzled Wonder Woman shirt from Walmart or Target, she’s probably not trying to say, “I’m a big fan of this Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez artwork from the 1970s post-mod era.” The message is more likely “I am a strong woman” or “I am a feminist.”

When Wonder Woman is viewed only through a modern lens, the fascinating and important things she’s represented for decades are easily missed. Wonder Woman has been a symbol of feminism and what it means to be a strong woman, but these aren’t concrete ideas. Feminism in the 1940s was much different from feminism in the 1970s, and the role of women in 1950s America was a far cry from the role of women today. Wonder Woman has always dealt with these ever-changing concepts, whether she was embracing them or reacting against them. When we look at the history of Wonder Woman, we can see the history of American women as a whole, from new opportunities during World War II to the limited, domestic roles of Cold War culture to the assertion of rights and the power of women that brought about the women’s liberation movement. Very few female characters have had the longevity of Wonder Woman, in comic books or any other medium. She’s weathered every crisis that the comic book industry faced and has endured for seven decades in a constantly changing American society. The story of Wonder Woman is a meaningful history, one that deserves to be known.

Every version of Wonder Woman has been simultaneously progressive and problematic. The Golden Age Wonder Woman flipped typical gender roles and was a powerful heroine who cared about everyone, even her foes. The psychological theories that made the original Wonder Woman so uniquely feminist were tied to an often sadistic fetishism, and the comics both valorized and sexualized women and their powerful traits.

By the Silver Age, Wonder Woman more resembled her fellow female characters, but she was undisputedly the strongest and most courageous female character in comics. She survived being called out in
Seduction of the Innocent,
and she might have secretly been a lesbian the entire time.

Female characters began to assert themselves and step out on their own in the Bronze Age, while the mod Wonder Woman fell back as everyone else stepped forward. The human Diana Prince painted a poor portrait of modern womanhood, but amidst the violence and the heartbreak, Diana remained a force to be reckoned with.

Outside of comic books, the 1970s brought new interpretations of Wonder Woman. Cast as a feminist icon and imbued with the tenets of liberal feminism,
Ms.
modernized the character and the
Wonder Woman
TV show made her a household name.

The blank slate Wonder Woman of today is an icon, but by focusing on only that, her history and her humanity are lost. While Wonder Woman has always been a mess of contradictions, she has persevered. For every villain she rehabilitated, she was copiously bound. For every time she kowtowed to Steve Trevor, she defeated an alien giant bent on destroying the planet. For every man she fell in love with, she mastered a new martial art. She isn’t a great character despite her contradictions but because of them. Wonder Woman has so many facets and incarnations, and within them lies a character who is both bizarre and brilliant. To forget her past is to miss what makes Wonder Woman such a great hero.

Acknowledgments

O
ne thing you learn when writing your first book is that while writing is a rather solitary activity, a book is very much a group project.

This book began as an essay during my undergraduate degree in history at Dalhousie University, which was generously funded by a scholarship from Fred Fountain. As that essay grew into my master’s thesis, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, I received great help and advice from my advisor, Dr. Todd McCallum; my thesis committee, Dr. Jerry Bannister, Dr. Claire Campbell, and Dr. Anthony Enns; and Saman Jafarian and the other grad students and staff at the Dalhousie history department.

Along the road from thesis to book, I had research assistance and general help from Janelle Asselin, Geoffrey C. Bunn, Jon B. Cooke, Calum Johnston of the world’s best comic book store, Strange Adventures, Lauren Kalal from Rotary International, Alan Kupperberg, Trina Robbins, Jennifer K. Stuller, Kirsten van der Veen at the Smithsonian, and most likely many others I’m rudely forgetting.

The many books listed in the bibliography were invaluable to me, but in particular I should single out Bart Beaty’s
Fredric Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture,
Gerard Jones’s
Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book,
Amy Kiste-Nyberg’s
Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code,
and, most important, Les Daniels’s
Wonder Woman: The Complete History.
Daniels’s book provided a solid background for all of the bizarre directions I took things in my own history of Wonder Woman, and I am indebted to his years of fantastic research in superhero comics across the board.