Who the Hell is Wonder Woman? pt. 1

Before we get into the first story arc of Wondy’s third volume, it’s time for a crash course in recent Wondy history.

This gets a little rough in spots, so I recommend making a drinking game out of it. Here’s a simple guide –

Take a drink every time:

• Wondy’s costume changes for no reason.
• A member of Wondy’s supporting cast vanishes forever with no explanation.
• Wondy fights Superman.
• Wondy dies.
• A character, superpower, or outfit that hasn’t been seen since 1973 suddenly turns up without explanation
  
• A writer or artists makes a nonsensical reference to the old Lydna Carter TV show.

Those rules should get you so sloshed that you might even be able to enjoy Jodi Picoult’s run and Amazons Attack by the time you get to them (and don’t worry, I’ll cover those abominations in later entries).

Okay. Check it.

Wonder Woman’s series was relaunched from issue #1 in 1987, following the cancellation of her first series that had run for nearly fifty years. The mastermind behind the series was superstar cartoonist George Perez, who changed a lot of things about the character that are only really that important to nerds like me.


Wondy’s origin is basically thus:

Hippolyta is Queen of the Amazons, who live on Paradise Island, totally separated from the modern world. After living on the island for a couple thousand years, Hippolyta decides that she wants a baby (just like a woman!) and asks the Greek gods to help her out. She carves a baby out of clay (and for Diana’s sake, we hope she had a pretty extensive knowledge of sculpting, to say nothing of human anatomy; suffice it to say that if I tried to sculpt my own baby, it would have a velociraptor head and lobster claws), the gods give it life, and bam: insta-birth.

Diana grows up on the island, until one day the outside world is threatened by Ares, god of war. The Amazons hold a contest to decide which of them will become the ambassador of the Amazons and go to Man’s World to fight Ares. Diana wins, leaves the island, and becomes Wonder Woman.

Keep in mind that this is a really simplified version of a series of events that has been retold and contradicted so many times that it really doesn’t even make sense anymore. You can check out a very pretty, truncated version of her origin here.

Believe it or not, there’s actually a backstory regarding her ridiculous outfit. It turns out that it was actually designed to honor a fallen Amazon heroine, and the fact that Diana winds up running around Boston catching bank robbers and saving babies dressed like an overly-patriotic cocktail waitress in Vegas is pure coincidence.

Like most battle armor, Wondy's costume is made of spandex and leaves almost her entire body uncovered.

Anyway, this series lasted until 2006. Over that time, the book was handled by a number of different creators, including William Messner-Loeb, John Byrne, Eric Luke, and Phil Jimenez. Generally, one writer’s take on Diana had little to do with any others, so Diana’s costume, personality, supporting cast, base of operations, powers, and hairdo tended to be completely different every few years. During this time, she joined (and briefly led) the Justice League, died twice, became a goddess twice, had a couple love interests (but no sex; ouch), worked at a fast food joint, lost the title of Wonder Woman at least once, watched her mom die, turned back into clay a few times, fought Superman a few times, and reduced the amount of fabric in her costume to a terrifying degree.

That pose is getting old, Diana.

She did have some great covers, though. Brian Bolland did a fantastic series of covers in issues #63 - #100, and Adam Hughes did the same from issues #139 - #197. True, Hughes’ Diana did have a tendency to look like a star-spangled blow-up doll, but I think his heart was in the right place. Or at least a very horny place.

We've secretly replaced Wonder Woman with a sex doll. Let's see if anybody notices.

The last writer to tackle Diana before her second series ended was Greg Rucka, who penned the book from issue #195 to # 226. This period of the book tends to be really divisive among fans, but I think it sucked. Essentially, Rucka took Diana – who is supposed to be a symbol of empowerment, strength, and independence – and turned her into a moronic, sniveling wimp. The phenomenally talented J.G. Jones managed to turn out a series of washed-out, boring-looking painted covers for this period, as well. Anyway, I’ll cook up an entry to whine about that later.

For a fun game, speculate how the image on the left might have led to the one on the right.

Immediately before the end of her second series, Diana was involved in a big DC mega-crossover called Infinite Crisis. The less you know about it, the better.

Wondy’s involvement was basically thus: A C-list DC character named Maxwell Lord was mentally controlling Superman and basically causing him to freak out and start punching all his friends. Wondy had a huge fight with Supes (seriously, it took up an entire issue) and finally got fed up and, after slashing Superman’s throat with her tiara, tied Max up in her lasso and snapped his neck.

What now, motherfucker?

And that’s why you don’t fuck with a girl wearing star-spangled panties and a tiara.

Anyway, a bunch of Wondy’s fellow superheroes were miffed that she had resorted to taking a life (which I guess is easy to say when Superman didn’t just try to throw you into the sun), and she, herself, was pretty shaken up by the experience, so she decided to take a year off from super-heroing and find herself. You’d hope that someone who can lift mountains and has saved the world every other week for most of her life wouldn’t have to resort to the same thing a 22-year-old does when he graduates college and doesn’t want to get a real job, but maybe that's what happens when you spend most of your adult life punching monsters. Instead of backpacking across Europe, though, Diana decides to hang out on a mountain in the Himalayas or something. It makes less sense the more you think about it, so don’t bother.

Okay, so that makes two entries in which I haven’t even addressed the story I’m supposed to be writing about. Now that the stage is set, next time we can get into the story itself. What did Wondy do with her year off? How did the world get along without her? What will she do when she gets back?

Find out in "Who the Hell is Wonder Woman?" pt. 2.