Wonder Woman had its world premiere in Shanghai on May 15, 2017, and was released in the United States on June 2, 2017, in 2D, Real D 3D, and IMAX 3D by Warner Bros. Pictures. The film received largely positive reviews, with praise for its direction, acting, visuals, action sequences, and musical score, although the portrayal of its villains and the ending received some criticism.[8] The film set several box office records,[9] and became the fifth highest-grossing superhero film domestically and 20th highest-grossing film in the United States overall. It grossed over $821 million worldwide, making it the tenth highest-grossing film of 2017. As of August 2019, Rotten Tomatoes has listed the film fourth on its list of the "Best Superhero Movies of All Time",[10][note 1] and the American Film Institute selected it as one of the top 10 films of 2017.[11] A sequel, Wonder Woman 1984, is scheduled to be released on June 5, 2020, with Jenkins returning as director and Gadot reprising her role.
Princess Diana of Themyscira is an Amazonian warrior princess and one of the world's first superheroes, known as Wonder Woman. She is the daughter of Queen Hippolyta and Zeus, king of the Olympians. Born on Themyscira, Diana was raised in paradise, hearing tales of her the Amazons' great task of defeating the God of War, Ares, and bringing peace to the world, ushering in a new era of peace to the world. Upon coming of age, Diana began pursuing the life of a warrior, despite her mother's rejections. Determined to serve, she ultimately enticed her aunt Antiope to train her in secret, but was soon discovered by her mother, Queen Hippolyta. Begrudgingly, the queen accepted Diana as a warrior, and ordered Antiope to train her better than any other Amazon.
Lasso Mastery: Wonder Woman is extremely skilled at wielding her unbreakable Lasso of Hestia both offensively and defensively, notably using it to stop an escaping German spy, to take down numerous German soldiers in World War I battles, to retrain a British terrorist leader, to restrain and defeat General Ludendorff, to hold her own against Ares after getting her sword destroyed, to restrain a resurrected Superman (albeit unsuccessfully), and to even restrain Doomsday himself.
Wonder Woman is a fictional superheroine, appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character is a founding member of the Justice League. The character first appeared in All Star Comics #8 in October 1941[1] with her first feature in Sensation Comics #1, January 1942. The Wonder Woman title has been published by DC Comics almost continuously except for a brief hiatus in 1986.[3] In her homeland, the island nation of Themyscira, her official title is Princess Diana of Themyscira, Daughter of Hippolyta. She has no father; she was created out of clay and brought to life by the gods of Olympus. When blending into the society outside of her homeland, she sometimes adopts her civilian identity Diana Prince.[4]
Centuries ago, an argument between Aphrodite and Ares led to the creation of the Amazons, who have been guided and protected by the goddesses ever since. Ares' recent schemes to destroy the Amazons and his fellow gods led to an Amazon champion being chosen.[4] This champion was the Princess Diana, daughter of Queen Hippolyta, whom Hermes escorted to Man's World. There she was called Wonder Woman. Hephaestus forged Wonder Woman's golden Lasso of Truth from the girdle of the earth-goddess Gaea, and her silver bracelets which he formed from the splintered Aegis of Zeus. While the Olympian gods were her patrons, other gods were her foes. Ares and his progeny, Deimos and Phobos, quickly set about challenging the princess in her quest. Phobos created the creature Decay from the "heart of the Gorgon," which Diana quickly dispatched. Meanwhile, Deimos recruited humans on opposing sides, inciting them to war.[5]
The girl who wondered has seen wonders... has become a woman who has traveled the world, who has traveled worlds! A woman who has touched countless lives, has made them better in ways beyond measure. A woman who has brought hope, and joy, and love. A woman who is the hero of so many. The truth of you has never changed, Diana. Even the gods themselves could not take that from you. Why would we? It's one of the many reasons we love you.
Granted by Athena (Goddess of Wisdom), this gives her a degree of wisdom beyond that of most mortals and gives her a strong moral sense. Originally in the Golden Age, her wisdom primarily consisted of her deep knowledge of, and ability to navigate through, human emotions. When she first showed up in Man’s World, she learned enough English language to converse with others in a few hours only. This also aids her in her tactical ability. She is among the smartest and wisest members of the Justice League of America, along with the Martian Manhunter and Batman.
She asked him who he was, but before he could answer, the two noticed several boats coming through the island's forcefield. Steve noted that he was one of the good guys and the people on the boats—Germans—were bad guys. Having noticed the invading ships, the Amazons quickly gathered on the cliffs above the beach. Hippolyta ordered Trevor to move away from Diana, but forgot about him as the German soldiers began to come closer to shore. She took command of her army, ordering the archers to fire on the boats. Diana and Trevor took cover behind boulders on the beach.
Impressed by this unknown woman's self-sacrifice, the Amazons entombed her with honors and clothed her in armor displaying the American flag pattern on her uniform, which they assumed were her heraldic colors.[37] Trevor's legacy was also the primary reason why Ares arranged for Steve Trevor to bomb the island, as he could not resist the irony of the heroine's son unwittingly killing her admirers.[37]
Diana, Trevor, Sameer, and Charlie sat at a table together as Trevor proposed his plan to them. Sameer and Charlie were willing to join them, if they were paid for the job. Trevor, however, had no money. The two refused the job. Sameer told Diana that all the payment he needed was a photograph of her; Diana countered that he wouldn't need one, as she was going with them. He and Charlie were baffled by her response.
As her injuries healed, Wonder Woman and her friends spent some time on New Genesis. She spoke to Highfather, who agreed to let her return to Earth. As soon as Diana and her friends returned to Earth, Orion decided to go with them. Arriving to London, they realized the First Born had wrecked the entire city and killed Lennox. The First Born summoned an army of hyena men to kill the intruders but Ares arrived to help Wonder Woman in the fight.[35]
When last we left Wonder Woman #49, the battle brewing ever since DC's METAL cracked open the Multiverse seemed to be reaching its climax. With the Dark Gods playing similar roles to the Greek pantheon, but with all-powerful demands, enslaving humanity, Diana and her twin brother Jason were splitting up to oppose them around the globe. Just as they seemed to knock back their leader, King Best, the Dark Gods launch an assault on Jason.
Marc DiPaolo introduces us to Wonder Woman's creator and history and he demonstrates how she is a "WWII veteran, a feminist icon, and a sex symbol" all throughout her "career". Wonder Woman stars in multiple films and is most commonly known for her red, white and blue one piece, and her tall, sexy assertiveness. What many people don't know is that she is a big part of history in the comic and superhero world because of how her character influences real life people of all ages, sexes, ethnicities, and races. "Marston created the comic book character Wonder Woman to be both strong and sexy, as a means of encouraging woman to emulate her unapologetic assertiveness."[227] Charlotte Howell notes in her essay titled "'Tricky' Connotations: Wonder Woman as DC's Brand Disruptor" that Wonder Woman is, "inherently disruptive to masculine superhero franchise branding because, according to her creator William Moulton Marston, she was intended to be 'psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who, [he] believe[d], should rule the world.'"
The British War Council quickly gathered to discuss the notebook. Their codebreakers were unable to decipher the two different languages that it was written in, but Diana quickly identified them as Ottoman and Sumerian. She read the book out loud, informing the council that Doctor Poison had created a new form of mustard gas based on hydrogen instead of sulfur, which gas masks would be useless against.
Phobos returned alongside his sister Eris in alliance with Circe. Circe had amassed great power by bringing gods of various pantheons together. Among them were the Roman gods, who challenged the Olympians for their domain. It took much strength for Zeus to summon Hermes and Diana to New Olympus, where the gods had been trapped. Earth's heroes were able to turn the tide against Circe, but three gods died: Circe killed Hermes; Harmonia was killed by her sister Eris; and Eris herself was slain by Son of Vulcan. Zeus and the Olympians decided then to follow the call of Cronus and the Titans to help guide other worlds in the universe. New Olympus was left to the Roman gods.[14][15]
^ Lyons, Charles. "Suffering Sappho! A Look at the Creator & Creation of Wonder Woman". Comic Book Resources. Archived from the original on January 19, 2013. Retrieved August 23, 2006. In October 1940, the popular women's magazine "Family Circle" published an interview with Marston entitled "Don't Laugh at the Comics," in which the psychologist discussed the unfulfilled potential of the medium.
As early as the 1950s,[210] Wonder Woman's tiara has also been used as a razor-edged throwing weapon, returning to her like a boomerang.[183] The tiara allows Wonder Woman to be invulnerable from telepathic attacks, as well as allowing her to telepathically contact people such as the Amazons back on Themyscira using the power of the red star ruby in its center.[63]
To find the perfect location to shoot the Amazon island of Themyscira, the birthplace of Wonder Woman herself, the film's producers searched all over the world, finally settling on the Cilentan Coast: a stretch of coastline on the Tyrrhenian Sea, located in the Province of Salerno in Southern Italy.[134] It was chosen because most beaches in the world that sit below big cliffs disappear beneath the tide for part of every day. Production designer Aline Bonetto and her location manager Charles Somers considered 47 countries and visited several of them before they found what they were looking for. Bonetto explained that, "Italy had beautiful weather, a beautiful blue-green sea, not too much tide, not too much wave. Our effects team added some cliffs in post-production, and it was the perfect way to go".[135] The estuary at Lower Halstow in Kent is featured in the scene in which Diana arrives at a Belgian creek to make her way to the warfront.[136] Bill Westenhofer served as the visual effects supervisor for the film[137] and Martin Walsh served as editor.[127]
Diana sees Sir Patrick Morgan in the base, who reveals himself to be the true Ares, and tells her of his plan for a world without humanity by having them destroy each other. Ares proposes that Diana help him accomplish his vision of paradise, but Diana promptly refuses, not wanting to kill billions of innocents. Ares then reluctantly engages her in an epic battle while Steve and his comrades attempt to dismantle the plane harboring the mustard gas.
With the appearance of the Bana-Mighdallian Amazons, the Olympians faced a new prospect. Though devout Amazons, these newest citizens of Themyscira do not worship the Greek gods. Renouncing them millennia ago, the tribe instead worship a combination of Egyptian and middle eastern deities. The central gods worshipped by the desert Amazons are: Isis (wisdom and magic), Mammitu (judgement bringer), Bast (nature and feminine), and Neith (mother figure and protection). These gods followed the Bana-Mighdallian Amazons to Themyscira where they continued to be worshipped. Facing the situation with hands tied, both pantheons agreed to integrate themselves with each other for the benefit of their people. Though these new gods do not reside on Olympus, they are treated with diplomacy when called to aid the Amazons in a united godly role. Despite the gods mentioned being part of the inner-circle of deities in the Bana's belief system, less significant gods have been shown to be part of their godly pantheon as well such as Sekhmet (war god), Thoth (their only known male god) and possibly Ishtar (love goddess). The gods of Bana-Mighdall proved their loyalty to the Olympians by aiding the Greek gods in battle when the war gods Sekhmet and Ares previously devised a coup on Olympus.
While the story is very flawed, the art of this arc has been fantastic, and this issue is no exception. Jesús Merino continues to show off his mastery as an illustrator with the battle against King Best. The design of the leader of the Dark Gods is terrific, and the Amazon twins have never looked better. Jason, in particular, looks great as the details in his powers make him appear more powerful than ever. Even if next issue falls apart, I do not doubt that the art will still go above and beyond.
A new pantheon of gods has been born! But who are they? Where did they come from? What do they want? All questions for Wonder Woman, because she played more of a role in their arrival than you’d think! Will it fall to Diana to end their existence as well? Meanwhile, Wonder Woman’s brother Jason learns his true purpose. It’s all here in this extra-sized anniversary issue!
Gaines decided he needed another expert. He turned to Lauretta Bender, an associate professor of psychiatry at New York University’s medical school and a senior psychiatrist at Bellevue Hospital, where she was director of the children’s ward, an expert on aggression. She’d long been interested in comics but her interest had grown in 1940, after her husband, Paul Schilder, was killed by a car while walking home from visiting Bender and their 8-day-old daughter in the hospital. Bender, left with three children under the age of 3, soon became painfully interested in studying how children cope with trauma. In 1940, she conducted a study with Reginald Lourie, a medical resident under her supervision, investigating the effect of comics on four children brought to Bellevue Hospital for behavioral problems. Tessie, 12, had witnessed her father, a convicted murderer, kill himself. She insisted on calling herself Shiera, after a comic-book girl who is always rescued at the last minute by the Flash. Kenneth, 11, had been raped. He was frantic unless medicated or “wearing a Superman cape.” He felt safe in it—he could fly away if he wanted to—and “he felt that the cape protected him from an assault.” Bender and Lourie concluded the comic books were “the folklore of this age,” and worked, culturally, the same way fables and fairy tales did.
Later, as a healer tended to Diana's battle wounds, she noted with confusion that Diana's wounds had healed completely. Diana then visited Trevor in his cell, asking him about the outside world. Due to his words, Diana decided to sneak him off the island and confront Ares herself. She snuck into the island's tower and stole the god killer, along with an Amazon shield, the Lasso of Hestia, and a special set of battle armor. She broke Trevor out of his cell and took him to the island's dock, where she was intercepted by her mother. To her surprise, Hippolyta allowed Diana to leave, gifting her Antiope's tiara. She then warned Diana to be careful, mournfully telling her that the world of men did not deserve her.
When Hippolyta and the other Amazons were trapped in a demonic dimension, she started receiving visions about the death of Wonder Woman.[107] Fearing her daughter's death, Hippolyta created a false claim that Diana was not worthy of continuing her role as Wonder Woman, and arranged for a contest to determine who would be the new Wonder Woman, thus protecting Diana from her supposed fate.[108] The participants of the final round were Diana and Artemis, and with the help of some mystic manipulation by Hippolyta, Artemis won the contest.[109] Thus, Diana was forced to hand over her title and costume to Artemis, who became the new Wonder Woman and Diana started fighting crime in an alternate costume.[110] Artemis later died in battle with the White Magician – thus, Hippolyta's vision of a dying Wonder Woman did come true, albeit not of Diana as Wonder Woman.[111] Diana once again became Wonder Woman, a request made by Artemis in her last seconds. Artemis would later return as Requiem. Prior to Artemis' death, Hippolyta would admit to her daughter about her own part in Artemis' death, which strained their relationship as Diana was unable to forgive her mother for sending another Amazon to her death knowingly for the sake of saving her own daughter.
After the disappointing downward trend of quality for this series, this volume was a somewhat refreshing addition. Though the plot was rather basic and a bit nonsensical at times, overall it was a decent enough addition to the series. The artwork is solid and makes the story more engaging. This volume also includes Wonder Woman Annual #2, which as a fan of the Star Sapphires I enjoyed. However, the ending to this arc was incredibly rushed and told in a way that completely removed any sense of su ...more
On occasions Wonder Woman has employed a magical sword of unknown (though presumably Amazon) origin. This sword has been used most specifically against those with the power of invulnerability as invulnerability generally does not work against magical items. It is generally represented as a short sword. In Wonder Woman (vol. 4) #15, Hephaestus modifies Diana's bracelets so that she can manifest two short swords from them during battle.
In one episode, a newspaper editor named Brown, desperate to discover Wonder Woman’s past, assigns a team of reporters to chase her down; she easily escapes them. Brown, gone half mad, is committed to a hospital. Wonder Woman disguises herself as a nurse and brings him a scroll. “This parchment seems to be the history of that girl you call ‘Wonder Woman’!” she tells him. “A strange, veiled woman left it with me.” Brown leaps out of bed and races back to the city desk, where he cries out, parchment in hand, “Stop the presses! I’ve got the history of Wonder Woman!” But Wonder Woman’s secret history isn’t written on parchment. Instead, it lies buried in boxes and cabinets and drawers, in thousands of documents, housed in libraries, archives and collections spread all over the United States, including the private papers of creator Marston—papers that, before I saw them, had never before been seen by anyone outside of Marston’s family.
(For the record, Marston and Olive Byrne’s son, Byrne Marston, who is an 83-year-old retired obstetrician, thinks that when Marston talked about the importance of submission, he meant it only metaphorically. “I never saw anything like that in our house,” he told me. “He didn’t tie the ladies up to the bedpost. He’d never have gotten away with it.”)
Olive Byrne met Marston in 1925, when she was a senior at Tufts; he was her psychology professor. Marston was already married, to a lawyer named Elizabeth Holloway. When Marston and Byrne fell in love, he gave Holloway a choice: either Byrne could live with them, or he would leave her. Byrne moved in. Between 1928 and 1933, each woman bore two children; they lived together as a family. Holloway went to work; Byrne stayed home and raised the children. They told census-takers and anyone else who asked that Byrne was Marston’s widowed sister-in-law. “Tolerant people are the happiest,” Marston wrote in a magazine essay in 1939, so “why not get rid of costly prejudices that hold you back?” He listed the “Six Most Common Types of Prejudice.” Eliminating prejudice number six—“Prejudice against unconventional people and non-conformists”—meant the most to him. Byrne’s sons didn’t find out that Marston was their father until 1963—when Holloway finally admitted it—and only after she extracted a promise that no one would raise the subject ever again.
Hermaphroditus Wonder Woman #69 (April 24, 2019) Hermaphroditus is the God of Androgyny, Sexuality, Unions, Fertility and Marriage who is based on the god of the same name. In the DC Universe, Hermaphroditus is a transgender deity with angelic wings and goes by the name "Atlantiades". He revealed that he left Mount Olympus in hopes to get away from his mother Aphrodite and decided to take refuge on earth in a neighborhood called Summergrove in Connecticut. He used his powers to influence the Summergrove residents to submit to their inner desires.
Zeus has made a woman called Zola pregnant. Hera, due to this, is furious. She sets out to kill Zola, but Hermes finds her first, only to find out that Zola does not want to come with Hermes. Zola opens the door, and an arrow is shot at her direction; Hermes pushes her away in time, and gives her a key, as assassins sent by Hera and it teleports to Wonder Woman’s apartment, because Hermes enlisted Wonder Woman to protect Zola. Zola gives Wonder Woman the key, and it teleports both Wonder Woman and Zola back to Zola’s house. After Zola finds out that she is pregnant with Zeus, it gets revealed that one of Zeus’ children is going to take his place, by Zeus’ own will. Wonder Woman takes Zola, along with Hermes, to Themiscyra where Diana explains to her Mother, Queen Hippolyta, why she took with herself Zola and Hermes to Themiscyra. Alongside all of this, Hippolyta tells Diana about her true origins; that her real father is Zeus. Diana’s reaction to this isn’t very well, so she decides to abandon Themiscyra. Hera is aware of the fact that Wonder Woman is Zeus’ daughter, and she arrives to Themiscyra, furiously. Wonder Woman realized she did a mistake by leaving her home, so she went back to Themiscyra where she sees that everyone has been turned into snakes by Hera, except for Hippolyta, she was turned into stone. Apollo arrives in a bar searching for War (Ares), and explains to him that Zeus doesn’t even exist from what he’s sources says. Apollo takes this as his chance to become the king of Olympus and the Gods.
