"Gas was intended to win the war. On that much Wonder Woman is absolutely right." said David Hambling in Popular Mechanics.[223] Rachel Becker of The Verge stated that despite the scientific liberties of using a "hydrogen-based" chemical weapon as a plot device, the film succeeds in evoking real and horrifying history. "First off, mustard gas is such a horrible, terrifying weapon, it doesn't need to be made more potent. But if you were a chemist bent on raining destruction on the Allied forces, you wouldn't do it by replacing the sulfur atom in mustard gas with a hydrogen atom. You'd know that sulfur is the linchpin holding together this poisonous molecule."[224]
When Marston died in 1947 Robert Kanigher took over and Diana became less of a feminist character but during this time, her abilities expanded as she wore earrings that provided her with the air she needed when she was in outer space and she had an invisible plane. Extra additions included a tiara which could cut through almost anything and acted as a boomerang and her bracelets now had two way radios.
Robinson's run has not been inspiring and, while I'd argue that this is better than his earlier two volumes - in that there's at least an attempt at some characterisation amidst the fighting - it's still not really enough. The main problem is the rather uninteresting villains, generic manifestations of war, chaos, and so on, whose powers don't even seem terribly consistent. Plus, Jason gets a bunch of new powers, that essentially allow him to do whatever the plot requires so long as he can think ...more
He took that secret to his grave when he died in 1947. Most superheroes didn’t survive peacetime and those that did were changed forever in 1954, when a psychiatrist named Fredric Wertham published a book called Seduction of the Innocent and testified before a Senate subcommittee investigating the comics. Wertham believed that comics were corrupting American kids, and turning them into juvenile delinquents. He especially disliked Wonder Woman. Bender had written that Wonder Woman comics display “a strikingly advanced concept of femininity and masculinity” and that “women in these stories are placed on an equal footing with men and indulge in the same type of activities.” Wertham found the feminism in Wonder Woman repulsive.
Superhuman Speed: Wonder Woman, while not as fast as Superman or the Flash, can move at inhuman speeds. She was able to make it from the Metropolis Airport to Gotham Port in minutes after seeing Doomsday on television. She was fast enough to get up from her seat, disarm a man of his gun, and toss him across a room in seconds; to leave Lex Luthor's fundraiser before Bruce managed to reach her; to save Batman from Doomsday's thermal attack; and to instantly use the Sword of Athena to slice apart in mid-air a car that Doomsday hurled at her. Indeed, Wonder Woman appeared as a blur when charging back at Doomsday after being knocked back by him. She was also capable of landing blows on Superman, even though she was outmatched.
On October 21, 2016, the United Nations controversially named Wonder Woman a UN Honorary Ambassador for the Empowerment of Women and Girls in a ceremony attended by Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information Cristina Gallach and by actors Lynda Carter and Gal Gadot.[231][232] The character was dropped from the role two months later after a petition against the appointment stated Wonder Woman was "not culturally...sensitive" and it was "alarming that the United Nations would consider using a character with an overtly sexualized image".[233]
The story behind the writing and editing of Wonder Woman can be pieced together from Bender’s papers, at Brooklyn College; Frank’s papers, at the University of Minnesota; and Marston’s editorial correspondence, along with a set of original scripts, housed at the Dibner Library at the Smithsonian Institution Libraries. In his original scripts, Marston described scenes of bondage in careful, intimate detail with utmost precision. For a story about Mars, the God of War, Marston gave Peter elaborate instructions for the panel in which Wonder Woman is taken prisoner:
I can tell that this story was supposed to have a lot of pathos to it, but I just wasn't feeling it. I couldn't feel.much for Jason, he's been such a twit since he appeared, it is hard to feel for WW and her relationship with him, such as it is. The whole story was pretty meh, honestly. The art was good most of the time, and there were some really fantastic individual p ...more
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.
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.
After the release of the 2017 film Wonder Woman, many bloggers noted what they felt made Wonder Woman a feminist icon in the film. Zoe Williams for The Guardian said, "Yes, she is sort of naked a lot of the time, but this isn't objectification so much as a cultural reset: having thighs, actual thighs you can kick things with, not thighs that look like arms, is a feminist act. The whole Diana myth, women safeguarding the world from male violence not with nurture but with better violence, is a feminist act. Casting Robin Wright as Wonder Woman's aunt, re-imagining the battle-axe as a battler with an axe, is a feminist act. A female German chemist trying to destroy humans (in the shape of Dr Poison, a proto-Mengele before Nazism existed) might be the most feminist act of all."[234] Alyssa Rosenberg for The Washington Post said, "... None of these experiences crushed me, of course, but I do wonder what it might have been like if they hadn't happened.The power of Wonder Woman, and one of the things that gives Jenkins's adaptation of the character such a lift, is in the answer to that question. Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) doesn't have any idea what women and men are — or aren't — supposed to do. Even when she does encounter other people's ideas about gender roles, she doesn't automatically accept them, and she never lets anyone stop her. And the movie goes a step further and argues that it's not merely little girls all over the world who stand to gain if they can grow up free of the distorting influence of misogyny: a world like that would be liberating and wonderful for men in lots of ways, too."[235] Emma Gray for HuffPost said, "When it comes to pop culture, we speak often about representation; the simple yet often unfulfilled idea that it matters to see someone like you fill a variety of imagined roles on screen. After awhile, these conversations almost begin to feel obvious. We know that it's good to see women and people of color and disabled people and trans people and queer people in the same numbers and variety of roles that white, cisgender, straight men have long been afforded. But what these discussions often lose is the emotional impact of finally seeing something you may have never even realized you were missing. For many women viewers, "Wonder Woman" filled a hole they didn't know they had." [236]
Wonder Woman has been the subject of a discussion regarding the appearance and representation of female power in general, and of female action heroes in particular[225] since her initial 1941 appearance in Sensation Comics,[225] as she was created to document "the growth in the power of women", while wearing "a golden tiara, a red bustier, blue underpants and knee-high, red leather boots."[226] She was blacklisted a year later in 1942 in the "Publications Disapproved for Youth" because, the group behind the list argued, she was "not sufficiently dressed".[226][227]
Superhuman Stamina: Wonder Woman's advanced musculature is considerably more efficient than that of a human and most of the other Amazons. As a result, her muscles virtually do not produce fatigue toxins during physical activity compared to humans and most other members of her race. Her virtually inexhaustible endurance allows her to exercise her maximum capacity for an indefinite period of time without tiring at all, as she never needs to slow down or catch her breath during her fierce battles with Ares, Doomsday, Steppenwolf and the resurrected Superman, despite being pressured considerably by all of them.
It introduces us to the character of Diana in a new and important way, tying her origin to a larger overall story and presenting her as a character that both shares our weaknesses and possesses strengths we can't have. This book is a nearly perfect DC Comics story. You'll find the only thing that's disappointing about it is that it got canceled too soon.
In two social event scenes in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, it's implied the Wonder Woman character does not consume alcohol. Non-alcoholic consumption is a characteristic usually associated with Batman who, in this cinematic version, does consume alcohol. She is seen consuming a small amount of alcohol in Wonder Woman, however, when offered some by Steve Trevor.
For a time she was given enhanced vision by Athena, which gave her the ability to see in darkness and through illusions. This also makes her resistant/immune to telepathy. Due to her wisdom she can learn languages faster than a regular person, she can talk to animals. She has also been shown to project herself astrally in order to commune with the gods and ask for special favors from them. She has also been shown to take on the abilities of certain of her patron goddesses as when she became a form of divine midwife to save the life of an unborn child.
After the release of the 2017 film Wonder Woman, many bloggers noted what they felt made Wonder Woman a feminist icon in the film. Zoe Williams for The Guardian said, "Yes, she is sort of naked a lot of the time, but this isn't objectification so much as a cultural reset: having thighs, actual thighs you can kick things with, not thighs that look like arms, is a feminist act. The whole Diana myth, women safeguarding the world from male violence not with nurture but with better violence, is a feminist act. Casting Robin Wright as Wonder Woman's aunt, re-imagining the battle-axe as a battler with an axe, is a feminist act. A female German chemist trying to destroy humans (in the shape of Dr Poison, a proto-Mengele before Nazism existed) might be the most feminist act of all."[234] Alyssa Rosenberg for The Washington Post said, "... None of these experiences crushed me, of course, but I do wonder what it might have been like if they hadn't happened.The power of Wonder Woman, and one of the things that gives Jenkins's adaptation of the character such a lift, is in the answer to that question. Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) doesn't have any idea what women and men are — or aren't — supposed to do. Even when she does encounter other people's ideas about gender roles, she doesn't automatically accept them, and she never lets anyone stop her. And the movie goes a step further and argues that it's not merely little girls all over the world who stand to gain if they can grow up free of the distorting influence of misogyny: a world like that would be liberating and wonderful for men in lots of ways, too."[235] Emma Gray for HuffPost said, "When it comes to pop culture, we speak often about representation; the simple yet often unfulfilled idea that it matters to see someone like you fill a variety of imagined roles on screen. After awhile, these conversations almost begin to feel obvious. We know that it's good to see women and people of color and disabled people and trans people and queer people in the same numbers and variety of roles that white, cisgender, straight men have long been afforded. But what these discussions often lose is the emotional impact of finally seeing something you may have never even realized you were missing. For many women viewers, "Wonder Woman" filled a hole they didn't know they had." [236]
Diana succeeded in her trials, defeating numerous monsters including Echidna, the Chimera, the Cyclops, the Hydra, the Harpies, and the Minotaur. Eventually, Pan's bones were discovered on Olympus but it was too late to save Diana from her labors. Joined by her mother, Diana did indeed destroy the demons beneath Themyscira with the help of the amulet of Harmonia (these demons were funneled into Ares). Diana also freed Heracles, who had borne the weight of Themyscira for eons while imprisoned in a stone form and had been scarred by various monsters. Heracles was accepted into Olympus.[9]
Wonder Woman (vol. 1) #179 (Nov. 1969) showed Wonder Woman giving up her powers and returning her costume and title to her mother, in order to continue staying in Man's World. The reason behind this was that all the Amazons were shifting to another dimension, but Diana was unable to accompany them as she needed to stay behind to help Steve, who had been wrongly convicted.[92] Thus, she no longer held the title of Wonder Woman and after meeting and training under a blind martial arts mentor I-Ching, Diana resumed crime fighting as the powerless Diana Prince. She ran a mod-boutique as a business and dressed in a series of jumpsuits while fighting crime.[36][61][62][93][94] During this period, Samuel R. Delany took over scripting duties with issue #202. Delany was initially supposed to write a six-issue story arc, which would culminate in a battle over an abortion clinic, but Delany was removed reportedly due to criticism from Gloria Steinem, who, not knowing the content of the issues Delany was writing, was upset that Wonder Woman had lost her powers and was no longer wearing her traditional costume.[95]
As the soldiers landed on the shore and began to open fire, several archers leaped from the cliffs. Diana watched, horrified, as a bullet fired from one of the German soldiers hit an archer, killing her almost instantly. Amazonian cavalry stormed the beach, engaging the soldiers and quickly overwhelming them. Though Trevor told her to stay back as he fought one of the German soldiers, Diana picked up a sword from a fallen Amazon and easily dispatched a soldier.
Later, Diana, Zola and Hera had lunch while they were watched by Hermes. Orion, believing Hermes had bad intentions, attacked him before being stopped by Wonder Woman, and at the same time Strife appeared. Back at the apartment, Strife gave War's helmet to Diana, even though Diana still felt uncomfortable at becoming the new Goddess of War. In that moment, Siracca entered the apartment and told Diana that Milan had been captured by Cassandra. Wonder Woman asked Hermes to take her to Chernobyl, and he accepted to help.[38]
