![]() and then realizing just how ICONIC that bathing suit is. Comics have struggled constantly with the fact that Diana is basically wearing a bathing suit, thinking that it was ridiculously sexual, wanting to desexualize their character and alter the costume. This was a much more complicated issue a few years ago. Her home and her sisters are a huge part of her story, and those relationships need to be nurtured. It fed a lot of stories as she has to earn her place with her people in order to keep them safe. We chose to actually continually alter her standing with her island nation, making her sometimes an exile, sometimes the heir to the throne. Writers LOVE to alter the status of the island and its inhabitants. Second, it's her relationship with Themyscera itself. This becomes a hub of her story as it moves on. Then she chooses to create her embassy, a bastion of Themysceran teaching and a refuge for women. We made her a student at first, but she graduates to devote herself to learning about the ways the Amazons have interacted with the rest of the world and collecting Amazonian artifacts. It's not actually clear just what Diana does with her time. Clark Kent is a reporter who becomes a superhero when he's needed. We understand that Bruce Wayne is a playboy by day and vigilante by night. The first is Diana's role in the larger world. The larger structure of her timeline actually pointed out two concepts that had to be solidified. We tried to use the simplest and most traditional version of her story wherever we could. As is often the case, the Justice League animated series gave us a nice clean starting point. Wonder Woman has had her origin and her overall story tweaked and retold several times over the years, and that can often make it difficult to settle on a single framework for her timeline. Likewise, Patty Jenkins 2017 feature film starring Gal Gadot is perhaps one of the greatest depictions of a superhero that has happened since Christopher Reeves Superman. Linda Carter's Wonder Woman TV series was a downright feminist revolution, and it's influence touches literally all of pop culture like the gravity of a sun. Of course, there are two huge interpretations of Wonder Woman that have to be mentioned if you're going to address the evolution of the character, and neither of them are from comics. ![]() Alan Heinberg & Gail SImone both had short but enduring stints with Diana, all full of love and compassion for the character. George Perez wrote a seminal run seeped in ancient greek myth and monsters, Greg Rucka has crafted whole mythologies for the character more than once, each time seemingly from scratch. There've been several writers who seemed to inherently understand the complex formula of ideas that made her so special. Of course, Wonder Woman has remained a feminist icon, but the book was almost always written by men and not all of them had a clear idea of what a 'feminist icon' should look like. When Marston left the book, it's not surprising that a lot of his particular ideas didn't translate over to new writers. This implementation of sexual agency is actually a pretty advanced idea, something third-wave feminism is still exploring. While undeniably sexual, the Vargas girls are all clearly also confidant and in complete control of their sexuality. The famous "Vargas Girls" were featured in Esquire magazine and on countless American and Allied World War II-era aircraft. ![]() ![]() Perhaps the best clue here is that his main visual inspiration for Wonder Woman was the pin-up art of Alberto Vargas. The first is that the character's status as a sex symbol was intentional, but that Mastson didn't see it as an impediment to her empowerment. This means that to understand Wonder Woman, there are really two main points that need to be explored. Diana's origins becomes even more interesting, however, because Marston was in a polyamorous relationship with his wife Elizabeth and their mistress Olive Byrne, both of whom served as inspiration for the unconventional, liberated woman he intended to create. He became a educational consultant for DC, and settled down to put his money where his mouth was by creating a character that fulfilled that potential a character who solved problems not with their fists, but with love. Already-prominent psychologist William Marston was interviewed for Family Circle Magazine in 1940 when he spoke about the potential for the medium of comics.
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