Today, we look at how the origin of Wonder Woman's costume (and its American flag-inspired design) changed before and after Crisis on Infinite Earths.
This is "Gonna Change My Way of Thinking," a feature spotlighting notable examples of retcons that don't fit into the framework of Abandoned an' Forsaked, which is specifically about stories that outright "overturn" older stories. There are many examples of "retroactive continuity" that do not actively abandon the works of the past (especially cases where the overall continuity was rebooted). Some of them are minor, some of them are major, all of them are interesting enough to me that I figure that they are worth writing about.
One of the interesting things about the Golden Age of Comics is that, in general, not a whole lot of time was spent in most of these comic books actually explaining anything about the how or the why of superheroes. What I mean is that when we first meet Batman, we just know that he's a rich guy named Bruce Wayne who also likes to dress up as a bat and throw bad guys to their deaths. It would take six issues before Batman was given an actual origin and a reason for why he dressed up as a bat. That was typical of the era. However, there were certainly exceptions to that sort of thing and in the case of Wonder Woman, William Moulton Marston and H.G. Peter actually gave a reason behind Wonder Woman's costume when she debuted.
You see, in All Star Comics #8 (which was a special preview of Wonder Woman ahead of her "official" debut as the lead feature of Sensation Comics), Marston and Peter had American pilot Steve Trevor crash land on Paradise Island and Aphrodite and Athena tell the Amazons that they have to go help out America...
It's funny, Americans in 1941 were already pretty confident in the idea of American exceptionalism, but it is still pretty funny to see a comic book story involving the gods outright stating so explicitly.
Queen Hippolyta's daughter competes to be the "Wonder Woman" to help represent the Amazons in America and she is the ultimate victor and Hippolyta reveals that she has designed a costume to be worn in America for the Wonder Woman...
Hippolyta doesn't explicitly say "I worked in the American flag to the design because of, you know, America," but I think that that was implied. So that was the original reason why the American flag was part of Wonder Woman's costume.
This time around, in 1986's Wonder Woman #1, Wonder Woman wasn't sent to Man's World into decades after World War II, to specifically stop an evil plot by Ares. The same basic idea happened, though, that Hippolyta's daughter, Diana, disguised herself and then won the contest to be the "Wonder Woman" of the Amazons in Man's World.
This time, though, there is a whole mystery about a special warrior's garb that Wonder Woman wears based on the inspiration for Diana's name...
She wears the costume in the final page of the first issue (by George Perez, Greg Potter, Len Wein and Bruce Patterson) and there is no explanation given yet as to why the American flag is worked into the design....
In fact, in the second issue, when Wonder Woman discovers American pilot, Steve Trevor, she is shocked to discover that he is wearing emblems that match her outfit...
There are a few other bits like that for the first year of the series (like the Soviet Union getting upset that Wonder Woman has an American Flag in her costume, as they assume that she is somehow working for the Americans), until finally the truth was revealed in Wonder Woman #12.
First, at the end of Wonder Woman #11, when Wonder Woman is in the land of Hades, she meets Diana, the warrior who she was named after, who has a costume much like hers!
In the next issue, we learn that Diana Rockwell Trevor was part of the Women's Army Corps during World War II and then after the war, she was flying an experimental jet when she crashlanded on Paradise Island (yes, the Post-Crisis Wonder Woman intentionally moved away from the World War II origins of Wonder Woman to then tie them again to the era of World War II, just with Steve Trevor's MOM)...
Diana Trevor saved an Amazon, but died in the process and her tattered outfit (including her WAC emblem and her American flag emblem) were used to design a special costume that Diana wore in the afterlife and then her namesake would wear as Wonder Woman...
Things got weirder later on, as both A. DC decided to be less explicit with when Diana Trevor got into flying (as otherwise, in 2001, Steve Trevor would have to be pretty old for his mom to be flying in World War II) and B. During a plotline, Hippolyta had taken over as Wonder Woman after Diana was seemingly killed and Hipployta traveled back in time and joined the Justice Society during World War II, and thus, she was now paradoxically an influence upon Diana Trevor (as explained in Our Worlds At War: Wonder Woman #1 by Phil Jimenez, Cliff Chiang and Wade Von Grawbadger)...
But the same basic idea remained, that Diana Trevor's outfit inspired Wonder Woman's American Flag costume despite Hippolyta wearing the American Flag design during World War II. During Wonder Woman: Rebirth, the costume dropped the American Flag design.
Thanks to reader Doug F. for the suggestion! Okay, folks, feel free to suggest more examples of this sort of thing! Obscure ones, famous ones, whatever! Send your suggestions to brianc@cbr.com!
0 Comments