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In 1987, Wonder Woman was revised as part of an overhaul of the DC Universe, in the Crisis on Infinite Earths story arc. This paper analyses the representation of Diana in George Pérez, Greg Potter and Len Wein's revision of the character, February 1987–December 1991. The writers discarded her Diana Prince secret identity and Steve Trevor as love interest. Influenced by spiritual and feminist discourses of the mid-1970s onwards, he made her into a Goddess-like fantasy figure split into two identities. She is Diana, Princess of Themyscira, a private, spiritual neo-pagan, but she is branded in consumer culture as Wonder Woman, goddess. The discourses constructing Wonder Woman as goddess, however, clashed with feminist and societal discourses circulating in popular culture and politics of late 1980s' America. These discourses aimed at disempowering female autonomy. The clash between these discourses highlighted paradoxes in Wonder Woman as a female icon of empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In honor of the 75th anniversary of the comic book super heroine Wonder Woman in 2016, Kent State University and Cleveland Public Library partnered to celebrate the intersections of public literacy, comics, and feminism in a jointly sponsored symposium with support from the Ohio Humanities Council. The 2016 Wonder Woman Symposium partnered these powerful public institutions in Northeast Ohio, taking up the historical trends that have changed the world of comics, American popular culture, and feminism. Centering on the figure of Wonder Woman and her heirs, this symposium featured addresses by major creators in the industry and historians of the comics world, and workshops by comics creators on creating graphic narratives and comics. This celebration paid respect to "herstory" while recognizing Wonder Woman's perpetual relevance to our present day, and beyond. This article reflects on the 2016 Wonder Woman Symposium, public humanities and the future of comics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The superhero genre, as the name implies, is a male-focused genre, whose lone 'redeemer heroes' enact 'rites of order' in which the Other is expelled from contested space and order is restored through externalised action. But William Moulton Marston's specific vision of a feminist 'loving authority,' rooted in feminist utopian novels, created the superheroine, a genre figure incorporating 'rites of integration' in which oppositions are reconciled and otherness is integrated and domesticated. Wonder Woman may not have been the first female superhero, but she was the first superheroine – an alternative to the cowboy-derived superhero that offers a different vision of the genre – and though many depictions of Wonder Woman have not lived up to this vision, Marston provided a model other creators have taken up in figures like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Batwoman. The superheroine opens the possibility for an evolution and transformation of the superhero genre and for other genres that convey and perpetuate – and possibly alter – our cultural mythology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay – originally delivered as a more informal talk – explores psychiatrist and comics critic Fredric Wertham's reflections on the character Wonder Woman in both his notable monograph Seduction of the Innocent (1954) and clinical notes. In particular it explores his negative understanding of her sexual expression and the character's potential deleterious influence on the mental hygiene of younger comics readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Born at the height of World War II, Wonder Woman fought against the axis powers and misogyny! She was (and continues to be) a beacon of female empowerment and queer identities. As her creator William Moulton Marston proclaimed, Wonder Woman is inspiration "for the new type of woman who, I believe, should rule the world." Yet while Wonder Woman has been both a feminist as well as queer icon, inspiring many, she was later--as fate would have it--marketed primarily to young boys in the comics world. A look at Wonder Woman through the ages captures the evolution of her message about gender, war, identity and the many audiences she has in one life inspired, and in another endured. In this essay, I consider the many lives of Wonder Woman both within comics and without. We will herald the new incarnation of Wonder Woman who not only reflects female power, but inspires it in female as well as male readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the wholesale rewriting of Wonder Woman’s origin story in a run written by Brian Azzarello that started in 2011 and finished in 2014. The new origin story made Diana the daughter of Zeus and did away with her matriarchal birth and lineage that was the cornerstone of the character. The paper argues that Wonder Woman was an explicitly feminist intervention from the beginning and that this piece of retroactive continuity completely undermines the political possibilities of Wonder Woman as a character. It also considers this move in light of the current context in superhero comics in which great advances have been made in the representation of gender and in the employment of women writers and artists. The paper concludes by arguing there is a tragic inevitability to Wonder Woman’s demise in that anything that truly threatens an alternative to patriarchy must in the end be tamed. Finally, the paper makes use of Greg Rucka’sHiketeiato illustrate the problem of Wonder Woman representing an alternative law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]