Wonder Woman & the World Wars

[Alpha]

But that same question about Wonder Woman meaningfully changing the world apply to today. She isn't doing anything meaningful anyway.

And who says that she couldn't have done something meaningful in history? It wouldn't destroy thr fabric of the DC universe.

[I'm a Fish]

And while I understand your frustation that Diana would be present in our world even though women went on without power for decades, I find it surprising that you don't have the same complaint about us not seeing Diana fight for feminism in the middle east and try to create peace and respect in Israel-Palestine. I mean, the same reasons why Diana isn't fixing the world of today also apply to the 20th century if she existed back then.

But that same question about Wonder Woman meaningfully changing the world apply to today. She isn't doing anything meaningful anyway.

And who says that she couldn't have done something meaningful in history? It wouldn't destroy thr fabric of the DC universe.

Well, first and foremost Diana is an American hero written by American writers. American writers are most likely going to write American problems, that’s why she’s fighting domestic terrorist in Year One. It doesn’t mean other people’s situations around the world are less important or less worthy of Wonder Woman’s attention (if we are under the assumption these real-world events take place in a cannon DC comics). It’s just an unfortunate box she’s placed in unless we either get a larger global following/writing for the character, or get more writers who are interested/comfortable enough to addressing these issues.

Also making Wonder Woman the first hero who existed for decades without any another confirmed hero’s to assist with global responsibility is the problem. She’s also powerful enough that she doesn’t need the help of other heroes, so that puts her in a position that we have to either address that these events didn’t happen or we have to address why Wonder Woman would allow them to happen. With the amount of superheroes in the modern day DCU, we can assume other heroes are taking care of those problems. An example, Diana doesn’t have to worry about China because we know there is a Wonder Woman in China.

America chooses WWII because America loves to glorify our roll in WWII, and glosses over the horrors that were allowed to occur under the orders of the American government, the terrible Interment camps Japanese Americas where placed in being one that comes to mind. So either we have a romanticized version of America’s WWII history (which THB America media loves to do anyway), or the comic should address why Wonder Woman didn’t feel the need to call America out on their actions.

Diana actually addressing and interfering in these events would be an interesting comic, but her ongoing only has 12 issues a year. That is not enough time to dig into the gravity of these heavy topics, and DC isn’t about to give her multiple ongoings or bring Sensation Comics back into cannon to properly address these issues. I would actually like an ongoing that had Diana reaction and response to several events in real-world history dating back to the 40s, but that would need to be a separate book and DC ain’t about to do that.

The comic media is also a form of escapism that occasionally delves into real-world topics for drama and relatability. That’s why even when she was punching Nazi’s in the actual 40’s, it was still more of a subplot.

[Guy_McNichts]

The thing is this will always be an issue because mainstream superhero comics exist in this perpetual status quo that must relatively resemble our modern day or present. So you have to let things slide...like, as an example, when 9/11 happened we just had to accept that it also happened in the DC universe (and Marvel) despite the presence of Superman, Wonder Woman and dozens of other heroes.

It's easier to let these things slide when they're happening in the "now." We can accept, even if the comics don't directly address it, that, yes, Wonder Woman is dealing with these real world issues as best as she can but it's still in progress because it's in progress now in the real world.

It's sort of like when people say Bruce Wayne would be more helpful utilizing his vast wealth to combat crime and improve Gotham instead of dressing as a bat and beating up people. Now, Batman fans will be quick to point out that he DOES use his wealth and donate money and so on. We're just not seeing the results because it's in progress.
Compare that to say DC declaring in canon that Bruce has been operating as Batman and donating money since the mid-80's...and Gotham is still a wretched hell-hole. In one scenario, Bruce IS doing his best and hoping it'll bear fruit. In another, he HAS BEEN and nothing's changed.

It's one thing to say Diana has only been Wonder Woman for a few years like Superman and Batman and so on, and is trying to improve the world right now. It's another to say she's been around for almost a century and the world is still what it is...unless you Forrest Gump her into real world events, which is something that really needs to be handled carefully because it could very easily become tasteless and insulting to the real people who were really there.

The solution to this sort of thing is to just not dwell on it. To take it back to my 9/11 example. At the time, we just had to accept that the heroes couldn't stop it because it was a real like thing where people really died.
Now suppose someone does a story where Superman and the Justice League have been operating since the year 2000, and they set a story specifically in September of 2001, and point out that the heroes were indeed in Manhattan at the time...and then the story just kind of glosses over the world-changing event that happened that month.

It's easier to ignore the elephant in the room when they don't dress it up in neon lights and actively jab it with a stick.


But, again, I just don't like how putting Wonder Woman in the past glosses over a lot of her development.
I would rather see her deal with the reality she, as an immortal, will outlive her non-Amazon friends and loved ones in the now. I would rather see her deal with the frustration that comes with trying to change a stubborn and flawed world in the now. If she was to lose faith in humanity and eventually regain her idealism, I want to see it as it happens.

I don't want it to have already happened and be left to flashbacks. If Diana has been around since World War II, she's presumably already made peace with her friends aging and dying around her. She's likely already had her idealism and faith in humanity tested and has already gotten over it because she needs to be Wonder Woman in the modern day right now.

I won't deny there could be something interesting in a version of Wonder Woman that's already been through it all, seen it all, and come out the other side a little jaded or world-weary or still holding onto her idealistic nature. But I think that should be left to an Elseworld story or a designated Earth-2 or something.

You know, it's tragically ironic that DC scrapped the alternate Earths in the 80's because they thought it was too convoluted and confusing, yet having an officially designated Earth for characters who've been around since the 40's and have aged accordingly and a separate Earth where the heroes are always in the present and unchanging is, in comparison to the nonsense they've been doing, a far simpler and more elegant solution.

[WonderLight789]

The thing is with Wonder Woman, there have been several times in her history when they went back to the "Golden Age"--whereas you rarely get that with Batman and Superman (usually it's a one-shot Elseworlds story). So it never became something that was done away with long ago--it's always been one of their approaches to the character, especially when they want to recharge the series.

And the W.W. II events are a part of her origin, where they aren't part of Superman and Batman's origins. It's in the epic nature of the character. The stories are invoking gods and heroes and important struggles between good and evil on a global scale. This doesn't work as well, when the struggles are taking place in proxy wars. The epic nature of W.W. II suited the epic nature of the Olympian gods.

It also makes sense why, when the lines between good and evil were so clearly drawn, Wonder Woman would adopt a costume that celebrates the country she has come to defend.

In order to make Wonder Woman work in times far removed from that era, the writers and artists have had to change too much about her origin and her motivation.

Of course, in the 1940s, Wonder Woman was not so super-powerful, so you didn't expect her to end the war overnight. Hitler had gods working on his side, too. And Wonder Woman's philosophy prevented her from forcing people to become good. They had to come to understand what was right for themselves.

Marston established her as having had a very long life and other versions have said the same thing. So it's possible for her to have been active in the 1940s and not to have aged since then.

And her supporting cast has been stripped away from her so many times that the only other supporting character that remained for most of the time was Queen Hippolyte/Queen Hippolyta (and even she has been taken out of the comics at times). And the Queen is also an immortal.

So unlike Batman and Superman, there aren't that many mortal cast members to account for. There's been Steve Trevor, who's been dead and rebooted several times. And Etta Candy was taken out of the comics for decades and when she returned she was always different from the original version.

WW in the 40s was super powerful. And performed far greater feats than modern WW. So yes, i could see her stopping the war overnight.

[Alpha]

If she could then she would've.

[WonderLight789]

If she could then she would've.

Plot. The same powerhouses that could move planets and move faster than light in the Golden Age. Yet couldn't stop a war world all by themselves. Which is why having WW in a war world is not a good idea imo. If you have to nerfer a character to tell a story. To me there is no po¡nt in that.

[Alpha]

She wasn't nerfed. Her powers depended on the situation. We've talked about this before. In one page she could use just her teeth to lift a group of people trapped in a cage, and in the next she could get knocked out just by being hit with the butt of a gun. There was no "power level" for her to be nerfed.

[Jim Kelly]

Ideally for me, Wonder Woman would exist along with the whole Justice Society in the 1940s. But I'm not sure how to work this out. One the one hand an Earth-Two style universe allows her to be in the same milieu of all the super-heroes of that era (including Superman and Batman). But then what to do with the Wonder Woman on the mainstream Earth?

By putting her in the past, she can have her honours. I'm not saying that Wonder Woman was responsible for women gaining more rights and holding down jobs and being part of the war effort in the 1940s. As a comic book character that wasn't possible--but she certainly counted as a symbol that women and girls embraced and drew inspiration from. If she can't be celebrated for that in her own comic book--or for her importance to Women's Lib in the 1970s--then it robs her of those genuine accomplishments.

It's one of those sad paradoxes where super-heroes end up having done more for us in the real world than what they're allowed to accomplish in the continual present of their comic book. It's like instead of the reality--being an inspirational symbol for the last 80 years--comic book Diana has to surrender that and stand in the shadows as if she was never that big a deal.

I think in my fan comic book, Wonder Woman would break the fourth wall and be cosmically aware of all her iterations and multiple realities.

[HsssH]

Ideally for me, Wonder Woman would exist along with the whole Justice Society in the 1940s. But I'm not sure how to work this out. One the one hand an Earth-Two style universe allows her to be in the same milieu of all the super-heroes of that era (including Superman and Batman). But then what to do with the Wonder Woman on the mainstream Earth?

Earth-2 has not really been a thing since CoIE so I wonder would anyone even care about it asides of few hardcore fans?

And I'm still baffled by these "why WW didn't stop world war?" arguments. Back then writers created Nazi villains like Captain Nazi for heroes to fight and there were things like Spear of Destiny giving Hitler some protection. Why are people assuming that WW would just punch regular Nazi soldiers and throw around some tanks instead of fighting other super powerful beings? Even some of her lame villains like Genocide could be revamped to fit that era.

[bat39]

It is interesting why Wonder Woman continues to be tied to the WW2 era (WW1 thanks to the DCEU movies), while Batman and Superman aren't. I think it comes down to a bunch of factors:

1. Wonder Woman's original origin story does involve WW2 in a way that Batman's and Superman's don't. Hell, she was a serving military officer during WW2 in her civilian identity.

2. Wonder Woman was more strongly tied to the JSA than Batman or Superman. She was an active member of the team for the bulk of their Golden Age run. This led to Diana being established on Earth Two when the concept was introduced even before Batman or Superman were, and allowed the comics to shift to the adventures of a WW2-era Wonder Woman briefly in the late 70's to match the TV show.

3. Wonder Woman's media adaptations, perhaps for one or both the above reasons, continue to revisit the WW2 era periodically. The Lynda Carter show, the DCEU movies (with WW1), the new JSA animated movie. So the iconic image of Wonder Woman as a WW2 era hero stays in pop-cultural consciousness in a way it doesn't for Superman and Batman.

4. Wonder Woman as a character and a 'brand', sadly, hasn't really had a 'definitive' contemporary take that has cemented itself in the popular memory. With Batman, you've had Frank Miller's work on the character which forever redefined the character of the Batman franchise, and directly or indirectly spawned iconic adaptations like the Burton movies, BTAS, the Nolanverse etc. Superman had the Donner movie that continues to define how most fans view the character. Wonder Woman hasn't really had that (until the 2017 movie arguably, and time will tell if it stands the test of, well, time) so the result is that a kind of fluid situation where the character and her world is being constantly redefined. In such a scenario, the temptation to return to the Golden Age is far greater than it is with other characters.

5. Wonder Woman is immortal and doesn't have as stable or iconic a supporting cast as Superman or Batman. So if DC wants one A-list hero from its contemporary line-up to have a direct link back to WW2 (the way Marvel has Captain America), then Diana is the obvious choice.

Honestly, I'm pretty agnostic about whether she's part of WW2 or not. I think there are good arguments to be made either way, and I've loved takes on her origin that both do and don't include a world war. That said, the WW2 era is interesting for her simply because its different from the standard Year One story we get of some superhero starting out in ''our'' contemporary world. And a lot of the issues with placing her in that era are solvable through a good story (e.g. explaining where she's been for the intervening decades, why she didn't change the world much etc.) and/or the same kind of comic-book logic that we use to handwave other stuff like why Batman just can't seem to clean up Gotham City permanently.

[HsssH]

One last thing about whole "why she didn't change the world" thing, obviously point of her WW1/WW2 stories would be that if not for her then Nazis would have won with their super villains.

[bat39]

One last thing about whole "why she didn't change the world" thing, obviously point of her WW1/WW2 stories would be that if not for her then Nazis would have won with their super villains.

Yeah.

Or to put it another way...she deals with the Nazis supervillain/mystical threats, so that the US military can focus on winning the actual conventional war.

I've always felt that this is a great answer for ''Why superheroes haven't changed the world?" I mean, you can whine about how Superman hasn't, say, eliminated the drug problem. But Superman saves the world from Zod and Brainiac...without him there wouldn't be a drug problem, but there wouldn't be a world. Period.

That's actually how the 2017 film played it. Diana was needed to kill Ares and end his explicit intervention in WW1. But the war ultimately runs its course as per history and is won, as in real-life, by the actions of the Allied troops.

Also, the leaked 5G timeline that leaked a while back gave a plausible explanation for why Diana would abandon Man's World and return to Themyscera after the war - she didn't approve of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and her disgust with humanity was sufficient to get her to withdraw.

[Jim Kelly]

When I finally got around to watching the first CAPTAIN AMERICA movie from Marvel Studios, I was let down that Steve doesn't ever go and punch Hitler in the face. In fact, he doesn't do much in fighting the Nazis and helping the Allies against the Axis (except as a patriotic symbol) and instead he gets taken away on this side quest to defeat Red Skull. And it turns out that Red Skull isn't really a Hitler flunky, but rather an even worse villain (supposedly) than Hitler himself and the real threat to the world is Hydra. Which for a World War Two movie felt all wrong to me.

I didn't expect Captain America to end the war single-handed, but I expected him to be more involved in the actual events of the war rather than some fantasy story that has nothing to do with the actual war. At least in the WONDER WOMAN movie, we see Diana in realistic depictions of the First World War and the real life tragedy of that war.

[John Venus]

I would have liked more Nazi punching in the first Cap movie as well and for the Red Skull to be a more overt Nazi but to me that is made up for by the fact that most general audiences think of Hydra and the Red Skulls as Nazi's anyway. Most people losing their mind over Cap saying 'Hail Hydra' in Nick Spencer's Cap run were people who only watched the movies and has never read a Captain America comic book in their life. Since the first Cap movie was said to have taken place over the course of 5 years I like to think Steve went on missions where he fought real Nazi's as well.

The best way to say your fictional hero contributed to a real life event like WW2 without actually changing the course of how those events played out is by having them defeat a fictional threat that would have changed the actual events of the war.

[Guy_McNichts]

Also, the leaked 5G timeline that leaked a while back gave a plausible explanation for why Diana would abandon Man's World and return to Themyscera after the war - she didn't approve of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and her disgust with humanity was sufficient to get her to withdraw.

Yeesh. So basically they were going to take Zack Snyder's original "walked away from mankind a hundred years ago" idea from Batman v. Superman and make it Diana's canon backstory in the comics.

Any bets on who would wind up being responsible for "inspiring" Diana to be Wonder Woman again? I'm going to guess it's the same guy that needed to tell her to protect civilians.

Just goes to show what bollocks the whole "first superhero" thing is.
Yeah, Wonder Woman was the first superhero...who then immediately quit, took her ball and went home, and stayed there until real heroes like Superman and Batman restored her faith in humanity. So, she might have come "first," but we all know who really matters.

It's a little distressing how--between the DCEU and apparently 5G--DC is/was determined to make being a quitter a critical part of Wonder Woman's backstory.
Captain America was frozen in ice. Wonder Woman gave up and went home.

Screw Cheetah. Screw Circe and Ares. Wonder Woman's true arch-nemesis is DC Comics.