Wonder Woman

So, my group had Wonder Woman as an iconic character to explore. I didn’t really know anything about her character other than she was that tough chick character with the star-pants. I wasn’t even aware of the Lasso of Truth, which is a big “icon” associated with her – makes me feel a little dumb, but whatever. Now I know, right? Anyway, as it turns out, my not knowing much about her ties into a lot of what I’ve found out about her iconography (that she has a lack of it that the others certainly don’t). I’ve found a lot about her being a feminist icon; she was created as Marsten’s ideal woman, really – the quote from him on Wikipedia said that “Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world.” And her entire background of being an Amazon princess, her alter ego name of “Diana” after the goddess Diana/Artemis is evidence of her being symbolic of feminine power. But that’s the only connotation, really, that has stuck in people’s minds throughout the life of the character. Other than that, she does seem like a female Superman equivalent. And Dan was saying in class that this follows her lack of true personality throughout the years, that she’s been someone who changes a lot because she can’t hook as strong an audience as the other icons. The interview with Gail Simone correlated with that thought, too, and Simone said that with her writing of Wonder Woman this time, she’s been trying to give the character that sense of self that she’s been missing. I still think it’s going to be a difficult, if not impossible feat to accomplish (although, this is coming from someone who’s never read Wonder Woman, so I’m obviously not the best person to make a judgment call here); I think it’s going to be very hard, this late in the game, to re-invent the character this way and keep her from being the simply “feminist” icon she seems to have become.