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"Of all people, you know who I am...who the world needs me to be. I’m Wonder Woman."

"Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don't want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman."
William Moulton Marston, 1943

The Amazing Amazon. The Spirit of Truth. The Princess and Diplomat of Paradise Island/Themyscira.

As beautiful as Aphrodite, as wise as Athena, swifter than Hermes and stronger than Hercules.

The Heart of The DCU.

The Superheroine.

The first prominent female superhero in the history of comic books, and generally considered the greatest of the superheroines, was created in the 1940s. Wonder Woman is distinguished by her indestructible bracelets, which deflect bullets, and her enchanted lasso, which compels men to tell the truth and puts animals to sleep.

She was created in 1941 by psychologist and writer William Moulton Marston (then an educational consultant to DC Comics) and the artist Harry G. Peter, as a deliberate counterpoint to the all-male stable of "Übermenschen" published by DC at the time. Marston was remarkably free of the era's usual prejudices about and disdain for women, and intentionally designed the character to embody his image of an idealized strong, unconventional and independent woman. The character first appeared in All-Star Comics #8 (December, 1941).

Marston was also vital in the development of the polygraph ("lie detector") — which may be why Wonder Woman's lasso forces criminals to speak the truth. Marston also had unconventional views on psychology and sexuality. He and his wife had a third partner, Olive Byrne — unconventional by today's standards, grounds for potential arrest in 1941. A central part of his (and Wonder Woman's) worldview was the idea "submission to loving authority," which shares some elements with BDSM and/or bondage, which many modern commentators have noticed - e.g., the "Suffering Sappho!" section of Superdickery.com. Marston's writing is still hotly debated in fandom spaces; some people criticize his work as appealing to fetishes, others characterize this as a gross oversimplification.

He also had very unconventional views on how the world should be run for the time he lived in, believing a matriarchy would be superior to the male-dominated world of the 1940s. This was the basis for Paradise Island.

Due to the deal Marston struck with DC, for a long time (at least through 1986), DC had to publish at least four issues of Wonder Woman each year or lose the rights to the character. This may have been one of the reasons that she was one of the few superheroes who continued publishing during The Interregnum, along with Superman, Batman and a handful of others. Her longevity is certainly one reason that contributed to her being one of DC's "Big Three" — as Frank Miller described it — Wonder Woman, Superman and Batman, are all the "gods" of the DC Universe, and the rest are all "just" heroes (something that is taken to its logical extreme in the Kurt Busiek/Mark Bagley year-long series Trinity). Also playing a big role: her 1970s TV series with Lynda Carter and her visibility in the Super Friends cartoon, as noted below.

Originally, Wonder Woman's powers were depicted on a smaller scale, relative to her contemporaries. She was strong, but her strength never escalated to moving planets like Superman. She was fast, but not crossing into parallel timelines through raw speed like The Flash. She couldn't fly, but The Silver Age Wonder Woman could "glide on air currents". Most of her tricks were gadget-based; the bullet-deflecting bracelets, the Lasso of Truth, the invisible jet. On the other hand the character was stated to have the strength of Hercules and speed of Hermes from her first appearance. These deities were shown to be a match for Superman and Flash, respectively, in other series. Wonder Woman herself battled Superman to a standstill in the tabloid-sized special comic "Superman versus Wonder Woman".

The bosomy note , raven-haired Amazon heroine was never as well-known by the general public as the other "big heroes" until the 1970s, thanks to Shannon Farnon, her voice actress on Super Friends, and Lynda Carter, who portrayed her in prime time. In addition, feminists loved her, as evidenced by her being on the cover of the premiere issue of the movement's flagship magazine, Ms.

At the same time, however, Wonder Woman was undergoing a Retool; with the popularity of shows like The Avengers, and its visions of strong Action Girls, she lost her powers, took up martial arts under inscrutable old Oriental guy I Ching, and became Undercover Agent Diana Prince. Ironically, this period was mostly ended by the above feminists, such as Gloria Steinem, who protested the depowering of a strong female character (the aforementioned Ms. cover was the vanguard of this). Plus, the stories themselves were generally considered below-par and no longer relevant with The Avengers having ended. As a result, Diana was repowered and rejoined the Justice League, and the whole episode is considered an Audience-Alienating Era, though it is referenced from time to time.

Later, she was revamped for Crisis on Infinite Earths by the comics legend George Pérez. She was powered-up, giving her flight, and tying her much more to Greek mythology and a mission as a messenger of peace to "Patriarch's World". Furthermore, she considered a Secret Identity obviously counterproductive in that role, so she stayed with her new friends, Julia Kapatelis, a classical Greek scholar, and her daughter Vanessa. Furthermore, Steve Trevor was revised to be old enough to be Diana's father, thus precluding the cliché romance; instead, he romanced Etta Candy. However, it turns out that he is indirectly linked to Diana's home since his mother, Diana Trevor, crash landed there and died helping the Amazons defeat a monster, making her a deeply honored hero to them.note 

In addition, she was simultaneously made much more naïve and tougher. The naïveté is such that Wonder Woman could not conceive of a woman being an enemy, which made the time when the Cheetah tried to con her out of her lasso an extremely upsetting moment. The toughness comes from being a classically trained warrior who is ready to kill as necessary and with no regrets, such as when she decapitated the villainous god Deimos. At the same time, her supervillain enemies became much more credible threats as in how the Cheetah was changed from a normal woman in a silly cheetah suit to a villain who became a powerful and deadly were-cheetah who is a real challenge to Diana in battle.

A popular (and therefore cheapened) way to escalate the drama in Wonder Woman stories (or Crisis Crossovers) recently has been to threaten Paradise Island... and then make good on the threat. The Amazons have been all-but-destroyed by Darkseid, themselves (in two civil wars), Imperiex, Hera, OMACs, Granny Goodness in the wake of Amazons Attack!, and in Alternate Universe by the removal of the gods' protection.

In the mid-2000s run written by Greg Rucka, she suffered from a negative reaction in-universe, between escalating her role as emissary, leading to accusations of forcing her beliefs on people, and snapping the neck of a villain who had telepathic control of Superman because she felt it was the only way to stop him. In the middle of all this, she fought shadowy corporate schemers, resurrected Gorgons, participated in the hostile takeover of Olympus by her patron, Pallas Athena, and faced the destruction of her home by OMACs (the whole OMAC's storyline, as well as much of the universe-changing crises that ultimately led to the "New 52" continuity reboot, can be seen as indirectly resulting from the killing). There was some delight at Wondy's appearance in Manhunter, when she enlisted Kate Spencer's services as a lawyer during her trial for the killing which occurred during Rucka's run.

After Rucka's run and the OMAC crossover event, Wonder Woman regained (or rather gained for the first time in this continuity) her Diana Prince: Secret Agent identity in order to connect with people. Many fans were not pleased, although others noted that it was very much a shout out to the Lynda Carter series which cast Diana as a spy. Soon after, she reluctantly got involved in a war between the Amazons (along with her newly resurrected mother) and Patriarch's World.

In the late 2000s, Wonder Woman's series was in the hands of Gail Simone. Her supporting cast was revisited and she went up against a series of monsters including the ultrapowerful Genocide, her mother's former bodyguards, a grief-stricken Green Lantern, her own pantheon, and some long-lost family members who were abducted by a vicious alien race. The tales were epic, twisty and generally well received, and Gail's deep love for the character is evident.

However, she was not the first woman to write the comic, as has sometimes been claimed. That distinction goes to William Moulton Marston's assistant, Joye Hummel Murchison Kelly, who became increasingly involved in the plotting and writing of scripts during the 1940s as Marston's health declined. Ultimately she scripted many Wonder Woman stories on her own under the "Charles Moulton" pseudonym. Other women to write on the comic have included Dann Thomas (who cowrote Wonder Woman #300 in 1983, making her the title's first credited female writer), Mindy Newell in the 80s and 90s, and Jodi Picoult in 2007.

Sales on the book continued to drop, so when Wondy's 600th overall issue (and a renumbering of the current series to reflect that) came around, J. Michael Straczynski shook things up. In his year-long storyline "The Odyssey" (completed by Phil Hester), the gods went back in time to remove their protection from the Amazons. As a result, Paradise Island fell when Diana was a little girl, and a handful of Amazons smuggled her out and raised her on the streets of Man's World. During the story, Diana struggles to regain her powers and understand why the world seems disastrously wrong around her.

After "The Odyssey" ended, Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang took over the title and relaunched as part of DC's New 52 reboot. Their run on the book shoots for a much darker and more horror-influenced tone than previous runs. Wonder Woman once again sports a new costume, though it is much closer to the original than the suit from the JMS run. Azzarello and Chiang's ongoing work has met with both critical acclaim and controversy for their handling of the mythical and gender themes of Wonder Woman's world. Like Greg Rucka's run, Azzarello and Chiang approach Wonder Woman's world through the myths of the Greek gods, though the difference between the two approaches is quite clear. Additionally, in 2014, she started headlining a relaunch of Sensation Comics, meaning that, alongside Action Comics and Detective Comics, each member of DC's Trinity had their own "X Comics" series running alongside their solo book until Sensation was cancelled with issue #17.

As part of the DC Rebirth initiative, Greg Rucka returned to write Wonder Woman (Rebirth). His run attracted notice for being the first in the main DC continuity to depict Diana as in a relationship with another woman.note  Also, for the first time in three decades, Diana and Steve Trevor are officially a couple in mainstream continuity again.

In 2016, Grant Morrison released a Graphic Novel centered around Wonder Woman set in the Earth One continuity, naturally titled as Wonder Woman: Earth One.

The 2017 biopic Professor Marston and the Wonder Women is based on the lives of William Moulton Marston, his wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston, and their domestic partner Olive Byrne, the people who created and inspired her.

Needless to say, the cheesy 1973 grindhouse film Wonder Women has nothing to do with the superheroine, but we wish it did.


General Trope Examples

Tropes associated with Wonder Woman include:

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  • Absurdly Sharp Blade: Diana sometimes carries the Sword of Hephaestus, which can shave electrons off an atom.
  • Action Girl:
    • Diana has consistently been depicted as one of the DC Universe's heaviest hitters, comparable to Superman in raw strength and speed and Batman in martial skill and cunning.
    • During the Golden Age, Etta Candy and her "Holliday Girls" sorority were pretty tough cookies in their own right. While they sometimes got the enemy through various feminine wiles, other times they'd just straight-up slug it out with Nazis or Martians twice their size. And win.
      • Alas, this was rapidly toned down as soon as Marston died; even George Perez's much-celebrated reboot had Etta as a Plucky Office Girl who rarely got in the thick of the action. It would be another twenty years before Gail Simone would return Etta to a field role. Perez did have Candy in-story from overweight to muscular stocky, and emphasized she was a soldier.
    • Donna Troy, Cassie Sandsmark, Artemis and theoretically every other Amazon would count as well, though Conservation of Ninjutsu usually means the latter turns into a Faux Action Girl Redshirt Army whenever they fight as a nation rather than as individuals.
  • Action Mom: Diana's mother, Hippolyta, is the queen of the Amazons, so you have to expect she'd be just as badass as the others. She's even stood in for her daughter and has used the name Wonder Woman for herself in the past.
  • Adaptational Gender Identity: While not made explicit due to the culture at the time, Wonder Woman (1942) heavily implies Hypnota is a trans man. Every subsequent writer to use the character has called them Hypnotic Woman and removed any traits that could be considered transgender.
  • Adaptational Modesty: Her original costume had knee-length star-spangled culottes that looked like a skirt unless she was in action. This was revised to the familiar star spangled short shorts and a strapless halter top. Over time it became a leotard and a corset with varying amounts of cleavage, and was otherwise not protective wear. Even within the comics through all sorts of redesigns they've experimented with adding pants and fully covered armor, but often revert to something closer to the classic appearance due to fan outrage of changing the costume too much (making her look like a generic female warrior rather than Wonder Woman). The DC Extended Universe included a Grecian/Roman inspired combat skirt that ended up well received, emphasizing the heritage of the outfit both in the comics lore and in real world comics history. Comics and other adaptations quickly followed their lead.
  • Adapted Out: Traditionally, the Amazons were portrayed as keeping their husbands, and presumably the rest of their male kin, in the neighboring country. Paradise Island/Themyscira has no neighboring country and the Amazons have no male kin.
  • Advanced Ancient Acropolis: Pre-Crisis Paradise Island had advanced tech.
  • All-Loving Hero: Diana, all the way. Pre-New 52, it was emphasized in her Blackest Night tie in, where even decapitating the risen-from-the-grave Maxwell Lord, the only emotion within her was love. In the New 52, where Diana is a much harder person, she still tells Hades that she really did love him after the forced marriage deal he put her through, because:
    Wonder Woman: "Hell... I love. Everyone."
  • Alliterative Name: Wonder Woman. This also worked on her Spanish name, Mujer Maravilla and even for the Romanian translation, Femeia Fantastica from Justice League.
  • Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: She is known for her beauty, prowess and dignified personality.
  • Alternate Universe: Wonder Woman was officially the first DC comic to run an Alternate Universe story, predating even The Flash's famous meeting with Jay Garrick. Diana helps her counterpart from another universe fight the race of giants that are tyrannizing her world.
  • Amazonian Beauty: She is a literal Amazon and she is definitely beautiful. Even when she's portrayed as possessing a very muscular build for her body.
  • Ambiguously Brown: Not in the original comics, but some of the more recent depictions portray her as such.
  • Ambiguously Gay: Paradise Island has fueled Slash Fic for decades, long before it was called slash. (Fan imaginings of lead characters in gay relationships did not begin with Star Trek: The Original Series.)
    • Diana introduced a male suitor, Nemesis, to the courtship rituals of Themyscira. When he points out that Themyscira is filled with women, she says, "Yes, exactly."
    • It's been acknowledged that many Amazons are lesbian since George Perez's run in the late 1980s, in keeping to the Classical Greek roots.
    • There have been hints and implications over the years that Wonder Woman herself is bisexual, and several writers have said they consider her so. Nothing has been directly stated in the comics themselves, though. At least until DC Rebirth, where issue 2 of Wonder Woman not only heavily implies Diana has had female partners but that she is The Casanova.
    • For years there has been subtext between Hippolyta and Phillipus, the captain of the royal guard. On her Tumblr page, Gail Simone claimed she had planned to have the two women officially get married, an idea which was even supported by Dan DiDio. [1].
    • Grant Morrison, in his Wonder Woman: Earth One, makes the subtext text, as his Diana is openly in relationship with another woman, and she confirms all the Amazons to be lesbian, bisexual or pan.
    • Ambiguous no more: Greg Rucka officially came out saying that that Wonder Woman is bisexual.
    • Back in the Golden Age, when sexist Moral Guardians accused her of being a lesbian because she was doing all these "masculine" activities, Marston delivered an amusing Take That! by giving Wonder Woman the catch phrase, "Suffering Sappho!"
  • Ancient Grome: Especially in the Golden and Silver Age, several gods use their Roman names, especially Mars, Mercury and Minerva. Averted by Perez.
  • Animal-Themed Superbeing: Reoccurring villain, The Cheetah.
  • Anti-Hero Substitute: Artemis took over as Wonder Woman for a brief time during The '90s.
  • The Artifact:
    • Steve Trevor, since Marston left the book, has been adrift, but lingers (especially in adaptations) based on the name retaining some currency. Completely averted as of the New 52, however, where Trevor has been upgraded to being the DCU's version of Nick Fury.
    • The Invisible Jet has been of dubious usefulness ever since the writers decided Diana should be able to fly on her own. But the plane is cool! Besides, it lets her transport things and people.
    • The usage of her bracelets to block bullets is one of the most signature staples of Wonder Woman and made sense during a classical era when she wasn't as powerful as she is now. But now that Wonder Woman is DC's World's Strongest Woman who's able to fight Superman, Darkseid, or The Darkest Knight, it seems almost inconceivable that the same woman who got punched by Superman from the sun back to the earth and survived re-entry can still suffer cutting or piercing damage from mundane weapons and still be injured or possibly killed by firearms. However, because Wonder Woman blocking bullets with her bracelets is such an iconic move of hers, it's been kept into the modern era despite Diana being in an awkward gray zone where she's a near-invulnerable Flying Brick but one who can conceivably be killed by a bullet.
  • Artistic License – Paleontology: When Wonder Woman goes back in time and finds a Tyrannosaurus rex terrorizing some cavemen, she figures out it must have somehow escaped the ice age.
  • Author Appeal: The bondage situations, as mentioned in the main description. His other domestic partner was noted for always wearing metal bracelets when outside the house.
    • In fact, according to The 10 Cent Plague by David Hajdu, Wonder Woman was originally created to help the author "deal with his persistent fantasies of being dominated by women" or some such thing.
    • There is a lot more about this in Les Daniels' Wonder Woman: The Complete History. He genuinely believed in female superiority.
    • Marston had developed his belief in female superiority in part as a result of his experiments with polygraphs; due to his experiments he came to the conclusion that women were inherently more ethical and honest than men. Wonder Woman's main weapon is a lasso that can compel people to tell the truth, and that some later writers would call Diana the "Goddess of Truth".
  • Author Tract: One of the reasons William Moulton Marston created Wonder Woman was to convince everyone to come under "submission to loving authority" and how a "loving matriarchy" would be a superior, peaceful world government. Oh, and bondage is highly enjoyable.
  • The Bermuda Triangle: The native home to Wonder Woman and her sister Amazons, the fictional nation Themyscira (a.k.a. Paradise Island), is currently located in the Bermuda Triangle, but the island can teleport to any different location or time whenever the island's inhabitants desire.
  • Big Bad: Ares, the Greek god of war and Circe the socreress. In the New 52, Ares is more of an Anti-Villain. The first new Big Bad was Hera, who was then succeeded by First Born — Zeus and Hera's unnamed first son, who was sealed away by Zeus due to the prophecy stating that he would be dethroned by his own child. Once he breaks free, he's not too pleased.
  • Black and Nerdy: Jason Keralis is a black Mad Scientist biologist with a great interest in Greek Mythology.
  • Blocking Stops All Damage: A plot point. Her bracelets are divinely created to block anything.
  • Bodyguard Babes: Alkyone, Myrto, Charis and Philomela ("The Circle") were named Queen Hippolyta's personal guard. It didn't work out too well.
  • Bodyguarding a Badass: As a diplomat, Wonder Woman has at least once had a division of Secret Service agents (unpowered people with pistols and radios, not other Amazons) assigned to protect her. It is hard to imagine a threat they could defeat which would even scratch her skin.
  • Born of Magic: For most of Wonder Woman's history, her origin has been that her body was sculpted from clay by Hippolyta, which Aphrodite breathed life into, like the legend of Galatea. This was discarded in favor of Zeus being her father in the New 52 rebooted continuity, which has since been retconned away in the DC Rebirth revised continuity, which was later turned back to being one of Zeus' daughters again because of the success of the 2017 movie in which she is Zeus' daughter.
  • Bound and Gagged. Her creator may not have been into bondage himself, but he definitely wrote it into the job description. The original Wonder Woman has all those abilities... unless her bracelets were chained together (specifically by a man), at which point she became de-powered. So you can expect incredible amounts of bondage throughout the first couple decades of her comic. It's such a common occurrence - to the point of once suggesting that the villains threaten to untie her - that the Superdickery website has an entire gallery devoted to it.
  • Brainwashing for the Greater Good: Queen Atomia was permanently welded into a mind control device by Aphrodite to facilitate her reformation.
  • Broke Episode: Volume 2, Issues #72-81 (Feb. 1991-Nov. 1993) sees Diana practiclly homeless with Paradise Island missing and her stipend from the JLA tied up in a computer glitch (the system still thinks she's dead) and having to find a job to make ends meet. Her employer? A Taco Bell Expy. She actually gets into the work after a while and her franchise in Boston turns into a Good-Guy Bar by the end of the arc.
  • Canon Immigrant: The magic lasso originally did more than compel telling the truth — in the Golden and Silver Age, the captive of it had to obey ANY instruction the holder gave. As this was too squicky for family hour, both Super Friends and the television series changed it to the current version, based on William Moulton Marston's pioneering work with the lie detector. It stayed that way when DC rebooted the character after Crisis on Infinite Earths. The original lasso of compulsion still existed in the comic books, but post crisis it was pushed onto Teen Titans, which became one of DC's Darker and Edgier series prior to Vertigo.
    • It was retooled again at some point: the lasso now not only compels people to tell the truth, it also automatically reveals the truth about anything it's attached to: Diana can use it to find pressure points on giant monsters, etc. This evidently comes from the lasso being some kind of manifestation of the concept of Truth. Which may be why using it on Darkseid in Final Crisis canceled out the Anti-Life Equation.
    • The lasso, per Gail Simone's run, also doesn't just force people to tell the truth. It sees into their soul and reveals their deepest secrets.
    • The "Wonder-spin" from the Lynda Carter series has found its way into comics, popping up on-and-off and Depending on the Writer, as a means for Diana to change outfits.
    • Also from the show, the famous "bullets and bracelets" crossed arms pose originated from the show and in the Post-Crisis continuity was made an Amazon salute.
  • Canon Discontinuity. The reboot made the original Wonder Girl an awkward character; she was later retconned as a Wonder Woman magic clone with a literal Multiple-Choice Past. When they originally gave her her own backstory she was an orphaned girl rescued from a fire by Wondy and adopted by Hippolyta.
  • Captain Geographic: For America, despite not being born there.
    • In the original story, her mom designed her outfit after Aphrodite showed her Steve's mission that brought him to the island in the first place.
    • In the George Perez reboot, it's explained that when Steve Trevor's mother washed ashore Paradise Island, they thought her American badges were crests, and created an outfit to honor her death based on the American flag.
    • And in Gail Simone's run, it was explained that she was "born" on a night with a red Hunter's Moon and the constellation Cassiopeia visible.
    • In the film, it's explained that she is Themyscira's ambassador, and honors where she's going by wearing their colors (how they knew that Steve's flag patch was the American ensign is not explained).note 
    • Averted in the New 52, where her suit is usually depicted as crimson and black and with much, much less stars.
  • Captain Superhero: Some of the Rogues Gallery, like Steve Trevor's one time alias Captain Wonder.
  • Catchphrase:
    • Not so much these days, but back in the day she had "Merciful Minerva!", "Great Aphrodite!", "Holy Hera!" and "Suffering Sappho!"
    • Pre-Crisis Etta Candy had her "Woo-woo!"
  • The Champion: A sometimes forgotten part of Diana's character. She is the personal champion of the Goddess Athena. She has been to seen to go through with Athena's plans wholeheartedly, regardless of the risks. She is also called the Champion of the Amazons.
  • Charles Atlas Super Power: The Golden Age explanation. Amazonian disciplines allowed any woman to channel mental energy into muscle, giving super strength and speed. It was a learned skill. In one early issue, it's even taught to some girls from the outside world — one adolescent is seen lifting five tons without strain. The Silver Age Retcon made WW The Chosen One, sculpted out of clay and given life and powers by the gods, making her the most powerful Amazon by far — strong as Hercules, swift as Mercury, etc. In other words, Captain Marvel with a uterus.
  • Chest Insignia: In various ages, her bustier of justice has been decorated with either a gold eagle with Wonderbra wings, or a gold "WW". Alex Ross believably combined the two in Kingdom Come.
  • Chickification: In the 2011 TV series much was made about her going through Xenafication and becoming more ruthless; on the other side, some people didn't like the fact that the normally tough Wondy was sitting on her couch, crying into a bowl of rice cakes. She also got pretty Chickified in the late 1950s. Some issues looked more like Teen Romance Comics.
  • Clark Kenting: Originally on par with the Mr. Kent himself, and sometimes worse as she won't even wear glasses as Diana Prince, yet even Steve Trevor didn't figure it out. Averted since The Dark Age of Comic Books when she didn't have a disguise at all, but brought back in The Modern Age of Comic Books when she resumed her Diana Prince secret identity. At least she wears glasses and changes her hair style now.
  • Classical Mythology: Though the Golden Age had The Theme Park Version, often liberally simplifying them, mixing in other mythologies, and Westernizing them. More modern incarnations are generally more faithful about their adaptations... Depending on the Writer.
  • Clingy Costume: Wonder Woman #80 has her fall asleep one day (near a pond, no less) then wake up to find herself trapped in a mask that's rigged to explode.
  • Clone by Conversion: Queen Atomia's "Proton Chamber" turns those of her victims that are forced into it and put through the chamber's process all into identical clones which are near mindlessly loyal to her and extra susceptible to her mental commands.
  • Combat Pragmatist: Not feeling bound to Thou Shalt Not Kill, Diana feels perfectly free to use deadly force if the situation calls for it; while Superman and Batman will not cross that line.
  • Composite Character:
    • During Rucka's run, goddesses Demeter and Artemis seem to be merged into one.
    • In the Golden Age, the secret identity of Wonder Woman, Diana Prince, is taken by Wondy from a military nurse that wanted to marry her beyonce in South America. In the post crisis, the identity of Diana Prince is used for undercover operations and the original nurse is never brought up.
  • Continuity Snarl: The Wonder Woman Family, as discussed here and here. Donna Troy had so many problems over the years that she got her own page.
  • Cool Plane: Her invisible jet. Just [don't think too hard about the way it works (or why she needs it if she can fly, though at first it was because she couldn't fly (The Golden Age of Comic Books), then she can only fly glide short distances (The Silver Age of Comic Books) and needs the jet for long-distance flight. This hasn't been true since the 1980s, though). In The Modern Age of Comic Books, she occasionally uses it to transport cargo or passengers, but for the most part, it hangs around due to historic value and Rule of Cool. More recent versions have depicted the jet as a stealth plane. Which was its original purpose, back in The Golden Age of Comic Books. Why else make a plane invisible?
  • Costume Evolution: She's gone through several minor costume changes, but she tends to return to her red and blue leotard. Other outfits give her pants or battle armor, or just add darker colors.
  • Country Cousin: Etta Candy's family lives on a ranch in Texas and Etta, Diana and on at least one occasion Steve have traveled there for a handful of story arcs in the country.
  • Crusading Widow: Paula von Gunther at first appeared to be a loyal Nazi spy. After the reveal that the Nazis had murdered her husband and kidnapped her daughter to force her to comply and Diana saved her daughter Paula eagerly switched sides and dedicated her life to aiding the Allies and Wonder Woman against the Nazis.
  • Darker and Edgier: Azzarello's run on the comic (Wonder Woman (2011)) is much darker than previous WW comics, which Diana being willing to and eager to kill opponents—she was the only one of DC's big three to have a rule against killing from the very beginning—and the Amazons as murderous, child killing, slave trading rapists as a society instead of being either a Perfect Pacifist People made up of female refugees from across the ages (Golden Age), or a Martial Pacifist people made up of the reincarnations of women murdered by men throughout the ages (Post Crisis).
  • Dead All Along: Vance Trotter. His twin brother Globe kept his death a secret as part of a plan to get their uncle's fortune.
  • Dead Person Impersonation: In a story from Issue #43, Globe Trotter uses a fake beard to impersonate his deceased twin brother and use him as a cover-up to get rid of his cousins and inherit their rich uncle's estate.
  • Deal with the Devil: He begged her to take one, but she declined.
  • Death of Personality: Queen Atomia has two different ways of inflicting this on her victims to turn them into her loyal "servants", and not even Amazonian medical science can restore them once the process is complete. She can put them through her Proton Chamber which at least leaves them with a human appearance and semi intact—though severely altered—mind, or force them through her Nutron Machine which leaves them far less intact and almost mindless outside of obeying her commands.
  • Defector from Paradise: Wonder Woman would count as this considering she chose to leave Themyscira, an all-female utopia where women can practice a peaceful way of life and cultivate their minds, to become a worldwide superhero and diplomat in order to make the "Man's World" more like her home. However, this case could count as an aversion considering many stories present Themyscira as not being as perfect or flawless as previously believed.*
  • Deity of Human Origin: Has ascended to godhood twice:
    • In the post-Crisis continuity, under John Byrne, she became the Goddess of Truth for a short while.
    • In the New 52 she became the new Goddess of War after killing Ares.
  • Demoted to Extra: She hasn't been able to keep a stable supporting cast together in decades. Even Steve Trevor got Put on a Bus years ago.
  • Depending on the Writer: As with most superheroes, her personality and powers vary every time a new writer is brought in.
  • Depower: The I Ching kung fu period.
  • Depraved Dwarf: Recurring villain Dr. Psycho, with emphasis on the depraved. We're talking an evil midget with Psychic Powers who once used Mind Control to make a bunch of people commit cannibalism, an act that not only sexually aroused him, but inspired him to Mind Rape them by letting them feel his arousal as if it were their own and then let them go once he was bored. Even beyond that, he's defined by his hateful misogyny.
  • Difficult, but Awesome: Using her lasso in a brute-force fight. It's a favorite candidate for The Worf Barrage, because if her target turns out to be stronger than her, she's usually yanked through the air into his fist. But if Diana's stronger—or she gets the villain off-balance first—she can whip the villain around at the end of a giant Epic Flail that inflicts leverage-enhanced Grievous Harm with a Body on him and any other villain underneath.
  • Double Standard: Rape, Divine on Mortal: Subverted during George Pérez's run. Pannote  managed to focus Zeus' attentions on Wonder Woman, still a naive young woman. Zeus put rather direct moves on Wonder Woman, and royally pissed him off when she refused harshly, and attempted to rape her — in front of her mother Hippolyta no less. Despite the fact that Diana and Hippolyta both worship Zeus as the head of the Greek pantheon, they both call him out.
    Wonder Woman: Please, Lord Zeus — do not force yourself upon me! Though I live to serve you — I am not your toy!
    Hippolyta: Your cruel son Heracles showed me such "respect"...I shall not allow his father to trifle thus with my only daughter!
  • Dressed Like a Dominatrix: Superwoman, an evil Alternate Universe version of Wonder Woman introduced in 1964, making her possibly the oldest example of this trope. Since Wonder Woman herself was created with certain BDSM undertones, it's no surprise her evil counterpart turned out this way. She originally wore a black leather leotard, high-heel boots, and a cape, and wielded the signature magic lasso which resembles a whip. A later version of her got opera gloves, as well. Her New 52 version wears a shoulderless black leather catsuit, opera gloves, thigh-high high-heeled boots and a cape, and wields a barbed lasso that makes the victim "obey and love" her.

    E–K 
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • In Wondy's first appearance in All-Star Comics #8, the introductory blurb about her powers is "As lovely as Aphrodite, as wise as Athena, with the speed of Mercury and the strength of Hercules"; all later iterations of this blurb will end with "faster than Mercury and stronger than Hercules".
    • She didn't have her iconic Lasso of Truth for her first few appearances, and was only given it by her mother in the sixth issue of Sensation Comics. Also, it was simply known as the "Magic Lasso" in the early days, and compelled captives to obey Wonder Woman's every command by imposing her will on them. The idea that its primary function was to force people to tell the truth originated in Wonder Woman (1975), and didn't make its way into the comics until George Pérez rebooted Wonder Woman's origin after Crisis on Infinite Earths for Wonder Woman (1987).
    • Likewise, Wonder Woman couldn't originally fly, which explains why she needed the Invisible Jet in the first place. And it wasn't the Invisible Jet at first, either, but simply the Robot Plane (with standard-for-the-time propeller propulsion, which somehow worked in space).
    • The Golden Age Wonder Woman stories come off as rather kinky nowadays, with a lot of gratuitous Bound and Gagged scenes, even by the standards of the era. Also, Wonder Woman's major weakness was that she would lose her powers if her bracelets were ever welded together by a man, a problem she obviously no longer has.
    • The Amazons were all white in the Golden Age stories and for much of the comic's history. It was George Perez who decided to give Paradise Island a racially diverse population, as he felt there were some Unfortunate Implications behind having an all-female utopia consist solely of white women.
    • There was a greater focus on psychosexual and gender themes in the Golden Age stories. In addition to the ubiquity of the aforementioned bondage themes, Wonder Woman had several villains who were female crossdressers, like Doctor Poison and Blue Snowman.
    • Wonder Woman had a lot of rather silly Golden and Silver Age villains who are pretty much never used any more, such as Mouse Man.
    • It helps that the original creator was heavily into bondage, and worked it into his stories whenever he got the chance. Later writers didn't share the fetish and so it was toned down heavily even before the Comics Code.
  • Equal-Opportunity Evil: The Nazis and the Japanese in the classic comics, who employ women in senior positions (e.g., Paula Gunther, Princess Maru) and are much less sexist against them than the US Army authorities are against Diana and Wonder Woman.
  • Era-Specific Personality: It's been noted by writers that there isn't much of an iconic personality associated with Wonder Woman, who has ping ponged between demure, naive, gritty warrior, a women's liberation mouthpiece, ambassador to man's world, elegant royalty and military general. Unlike Batman or Superman, who's various incarnations tend to evolve on what came before, new writers have more room to experiment with her personality and mythology.
  • Everybody Hates Hades: Largely averted, instead making him a patient shepherd with an epic combover. Sporadic appearances tied to Artemis portray him as a regular Satan, however.
  • Evil Twin: Vance Trotter's twin brother Globe kills their uncle for the inheritance.
  • Eviler than Thou: Wonder Woman considers the second Cheetah "far worse than Priscilla Rich" because all Priscilla "cared about was personal revenge on her imagined enemies" while the new Cheetah sees "the whole world as her enemy".
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The Amazons' Purple Healing Ray is... a ray that heals people, and is purple. Lampshaded in Wonder Woman: Bloodlines when Steve asks what it is, Diana tells him it's the Purple Healing Ray, and Steve says, basically, "Right! So, what do you call it?"
  • Expy: Tom Tresser/Nemesis, as portrayed in Wonder Woman, was a 21st Century analogue of Steve Trevor.
  • Faceless Goons: While Queen Atomia's "Protons" have all been modified to have identical faces her "Nutrons" are never seen outside of their helmets.
  • Fad Super:
    • She was created to be timely as both a super-patriot and a fightin' first-wave feminist. Writers have gradually divorced her from the patriot angle while struggling to define what sort of feminist she is.
    • Supporting character Nubia was introduced as a painfully inept attempt at creating a heroine to reflect the Black Power movement of the 1970s.
  • Familial Foe: As there are several continuities where Wonder Woman fights alongside several generations of Etta Candy's family Etta and her children and grandchildren have found themselves fighting Ares and Circe.
  • Fantasy Kitchen Sink: While primarily focused on Greek mythology, the Wonder Woman comics have dealt with characters and creatures from other myths (Egyptians, Norse and Aztec for example), metahumans, cyborgs, demons and aliens.
  • Female Fighter, Male Handler: This is the main relationship between Diana and her Love Interest Steve Trevor. Even when he's already a skilled fighter and a military man, he has nothing to do against supernatural powers Diana has, being usually her handler and supporter.
  • Feminine Women Can Cook: Averted to a degree in a JLA Classified arc, where during a League meeting, Wonder Woman (one of the team's toughest warriors) bakes a plate of Themyscrian pomegranate-flavored pastries. In the last scene of the issue in question, Batman says, "And one more thing. Diana, Alfred will need this recipe."
  • Feminist Fantasy: The reason William Marston created Wonder Woman, as he explains in the page quote.
  • Fictional Counterpart: One memorable story has Diana appearing on "The Scene," a talk show hosted by various female journalists such as Lois Lane and Linda Park. The name, logo, and premise of the series are extremely similar to those of the real life female talk show The View.
  • Flag Bikini: Wondy's iconic outfit could easily be described as a USA flag leotard.
  • Flight, Strength, Heart: As she actually was given a loving heart and the power to make friends easily. She was also given beauty, the power to talk to and calm animals; and has an invisible plane, even though she can fly, and it doesn't actually make anyone within it invisible. The TV series also introduced us to the way Wonder Woman could spin to change clothes.
  • Flying Brick: Slowly evolved into this from Lightning Bruiser.
  • Funny Animal: "Wonder Wabbit", a Funny Animal rabbit counterpart of Diana who lives on Earth-C-Minus. Wonder Wabbit is a member of her world's "JLA" (the "Just'a Lotta Animals").
  • Gender-Blender Name: One of the Holliday Girls goes by Bobby Strong, using Bobby as a diminutive of Roberta.
  • Gentle Giant: In spite of being among the biggest and toughest League members, she is also among the most loving among them, to the point where she fights only to protect, prefers solving conflicts via diplomacy, and is even fond of animals.
  • Girly Bruiser: Glamora Treat, one of the Holliday Girls, is demure, fashion conscious and highly aware of any attractive males near her to the point that Diana feels uncomfortable having Glamora go on a mission with Steve. She also gleefully and eagerly joins on dangerous expeditions, is a crack shot with a rifle, can do a lot of damage with a club, has trained in Amazonian martial arts and loves beating up Nazis. For bonus points she is the girly girl in a Tomboy and Girly Girl pairing with fellow Holliday Girl "Bobby" Strong.
  • Giving Them the Strip: In Wonder Woman #11, Wonder Woman jumps onto a fleeing getaway car and grabs hold of Hypnota's servant Serva. Serva dives out of the car, leaving Wonder Woman holding her cloak.
  • Go-Karting with Bowser: In Wonder Woman (vol. 3) #36, over a few pages, Wondy goes from fighting Giganta (who it turns out, was merely waiting for her date with The Atom) to commiserating about Tom Tresser telling her their relationship is over to beating up the Olympians together. Giganta these days is more of an Anti-Villain or Punch-Clock Villain at worst.
  • God Is Displeased: Zeus tends to get displeased with humanity for their technological advancements, not worshiping him and giving him the power he lusts after, and their violence as he is a major hypocrite and sees it as a relection of Ares and Ares alone. His reactions tend to be genocidal with him slaughtering huge swaths of people in his bid to subjugate them in Volume 3 and being stopped from doing so in Volume 2 and The Legend of Wonder Woman (2016) at great cost to the Amazons.
  • Gods Need Prayer Badly: Played with. In the post-Flashpoint continuity, Hera explains that the gods have a three-layered backup plan to retain their immortality. Step one involves the worship of humans—however, if there aren't enough worshippers to sustain them, step two is to rely on the magic of The Fates to keep them immortal. However, if the Fates are weakened and/or killed, then their only remaining source of immortality is to remain on Mount Olympus as, anywhere else, they will become mortal.
  • Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: One story features Art Fairdeal and his Distinguished Gentleman's Pipe versus his cigar chomping rival Josh Slicker.
  • The Heart: Diana has consistently been recognized as the most loving member of the Justice League, always motivated by her love of others. In fact, it's been revealed that she loves everybody: she is a fighter who loves even her enemies. This means that she fights because it's necessary, never out of anger or revenge. In fact, during Blackest Night, her enormous capacity for love earned her a Violet Ring, turning her into a Star Sapphire. Also during Blackest Night, when she faced Black Lantern Maxwell Lord, she reads his aura during the fight and realizes she's feeling love for him while they fight. She and Nightwing kind of share this position during DC teamups.
  • Heroic BSoD: She's not prone to these, but one instance happened when she was forced to confront two equally valid but conflicting truths (which of the parents had the rights to a child, one of whom was a supervillain dictator). The lasso actually snapped and for a brief time, truth itself became unbound on the world.
    • During George Perez's run, the younger, more naive Wonder Woman underwent one when she found out that Myndi Mayer's death was not the result of a shotgun attack, but of a cocaine overdose; the killer had unknowingly shot a corpse. Diana did not take it well.
      Diana: Oh Dear Gaea, why? She was so young, so vital!
  • Hidden Elf Village: Paradise Island, though it is accessible to the outside world in certain arcs. In JLA/Avengers, Wonder Woman finds Asgard through the same general way she finds Paradise Island. She can't quite explain to Aquaman how she does it - she just does it.
  • Hide Your Lesbians: Greg Rucka, the man responsible for re-imagining Wonder Woman for the 21st century and re-inventing the character, has said publicly that he imagines she would have had same-sex relationships as her upbringing in a matriarchy with no men would practically demand this. But this aspect of her character may well be seriously down-played for the reboot.
  • I Have Brothers: Roberta "Bobby" Strong will resort to this explanation for why she's a viable candidate for adventurous outings if her own abilities and explanation of her skills isn't enough to convince those in charge.
  • I Have Many Names: The invisible jet was often called the "robot plane" (or "see through robot plane") in pre-Crisis stories.
  • Immortality: Depending on the Writer. The Lynda Carter version "remembered the Greeks and the Romans". In Justice League Unlimited, Batman points out that she's from "a society of immortal warriors". In some comic incarnations, her immortality was lost when she left Paradise Island; in The Kingdom, she loses it due to pregnancy; in still other continuities, she is still and always immortal, and may even eventually become a goddess herself.
  • Immortality Field:
    • Themyscira or Paradise Island keeps the Amazons immortal. Amazons lose their immortality when they leave for the "Patriarch's World" and, for a while, it was decreed by Aphrodite's Law that the Amazons would become mortal if a man sets foot on the island.
    • The DCU's version of the Gods of Mount Olympus need prayer badly to remain immortal, but if there aren't enough worshipers and The Fates are weakened or killed, then their only option is to remain on Mount Olympus; anywhere else, they will become mortal.
  • Immune to Bullets: Sometimes. Frequently her bracelets are, but she herself is not. Despite being completely able to take on Superman...
  • Impossible Hourglass Figure: Even the versions that are muscular and athletic generally have a wasp-waisted hourglass figure.
  • Impossibly Cool Weapon: The Golden Lasso, Bracelets of Submission and Sword of Hephaestus. Depending on the Writer her tiara can be a bladed throwing weapon which always returns to her.
  • Improbable Weapon User: A lie-detecting rope, a tiara, bracelets and an invisible telepathic airplane that (in the Silver Age version at least) used to be a flying horse. All perfectly normal. In the Golden and Silver Age comics, she also possessed devices such as the Purple Healing Ray (Exactly What It Says on the Tin) and the Mental Radio, a two-way radio/TV device that transmitted messages via telepathy.
  • Improvised Weapon: In addition to her standard armament of improbable weapons, she'll use whatever is available, including the invisible plane as a battering ram against larger foes. In Justice League Unlimited, as a last resort to stop Brainilex from destroying the world, she threw a Javelin at the building he was in. Like a javelin.
  • In Name Only: In the foreword to the Trade Paperback "Gods and Mortals", George Perez mentions that there were several proposals for the Post-Crisis reboot of Wonder Woman, some of which had nothing in common with the original but the name.
  • Inheritance Murder: A story in Issue #43 features a villain planning to kill his relatives for their family's fortune.
  • Institutional Apparel: Reformation Island has it's own version of institutional apparel. The inmates there are given sporty dresses and then locked into magic girdles and bracelets of submission which they wear at all times until they are deemed reformed and released.
  • Intimate Marks: Her costume qualifies Depending on the Writer. The Eagle-shaped "WW" on her costume is typically drawn low cut enough to expose lots of cleavage.
  • Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: After Genocide stole her lasso and went on to kidnap Etta Candy, Wondy resorted to this with Cheetah. She used the tiara to cut Cheetah's face and then threatened to cut off pieces of her tail if she didn't reveal where Etta was being held.
  • Insistent Terminology: Nemesis in "Who Is Wonder Woman?":
    Sarge Steel: "... You'd still be one of Circe's pigboys."
    Nemesis: Wolfmen. A small but important distinction."
  • Island of Mystery: Themyscira, or Paradise Island.
  • Kangaroo Court: Ghorkos, Dread Master of Phobos, inner moon of Mars, is holding a trial for Steve Trevor where Steve "will be shot if he tells the truth, hanged if he lies, but can name his own execution if he pleads guilty". When Steve chooses Wonder Woman to be his lawyer since no one in Phobos will defend him, the prosecutor, unable to outright prohibit her from doing so, sets an Impossible Task to "prove her fitness to practice law on Phobos" and says she'll be killed if she accepts the challenge and fails. Upon Wonder Woman's advice, Steve says "You're going to hang me!". Hanging is the punishment for lying and it cannot be done without turning Steve's statement into the truth. Shooting is the penalty for telling the truth and it cannot be done without turning Steve's statement into a lie. Because the statement won't be considered a guilty plea either way, he's acquitted.
  • Kill It with Fire: One of her oft-ignored abilities, in the comics, is immunity to fire.
  • Kryptonite Factor: In The Golden Age of Comic Books, in keeping with the bondage undercurrent, she lost her powers whenever her bracelets were chained together by a man (she was tied up "incorrectly" on several occasions. Hilarity ensued.) She (like all other people, supposedly), could also be knocked out by hitting them on the right spot in the back of the head. In addition, removal of an Amazon's bracelets would send her into Unstoppable Rage. In The Silver Age of Comic Books, this was expanded to being bound in any way by a man. All these vulnerabilities were removed Post-Crisis; not being bulletproof was sufficient.

    L–R 
  • The Lad-ette: During the Golden Age, Etta Candy's Beta Kappa sorority were a bunch of feminine female Frat Bros who liked beating up Nazis and singing Bawdy Songs about their sexual desire for men.
  • Lady Land: Paradise Island/Themyscira
  • Lady of War: Some recent reimaginings.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Wonder Woman (as Diana Prince) gets into an argument with a superhero memorabilia seller about why WW is not considered cool. He says "all I know is she's never sold as well as Superman or Batman...".
  • Legacy Character:
    • During the 1990s, the Wonder Woman mantle was briefly passed to Artemis before she was killed off. Later, the mantle again changed hands, this time to Queen Hippolyta. This led to a series of confusing events where Hippolyta went back in time to the 1940s and retroactively became the "original" Wonder Woman, making Diana a legacy heroine herself. This idea was ignored by subsequent writers and done away with when DC rebooted its history during the New 52.
    • Villainous example with the Cheetah's mantle being passed on from Priscilla Rich to Debbi Domaine.
  • Leotard of Power: Her iconic costume is composed of a strapless blue star-spangled leotard with a golden breast plate.
  • Lightning Lash: Cassie Sandsmark's Lasso can channel Zeus's lightning.
  • Living Lie Detector: With help from her magic lasso. It's also canon that she's the spirit of truth, and it's hard to tell a lie around her even without the lasso. As Mercedes Lackey pointed out in the foreword to "The Circle" TPB, the lasso doesn't just make someone tell the truth, it makes them see and confront the truth. Traditionally (before the odd recent decision to make her the most violent of DC's Big Three), when she was very focused on redeeming villains who could be redeemed, the lasso was a wonderful tool because if she got it around the villain and asked him the hard questions about his motivations, he not only couldn't lie to Wonder Woman, he couldn't lie to himself.
  • Long-Lost Relative: The leader of the Citizenry is Astarte, Hippolyta's forgotten older sister, who was taken by the Citizenry in Hippolyta's place. The sisters are not fond of each other these days.
  • Love-Interest Traitor: Jason Keralis. He and Diana bond about wanting to prove themselves, and even kiss, and then it turns out he's been sabotaging The Quest the whole time.
  • Made of Iron: Her skin's not so tough against some things as other Flying Bricks, but she's still far more durable than normal humans. While pointy objects and bullets seem to annoy her a lot, blunt stuff and lava or other such things don't bother her any more than they do Superman.
  • Magic from Technology: During the Golden Age, Themyscira had advanced technology that was a mixture of science and magic, such as their "Purple Ray".
  • Magic Skirt: Her original look, but only in her very first story. Even there, a couple of panels make it clear that Wonder Woman is actually wearing culottes, not a skirt. The skirt became popular in later eras, however, whenever an artist wanted to evoke a "Golden Age Wonder Woman" look and feel (e.g., in Kingdom Come and DC: The New Frontier).
  • Magical Girl Warrior: Even more so as depicted in an anime-style Japanese statuette seen by Diana and Black Canary when the two visit Tokyo. The price tag reads "Wonder Woman: Happy Magic Fun Sword Girl - Sexy! Sexy! Fight! Fight!"note 
  • Magical Weapon:
    • Diana's iconic Lasso of Truth is a mystical weapon with the ability to compel people to tell the truth. It can also, extend in length, dispel illusions and undo mind control.
    • The Wonder Girls, Donna Troy and Cassie Sandsmark, also have magic lassos of their own. Donna's can mind control people while Cassie's summon lightning.
  • Mama Bear: It doesn't matter if you're some Eldritch Abomination or one of the Gods themselves, you do not mess with Hippolyta's daughter.
  • Martial Pacifist: As mentioned below, Diana is one of the greatest fighters in the DC Universe, and she has no problem with killing an enemy when the situation calls for it. That said, her iconic tool isn't a sword, but her Lasso of Truth, which is meant to bind and subdue her foes. Diana will always seek a peaceful solution first before a violent one.
  • Master Poisoner: Doctor Poison.
  • Metronomic Man Mashing: Wonder Woman gets this done to her by The Devil. It succeeds in pissing her off. Well, more so than she already was at him.
  • Mildly Military: In the early Silver Age, you would never have guessed that being a lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force required Diana Prince to do anything more onerous than wear a blue uniform.
  • Mirror Self: John Byrne retold Donna Troy's origin so that she was originally the mirror self of Princess Diana as a teenager, but given a separate personality by the sorceress who owned the mirror. Donna Troy was then captured by Queen Hippolyta's nemesis Dark Angel, who mistook her for Diana, and subjected her to live multiple lives that all ended in tragedy, ultimately leading to the one where Donna becomes Wonder Girl/Troia of the Teen Titans. This origin has recently been retconned out of her history since 2006.
  • More Deadly Than the Male: Batman and Superman both have codes against killing. Post-Crisis, however, Diana explicitly doesn't, which has led to conflict between them on a few occasions. Under most writers, however, she still only kills as a last resort.
  • Most Common Superpower: Depending on the Artist, her breasts can rival Power Girl.
  • Motive Decay:
    • Cheetah III, Giganta, and Circe all have severe cases of this.
    • Diana herself, since the 1990s: see Thou Shalt Not Kill, below.
  • Mr. Alt Disney: One of her minor Bronze Age villains was Wade Dazzle, a Life Drinker who sustains himself through life force drained from visitors to his theme park and fed into his preserved body.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Wonder Woman is a tall, very beautiful raven-haired Amazonian woman (and also the World's Most Beautiful Woman) who wears outfits (such as a revealing strapless leotard or a bustier-hotpants combo) that display her skin and highlight her muscular yet voluptuous body, large bust, strong toned muscles (especially her large biceps), ripped broad shoulders, and long muscular legs.
  • Muggles Do It Better: Zig-zagged depending on the writer and story, but there have been a number of occasions where mortal weapons proved not-so-useless against magical/mythological enemies.
  • Multiple-Choice Past: Her origin and history have been retconned at least half a dozen times.
  • Never My Fault: Mona Menise cracked up her car while speeding and says it's the policeman's fault for trying to make her stop.
  • Nice Girl: Depending on the Writer, of course, but emphasis will often be placed on Diana being one of the kindest and friendliest members of the JLA.
  • Not Quite Flight: For most of The Silver Age of Comic Books. Finally they just said "screw it, she flies".
  • Oh, Crap!: Both the trope and the words used by Diana in the animated movie.
  • Oh, My Gods!: As DC's most prominent character tied to Classical Mythology, she's had several over the years. "Great Hera" and "Suffering Sappho" are the most well-known but also "Merciful Minerva!", "Athena's Shield!", "All-Wise Athena!", "Aphrodite Aid me!", etc
  • On One Condition: In "Andy Gorilla - Prize Pupil", unless Ms. Gates' school meets Mr. Scragg's in its annual baseball game, she must close and merge with his in accordance with the terms of Mr. Scragg's grandfather's will.
  • Our Giants Are Bigger: Long-time Silver Age writer Robert Kanigher seems to have liked stories about giants, so giants of one sort or another kept showing up (usually as villains) all through the Silver Age.
  • Our Hydras Are Different: Wonder Woman faces a fire-breathing hydra in the George Pérez run of volume 2; she overcomes it through the fairly Boring, but Practical tack of tying all its heads together with her unbreakable lasso, then piercing its heart with arrows.
  • Our Mermaids Are Different:
    • One of Diana's suitors in the Silver Age was Ronno the Mer-Boy (later changing his alias as Manno the Mer-Man). He's a typical example of a male merfolk, though strangely he seems to have knee joints on his tail and can stand on his fins and hop about when on land.
    • In the Golden Age Gerta von Gunther created a number of winged shark mermaids, they were led by one of their number named Sharkeeta and turned against her to get retribution for being kept in tanks like pets.
  • Painted-On Pants: Wonder Girl traditionally wears these. During the Messner-Loebs run, WW also wore something like bike pants. Wondy herself follows this trope in "The Once and Future Thing", with her disguise in The Wild West. Which is odd, since she swiped it from a man, and it was still form-fitting, including in the crotch.
  • Patron God: In Wonder Woman's pre-New 52 backstory, she was molded from clay by her mother Hippolyta and given life by the Olympian goddesses to be as "beautiful as Aphrodite, wise as Athena, stronger than Hercules, and swifter than Hermes". Wonder Woman often invokes the gods in her various catchphrases, like "Great Hera!" and "Merciful Minerva" and is shown to respect and appreciate their blessings, while also confronting them for abuses of their power.
  • Perspective Flip: Wonder Woman's origin is one of Hercules' Ninth Labor specifically and Classical Mythology in general. The Amazons were the good guys, it was Hercules who betrayed their trust, they worshiped female gods (and Hermes) rather than the generally disliked Ares, etc. Justified during Marston's run as we are never shown these events directly, only told them by Hippolyta or from an "ancient Amazonian scroll". (Although it is heavily implied that Amazon version is the "true" one in Wonder Woman's universe.) Marston also gave their mythology Divine Ranks that would make more sense for a group of female warriors often fighting male-dominated people than that of the Greeks; having a good goddess (Aphrodite) fighting over dominance with an evil male anti-god (Ares/Mars) rather than there being a patriarchal Top God. Most later authors have tried to "fix" this to various extents however.
  • Pimped-Out Cape: Wonder Woman doesn't wear capes often, but when she does, they usually fit this trope.
  • Pinball Projectile: Her tiara (See Precision-Guided Boomerang below)
  • A Pirate 400 Years Too Late: Wonder Woman once faced a husband and wife team that lead a group of (mostly women) air pirates who operated out of a small fleet of aircraft. While most of the group was well adapted to "modern" (1940s) times the husband styled himself after an old timey pirate and went by Captain Redbeard. Amusingly their fight attracted the attention of a Clock Roach that then put the pirates, Diana, Steve Trevor, Etta Candy and the Holliday Girls back in the more appropriate time period for a swashbuckling confrontation on the high seas.
  • Plot Parallel: In The Once and Future Story Diana slowly realizes that the archeologist Moria is trapped in an abusive relationship which is mirrored in the legend she's translating for the researchers, in which a princess travels to Athens to save her mother from being abused by Theseus.
  • Portal Door: Paradise Island/Themyscira is host to and guardian of Doom's Doorway, a rift which leads to the outer realms of Hades and the Underworld. The realm of the gods is also much easier to access from Themyscira than most other places on earth.
  • Power Dynamics Kink: The original comics from the 1940s, created by William Marston, contain plenty of sub-dom undertones. This is a case of Real Life Writes the Plot: Marston was in a submissive relationship with two women (his wife Elizabeth and their polyamorous partner Olive Byrne). He was also a believer in the superiority of women, and proposed the idea of submission to a "loving (female) authority" as a counterbalance to the "anarchic and violent" aspects of masculinity (as he put it, "give [men] an alluring woman stronger than themselves to submit to and they'll be proud to become her willing slaves").
  • Power Loss Makes You Strong: Part of the thinking behind the Depower. Feminists shouted back "No it doesn't!"
  • Power Trio: Forms DC's "Holy Trinity" Batman and Superman. There was even a short-lived comic featuring the three called "Trinity".
  • Pragmatic Hero: Diana is willing to kill if necessary and will do so without ever losing sleep about it, unlike Batman and Superman.
  • Precision-Guided Boomerang: Her tiara, though she rarely uses it this way because it can kill people.
  • Public Domain Character: Wonder Woman herself is not the case, but much of her supporting characters are. The Greek gods, Circe, the Amazons in general (not specific Amazons) and their queen Hippolyta are all Older Than Feudalism.
  • Punny Name: Ubiquitous for lesser characters in The Golden Age of Comic Books; most notably Etta Candy for the chubby girl.
  • Put on a Bus: Anyone seen Julia Kapatelis anywhere?
  • Race Lift:
    • Etta Candy was black in the failed pilot. It was RetCanoned into the DCU with The New 52.
    • The Wonder Woman of Earth-D in The Multiverse was of Arabic descent, while the Wonder Woman of Earth-23 is black. And also looks an awful lot like Beyoncé.
    • The Wonder Woman of Azzarello and Chiang's run has a distinctly olive skin tone, though it doesn't seem to have spread to the rest of the New 52.
  • Real Women Have Curves: Wonder Woman's sidekick, Etta Candy, in the '40s. Woo woo! Etta is a notable aversion for being not the slightest bit insecure, and frequently important to the plot; although still serving as Plucky Comic Relief. Since the dawn of the Silver Age, her rare reappearances usually either depict her as insecure, or else emphasize her ability to take care of herself status while slimming her down a fair bit. However, the recent The Legend Of Wonder Woman miniseries has finally returned her original personality, with some modern polish that's actually quite appealing.
  • Really 700 Years Old: On the '70s TV show she claimed to be more than 2,500 years old.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: Sarge Steel, at least while not having his body inhabited by Dr. Psycho.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: When she started to lose her soul in "Ends of the Earth", her eyes turned red until she got it back.
  • Red Shirt Army: The Amazons keep becoming this in both animated and live-action film adaptations.
  • Reforged into a Minion:
    • Queen Atomia has created a machine and chamber that can turn people into her mindless "Neutron" and "Proton" slaves, altering their physical body and greatly reducing their mental capacity. When she tries to use the Proton Chamber on Diana and her friends Diana destroys the chamber.
    • Evidently this is what happened to Donna Troy in the New 52, despite those that turned her into a villain and her actions as one previously being explained as part of Diana's altered memories and Donna's backstory as Wonder Girl being restored a James Robinson brought back in her villainous history from the New 52 (despite it now contradicting canon in and outside of the WW book).
  • Reluctant Warrior: She may be an Amazon, but she constantly advocates diplomacy. At one point in the Post-Crisis continuity she is forced to kill Maxwell Lord since he had telepathic control over Superman, and (while under the Lasso of Truth's effects) refused to not use it to kill other heroes.
  • Requisite Royal Regalia: Her tiara.
  • Retool: Poor Diana has gone through so many of these over the years, you'd think she was some hanging-by-the-fingernails C-lister instead of one of DC's "Big Three". A quick thumbnail of the bigger ones:
    • At the dawn of the Bronze Age, Dennis O Neil infamously had all of Themyscira Put on a Bus and turned Diana into a Badass Normal kung-fu fighter, apparently to tap into the popularity of Emma Peel; she also ran a boutique by day and pretty much gave up both her Secret Identity and her star-spangled costume. This so-called "mod" era was derided by many (most notably Gloria Steinem) but hung on for about three years before unceremoniously fading away.
    • The immediate Post-Crisis period saw George Pérez doing a lot of tinkering and distilling with her origins, tying Themyscira to a good half of the Greek Dodekatheon (instead of just Aphrodite and Athena), setting her first contact with Man's World in contemporary times (The '80s), and sidelining traditional sidekicks Etta Candy and Steve Trevor in favor of his new Boston-based characters. Perez also soft-pedaled the idea of Diana as a "superhero" (apart from outright refusing a Secret Identity, she initially turned down an invite to join Justice League International) in favor emphasizing her ambassador work between the Amazons and Man's World; when she did fight, it was usually against some rogue God or Evil Sorcerer with a specific beef against the Amazons.
    • Alas, all this ambassador work crashed and burned in the War of the Gods Crisis Crossover - as did Perez's Real Life relationship with DC Comics. Enter Bill Messner-Loebs, who quickly put Themyscira back on that bus, and just a few issues later revealed that Circe made the whole place go kaboom. Most of Perez's supporting characters got booted, while the stories in general shifted to generally Denser and Wackier Urban Fantasy fare (that story where Diana worked at a taco joint to make ends meet? Loebs' idea).
      • Eventually, public and/or editorial demand got Loebs to bring back Themyscira... whereupon he had Queen Hipployta take about fifty levels in Jerkass and hatch a conspiracy to crown an Anti-Hero Substitute named Artemis the new Wonder Woman. It wasn't long before Artemis was killed in the line of duty, but this incident pretty much poisoned all ties between Diana and Themyscira...
    • Then Loebs got fed up and left. Cue John Byrne taking over and moving Diana to Gateway City, a thinly-veiled pastiche of San Francisco with a brand-new supporting cast (most notably Wonder Girl Cassie Sandsmark). Ironically, this was somewhat less drastic than the Loebs retool(s); Byrne had great respect for Perez and took steps to restore the old status-quo and scope of Diana's adventures, and it's even been argued that his supporting characters were just Perez's.
      • ... until Byrne had Diana killed off by the arch-devil Neron, then resurrected as a straight-up Physical God by the Olympians. In concept this meant she was more powerful than ever; in practice Olympus' Alien Non-Interference Clause basically turned her into a side-character in her own book while Hipployta - in atonement for the aforementioned conspiracy - became the "official" Wonder Woman and had all the actual adventures. Where all this was meant to go wasn't especially clear, as Byrne's run was Cut Short, and his last issue unceremoniously returned Diana to the mantle.
    • The next three writers - Eric Luke, Phil Jimenez, and Greg Rucka - were decidedly less keen on rocking the boat, though Jimenez's run did see Themyscira getting blown up by Darkseid (then rebuilt), and Diana's home base shifting to New York, with a legitimate embassy for the Amazons. For about five years or so, all was still...
    • ... then the Max Lord incident happened, followed by Infinite Crisis. Once the dust settled, Themyscira was on that bus again, and it was decided that Diana was too "out of touch" with humanity. Cue the return of her Secret Identity... as a field agent for the Department of Metahuman Affairs.
  • Retraux: Issue #0 of the New 52 reboot is styled after Golden Age Wonder Woman comics.
  • The Rival: Artemis of the Bana-Mighdall (later becomes The Lancer)
  • Rogues Gallery: Ares/Mars, Cheetah, Circe, Giganta, Dr. Psycho, Dr. Cyber, Angle Man, Paula Von Gunther. Gunther eventually makes a Heel–Face Turn, however.
  • Royals Who Actually Do Something: Queen Hippolyta of Themyscira isn't above getting her hands dirty (and, in one bit of comics continuity, was Wonder Woman during World War II). Her daughters, Diana and Donna, are more than happy to follow in their mother's footsteps, Diana as the current Wonder Woman and Donna as the first Wonder Girl (now Troia).
  • Rule of Perception: While most super heroes and DC's in particular suffer from incosistent showings Wonder Woman is hit extra hard by the fact that the powers she displayed on panel were clearly less than those of Superman and The Flash, but statements on panel would suggest she was stronger and faster than them. This wasn't a problem in the Golden Age, where the Shared Universe only really mattered to characters who did not have their own ongoing series. Events of Action Comics would often contradict each other, from spot light character to spotlight such as Zatara flat out ending World War II did not end the conflict in Superman's tales. Super strength/speed/etc. simply did not work the same way in Wonder Woman's stories as others and all was good. But as the shared universe began to assert itself more in the Silver Age it meant characters and events had to become consistent with each other, leading to conflict between writers who could not decide whether Wonder Woman's displays of power should be less or greater than other superheroes based on previous showings or consistent statements.

    S–Z 
  • Sadly Mythtaken: Wonder Woman is only loosely based on Greek and Roman Mythology with writers often taking liberties...sometimes very generous liberties. When another society's faith is borrowed from it tends to be twisted even further. The series has enough examples for its own page.
  • Same-Sex Triplets:
  • Sanity Slippage: Pre-Crisis, if Wonder Woman or any Amazon lost their bracelets, they slowly turned batshit crazy. Justified in that they were a punishment for the Amazons sins.
  • Schizo Tech: Pre-Crisis, Paradise Island had both magic and advanced technology. For instance, they built the Invisible Jet. Since they had a magic scrying device that let them observe developments on the outside world at will, and they were a scholarly culture with nothing but time on their hands to invent things, this actually makes perfect sense. Post-Crisis, this was deemed confusing, and the Amazons were cast solidly back into the Bronze Age.
  • Secret Identity: Though not much anymore. Lampshaded in the Simone run, with Tom Tresser even telling her that she's the worst person at keeping a secret identity he's ever known.
  • Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Diana's mission in Wonder Woman: Odyssey.
  • Sex Slave: In the backstory Diana's mother Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, was once enslaved by the demi-god Heracles (sent by Ares in his war against Athena) along with her people for his sexual desires. Athena freed Hippolyta on the condition that she would not seek revenge, but Heracles escaped anyway.
  • Shooting Superman: Most goons like to stand directly in front of her before shooting at her, regardless of the well-known fact that she can block bullets, and is just as super-durable as Superman besides.
  • Sidekick: Wonder Girl, Etta Candy. And the Holiday Girls, young women from Holiday women's college who assisted WW, did investigative work, got caught and tied up and rescued a lot. Many of them were from Etta's "Beeta Lamda" sorority, where a common pledge prank was that you had to walk around campus in baby outfits with diapers and a bottle.
  • Signature Instrument: During The Golden Age of Comic Books, Wonder Woman's gal pal and fellow Nazi hunter Etta Candy played a sousaphone, which she used on at least two occasions to seem beneath notice before pouncing on and attacking Nazi spies.
  • Skilled, but Naive: Mixed with a dollop of Good Cannot Comprehend Evil in George Perez's run, which had her fresh off Themyscira. In her late teens, she had been endowed with great intelligence, but she struggled with the concept of Barbara Minerva being deceptive and wanting to steal her lasso, or Myndi Mayer unable to break her cocaine addiction, leading to her drug-induced suicide. Those things were utterly foreign to her, though they helped her become Older and Wiser.
  • Sleeps in the Nude: Diana seems to have a habit of sleeping au natural.
  • Some Nutty Publicity Stunt:
    • Wonder Woman provoked what may have been the first comic book appearance of this trope, in one of her earliest adventures. Stealing a car from some Axis agents, they start shooting at her. As Wonder Woman deflects the bullets of one bad guy's tommy gun (with one hand) while driving off, the other says "I saw her on the stage! Let her go, she's probably doing some publicity stunt!" Which shows you how they lost the war.note 
    • Post-Crisis, it's deconstructed. She's a novelty, so much so that Myndi Mayer appoints herself as Diana's agent, which both Diana and Julia reluctantly agree is necessary. Myndi really does admire Diana, though, so it isn't the same exploitation that Rex Leech had with Superboy.
  • Speaks Fluent Animal: Diana has the infrequently acknowledged ability to talk to animals.
  • Star-Spangled Spandex: Along with Wonder Girl, Donna Troy.
  • Statuesque Stunner: Is often drawn this way in more recent comics. Averted in the original version, where she was normally proportioned and could easily pass for a pretty but otherwise unremarkable American woman when out of costume.
  • Strapped to a Bomb: This happened at least once. She wasn't just tied to the bomb, the bomb was dropped on a city. It was on the cover of a comic. This one, in fact.
  • Straw Feminist: When written badly, much to the ire of a lot of WW fans.
  • Strange Salute: Since Post-Crisis, the Amazons salute by crossing their wrists above either their brow or across their chests with their fists clenched.
  • Stripperiffic: JMS tried to deliberately avert this when redesigning the costume for his run. It's debatable as to his success; true, her legs are covered up, but her new breastplate actually shows off more cleavage than the old one, and the jacket usually comes off when she fights (and was eventually abandoned).
  • Strong and Skilled: Even when she's not portrayed as strong as Superman, she is still stronger than everyone else, and more than makes up for the rest by being a consummate master of martial combat.
  • Superhero Origin: She's the chosen champion of the Amazons and their patron goddesses, tasked with spreading the message of love, peace, and justice.
  • Super-Senses: Diana can sense magic! In some versions her normal senses are enhanced as well.
  • Super-Speed: She has the speed of Hermes, and according to a recent issue of Justice League, can hit and dodge faster than Superman thanks to her warrior training.
    • She'd still lose in a race, though. As Batman put it, "Who's faster: Bruce Lee or Usain Bolt?"
    • In another, older issue, a variant of when she first met Flash, she showed off how fast she was. He countered... by running backward and still beating her. She was amused.
      Wonder Woman: I warn you, the gods granted me the speed of Mercury.
      Flash: Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were fast.
    • According to an issue of JLA, the speed of Mercury is around mach three. Pretty fast by most standards... but the Flash has been quoted as saying, "Can we pick up the pace? Mach ten is a crawl!"
  • Super-Strength: As touted in her first outing she is "stronger than Hercules".
  • Super-Toughness: Exactly how much toughness she has depends on the writer, but generally she'll fall under this trope. She usually likes to block bullets with her bracelets instead of her skin, though.
  • Superhero Speciation: Nowadays, Diana has found her distinctive place in the DC trinity: while Superman provides the inspiration of good and Batman with his cunning, Wonder Woman provides an element of pragmatic power willing to go a step further than them and kill her enemies if necessary, while also using her diplomatic/political power as Themyscira's representative to the rest of the world to advocate for peace whenever possible.
  • Swiss-Army Superpower: In the earlier (Pre-Crisis/Silver Age) comics the titular heroine's emblematic lasso served as more than a vaguely fetishistic lie-detector. Over the course of a DC Showcase anthology she used it as an impromptu propeller, an emergency roller coaster track extension, an electrical conduit, another propeller, a drill, and some sort of sonic dinosaur repellent. She also used it occasionally to actually snag things. Specifically, a nuclear missile, all of Paradise Island, and a lightning bolt.
  • Take That! / Shout-Out: In one of the issues following Amazons Attack!, Steel tells Nemesis to spy on suspected Amazons because "we don't want an Amazons Attack 2".
  • Tailfin Walking: Subverted with Manno the Merman, who hops on land.
  • Targeted to Hurt the Hero: Paula von Gunther's husband was brutally murdered in front of her by the Nazis for the couple's refusal to cooperate, right before they kidnapped her daughter Gerta in order to force Paula to work for them lest they do the same to Gerta.
  • 13 Is Unlucky: Played for Laughs. General Darnell says he won't order Steve on a mission because, if he vanishes without a trace trying to accomplish it, he'll be the twelfth operative to do so.
    Steve: You scared me for a second, Gen. Darnell! I thought I'd be the thirteenth!
  • Those Three Gals: the cynical Amazons Hellene, Oenone and Iphthime. They double as Blonde, Brunette, Redhead.
  • Thou Shalt Not Kill: Originally played straight but averted more and more since the '90s, considering these days Diana is (usually) perfectly willing to kill if she judges it necessary and will never second-guess making that decision.
    • Which makes sense since Wonder Woman is a dedicated warrior, though she always tries for peace first.
      • Pre-Crisis, she was one of the most devout Technical Pacifist types in the DCU. That was part of the point of having a lasso (aside from Moulton's interests) — it was a non-lethal weapon. Back then, the Amazons certainly knew how to fight, but only for self-defense. Paradise Island was a "paradise" with lessons to teach us because unlike man's world, it was peaceful. There's a reason they were aided by the goddess of love and the arch-enemy of Amazon society was the god of war.
      • Kingdom Come. Wonder Woman has a slow Heroic Breakdown as she keeps pointing out she's a warrior - why else would she have a sword? - culminating in her killing of Von Bach. Batman gives her a What the Hell, Hero?.
      • This has led to Flanderization by people completely missing the point that she was acting violently out of character in Kingdom Come. That's why Batman and everyone were so shocked by her killing Von Bach. Since then, readers and writers alike seem to have pegged her as the one member of DC's Big Three who is willing to kill—which, in light of most of her history, may count as pretty drastic Motive Decay.
      • In fact, the Amazons in Post-Crisis were cursed because they took lethal vengeance on Heracles' men for their crimes. Athena gave them a What the Hell, Hero? "The Reason You Suck" Speech to them, and forced them to eternally guard the world from monsters on Themyscira apart from the World of Men.
      • Which actually obscures things more than it clears them up - ever since Post-Crisis, a good 50% of Wonder Woman's rogues gallery tends to consist of mythological monsters, rogue gods, and other things that probably couldn't be tried by mortal law even if she did bring them in alive. What Measure Is a Non-Human? tends to kick in hard here, and even the most devoutly pacifistic authors will often have her kill gorgons and minotaurs with nary a complaint.
      • In DC: The New Frontier, she frees a group of south-east Asian sex slaves and has no qualms about allowing them to kill the men who enslaved them, causing a big argument with Superman.
  • Threatening Shark: Themyscira is protected by Megalodons in the sea around it, and the giant sharks have even offered themselves for a Heroic Sacrifice to help protect the island.
  • Token Minority: Nubia, who was even explicitly called the "Black Wonder Woman" in The '70s. Later years have shown the Amazons to be more racially diverse, so Phillippus, while the most prominent black Amazon, doesn't stick out quite so much. Nubia was the black Wonder Woman. In this version of the story, Hippolyta had originally been directed to make two figures, one dark, one light. The black baby was stolen by Ares and thereby hangs the tale.
  • Tomboy and Girly Girl: During WWII the Holliday Girls contained a pair of close friends who fit, the very feminine and boy crazy Glamora Treat and the rough and tumble tomboy Bobby Strong.
  • Took a Level in Badass: What happens when Wondy wields The Mighty Thor's Mjölnir? This.
  • Too Much for Man to Handle: Di's Lasso of Truth has helped her defeat enemies by forcing them to confront that their own goals will destroy them, most prominently in George Perez's Wonder Woman (1987) Ares storyline. Ares walked away from his plans and agreed to a long standing truce after Diana showed him what would happen if he won with the lasso.
  • A True Hero: Depending on the writer, Diana is depicted as a more tactful hero than others such as Superman or Batman, because she shares similar abilities and moral character to the former, but also has the intellect and skills of the latter. In addition to this, unlike Superman or Batman, she considers herself to be a diplomat and if a crisis can be solved by extending a hand in friendship, then she'll gladly seek that option. But if the problem requires more permanent measures to be resolved, then she'll do what she must.
  • Tyop on the Cover: Fans of Classical Mythology getting into Post Crisis and onward Wonder Woman often spell Theymscira wrong, or rather they spell it right but then realize it doesn't match up with what they see in their comic books. It should be Themiscyra, but for whatever reason, DC published a comic back in the 1980s that switched the 'i' and 'y' and never bothered to switch it back.
  • Unlimited Wardrobe: In the Silver Age during her "mod" years Diana had a large constantly changing wardrobe. Other versions of the character have also had "an outfit for every occasion".
  • Unscaled Merfolk: Gerta von Gunther did some experiments on a handful of sharks which turned them into mermaid like individuals with human level intelligence. She then kept them in fish tanks like pets which infuriated them and they attempted to get revenge on Gera and the Amazons under the leadership of one of their number named Sharkeeta.
  • Unstoppable Rage: For Wonder Woman and other Amazons in their pre-Crisis incarnations, the Bracelets of Submission acted as a check against the use of unrestrained power. If Wonder Woman's bracelets were removed, she became intoxicated with power, violent and nearly unstoppable. Like some readers, villains could be confused about the "rules" of Wonder Woman's bracelets, thinking that their removal would also remove her strength (cue Oh, Crap! moment for the bad guys).
  • Villainous Crush: Dr Psycho has a twisted infatuation on Wonder Woman. Of course, it's not reciprocated.
  • Very Special Episode:
    • One of the few well-handled varieties dealt with the drug induced suicide of Wonder Woman's publicist Myndi Mayer early in Perez's run in Who Killed Myndi Mayer? It was so well-done it became one of the stories included in the Greatest Wonder Woman Stories Ever Told omnibus.
    • The Once and Future Story, published in 1998, has a story dealing with abusive relationships as its theme. The plot details how a princess of a tribe of warrior women saves her mother from an abusive relationship with Theseus, while Wonder Woman notices that the archeologist Moria is likewise in a similar relationship with her husband being the abuser. The back cover also has some information and phone numbers for dealing with such relationships.
  • Virtuous Vegetarianism: Wonder Woman is occasionally written as vegetarian. She is The Heart of the "Big Three" and is one of the most heroic and nice (though not necessarily gentle) superheroes in the DC universe. She is notably not vegan, however, if only because that would put most forms of ice cream off of her menu.
  • Wacky Fratboy Hijinx: The Holliday Girls spend far more time participating in wacky sorority girl hijinx, and beating up Nazis, than they do going to class. This gets them in real trouble on occasion such as the time two of the Heyday triplets were kidnapped from the Girls' Haunted House mostly because the place was incredibly unsecured and no one knew where they were since the older girls grabbed them and tossed them in a truck to bring them there on a whim.
  • Warrior vs. Sorcerer:
    • The titular character is a superhumanly strong and fast Warrior Princess who fights with a sword and a magic lasso. One of her most iconic enemies is Circe, a misanthropic witch.
    • Another evil magician among Diana's rogues gallery is Thomas Asquith Randolph, the White Magician. He was once a hero but ultimately became obsessed with gaining power. He was defeated by Diana with help from her fellow Amazon Artemis and, ironically enough, Circe.
  • Waterfall into the Abyss: Themyscira is a set of floating islands with waterfalls.
  • Wearing a Flag on Your Head: Her tiara and leotard.
  • Will Not Tell a Lie: As the Spirit of Truth, even a secret identity is difficult for her.
  • World's Best Warrior: Certainly the strongest Amazon warrior. In general, she's one of the biggest threats in The DCU. She's Superman with combat training.
  • World's Most Beautiful Woman: Supposed to be this in DC, due to Aphrodite's blessings.
  • Writers Cannot Do Math: In Issue #96, Angle Man traps Wonder Woman inside a Time Machine and sends her to the year 4457 but later says he sent her 2700 years into the future. By that math, he sent her from the year 1757.
  • Xenafication: Xena herself was ten times more compassionate and sympathetic than the 2011 TV version of Wondy. This version of Wondy seems to have been built around the notion that "strong women need to be more ruthless than anyone else!"

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