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Comic Book / Wonder Woman (1942)

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Diana sending Mars for a tumble

Wonder Woman's first self titled book, though she was already starring as the feature of the anthology comic Sensation Comics which was published concurrently with this volume until 1953. This volume was initially published from 1942 until 1986, used in 2010 for the Wonder Woman: Odyssey story line to celebrate the 600th issue of Wonder Woman, and then returned to once more in 2020.

Wonder Woman Volume 1 ran from 1942 to 1986, with over three hundred issues to its name, through the Golden and Silver Ages of Comic Books into the Bronze Age. These issues covered a lot of themes, characters and story arcs, with the tales starting out on what would eventually be called "Earth-Two" and ending on what would be termed "Earth-One" but can generally be organized by these writers and eras:

Volume 1 was brought to a close with Crisis on Infinite Earths after which the Amazon princess and her people were reimagined for the new DC Universe in the pages of Wonder Woman (1987).

Stories included:

Tropes included in Wonder Woman volume one:

    open/close all folders 

    In General 
Tropes which apply across all of the eras in the book.
  • Absent Animal Companion: While Jumpa's long absences are explained by the fact that Diana keeps her on Paradise Island, Diana also owns a horse named Serge who never appears again without explanation after Paula von Gunther's Heel–Face Turn. Jumpa shows up occasionally in later iterations, only to once again go missing without explanation as the comic continues.
  • Academy of Adventure: Holliday College, where at least 100 of the students are spies in training, Paula von Gunther has a secret laboratory under the mess hall, and regular odd villains try to sneak in or attack.
  • Advanced Ancient Acropolis: Paradise Island had healing rays, invisible aircraft, and telepathic videophones along with classical architecture.
  • Alien Space Bats: The desire to avoid this was a large part of the reason the book moved so swiftly away from the Golden Age continuity is that within a year of WWII ending Diana and Steve Trevor's efforts had ensured there were multiple extraterrestrial governments with treaties with the United States and embassies in Washington DC, which meant that Earth-Two's history should be diverging quite distinctly from what was actually happening post WWII.
  • Aerith and Bob: The Amazons of Paradise Island were women from throughout history who had come to the island seeking refuge and chose to take an oath to uphold the Amazons' peaceful protective ways then drank from the Fountain of Youth and survived ingesting the dangerous water so their names were incredibly varied, including Althea, Diana, Fatsis, Gerta, Hippolyta, Mala, Metala, Orana, Sophia and Zoe.
  • Affectionate Nickname: Steve Trevor affectionately calls Wonder Woman his "Angel".
  • Arbitrary Skepticism: Issue #16 has Wonder Woman skeptical of the story of Pluto's abduction of Persephone despite her own origins and the fact that Aphrodite herself is relating the tale.
  • Battle Couple: Wonder Woman, Amazon princess, hero and champion, has been working alongside and had romantic entanglements/relationships with Ace Pilot and spy Steve Trevor since her earliest appearances. Their Golden and Silver Age iterations each got married and had a daughter together.
  • Befriending the Enemy: A common tactic of Wonder Woman, most famously with Paula von Gunther. It doesn't always work, and it doesn't always stick, but she'll frequently make the attempt.
  • Blocking Stops All Damage: Wonder Woman's braces are divinely created to block just about anything.
  • Bound and Gagged: Her creator was into bondage himself, and he definitely wrote it into the job description.note  The original Wonder Woman has superhuman abilities... unless her vambraces were welded together 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, especially given that she nearly constantly allows herself to be captured in order to be a Play-Along Prisoner. 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. Steve Trevor tended to end up captured and tied up pretty often as well, and unlike his girlfriend could not just snap the ropes and/or chains when he wanted to leave.
  • Chance Activation: Etta Candy and Steve Trevor are discussing how impossible it's going to be to get a spacecraft they're in to do anything and Etta manages to launch them both into space by plugging in two wires and pulling a lever. Neither are pleased since it was accidental, the government is probably going to charge them with theft and they still have no clue how to actually control it
  • Charles Atlas Superpower: The Golden Age Wonder Woman got her super-powers from training in "Amazonian concentration" — it was even a skill that Amazons could teach to normal human females. Wonder Woman had been established (in the first issue of her own comic book, June 1942), as unquestionably a clay statue brought to life but having the same abilities as any other Amazon, just a bit more, or at an earlier than usual age. By The Silver Age of Comic Books, new editor Robert Kanigher insisted on having the story retconned to establish her as having been conceived and born in the usual way and bequeathed powers straight from the Gods in a sequence reminiscent of Sleeping Beauty's Aurora having gifts bestowed upon her by the fairies.
  • Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: Connie Sellecca was used by some as a model to base the Silver Age Wonder Woman on.
  • Continuity Reboot: Wonder Woman was retooled very heavily several times between 1965 and 1985. They finally gave up and restarted at #1, throwing out all previous continuity. Fans who only knew her from her job as the token woman in Justice League/Superfriends didn't understand why suddenly she was ten years younger and could hover, but really, the new Wondie as published was less revisionist than planned. It had gotten that bad.
  • Costume Evolution: Wondy's original flowing spangled culottes quickly tightened into bike shorts during the Golden Age, and then started shrinking into her iconic leotard look in the Silver Age. There was considerable controversy over her being "underdressed" and M.C. Gaines consulted female psychologists to ascertain where, if anyplace, he should draw the line.
  • Eating Optional: The Amazons are immortal while on Paradise Island, meaning they don't need to eat, but do for enjoyment and to improve their quality of life. Off the island they're just as mortal as anyone else, if a bit stronger and hardier, and need to eat like any other human.
  • Era-Specific Personality: Writer Robert Kanigher, who took over the book after Marston's death, started the infamous trend for each new writer to completely alter Diana's personality to their own desire and ignore what had come before. Diana ping pongs between demure, naive, gritty warrior, a women's liberation mouthpiece, ambassador to man's world, elegant royalty and military general.
  • Fantastic Race Weapon Affinity: Atlanteans typically use tridents and bidents. They're mostly Apparently Human Merfolk as the fish tailed merfolk she interacts with most commonly are her friends who live just off of Paradise Island.
  • 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.
  • Mortality Ensues: Traditionally the Amazons were only immortal while on Paradise Island and while upholding their oaths. If they left and revoked their oaths they were just as human as anyone else and aged at the same rate.
  • Mother Goddess: Aphrodite was responsible for the creation of Paradise Island and the formation of the Amazon culture. She was also responsible for creating Wonder Woman herself.
  • Mum Looks Like a Sister: Hippolyta looks young enough to be Diana and Donna's sister, but is actually their mother and is a lot older than she looks.
  • One-Gender School: Holliday College is a women's college.
  • Only the Chosen May Pilot: The original Robot Plane can reject pilots and only allow those they chose to pilot them. Despite its AI the Robot Plane doesn't start doing this until some aliens try to take it apart for parts, which makes it so selective it at one point abducts Steve Trevor so that it can have a pilot it approves of while Diana is busy.
  • Parrying Bullets: The Amazons have made a game of it, called Bullets-and-Bracelets. They do wear armor to play the game though, as a precaution.
  • Reed Richards Is Useless: Averted during Marston's run on the comic. Paula von Gunther's teleportation device causes space transportation to start becoming more common, with the Emperor of Saturn and Queen of Venus making alliances with the US and having ambassadors in Washington DC. This was promptly dumped by the wayside in favor of playing the trope straight after Martson died and Robert Kanigher took up writing duties.
  • Single Language Planet: The Saturnians speak the same language across the several moons their empire encompasses, though their agents stealing humans as slaves have also learned English.
  • Solar System Neighbors: Lots of examples; Wonder Woman becomes fast friends with the winged Queen of Venus, gains a nemesis in Mars who rules the ethereal Martians, fights and then becomes allies with the Emperor of Saturn, and alongside the Venusians overthrows the despotic misandrist Queen of Mercury. Earth is also invaded by a group from Neptune.
  • Speed Echoes: Diana's speed "playing" bullets and bracelets is usually depicted by her arms being visible in multiple positions.
  • Surveillance as the Plot Demands: The Amazons had a scrying device with which Hippolyta could view anything on earth, or elsewhere in the cosmos, with ease if she so desired. She mostly used it to keep an eye on her daughter's exploits.
  • Thou Shalt Not Kill: Diana 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.
  • Undying Loyalty: After Paula's brainwashed slaves are freed by the Amazons, and prior to Paula's Heel–Face Turn, one of her former slaves helps free Paula and tries to help Paula re-enslave her and the other freed victims.
  • Weapons Kitchen Sink: In the original stories dodging and deflecting bullets was the most popular game on Paradise Island. This meant that the Amazons of Paradise Island used such weapons as guns, nets, lassos, swords, cannons, bows and arrows, clubs, spears, throwing knives, plant toxins & seeds, mentally controlled fighter planes, stolen Saturnian ray guns, and magic as personal weapons all alongside each other, all while holding to a strict no killing rule. Most of them preferred unarmed combat or lassos though, as it made it easier to avoid killing opponents.

    "Charles Moulton" 
Issues 1 - 29, from 1942 to 1948.Charles Moulton was a pen name used by Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston and his assistant Joye Murchison, who used the pen name both together and separately. Their writing paired with Harry G. Peter's art marks the book's unmistakable Golden Age era. Issue 29 was Peter on his own after Marston's death.

Each issue in this era contains three densely packed Wonder Woman stories, which are either three separate unrelated tales or three chapters telling one full tale, which may have large swaths of time between them. These stories are divided by a "Wonder Women of History" short story simplifying the life of a historically important woman into a short comic and a short two page written word story building around a central mystery. The stories in the early issues are almost entirely self contained save for Paula von Gunther's character development, and while all the stories remain easy to read as stand alone entities the final few issues start pulling together an overarching plot concerning the disgruntled slavers of Saturn, who are now out of a job.

    Robert Kanigher 
Issues 30 - 177 (1948 to 1969), 204 - 217 (1972 to 1975), & 286, (1981).Robert Kanigher has had the longest run as a writer for Wonder Woman to date, which if one counts liberally could be considered to have spanned twenty-two years. While his first stories are arguably still part of The Golden Age of Comic Books and kept traditional artist Harry G. Peter he swiftly departed from the idiosyncrasies that characterized "Charles Moulton"'s run for The Silver Age of Comic Books. The official switch over from "Earth-Two", which is where DC's Golden Age stories reside, to "Earth-One" occurred in issue 98, but the stories had already had that Silver Age flavor for quite some time before this.
  • Adaptational Jerkass: With the switch in writers after William Moulton Marston's death Steve Trevor and Gen. Darnell become noticeably more sexist, frequently saying things they'd once have been happy to have Wonder Woman and the Holliday Girls' help with are a man's job and belittling their once trusted ally Etta Candy. This changes were somewhat subtle at first, but the subtlety was dropped when the book switched from the Golden Age Earth-Two to the Silver Age Earth-One.
  • Batman Can Breathe in Space: Silver Age Diana had earrings to provide life support in space by creating a "transparent envelope". Since she was also sculpted from clay and brought to life through magic it is entirely possible she does in fact not need oxygen to survive.
  • Chickification: When Robert Kanigher took over as writer after Marston's death a lot of Etta's "non womanly" strengths were either downplayed or portrayed as flaws. When H. G. Peter died too Kanigher took the chance to retool Wonder Woman entirely (into what became her Earth-1 incarnation) and made Etta a conventionally 50's feminine (in both appearance and mannerism) Damsel in Distress whose only remaining character trait was liking candy.
  • Creator Cameo: When working on a retool Robert Kanigher drew himself in the comic, and had his avatar personally "fire" a bunch of characters from the book.
  • Not Quite Flight: Kanigher gave Diana the ability to "glide on air currents".
  • Our Giants Are Bigger: Long-time 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.
  • Stay in the Kitchen: When Robert Kanigher took over writing duties following Marston's death Steve started spouting this viewpoint at least three times an issue to and about every and any woman on the planet, including Wonder Woman, as whatever he was headed out to do was suddenly always "no job for a woman". He tended to be outright downgrading and insulting towards "Diana Prince" and Etta Candy despite having worked well with them before and only trying to exclude Diana, who in that identity supposedly had no fighting abilities, when going into a fight.

Earth-Two (30 - 97)

  • 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.
  • Artistic License – Paleontology: When Wonder Woman goes back in time in "The Runaway Time Express" and finds a Tyrannosaurus rex terrorizing some cavemen, she figures out it must have somehow escaped the ice age.
  • Bathtub Mermaid: After shooting Di and Steve with his Kal-C-M Ray Uvo dumps them both in a giant fishbowl with a couple of angry aquatic extraterrestrials.
  • Big Fancy House: South Haven, where Sunny South grew up, is an old southern mansion with enough rooms to house a family reunion and a bunch of the Holliday Girls at once without people tripping over each other.
  • Boarding Party: As the Amazons have a strict no-killing rule they have to use their fleet of spacecraft to get close enough to board the ships of Uvo's fleet and take those on board hostage in order to defeat them.
  • Can Only Move the Eyes: When Di and Steve are hit by Uvo's Kal-C-M Ray and petrified they are still able to move their eyes to watch what's going on around them.
  • Captain Superhero: Steve spends a bit as "Captain Wonder"
  • Cartoon Bomb: While the explosive in the actual comic is of a sleek silver inconspicuous design the cover for issue #47 depicts Wonder Woman and a robot duplicate fighting over a round black bomb with a lit fuse.
  • Clingy Costume: Wonder Woman #80 has Diana fall asleep one day (near a pond, no less) then wake up to find herself trapped in a mask that's rigged to explode.
  • 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.
  • Distressed Dude: Ronno the Mer-Boy qualifies, partly due to him always putting himself in harm's way just to impress Diana, and partly because, being a merman, he is pretty much helpless on land.
  • Driven to Madness: Deborah "Debbie" Domaine was forced into the role of the second Cheetah by Kobra, and eventually went mad due to their control and manipulations of her life.
  • Epic Ship-on-Ship Action: Capt. Storm's final battle against the Royal Navy is shown in a flashback, with his ship pulled up alongside a navy ship and each blasting away at each other with cannons until Storm's vessel starts to sink.
  • Evil Is Hammy: Elektro claims to have captured Wonder Woman and dramatically sweeps back a curtain on a stage before his fellow gangsters and waits until they've all tried shooting at her and having their bullets repelled to declare that she's actually a robot which they can use to destroy the real thing.
  • Evil Twin: Vance Trotter's twin brother Globe kills their uncle for the inheritance.
  • Fake Action Prologue: Issue 32 appears to open with Uvo bombing the Empire State building and leaving it a pile of burning rubble. The next page reveals that this was a slightly sized down model on the planet Uranus and that the bombing is just a test for the intended attack on Earth.
  • Fake Town: Issue 32 opens on Uvo making practice bombing runs on scale models of several city blocks of New York, Paris and London in preparation for an attack on Earth.
  • Family Disunion: All of Col. South's niephlings and his daughter Sunny come to South Haven for a reunion. Col. South is then murdered, along with one of his nephews, by another nephew who also tries to kill Sunny. His remaining niephlings all prove to be jerks as well, with everyone more concerned about who's going to get the inheritance and the inconvenience of sticking around for the murder investigation than South's death.
  • Frameup: Elektro tries to frame Wonder Woman for a series of bank robberies by using a robot duplicate to commit them, but no one believes his attempt to defame her and the fact that the crimes are being committed by a robot is quickly made public in a fight with the real Wondy.
  • Gender Flip: After Marston died and Kanigher took over the book Kanigher quickly started replacing female supporting characters with male characters with no explanation, even though it was supposedly the same continuity. Characters replaced included Deisra of Venus, Queen Moonbeam and Queen Celerita, whom Kanigher replaced with Vertigo of Venus, King Moono and King Celerito.
  • Ghost Pirate: (#48) The title page for "The Treasure of Capt. Storm" depicts Capt. Storm and his crew as ghostly pirates aboard their sunken vessel, but in the story itself they only appear in flashback and the real villains are the modern day pirates who end up hunting for Storm's buried treasure.
  • Gratuitous Latin: Hippolyta shouts "Venus Nobiscum" when leading the Amazons into battle against the Uranians. This doubles as a shout out to a book by the then recently deceased former writer on the book and creator of Wonder Woman William Marston who wrote a book by that title.
  • Hat of Authority: While all non-slave Uranians wear headgear at all times Lord Uvo's pointed helm-hat is notably different and more distinguished than those of the rank and file.
  • Hell Hole Prison: Uvo consigns the women who oppose him to imprisonment in his walled in model cities, which he then tests nuclear weapons on.
  • He-Man Woman Hater: Uvo and his Uranians despise women and have conscripted all of theirs and any they capture in their never ending war to a life of slavery. He then uses many of those slaves by placing them in his several city-block models of earth cities and then dropping atomic weapons on them to observe the effectiveness of his planned attacks.
  • A House Divided: In "Who Killed Col. South?" all the cousins are antagonistic and cruel to each other even though they know there's a murderer in the house, save for the twin brothers. In the end it turns out the twins have actually been reduced to one as the killer offed his brother and has been using caring for his brother to hide his actions
  • Inheritance Murder: "Who Killed Col. South?" in Issue #43 features a villain planning to kill his relatives for their family's fortune. He does manage to kill two, but misses the rest.
  • Just Like Robin Hood: Robin Hood himself shows up as a merry scoundrel in "Wonder Woman Meets Robin Hood" and "The Amazing Movie Camera".
  • Kneel, Push, Trip: In issue 42 a fixer tries to bribe the Holliday Girls so that Rita will intentionally lose a race. In response Rita kneels behind him while Bobby and Etta sock him in the jaw, sending him tripping over Rita as he tries to regain his footing and hit the girls.
  • Law of Alien Names: The name of the war obsessed alien Commander Kel-X manages to combine multiple harsh sounds.
  • Lightning Gun: The Uranians have guns that shoot out jagged bolts of electricity. Unfortunately for them Di can deflect these projectiles with her bracelets just as easily as she can regular bullets.
  • Made a Slave: Uvo has made every woman in his empire, and every one he captures in combat, into a slave.
  • The Man in the Mirror Talks Back: Priscilla Rich would find herself being mocked and belittled by her reflection, which would usually take the appearance of Cheetah rather than how she was currently dressed. This was not actually happening, but a visual indicator of her fractured mind.
  • Message in a Bottle: The evening before his execution the cruel pirate Capt. Storm tossed a bottle containing a map to the location of his Buried Treasure into the sea, which is found decades later by the Barnacle Gang.
  • Mirror Match: In the '50s & '60s Robert Kanigher had Wonder Woman ended up with an improbably large number of storylines that involved her fighting doppelgangers of one sort or another.
  • Never Bareheaded: Lord Uvo and his Uranians never remove their helmet-hat combination headgear, and the only locals on Uranus shown without a head covering are slaves.
  • Never My Fault: Mona Menise crashed her car while speeding and says it's the policeman's fault for trying to make her stop.
  • No Woman's Land: Uranus is a bad place to be a woman, as Uvo enslaves every woman he comes across and likes to use them to test out the effects of atomic weapons.
  • 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 Mermaids Are Different: In #93 "Menace of the Mermen!" Paradise Island is attacked by mer-men with their own submarine, who get shot out of the thing like torpedos.
  • Parental Marriage Veto: As part of mellowing and sweetening Sourpuss into a kindly lady from her tough no nonsense original she was given a backstory in which her "bitterness" is due to her father refusing to allow her sweetheart to marry her as a teenager, then they meet again and get married and her personality is given a complete 180.
  • Pirate Booty: Before his execution the long dead pirate Capt. Storm buried his famous treasure in a location which would decades later be right by the bandstand at Holliday College.
  • Produce Pelting: In #32 Wonder Woman stops some hecklers who are throwing old vegetables as some street musicians whose instruments aren't tuned and who are playing off key.
  • Proscenium Reveal: Issue 32 opens with Commander Uvo bombing the Empire State building and laughing maniacally as he flies over New York City, then on the next page the view of his ship zooms out to show that the burning New York city blocks are a scale model rather than the whole city with a chunk of model Paris and London visible while Uvo's second in command talks about what a smart way this is for practicing their attack on the real cities.
  • Rape, Pillage, and Burn: Capt. Storm was notorious for giving no quarter, stealing everything of value when he attacked, killing all his victims and sinking those ships he couldn't steal for himself.
  • Sailor's Ponytail: The Royal Navy members shown fighting Capt. Storm back in the Golden Age of Piracy are depicted with short ponytails.
  • The Show Must Go On: (#32) When the bandstand starts to sink into the pond during a Holliday College band performance the girls keep playing even though they're in water up past their knees.
  • Shrink Ray: The shrinking formula named "Reduso Liquid" in issue 31 is used to shrink humans down to microscopic size and was intended by the woman who created it to be used in surgery.
  • Spikes of Doom: The fourth of the "Four Dooms" Inventa and Torcha force Wonder Woman to face is a "field of dragon teeth", which looks like a grassy field strewn with many sharp spikes about 6" long, and which turn out to each be an explosive device that is triggered by touch.
  • Sticky Situation: Uvo manages to trick Diana and Steve into walking right into a "Magnetic Glazite" wall which they stick to and can do nothing to escape until Di tricks Uvo into shooting it, which disables the power to it and lets them drop to the floor.
  • Stock Costume Traits: One of the hecklers who was throwing food at the off key street musicians is wearing a felt hat cut into a crown, which was at the time used as shorthand for youths who were troublemakers or shirked responsibility as such hats were generally made out of boy's father's fedoras.
  • Taken for Granite: Lord Uvo's Kal-C-M Ray turns those it's fired upon into statue-like figures, though they're still able to move their eyes.
  • Ten Little Murder Victims: In "Who Killed Col. South?" a handful of Holliday Girls go with Sunny South for a visit to the gloomy mansion on an island in a swamp where she was raised. Her father ends up murdered with Sunny's many cousins as the suspects, and by the end it turns out the cousin responsible has killed his brother as well and nearly killed Sunny while she was investigating.
  • Talk Like a Pirate: Capt. Storm and his crew talk like they've come from the film which started the trend, as amusingly do the Barnacle Gang for a brief unremarked upon bit after they discover the map to Storm's buried treasure.
  • Treasure Map: In #48 the Barnacle Gang discovers the map made by the long dead ruthless pirate Capt. Storm which leads to his buried treasure.
  • Useless Boyfriend: Kanigher is the writer who turned Steve from a badass spy & pilot into the poster boy of the Useless Boyfriend trope.
  • The X of Y: "The Planet of Plunder" (issue #31)
    "The Trail of Thrills!"(issue #39)
    "The Trial of Steve Trevor"(issue #41)
    "The Moon of Peril"(issue #46)
    "The Wizard of Castle Sinister"(issue #54)
    "The Carnival of Peril"(issue #74)
    "The Mask of Mystery!"(issue #80)
  • Walk the Plank: Capt. Storm and his pirate crew are shown forcing an injured prisoner to walk the plank in #48.

Earth-One (98 - 177, 204 - 217, & 286)

  • Adaptation Dye-Job: Kanigher's Hippolyta had blonde hair, unlike the black haired Hippolyta of the Moulton run.
  • Adaptation Name Change: Paula von Gunther becomes Paula von Gunta.
  • Amusement Park of Doom: Dazzleland from issue #122, where the life force is drained of park visitors to maintain the cryogenically frozen corpse of park founder Wade Dazzle.
  • Back from the Dead: After Robert Kanigher turned Steve Trevor into the quintessential Useless Boyfriend he was killed off to give Wondy some angst for her depowered mod era. Eros decided Steve's corpse looked like a nice way to court Diana and wore it for a while as "Steve Howard," then Aphrodite took what she could recover of Steve's memories, abducted and mind wiped a Steve from another universe and implanted those memories into that Steve to give Diana the love of her life back in a decidedly creepy fashion.
  • Been There, Shaped History: Professor Andro was present at and claims at least partial responsibility for numerous disasters throughout human history, including the eruption of Vesuvius, Atlantis' fall into the sea, and the Chicago fire of 1871.
  • Blob Monster: Wonder Girl's aptly named Impossible Tales enemy The Glop is an alien who is essentially a living bit of very mobile orange slime.
  • Body Backup Drive: Earth-One Aphrodite treats versions of Steve Trevor from other universes as handy back up bodies for the memories and essence of the Earth-One Steve. As a gift to Diana she brought Earth-270 Steve to Earth-One, erased his memories and implanted the memories and essence of the deceased local Steve.
  • Brainwashed: Osira—an extraterrestrial self proclaimed goddess who landed in ancient Egypt—saw that Steve Trevor looked like her dead husband Hefnakhti and hypnotized Steve into believing that he was Hefnakhti.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: Kobra decided to craft his own personal Cheetah. To this end he placed Debbi inside of a monitor station, suspended from the ceiling by electric cables. Using a brainwashing technique involving holographic projections, Kobra exposed her to a barrage of violent images of ecological disasters. With every flickering image she was forced to witness, an electric charge was sent coursing through her body. Within a short period of time, the process drove Debbi Domaine irrevocably insane.
  • The Collector: In #106 Tooroo, a giant alien, tries to collect Diana for his significant other Rikkaa who has a charm bracelet decorated with "souvenirs" from other planets.
  • Clam Trap: In the Impossible Tales Wonder Girl story in #107 Diana's foot becomes trapped when a giant clam snaps shut on her ankle. She escapes by using a piece of nearby corral to force the clam open again.
  • Cock Fight: Ronno the Merman and "Wingo" the male Harpy fight over Diana's affections pretty much any time they're in the same issue. While she befriended them both as a teenager in the Wonder Girl Impossible Tales her affections ultimately lie with Steve Trevor rather than either of her constantly fighting childhood friends.
  • Confused Question Mark: When Diana lifts a car that was about to hit a child a large question mark appears by the driver's side of the windshield, as both Diana and the child had been in a blind spot.
  • Convection, Schmonvection: Hand Waved In one of the Wonder Girl Impossible Tales Diana jumps into a bubbling volcano to retrieve her lasso, and while doing so thinks to herself how handy it is all Amazons "train" to be more heat resilient since a regular person would die doing what she's doing. Why her clothes aren't set on fire is not addressed.
  • Costume Copycat: The first time the Earth-Two Wonder Woman meets the Earth-One version she believes her to be someone wearing her costume in an attempt to imitate her and considers it more likely that she's a villain than a hero from another earth, but does stop trying to turn her in to the authorities and hear her out however skeptical Di may be.
  • Creepy Centipedes: Part of Wonder Woman's rogue's gallery in The Silver Age included the Crimson Centipede, an abomination of a man with green skin and 100 arms and legs with Guns Akimbo, created by Ares, the God of War.
  • Crystal Prison: Osira traps Wonder Woman and other Justice Society of America members in pyramid shaped force fields which she then solidifies into crystal prisons.
  • Cute Monster Boy: In the Silver Age Wonder Girl had two Pretty Boy monster boys vying for her romantic attention: Ronno the Merman and "Wingo", a male harpy.
  • Derelict Graveyard: In #115 a mysterious current sweeps a bunch of miraculously intact ships from over the ages off the ocean floor to float on the surface, one of which has a figurehead that looks mysteriously like Wonder Woman.
  • Duel to the Death: In issue #177 Galactic Conqueror "Klamos" has his minions gather up women to force them to fight to the death to find his bride. It doesn't work out as Wonder Woman and Supergirl sabotage the event and unveil Klamos as a robot controlled by his "assistant" Grok, destroying the despot's new empire.
  • End-of-Series Awareness: In a Robert Kanigher issue of Wonder Woman during The Silver Age of Comic Books, one story was about Kanigher himself dropping most of the supporting characters to retool Wonder Woman into something closer to The Golden Age of Comic Books, as well as characters wondering whether or not he has a yellow bowtie.
  • Engagement Challenge: Kenyah imposes a challenge for Nubia expecting to fight other men for ownership of her more than anything resembling marriage, instead she furiously answers him with:
    "I claim the right right to name my champion, Kenyah! One who will meet you on equal ground to battle for possession of me! I [name] myself!"
  • 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".
  • Evil Is Hammy: Professor Menace claims to have captured Wonder Woman and dramatically sweeps back a curtain on a stage before his fellow gangsters and waits until they've all tried shooting at her and having their bullets repelled to declare that she's actually a robot which they can use to destroy the real thing. He somehow manages to be even more dramatic than his Golden Age predecessor, possibly because he controls his robots with his mind rather than having to sit at a console like Elektro.
  • Fad Super: Supporting character Nubia was introduced as a painfully inept attempt at creating a heroine to reflect the Black Power movement of the 1970s.
  • Femme Fatalons: Debbi Domaine's costume came equipped with chrome talons that could rend through steel.
  • Flag Bikini: Wondy's outfit shrinks into what could easily be described as a USA flag leotard.
  • Futuristic Pyramid: Osira creates multiple pyramid shapes out of energy shields, which she uses to protect herself, fly around in and imprison superheroes.
  • Giant Spider: In the Wonder Girl Impossible Tale in #116 Ronno tries to steal a necklace from the cave of a sea spider, and gets caught in its web as the truck sized arachnid approaches to make a meal of him.
  • Ghost Ship: In #115 Wonder Woman investigates a mysterious fleet of ghost ships, which were brought to the surface from their resting places on the ocean floor by a strange current.
  • Gotta Catch Them All: The Impossible Tales Wonder Girl story in #107 has Diana seeking out each piece of her Wonder Girl costume hidden around Paradise Island by the Amazons, without knowing what the finished product is going to look like until she has all the scattered and hidden parts.
  • Gotta Get Your Head Together: Professor Menace clutches his head with both hands and yells when the Wonder Woman robot he's been controlling mentally is shorted out with electricity by Wonder Woman.
  • Harping on About Harpies: Wingo the Bird Boy is a Cute Monster Boy harpy with a crush on Wonder Girl who despises his merfolk rival for her attention Ronno.
  • Improvised Weapon: In the Impossible Tales Wonder Girl story in #107 Diana uses a piece of long corral to fight off a swordfish and then wack the giant clam clamped around her ankle to force it to let her go.
  • Kidnapping Bird of Prey: The Roc that lives on a spire near Paradise Island grabs Ronno out of the sea in #107 and Diana has to rescue him before the giant bird flies off and makes a meal of him.
  • Killer Robot: Professor Menace builds a killer Wonder Woman robot, which functions just as he'd intended until Wondy shorts it out in a fight.
  • Leave No Witnesses: After burying his treasure with four of his men Capt. Storm kills everyone involved and who saw them to ensure its location remains secret.
  • The Man in Front of the Man: Emperor Klamos is not only the puppet of his supposed loyal minion and current minister Grok he's just a war robot controlled by Grok, without even an AI.
  • The Maze: The Red Panzer forces Wonder Woman to run a basement maze with a homing missile chasing her.
  • The Mentally Disturbed: Deborah was declared unfit to stand trial, and remanded to Arkham Asylum upon her defeat. Given her fragile mental state, emotional instability, and bouts of berserk rage, this is not surprising.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Mistaken for Romance: In the Wonder Girl Impossible Tale in #116 Wonder Girl mistakes Renno's interactions with the mermaid Firra as Renno finally finding a girlfriend he doesn't have to pretend to be someone he's not to be with, but he and Firra are just friends. WG leaving has Renno once again setting himself off on a task he has no hope to complete in order to try and win her over.
  • Mocky Mouse: Wade Dazzle is assisted by robots based on his creations Jerry Gerbil and Harriet Hamster, who are pastiches of Mickey and Minnie Mouse.
  • Multi-Armed and Dangerous: The Crimson Centipede, a Silver Age villain, has sixteen arms and can reliably wield eight guns simultaneously.
  • Mummy Wrap: Countess Draska Nishki tries to "turn Wonder Woman into a mummy" in issue 161 by throwing the bandages she's wearing as a disguise on her. She's actually using the bandages to disguise that she's stolen the magic lasso and is lassoing the princess with it.
  • My Brain Is Big: #116 Professor Andro has a misshapen large cranium and boasts of his various "mento" powers implied to be mental powers tied to his large mind. However once Wondy catches him it becomes clear his human form was just a disguise he was wearing as he escapes the body in his true far more alien crystalline body.* And Now You Must Marry Me: Emperor Klamos kidnapped Wonder Woman and Supergirl and tried to force them to fight to the death for the "honor" of marrying him. They overthrew him and set free the people he'd subjugated instead.
  • Navel-Deep Neckline: Deborah Domaine's Cheetah costume has a neckline that reaches her midsection.
  • Nom de Guerre: In the Silver Age Steve Trevor's air force callsign was ST 9.
  • No Quarter: Capt. Storm became notorious as a pirate for granting the ships he targeted no quarter and killing everyone on board.
  • Operation: Jealousy: Firra suggests that Renno pay more attention to her than Wonder Girl at a dance to make Wonder Girl jealous, but the mermaid had rather underestimated how much her friend had already annoyed Wonder Girl and the plan backfires.
  • Our Centaurs Are Different: In the Silver Age Wonder Girl Impossible Tales the hidden merfolk village in the waters off Paradise Island has a longstanding feud with a herd or sea-centaurs.
  • Polar Opposite Twins: Wonder Woman and her twin sister Nubia are very different in personality and appearance. Diana is a Technical Pacifist raised in an all-female paradise with a Caucasian appearance and Nubia is a Combat Pragmatist raised in a hellish male-dominated culture with a Sub-Saharan appearance.
  • Possessing a Dead Body: After Steve Trevor was murdered Eros decided to wear his body to make a move on Diana as Steve "Howard".
  • Psycho Electric Eel: In #111 Wonder Woman is able to defeat her killer robot duplicate by kicking it towards the giant electric eels near Paradise Island which zap and short out the robot.
  • Rage Against the Reflection: When Priscilla Rich sees her alter ego Cheetah as her reflection talking to her her reaction is to punch the mirror until it cracks.
  • Replacement Goldfish: After Steve Trevor was murdered by Doctor Cyber, and Eros was done masquerading around as "Steve Howard" in Trevor's lifeless corpse Aphrodite kidnapped the Steve Trevor from Earth-270 wiped his memories and put what she could recover of Earth-Two Steve's memories in his head as a gift to Diana (of Earth-Two).
  • Ret-Gone: Bob Kanigher, declared Wonder Girl gone from continuity, even retroactively so as she had never appeared at all, in Wonder Woman #158 in 1965 (although in a very tongue-in-cheek way)
  • Right-Hand Cat: Red Panzer has a pet cat which he strokes while brooding and thinking up plots.
  • Robotic Reveal: When Wonder Woman and Supergirl are abducted to be forced to fight other women warriors taken from various planets for the "honor" of marrying the Galactic Conqueror Klamos they instead reveal that he is a robot war machine without even an AI being remotely controlled by his supposed right hand man, and blow him up.
  • Roc Birds: In the Impossible Tales Wonder Girl story in #107 Ronno the merboy gets grabbed by the giant Roc that lives on a spire near Paradise Island and Diana has to rescue him from the bird.
  • Same-Sex Triplets: Joey, Jackie and Johnny Star, the "Triple Stars".
  • Sapient Steed: #128 retconned the robot plane to have originally been a pegasus transformed into a plane by Athena.
  • Seashell Bra: The mermaids in Ronno/Renno's underwater village wear seashells over their breasts, while the mermen just go naked.
  • Separated at Birth:Diana's twin sister Nubia was stolen away at birth and they did not meet until they were both adults.
  • She Is Not My Girlfriend: The young merfolk Firra and Renno who live just off Paradise Island have to explain empathically that they are not dating and are just good friends. In this case neither of them have any romantic interest in the other, but Wonder Girl has a hard time believing them since Renno was spending so much time at a dance with Firra.
  • Shoo Out the Clowns: Bird Boy, Merboy, the Glop, Wonder Girl, Wonder Totnote  and even the Holiday Girls, Steve Trevor and Queen Hippolyta were deemed "silly" and booted from the title. Shooing the clowns kind of crippled the title, because virtually her entire supporting cast had been deemed silly and eliminated (Steve Trevor kept popping in and out, but the rest were just gone). (Here, Mike's Amazing World of Comics attempts to sort out the "Wonder Family".) In all the years since, she has never really been able to settle on a single, stable supporting cast or even setting.
  • Shoo Out the New Guy: The first thing Kanigher did when he was made the writer again after the derided "Mod Era" was kill off I Ching, one of the characters introduced and central to that era in the book, then have Diana lose her memory of him, all in issue #204.
  • Siblings in Crime: The Triple Stars are a villainous group made up of the triplets Joey, Jackie and Johnny Star.
  • Soft Glass: When Elektro has the Robot Woman jump through a giant skylight in #48 at a ball/exhibition there's understandably no concern about harming the robot, however all the people who were dancing beneath aren't concerned or injured by the many shards of falling glass.
  • Space Master: Although he starts out as a simple con artist, Wonder Woman's foe Angle Man becomes this after obtaining an alien device shaped like an artist's drafting triangle, which has the ability to distort space.
  • Spree Killer: In issue #204 an unnamed man sets himself up in a tall building and starts shooting the people down below, his highest profile kill being I-Ching, and he only stops killing when he falls out of his perch and dies trying to kill Diana.
  • Stock Money Bag: An alien robs a high speed train disguised as Billy the Kid atop a flying horse for a lark and he leaves with the loot in a white bag with a $ printed on the side.
  • 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 issue 205.
  • Stupid Jetpack Hitler: Red Panzer shows up in the "present" (1970s) in a time-traveling rocket plane. Though unbeknownst to him he actually arrived by traveling from Earth-Two to Earth-One.
  • Swordfish Sabre: In the Impossible Tales Wonder Girl story in #107 Ronno sees a swordfish about to attack a teenaged Diana from behind and ends up wounded by it, then Diana uses a piece of corral as a makeshift "sword" and fences with it until is has enough and swims away.
  • Tailfin Walking: Subverted with Manno the Merman, who hops on land.
  • Technopath: Professor Menace can control his Wonder Woman duplicate robot remotely using his mind and when the thing is electrocuted and shorted out he gets a painful bit of feedback. He later controls three different robots this way, but seems to have sorted out the feedback problems.
  • Threatening Shark: In the Wonder Girl Impossible Tale in #111 a massive shark tries to take a bite out of Diana while she's floating on her back near Paradise Island. Renno is able to warn her of its approach, and get knocked for a loop by the shark himself, in time for her to dodge it, grab it by the tail and toss it away.
  • Tragic Villain: Debbie Domaine had no motivation to become a supervillain, nor any interest in becoming one. Kobra, however, wanted a Cheetah for himself, and targeted Debbie since she was the niece of the original. He kidnapped, tortured and drugged her until she was suitably Brainwashed and Crazy for his use, and she never recovered from his project, becoming unstable and unable to control her emotions and outbursts. She spent the rest of her life in Arkham.
  • Train Job: A couple of aliens rob a train disguised as Jessie James and Billy the Kid riding flying bulletproof horses, mostly because they think it's hilarious.
  • Traintop Battle: Di fights a bulletproof alien disguised as Billy the Kid atop a high speed train he's trying to rob.
  • Token Minority: Nubia, who was even explicitly called the "Black Wonder Woman" in The '70s.
  • Villainous Lineage: While the Wonder Woman mythos is full of examples proving the idea that villainy runs in the blood false Kobra was a firm believer in the concept, which was rather unfortunate for Debbi Domaine when he decided he wanted his own Cheetah. As she was the niece of the original Cheetah he kidnapped her, tortured and drugged her until she went insane for his little pet project.
  • A Villain Named "Z__rg": In issue 107 Wonder Woman fights an alien named Zugggm whose people are thinking about invading earth.
  • Voluntary Shapeshifting: The Glop is a Blob Monster alien that can shape itself into pretty much any form that doesn't take up less or more mass than it's made of and can form and eject things based on substances it's "digested", like rocket propelled explosives.
  • Walking Shirtless Scene: Manno the Merman is never seen with a shirt, even as Mer-boy (and also technically can't walk, making him a Hopping Shirtless Scene.)
  • 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.
  • The X of Y: "The Forest of Giants"(issue #101)
    "The Box of Three Dooms"(issue #103)
    "The Bridge of Crocodiles"(issue #110)
    "The Chest of Monsters"(issue #112)
    "The Cave of Secret Creatures!"(issue #116)
    "The Secret of Volcano Mountain"(issue #120)
    "The Return of Multiple Man"(issue #129)
    "The Capture of Mer-Boy!"(issue #134)
    "The Kite of Doom"(issue #138)
    "The Academy of Arch-Villains"(issue #141)
    "The Amazon of Terror"(issue #160)
    "The Curse of Cleopatra"(issue #161)
    "The Return of Minister Blizzard"(issue #162)
    "The Secret of Tabu Mt.!"(issue #167)
    "The Cage of Doom"(issue #169)

    Mod Era 
Issues 178 - 203, from 1969 to 1972.Written by Dennis O'Neil, Mike Sekowsky & Samuel R. Delany.
  • Action Fashionista: During Diana's depowered "Mod" phase she was constantly getting new hip outfits to fight in.
  • All Witches Have Cats: Morgana is a witch from another dimension, and is quite attached to her black cat.
  • Audience-Alienating Era: Diana gave up her powers after Steve's murders and became a fashionable non-powered kung-fu superspy in a white pantsuit. This move backfired completely, considering it angered prominent feminists like Gloria Steinem, who denounced it as a profoundly sexist move to remove the power of one of the greatest female superheroes.
  • Bewitched Amphibians: Morgana turns one of Cathy's friends into a frog when they summon her while playing with magic rituals. He is returned to human by his girlfriend giving him a kiss.
  • Briefer Than They Think: The controversial 'I Ching' period was only twenty-five issues of her original run, extended to five years' time-wise by an intermittent publishing schedule. But it was during that period that the pilot movie starring Cathy Lee Crosby was developed, which lead it to look In Name Only in comparison with the better-known take of the character, and in turn led to the pilot movie for the series featuring the more traditional take starring Lynda Carter being called The New Original Wonder Woman. The Pilot Movie is known to even non-comics' fans, the original storyline, not as much, except for Gloria Steinem's denouncement of it.
  • Deflector Shields: Doctor Cyber had deflector shields built into her armored suit.
  • Demoted to Extra: They really didn't want to use much of Steve, partially because Kanigher had turned him into the quintessential useless boyfriend, and kept trying to kill him off. These deaths were never allowed to truly stick.
  • Depower: The I Ching kung fu period.
  • Despotism Justifies the Means: Doctor Cyber ran an international criminal syndicate dedicated to world domination and was willing to do whatever it took to take over the world.
  • Dueling Works: #161 presents an In-Universe example with two rival films based on the "Curse of Cleopatra" in production at the same time which Countess Draska Nishki tries using to disguise her involvement in the murders of a few cast members.
  • Fairytale Motifs: A trio of psychotic lesbians who called themselves THEM! kidnapped a girl named Cathy and made her their slave. Cathy was portrayed as Cinderella, THEM! as the evil stepmother and stepsisters, and Wonder Woman as the Fairy Godmother.
  • Good Scars, Evil Scars: Doctor Cyber had her face horribly scarred in her first confrontation with Wonder Woman, it is usually hidden behind the faceplate of her Powered Armor but the injuries left her face disfigured.
  • Heartbroken Badass: Wonder Woman had her heart broken when the love of her life Steve Trevor died. Then, because this is comics we're talking about, Eros possessed Steve's body and tried to recreate Steve's personality and then Steve was reanimated using a version of himself from another universe.
  • High Collar of Doom: Doctor Cyber wore a purple costume with a standing green collar that was taller than her head. It matched her cape.
  • Later-Installment Weirdness: Diana, trying to help Steve Trevor, changed up her looks and ended up forsaking her powers as Wonder Woman, only to have it be All for Nothing when he's killed, leading to a period where Diana was now wearing catsuits and training in martial arts under the assistance of a monk known as I-Ching. This would only last three years.
  • Magical Asian: I-Ching, Wonder Woman's mentor from the period at the beginning of the Bronze Age where she lost her powers for four years' worth of stories, is a textbook example.
  • Powered Armor: Doctor Cyber wore a suit of powered armor equipped with lasers and an invisibility screen.
  • Power Loss Makes You Strong: Part of the thinking behind the Depower. Feminists shouted back "No it doesn't!"
  • Psycho Lesbian: Them! is made up of three very heavily queer coded criminals who chase down a teenager that escaped from them and try to order her to put on a leash and be their "pet", find Diana pretty and want to keep her in bondage too, and kidnapp and sell people.
  • Put on a Bus: All the Amazons who aren't Diana had to go to another universe to recharge their power since being connected to earth has drained their magic.
  • Retool: 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.
  • Round Hippie Shades: I-Ching, Wonder Woman's mentor during her depowered phase wore sunglasses with perfectly round lenses.
  • Show Within a Show: Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor get involved with the production of a film about "the Curse of Cleopatra" after the stars are attacked by the WW villain Countess Draska Nishki.
  • Spy Catsuit: When she lost her powers and operated as "Diana Prince, Wonder Woman", Wonder Woman sometimes wore a white catsuit (though less often than popularly imagined — much of the time, she simply wore "normal" all-white outfits including minidresses, pantsuits, etc).
  • Totalitarian Gangsterism: Them! are a group of human traffickers who rule over a little corner of New York with fear and violence, until they try attacking Diana to get to one of their escaped victims.
  • Unlimited Wardrobe: During her "mod" years Diana had a large constantly changing wardrobe.
  • 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.
  • The X of Y: "The Wrath of Dr. Cyber!"(issue #181)
    "The Battle of the Mer-Men"(issue #199)
    "The Fist of Flame"(issue #201)

    Martin Pasko 
Issues 218 - 232, from 1975 to 1977.
  • Life Drinker: Issue #222 had a theme park mogul named Wade Dazzle who was being kept alive by life force drained from visitors to his theme park and fed into his preserved body.
  • 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.

    Gerry Conway 
Issues 233 - 285, from 1977 to 1981.This section of issues were primarily written by Gerry Conway with Jack C. Harris as the writer for issues 243 - 254 which introduced Orana and Paul Levitz writing issues 255 - 258. At the close of Conway's run Kanigher was brought back for his final two issues. Conway would later write the final issue in this volume.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: Kobra decided to craft his own personal Cheetah. To this end he placed Debbi inside of a monitor station, suspended from the ceiling by electric cables. Using a brainwashing technique involving holographic projections, Kobra exposed her to a barrage of violent images of ecological disasters. With every flickering image she was forced to witness, an electric charge was sent coursing through her body. Within a short period of time, the process drove Debbi Domaine irrevocably insane.
  • Clothes Make the Legend: As Orana attempts to exploit after winning the right to become the new Wonder Woman.
  • Color Character: The Red Dragon.
  • Interchangeable Asian Cultures: The WWII-set stories of the mid-late 70s featured a villain called Kung, a Japanese-American Imperial ultra-nationalist zealot. His costume's Chest Insignia is a yin-yang symbol and his animorphism powers are said to be inspired by the various animal-style forms of kung fu. Both of those things, and really the name "Kung" itself, are Chinese. This would be bad enough, but it goes against the grain of the character's core concept — the uber-patriots who worshiped the Emperor weren't known for remotely tolerating anything Chinese.
  • More than Mind Control: Kobra used this to turn Deborah Domaine into the new Cheetah after her aunt, Priscilla Rich, died, in #274.

    Wonder Girl Bonus 
Issues 265 & 266, 1980A two issue back-up story featuring Donna Troy with writing by E. Nelson Bridwell and art by Ric Estrada.

    Huntress Monthly 
Issues 271 - 321, from 1980 to 1984A a feature which ran after the main Wonder Woman story for four years following Helena Wayne. The initial writer for the series was Paul Levitz with art by Joe Staton, and the final writer was Joey Cavalieri working with penciler Rod Whigham.
  • Attack Hello: Solomon Grundy knocks out both of the guards accompanying the museum curator with one punch as he introduces himself to the curator, and makes it clear that he's stealing the entire contents of the vault.
  • Bad Guys Play Pool: In issue 301 Huntress goes to a shady pool hall when looking for a suspect, and finds him and his mob pals playing pool.
  • Bank Toaster: During Huntress's fight with Pat Pending in a bank he was attempting to rob she knocks him into a shelving unit containing gift toasters and blenders. Pat takes the opportunity of being partially obscured by the appliances to take a pill that allows him to fake his death.
  • The Beastmaster: In the Huntress feature she fights Herbert Hynde, who goes by "Earthworm" and can controll rats, reptiles and other vermin.
  • Color Character: Blackwing
  • Conveyor Belt o' Doom: Huntress is tied up and placed on a conveyor belt meant to slide her into a blazing furnace by the Undertaker.
  • Eaten Alive: The "Earthworm" has his rats swarm and consume those who annoy him, usually starting with the face and neck.
  • Grave-Marking Scene: In issue 295 Alfred visits Bruce's grave and talks to Bruce's headstone about how Helena is doing.
  • Hallucinations: Helena starts hallucinating after being drugged by Professor Fether.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: In issue #290 the "Crimelord" gets pulled over the edge of his own fortress while trying to grab Huntress and falls to his death due to the weight of the armor he'd bragged about.
  • Informing the Fourth Wall: The bank robber Pat Pending has a truly bizarre habit of talking aloud to himself on heists describing the objects in his utility belts and what the one he is selecting can be used for in his current situation despite working alone.
  • Knife Outline: In "Into Darkness Once More" Helena pins the fence Sidney to the wall to question him by firing about ten arrows into his sleeves while not hitting his arms.
  • Malicious Slander: Helena has her very own crooked reporter who insists on twisting the facts and outright lying to try and make Huntress seem like an out of controll murderer in a cape despite Helena's very strict no killing or even seriously maiming rule. At one point Dedra Borrower blatantly misquotes a medical examiner on television in the same second the examiner had just said that he could not yet determine cause of death. She turns to the camera and tells her viewers There you have it. A man's death due to the unchecked violence of an unsanctioned vigilante.
  • Modesty Bedsheet: Helena wraps herself in a bedsheet when she wakes up in Gary Minelli's bed and discovers he undressed her while she was unconscious.
  • Murder by Cremation: The Gotham mob boss known as the Undertaker tries to murder Huntress by putting her in the crematorium at his funeral home, though she escapes. This is also his favorite way of getting rid of the bodies of his victims killed elsewhere.
  • Oh, Crap!: While Helena is looking into some artwork that was apparently destroyed at the Gotham Museum and realizes the destroyed art was forgeries she returns to the museum to gather more evidence and try to figure out the motive. When she gets there she runs into Solomon Grundy and has a moment of horror as she realizes she's way out of her weight class and given that Grundy is putting guards' heads through walls doesn't have time to call for more powerful backup.
  • Pest Controller: The "Earthworm" is named for his lanky and wrinkled appearance, but the creatures he controls, like a more famous Gotham based villain who operates out of the sewers, are rats and, more dangerously, gators.
  • Pinned to the Wall: When Huntress faces off against the mob boss the Undertaker in his crematorium her first attack is to toss two throwing knives that strike the shoulders of his suit jacket and pin him to the door.
  • Protection Racket: Earth-Two Huntress and Blackwing fight a group called Boa that's been forcing small business owners all over Gotham to pay them protection money.
  • Rhymes on a Dime: The Arkham inmate turned receptionist under Dr. Tarr's instruction Lucinda tries to make everything she says rhyme. She struggles with it but never stops smiling, it just makes her talk and do other things agonizingly slowly.
  • Sewer Gator: The Huntress tracks down a baby trafficking villain called Earthworm in the Gotham sewers. He uses his control over the animals in the sewers to make some alligators attack her.
  • Shameless Fanservice Girl: During one of her storylines Helena is escaping Arkham Asylum and succumbs to the effects of being shot with a very potent hallucinogenic by Professor Fether. After her Journey to the Center of the Mind, Helena wakes up in the flat of her fellow inmate she escaped the Asylum with, Gary Minelli. She also finds herself naked in his bed, meaning he undressed and unmasked her while she was out, when she confronts him wearing only a Modesty Bedsheet, she's more worried about her Secret Identity being compromised than her modesty, despite his obvious flirting.
  • Shout-Out Theme Naming: The feature includes a character named Dr. Amos Tarr who it is eventually revealed has taken over Arkham by imprisoning the staff and various police officers and put the inmates in charge and is working with an unhinged scientist named Professer Fether. The whole thing being a reference to "The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether" by Edgar Allan Poe.
  • Speech Impediment: The Undertaker & Dr. Tarr's enforcer Milo has a very prominent lisp that presents itself as a lot of ssssh-es at the beginning of words.
  • Stock Superhero Day Jobs: Helena Wayne, Richard M. Grayson and Charles Bullock are attorneys at Cranston, Grayson and Wayne while acting as Huntress, Robin and Blackwing.
  • Super Registration Act: Power Girl is furious when a Gotham DA starts pushing for more government oversight of superheroes, accusing him of McCarthyism and brining up how the last time the government tried to register and control superheroes it forced the JSA to disband in the 1950s and it and most Earth-Two heroes remained defunct for a couple of decades.
  • Tentacle Rope: Helena hallucinates her ankles are being wrapped in tentacles that are pulling her down after being drugged by Professor Fether.
  • Too Many Belts: The bank robber Pat Pending wears three belts around his waist and hips, a belt around each of his upper arms, and a thigh belt on each leg. All but one belt slung around his hips are covered with large pouches containing the tools he uses in his trade.
  • Undressing the Unconscious: Gary Minelli, whom Helena escaped Arkham with, undressed and unmasked her while she was under the effects of a hallucinogenic before putting her to bed to sleep it off.
  • Vision Quest: After being drugged with a very potent hallucinogenic by Professor Fether while escaping Arkham Helena has to find herself within the center of her own mind before waking up.
  • Walk-In Chime-In: In the Huntress feature "Dying to Take You Away" Helena interrupts a bank robber talking to himself as she swings down from the rafters, but is replying things he'd said while outside the building and in another room rather than anywhere where it would make sense for her to have heard him.
  • Wrench Whack: One of the mobsters in issue 301 attacks Huntress with an oversized monkey wrench which he evidently carries with him while playing pool.
  • X-Ray Vision: Pat Pending uses a pair of x-ray goggles in his heists to aid in gettting into vaults.

    Roy Thomas & co. 
Issues 287 - 300, from 1982 to 1983.The Bronze Age of Comic Books was in full swing here, and while Roy Thomas was the most consistent writer for this run Marv Wolfman wrote issue 287, Paul Kupperberg wrote issue 297, Dan Mishkin wrote issues 298 and 299, and Roy often shared a writing credit with another creator, usually Paul Levitz.
In General
  • Blind Weaponmaster: Bellerophon was blinded by Zeus in antiquity for having the temerity to question whether the Olympians were gods and trying to fly to Olympus on Pegasus. He's still winning his fight with Wonder Woman until she brings her robot plane close enough to mess with his hearing.
  • Demoted to Extra: What befell Wonder Woman's long-running sidekicks Steve Trevor and Etta Candy
  • Gorgeous Greek: Supervillain Silver Swan went from plain Greek ballet dancer Helena Alexandros to a woman in white blonde bombshell. She resented her Hollywood Homely appearance in spite of being descended from/named after the mythological Helen of Troy, and struck a deal with Mars in order to become beautiful.
  • Handcuffed Briefcase: Diana Prince is keeping a briefcase meant to be full of sensitive documents handcuffed to her wrist when the intel comes through that a bomb has been planted in it. Diana uses the opportunity to fake Diana "Prince"'s death via explosion.
  • Heel–Face Turn: Sofia Constantinas started out as a criminal, before her interactions with Wonder Woman led her to turning over a new leaf and taking up the oath of an Amazon.
  • Mayfly–December Romance: Discussed in issue 300 when the Earth-One Diana visits the happy home of the married Earth-Two Diana and Steve and notes that even though "Mrs. Trevor" gave up her immortality to have and raise a daughter with Steve she's still aging at less than half the speed as he. Both Steve and Diana are at peace with this, saying that everyone dies eventually and it's simply a part of life.
  • Real Men Cook: When the Earth-One Wonder Woman ends up at the Earth-Two Wondy's house for a meal she discovers that Steve Trevor cooks the meals at their happy home, this Steve Trevor being the WWII hero to whom the original is Wonder Woman married.
  • Superpowers For A Day: In #289 Steve took pills that turned him to the Flying Brick superheroes the Patriot, and Wonder Man. Unfortunately the Patriot pills turned out to be part of a plot by Angle Man which drained powers from Wonder Woman and gave them to the pill taker so he did not take them again.
  • Western Terrorists: Nikos Aegeus is a Greek national who is said to be the leader of a terrorist group but their ideology is never revealed and his own is stated to differ from it as the reason he joined was due to his love of the power rush he gets from being able to order people around, hurting people and having them fear him.

"Judgment In Infinity"

  • Armor-Piercing Question: Played with With the Adjudicator. When he's forced by Diana's question while wrapped in the lasso to think about who gave him his supposedly righteous task, and it's revealed his fellows essentially sent him off to play with planets they don't care about so long as he doesn't bother them by thinking about them, he's just furious with her because they're now going to recall him and he won't get to destroy a bunch of earths and all life on them as he doesn't care why he was "judging" planets, its what he wants to do.
  • Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The extra-dimensional world destroying Sufficiently Advanced Alien Adjudicator is taller than the Washington Monument.
  • Bus Full of Innocents: When a cop opens fire and causes a panic at the National Mall a car goes careening towards a school bus, and is only stopped from hitting it by Diana lassoing the car and pulling it back.
  • Deadly Gaze: The Adjudicator can turn disintegrate people or cause them to fade right out of existence with his gaze if he so chooses.
  • Dem Bones: The henchmen the Adjudicator created as manifestations of his will modeled after the Horsemen of the Apocalypse were each skeletal figures wearing cloaks.
  • The Earth-Prime Theory: The storyline "Judgment In Infinity" establishes that the main universe Earth-One is the multiverse's keystone; and if it's destroyed, all alternate Earths will follow.
  • Elective Mute: The Adjudicator lets his thoughts and subsequent actions do the talking for him, which infuriates Diana given he's decided to destroy every version of earth and all inhabitants.
  • Exotic Eye Designs: The Adjudicator's eyes are split into a check pattern of many constantly changing swirling colors each square of which seem to reflect bits of shadow from different scenes.
  • Eye Beams: If the rays of multicolored light the Adjudicator can emit from its eyes hit a person they go through a quick transformation of turned crystalline solid and then disintegrated.
  • Heart Light: The Adjudicator is an extra-dimensional Omnicidal Maniac who has a bright glowing light in the middle of his chest.
  • Hellish Horse: The Adjudicator's four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride powerful steeds with flaming manes.
  • Horsemen of the Apocalypse: When the Adjudicator decided to judge earth—which in his case meant he'd already decided to destroy every earth in the multiverse—he formed four deadly horsemen based on the Biblical ones as his agents through which to judge humanity via their reaction to them.
  • Humanoid Abomination: The Adjudicator appears as 600' tall blue man with something like a star for a heart. He's also a mad ancient thing that exists between realities and goes around "judging" and casually destroying planets and all their inhabitants, by which he means all versions of a planet and its inhabitants across the multiverse at once after "judging" five representative versions. He's only stopped because his keepers let him play with worlds as a way to keep him from annoying them by thinking of them and Diana's use of her lasso on him while questioning who gave him the authority to destroy earth makes him think of his keepers, who summon him for punishment in response.
  • Judge, Jury, and Executioner: Ever since his Sufficiently Advanced Alien people kicked him out for being nuts the Adjudicator has been traveling the multiverse "judging" the worthiness of planets, then wiping out every single version of said planet across the multiverse in one go when it inevitably fails.
  • Obliviously Evil: The Adjudicator does not see his actions, which are the destruction of populated worlds by destroying a planet across multiple dimensions, as anything but just even after it's learned that he was given the duty of "judging" worlds by his fellows who couldn't stand him and essentially gave him the "task" of playing with worlds they didn't care about so long as he didn't annoy them by thinking of them.
  • Omnicidal Maniac: The Adjudicator justifies his actions as judgement on the peoples of whatever world he's currently destroying across the multiverse, but he "judges" the planets on a skewed scale only sometimes sending minions to test the inhabitants of a handful of the representative versions of the planet and that judgement always calls for the destruction of the planet(s) and its/their inhabitants.
  • Save Both Worlds: In the storyline "Judgment in Infinity", a group of heroines from five parallel Earths come together to save all parallel Earths from the Adjudicator.
  • Some Nutty Publicity Stunt: A passerby wonders if the Adjudicator's appearance next to the Washington Monument in #291 is some kind of publicity thing for the new Star Wars movie, but he's not terribly convinced.
  • So Proud of You: After Diana leads a coalition of super-women from across multiple earths in preventing the Adjudicator from destroying all the linked earths across the multiverse Donna gives her big sister a big hug while telling her how proud she is of her.
  • Square-Cube Law: In #291 when the Adjudicator appears standing beside the Washington Monument—which he's taller than—a woman who was visiting the monument wonders, "But—a man that huge—It's supposed to be scientifically impossible, isn't it?"
  • Sufficiently Advanced Alien: The Adjudicator is a multi-dimensional being who goes around destroying planets, across all dimensions at once. Right when the coalition of super-heroes from four different earths fail to stop him from destroying earth his more powerful overseers step in and save the planet, considering him to have overstepped his bounds.
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight: When the Adjudicator appears in DC the passersby have an argument about whether or not he's real or just some kind of movie promotion, with one woman pointing out that a humanoid that tall is scientifically impossible. None of them seem surprised to learn the threatening giant is not a staged event when told so by a guard.

    Dan Mishkin 
Issues 301 - 325, from 1983 to 1985.While Dan Minshkin was given the writing credit for most of the issues in this run Kurt Busiek wrote #318.
  • Absurdly Sharp Blade: After their first encounter Nikos Aegeus fled to Olympus and was gifted the knives of Vulcan, which can cut anything, by a benefactor there. He stabs Steve Trevor with one and manages to cut Diana's indestructible lasso, but is disarmed in short order.
  • Accidental Murder: From their prior fights Diana knows that tossing Artemis' sword away will get the unrelenting undead Amazon to stop attacking her to retrieve it. In their final fight when Diana kicks the sword into a plane she is surprised and horrified to discover that being far enough away from the sword causes Artemis to crumble into ash and die a final death. By her people's reckoning Artemis was already dead, but Diana is still upset to have brought about her demise.
  • All for Nothing: It turns out that Diana and Etta's landlord Russell Abernathy is a former senator who was convinced by Russian agents that if he gave them intel on weapon development programs and military movements they could and would save his dying wife. They lied, and he lost everything that had ever mattered to him and spends the rest of his life with a target on his back.
  • Deliberate Injury Gambit: During her fight with Artemis' reanimated skeleton in issue 302 Diana purposefully lets Artemis get in a hit that knocks her down in order to kick the sword powering the reanimation out of Artemis' hands.
  • Dem Bones: Artemis' skeleton is reanimated by Circe.
  • Floorboard Failure: After getting body swapped and waking up to find herself prisoner Black Canary takes advantage of the old floors in the room she is locked in to bash a hole to jump through.
  • "Freaky Friday" Flip: When Zenna Persik realizes she's been captured by her old foe the Nazi Karl Schlagel she swaps her mind out with that of an unsuspecting Black Canary who had been following their chase trying to figure out what was going on and apprehend them.
  • Grand Theft Prototype: When the "gremlins" overthrew the Ytirflirks some of them made sure to steal the Ytirflirks' superweapon the Phlogiston Bomb, planning to detonate outside of an atmosphere where it would be mostly harmless. Unfortunatly they crashed on earth so they take to hiding it instead.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: While Zenna Persik has an escape option during what turns out to be her last Nazi hunt it would leave either Wonder Woman or Black Canary dead, she chooses to sacrifice herself to kill the Nazi she's been chasing and destroy his new weapon instead of sacrificing one of the heroes to do so.
  • Hollywood Heart Attack: Diana and Etta's landlord Russell Abernathy, stands up and clutches his chest before falling over unresponsive when he has a heart attack.
  • In the Back: Nikos Aegeus steps out from behind a pillar and stabs an unprepared and unaware Steve Trevor in the back when Steve turns back towards Diana as he is heading into work.
  • Law of Alien Names: The large slaver aliens who had commanded the gremlins before the gremlins revolted and ended up stranded on earth were called Ytirflirks.
  • Lost Colony: Diana encounters a previously unknown and hidden colony of Amazons living in the Amazon Rainforest who split with the Amazons of Paradise Island long ago.
  • Magical Romani: Zenna Persik is a "gypsy" woman whose family was almost entirely wiped out by the Nazis and who uses her magic to track and kill Nazis who escaped justice. She also uses it to attack superheroes for no apparent reason.
  • Monochromatic Eyes: The Gremlins (which are extraterrestiral) have large solidly dark blue to black eyes.
  • The Mothership: The Ytirflirks were an alien race that enslaved the aliens known as gremlins for their mechanics and went about making war on other planets until the gremlins revolted and stole their mothership, crashing it on earth and killing/wreaking their enslaver's chain of command.
  • Nazi Hunter: Zenna Persik is a Roma woman whose family was murdered in Nazi concentration camps. She spends the rest of her life hunting down and killing Nazis, especially those that escaped any form of punishment after the war.
  • Over-the-Shoulder Carry: After one too many monsters have attacked Di in her Diana Prince identity talking about absconding with her to their "mistress" Diana decides to play along and pretend the latest, a minotaur, has knocked her out to see who said "mistress" is. He marches off with her slung over his shoulder, but he turns out to be a man Crice transformed against his will and the transformation is unmade by the lasso.
  • Perpetual-Motion Monster: Circe raises Artemis, Diana's long dead predecessor in the role of the Amazon Champion, as a skeletal figure who needs no sustenance and cannot seem to be harmed nor reasoned with as she attacks the Amazons seeking "revenge" for her abandonment and lonely death in the outside world.
  • Reduced to Dust: When Diana removes Artemis' sword from her the reanimated skeleton of the Amazon who once held the title Wonder Woman turns to dust and is blown away by the wind.
  • Ring of Fire: When Black Canary tried to apprehend Zenna Persik, unaware that the elderly man Persik was chasing was a Nazi, Persik responded by creating a wall of fire around her and her foe to prevent Canary from advancing.
  • Scary Scarecrows: The gremlins take inspiration from humans to create their own scarecrow, meant to scare off humans while the gremlins steal parts to try to repair their stolen spacship, by stuffing the body of one of the giant Ytirflirk aliens that had enslaved them and putting it on wheels.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Diana gives a little nod to the song "Oh! That Moonlight Glide" as she glides home at night by moonlight after a long day.
    • When Keith Griggs is attacked by one of Circe's beast men who has been transformed into a bear-like monster he responds
      Oh no you don't, Yogi! This is one camper who's not becoming part of your picnic basket!
  • Soul Jar: Circe ties the dead Amazon hero Artemis to her own reanimated skeleton through Artemis' sword. If she gets far enough from it, she'll lose her connection to the world of the living and die a final death.
  • Warrior Undead: Issues #298 has the discovery of an ancient Amazon's skeleton who wears a tiara similar to Wonder Woman (and for some reason still has hair). In issue #302, we learn that this Amazon is Artemis (not to be confused with Artemis of the Bana-Mighdall). Artemis was once Hippolyta's friend and a chosen champion of Athena. However, she became corrupted and was slain by Athena herself. Using a mystical sword, Circe revives Artemis's skeletal remains to fight Diana and the other Amazons. She proves to be a formidable enemy before Diana knocks the sword out of her hands, causing her to crumble to dust.

    Mindy Newell 
Issues 326 - 329, from 1985 to 1985.Mindy Newell became the second woman to write the woman of wonder and the first to actaully be credited, but she only had three issues before Gerry Conway was given the writing duties for the penultimate issue before Crisis on Infinite Earths permanently altered the universe in which Diana lived and operated.
  • Battle Couple: Diana and Steve of course.
  • The Big Damn Kiss: The final panel of the entire series is Diana and Steve sharing a passionate kiss after a brief talk about their daughter Lyta.
  • Defiant to the End: Persephone is unrelenting and unyielding in her battle even after the fall of Tartarus
  • Disintegrator Ray: While it is certainly not what the purple ray is meant for Diana figures out that it pretty well disintigrates the implacable foes attacking Paradise Island from Tartarus.
  • Eternal Love: Hades and Persephone have an everlasting love, and when Hades' mind is poisoned by the Anti-Monitor and Ares it is through the Power of Love that Persephone brings her husband back.
  • Evil Is Not a Toy: Montez tries summoning Tezcatlipoca to get rid of the heroes, and the trickster drains his life in return.
  • Gender-Equal Ensemble: The Air Force/Government employee group that Di is part of and which supports Wonder Woman consists of Diana, Etta and Lauren Haley and Steve, Darnell and Howard Huckaby.
  • Happily Married: Diana and Steve finally get married, and are quite blissful about it.
  • I Have Many Names: Tezcatlipoca says this word for word during his first meeting with Wonder Woman.
  • The Legions of Hell: After his fall Hades warps the denizens of Tartarus into an army of undead monsters and leads them against Paradise Island. As they are not living killing them doesn't break the Amazons' oath of never taking a life, but they prove nearly impossible to dispatch until Diana has a moment of inspiration and tries turning the Purple Healing Ray on them and discovers Revive Kills Zombie.
  • Take My Hand!: When Ares nabs the robot plane Diana urges Steve to take her hand lest he fall to his death.
  • The Trickster: Tezcatlipoca can manipulate and lie and twist the meaning of words and play dangerous pranks with the best of them.
  • Redemption Equals Death: After betraying Hippolyta the power hungry Antiope redeems herself by sacrificing her own life in battle to save Hippolyta's.
  • Revive Kills Zombie: The things attacking Paradise Island embody the opposite of life, so Diana tries turning the Purple Ray on them. It proves far more devastating to the things than conventional weapons.
  • The Scottish Trope: As is traditional Persephone dread Queen of Hades is not called by name but by Kore.
  • Sealed with a Kiss: The final chapter closes on a kiss between the newlywed Diana and Steve Trevor.
  • Wartime Wedding: After winning the fight against Ares, and hearing Zeus say that with the battle won the war is still in question, Steve and Diana decide they're getting married straight away as they've put it off too long.
  • Wedding Finale: Diana and Steve Trevor get married in the final issue, which took place right before Crisis on Infinite Earths permanently altered the multiverse.
  • Wrecked Weapon: Diana breaks Ares' axe.
Themyscira

    Wonder Woman 600 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ww600.png
Adam Hughes cover
Issue 600, 2010

The 600th total issue of (regularly numbered) Wonder Woman volumes, this issue was treated as a special celebration of the character and her history, and a lead in to the retool of Wonder Woman: Odyssey. The 226 issues of Wonder Woman Volume 2, (not counting the Zero issue, DC One Million issue, eight annuals and two specials) are counted as issues 330 through 555, while the 44 issues of Wonder Woman Volume 3 are counted as issues 556 through 599.

Due to its celebratory and semi-continuity detached nature the issue had numerous creative teams including writer Gail Simone with art by George Pérez for "Valedictorian", Amanda Conner as writer and artist on "Fuzzy Logic", author Louise Simonson with artist Eduardo Pansica for "Firepower", Dan Didio as writer with Scott Kolins as artist on "The Sensational Wonder Woman" and J. Michael Straczynski with Don Kramer on "Odyssey Prologue: Counter Shock". The issue contained five seperate Wonder Woman stories, a throwback to the Golden Age when her comic usually contained at least four stories rather than a single tale taking up the entire issue and continuing into the next.

  • Animal Eyes: The Ivan Reis, Oclair Albert and Rod Reis collaboration depicts Medusa with yellow-green snake-like eyes.
  • Blindfolded Vision: In the Ivan Reis, Oclair Albert and Rod Reis collaboration Diana fights Medusa with her eyes closed.
  • Contrapposto Pose: Phill Jimez's two page spread depicts Etta with all her weight on her right leg with her left leg slightly forward and to the side.
  • Dynamic Akimbo: In Phill Jimez's two page spread Donna Troy is depicted standing confidently with her hands on her hips.
  • Fangs Are Evil: The Ivan Reis, Oclair Albert and Rod Reis collaboration depicts Medusa with long fangs, which she's still barring and snapping after her head is cut off.
  • Flag Drop: Shane Davis' spread has Diana flying in front of a very large American flag which takes up the entire background.
  • Green and Mean: The Ivan Reis, Oclair Albert and Rod Reis collaboration depicts villainous Medusa with dark green skin and long sharp fangs even on her human face.
  • Internal Homage: Adam Hughes's variant cover is a recreation of the cover of Sensation Comics #1, the first cover in which Diana was front, center and the focus of the comic itself.
  • Losing Your Head: In the Ivan Reis, Oclair Albert and Rod Reis collaboration Diana defeats Medusa by cutting off her head, and while this seems to do in the snake woman's body her head and hair is still snarling and furious.
  • Medusa: The Ivan Reis, Oclair Albert and Rod Reis collaboration depicts Diana standing above Medusa's decapitated head, her eyes closed and the snakes still snapping at her.
  • Variant Cover: There was an Adam Hughes cover, a George Pérez cover and a reissue cover with art by Don Kramer and Michael Babinski.
Valedictorian
  • Action Prologue: The tale opens on Wonder Woman leading a coalition of female superheroes including Batwoman, Batgirl, Stargirl, Supergirl, Bulleteer and others in defending Washington DC from an attack by Ivo's Cyber-Sirens. The actual story is about Vanessa Kapatelis getting her life back together.
  • Compelling Voice: Ivo's Cyber-Sirens can get men to blindly follow their orders.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: After being tortured, brainwashed and turned into the Silver Swan against her wishes Vanessa Kapatelis has been able to return to and finish school and made class Valedictorian.
  • Everything's Better with Sparkles: Di's spinning transformation has added pink sparkles.
  • Our Sirens Are Different: Diana leads a coalition of female heroes to take down a group of android sirens created by Professor Ivo that are attacking the capitol. They only effect men, necessitating the quick gathering of a bunch of super-ladies.
  • Spectacular Spinning: This version of Diana has the spinning transformation sequence to change out of her Wonder Woman duds, complete with added pink sparkles.
  • Tears of Joy: Vanessa and Diana have tears in their eyes as they hug and talk about their past, their friendship and what Vanessa has been able to achieve.
  • Transformation Sequence: Diana spins in the air as she's meeting Etta and creates a swriling bunch of sparkling pink inside which she changes from Wonder Woman to an outfit appropriate for a graduation.

Fuzzy Logic

  • All Anime Is Naughty Tentacles: Power Girl makes an offhand comment about annoying guys with their "manga tentacles" after defeating Egg Fu, which Batgirl understands (her best friends are the nerdy Steph and Tim after all) but Diana doesn't.
  • Prehensile Hair: Egg Fu has a prehensile mustache, though it's made of a pair of mechanical tentacles rather than actual hair.
  • Property of Love: Parodied. Diana and Power Girl have a seemingly very uncharacteristic conversation about how Karen needs to understand and accept that "you belong to him", before The Reveal that they're talking about her cat.
  • Tentacle Rope: Egg Fu wraps Wonder Woman and Power Girl in its tentacles.

Firepower

  • Absurdly Sharp Blade: Aegeus has stolen the "Knife of Vulcan", which he claims can cut through anything even Diana's indestructible lasso.
  • Named Weapons: Aegeus has stolen the "Knife of Vulcan", which he claims can cut through anything.
  • Trainstopping: Superman stops a train after Aegeus wrecks a bridge, unfortunately the distance it takes to slow it down safely brings him back within range of Aegeus' magical attacks.

The Sensational Wonder Woman

  • Internal Homage: The opening monologue has such questions as "is she stronger than Hercules", to which the answer is of course yes as the line says Wonder Woman is "beautiful as Aphrodite, wise as Athena, stronger than Hercules, and swifter than Mercury".

    Odyssey 
Issues 601 - 614, from 2010 to 2011A retool by J. Michael Straczynski, designed to be detached from previous versions of Wonder Woman and pave the way for the New 52's drastic reimagining of her it remained hobbled by character deaths in the previous series and Crisis Crossovers despite Straczynski bringing in nods to as many bits of Wonder Woman lore he could fit in his short and very different run.

    Return to Legacy Numbering 

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