Diana Prince
Encyclopedia
Diana Prince is a fictional character
created by Charles Moulton and Harry G. Peter. Appearing regularly in stories published by DC Comics
, she debuted in Sensation Comics
#1 (January 1942) and serves as the civilian
and secret identity
of the superhero
Wonder Woman
.
, the personality, concept, and name of Diana Prince have become ingrained in popular culture as well, becoming synonymous with secret identities and innocuous fronts for ulterior motives and activities.
First written in the earliest Wonder Woman comics, Diana Prince's role was multifaceted. Unlike the Superman
alter-ego of Clark Kent
, who was originally little more than a front for Superman's activities and who adopted a passive "mild-mannered" persona to conceal his underlying strength, the Diana Prince identity functioned both to position Wonder Woman so that she could learn of situations requiring her intervention and to allow the character to embody feminist and other ideals espoused by Charles Moulton in more identifiably real-world contexts than the fantastic situations into which Wonder Woman herself was written. For example, Diana Prince was originally a nurse and then an officer in military intelligence, starting in the typical woman's role of secretary but gradually earning more autonomy, including the authority to interrogate espionage suspects, eventually becoming an intelligence officer in her own right and, over the years, rising from Lieutenant to Major. Although Diana Prince was frequently told not to accompany Trevor at pivotal moments of adventures because it was no place for a woman, Diana was actually the most competent person to tackle a crisis, whether by exercising her knowledge or her power as Wonder Woman, riding in with an all-girl cavalry of Etta Candy
and the Beeta Lambda sorority. In fact, for a period of time in the 1960s, Wonder Woman lost her powers and functioned exclusively as a non-powered Diana Prince who nonetheless experienced high adventure as a Modesty Blaise
-type character.
When Steve Trevor had fully recovered from injuries sustained in his crash landing on Paradise Island and returned to duty at military intelligence, Wonder Woman followed him, pursuing a job as secretary. Maj. Trevor already had a secretary of his own, Eve Brown, but Diana Prince successfully obtained a job as Col. Phil Darnell's secretary. Darnell noted that Diana, as an Army nurse, had the rank of Lieutenant. For a while, Eve was suspicious of Lt. Diana Prince, who did not seem to use any known system of shorthand when taking dictation (because Diana was actually relying on her own superior Amazon-trained eidetic memory) and did not seem to operate as a normal secretary would. Diana learned, to her dismay, that although she was now working alongside Steve Trevor, he only had eyes for Wonder Woman.
The real Diana Prince returned in September 1942, seeking out Wonder Woman. She asked for her identity back so that she could find work to help out her inventor husband Daniel White and their infant child. Wonder Woman agreed and even impersonated her so a husband would not know she was getting a job, but soon after, Nazi spies kidnapped Diana and planned to ransom her for one of her husband's inventions, an Anti-Aircraft Disintegrator Shell. Wonder Woman discovered the mastermind behind it was Dr Cue, a developer of diseases and gases. Wonder Woman was tied up and placed in an oven, but escaped after pretending to be knocked out by gas. Diana Prince was taken to where the shells where being tested and fell from the plane bound hand and foot while Cue used a parachute as the shell had disintegrated the plane. Wonder Woman rescued Diana and unmasked Cue, revealing him as Colonel Togo Ku, Chief of Japanese spies in America. Wonder Woman rescued Dan White and apprehended the spies. When the invention proved successful, Diana Prince relinquished her legal name and began referring to herself by her married name Diana White, and Wonder Woman resumed using the Diana Prince identity.
Diana Prince continued to work in military intelligence, eventually rising to the rank of Major. She eventually was forced into the difficult situation of working alongside her true love, Steve Trevor, while Darnell fell for Diana Prince.
When the DC Universe adopted the convention that the Golden Age adventures took place on the parallel world of Earth-Two
, it was learned that Wonder Woman eventually gave up her secret identity, married Steve Trevor, and became the mother of Hippolyta "Lyta" Trevor, who became the superheroine Fury
. Although she had given up her immortality by marrying Trevor, this Wonder Woman was still aging at a much slower rate than her husband and sometimes met the Earth-1 Wonder Woman.
yeoman, who was secretary for Maj. Trevor and not the commanding officer (Gen. Blankenship, replacing Col. Darnell).
Wonder Woman, excluded the story of Wonder Woman purchasing credentials from a real Diana Prince and, instead, showed her creating the identity from scratch. In some versions, the Diana Prince identity was created to become a military intelligence officer, winning the opportunity after competing against several women in a contest of skills, but in others Diana Prince was first a nurse who then followed Steve to military intelligence. In one version it just appears without explanation.
A significant turning point came in the 1960s, when the Amazons claimed they needed to leave this world for another dimension in order to "renew their magic," and Diana renounced her powers and Wonder Woman identity in order to remain with Steve. Now operating full-time as a nonpowered Diana Prince, she gave herself a "mod" makeover in order to go undercover when Trevor was accused of being a double-agent. She earned an enemy in Doctor Cyber
, international terrorist, who kidnapped Trevor. During this adventure, Diana Prince met and befriended blind martial arts expert "I Ching
," who trained her in Asian martial arts, which Diana as a trained Amazon quickly mastered. When one of Cyber's henchwomen killed Trevor, Diana continued to work with Ching to bring down Cyber. Other adventures included sword-and-sorcery missions, supernatural villains, fighting militia sects, and helping people in trouble.
Diana left the military, opening a "mod" boutique in New York City. After rescuing runaway Cathy Perkins, who had been captured by a weird dominatrix gang, she hired Cathy to be her assistant and run the boutique when Diana was called away for adventures. One such adventure saw her being forced back into military service for one case.
The non-powered Diana Prince era ended abruptly when a sniper terrorized New York City. A shot and killed a motorist, whose car crashed into a restaurant in which Diana and Ching were enjoying lunch. Ching was killed, and an enraged Diana set off to stop the sniper. Along the way, she suffered a head injury, and the dazed Diana started operating on subconscious urges that compelled her to steal a military aircraft and head for the Bermuda Triangle, where she crashed. When she woke up, she was suffering from amnesia, and she found herself on Paradise Island, where the Amazons restored as many of her memories as possible, although her time as a non-powered adventurer could not be restored completely.
DC Comics embarked upon the powerless Diana Prince stories because, according to writer/artist Mike Sekowsky, "the sales on the old WW were so bad that the book was going to be dropped. The new Wonder Woman was given a chance -- (a last chance for the book) and it worked!" The restoration of the superpowered Wonder Woman was inspired, at least in part, by complaints from feminist advocate Gloria Steinem
about the de-powering of the character.
In Wonder Woman #250, Diana lost the title of Wonder Woman to an amazon rival named Orana. In spite of her loss, Diana rebelled against the Gods of Olympus and left Paradise Island determined to live her life in her alter ego. However her super heroine retirement was short lived. In the following issue, Wonder Woman #251, Orana, now calling herself the 'New Wonder Woman', tried to pick up Diana's responsibilities as a heroine. In Orana's first major battle, the red-haired Wonder Woman was shot and killed by a terrorist named Warhead. Orana's death allowed Diana to reclaim her role as Wonder Woman once again. Diana eventually left the UN Crisis Bureau and briefly served as a NASA astronaut in Houston, where she dated fellow astronaut Mike Bailey (later revealed to be operating as Ace of the Royal Flush Gang
,) before returning to a different UN program.
Still grieving the second death of Steve Trevor, Diana returned to Paradise Island, where her memories of Steve Trevor were erased in a misguided attempt to heal her emotional distress. When a Steve Trevor from a parallel world crashlanded off Paradise Island, Aphrodite altered the memories of all the world to allow him to be accepted as the Steve Trevor of this world. Wonder Woman erased all traces of her previous life as Diana Prince and established a new Diana Prince identity, becoming an Air Force captain (eventually major) serving in the Pentagon as adjutant to Col. Trevor in the Special Assignments Bureau, a special military intelligence program designed to interdict global crises before they develop.
For a while, Diana found herself torn between Steve and Maj. Keith Griggs, who was in love with Diana Prince.
This Diana Prince identity was ended during the Crisis on Infinite Earths
, when an office meeting was interrupted by Hermes, demanding Diana's service to save Paradise Island and Olympus itself. Diana and Steve were married by Zeus himself, before all of history was rewritten by the events of the Crisis on Infinite Earths.
After the Crisis on Infinite Earths storyline, the history of all DC Comics' characters were erased and re-started anew. When the Wonder Woman comic book was rebooted "Post-Crisis", the Diana Prince identity was not revived, although references to it were occasionally made as a possible name to use for legal purposes. Instead Wonder Woman was simply referred to as "Diana of Themyscira" when not in costume. Thus, she had no secret identity and lived openly as an Amazon in everyday life. There were a few times where Wonder Woman did adopt a secret identity but only for undercover operations, such as when she worked beside the assassin Deathstroke
. During that adventure in the Balkan country of Pan Balgravia Diana created the false persona of Diane Prince to hide herself from the country's government spies while trying to rescue a kidnapped Barbara Minerva
. Later when Diana worked at the Gateway City Museum with Helena Sandsmark she did publicly use her well-known alias during an on-camera interview with a reporter.
When Hippolyta assumed the role of Wonder Woman and traveled back to World War II, she stayed in the home of a Nurse Diana Prince.
After Wonder Woman was broadcast worldwide killing a villain named Maxwell Lord
, as he was controlling Superman and said the only way to stop him was to kill him, so his neck was snapped, the Amazon went into a year's exile. This exile ended the viability of her initially intended mission of being an ambassador and teacher of Amazon principles. Once she returned to public life, Diana realized that her life as a full-time celebrity superhero and ambassador had kept her removed from humanity. Because of this she again donned the persona of Diana Prince and became an agent at the Department of Metahuman Affairs, where she was ordered to help capture Wonder Woman. During a later battle with Circe
, the witch placed a spell on Diana leaving Wonder Woman powerless when in the role of Diana Prince.
The Diana Prince identity has been a feature of almost all significant appearances of Wonder Woman in other media.
The first effort at a pilot presentation for a television series was based on a comedic conceit that the homely Diana Prince saw herself as a gorgeous Amazon whenever she becomes Wonder Woman—although no one else sees such a change in her looks.
The first TV pilot movie, starring Cathy Lee Crosby
, was modeled primarily on the mod Diana Prince era and featured Crosby as Diana Prince, secretary to military intelligence officer Steve Trevor, but secretly operating on her own as an agent known to some as "the Wonder Woman." The SuperFriends cartoon included at least one episode featuring Diana Prince spinning to become Wonder Woman.
The most significant appearance to date has been the Wonder Woman TV series
, starring Lynda Carter
. Diana Prince was in the first season the bespectacled Yeoman Prince, WAVES secretary to Maj. Steve Trevor in the military intelligence headquarters in Washington, DC. In the second and third seasons, set in the modern day, Diana Prince was an agent of the Inter-Agency Defense Command (IADC), operating at first from Washington and, in the final episode, from the Los Angeles field office.
The Lynda Carter TV series had a significant impact on the comic book. During the first season, DC Comics decided to set the comic book in World War II to match the series, using the parallel worlds conceit to explain that the Wonder Woman of Earth-One accidentally travelled both back in time and to a parallel world, where she encountered her multiversal counterpart. When the Earth-One Wonder Woman returned to the present day, the comic book remained behind in World War II to follow the adventures of that Wonder Woman. This experiment lasted a year, until the May 1978 issue returned to the present day. Once the comic returned to the present day, the comic art by Jose Delbo continued to reflect aspects of the TV series, notably the fashion-forward Diana Prince with a long ponytail which became a feature of the TV series starting in the middle of the second season. Other aspects of the TV series, most notably the "Wonder spin" transformation and the convention that Diana Prince is powerless until she transforms into Wonder Woman, became incorporated in the 2005 restart of the comic book.
A Bronze Age tweak gave her a new method of transformation using the magic lasso. The explanation was that Amazon scientists treated Wonder Woman's clothes with a special chemical that would respond to the vibrations of the magic lasso; whenever Diana stepped into the lasso loop and brought it up and down, her Diana Prince clothes would transform into the Wonder Woman armor.
The most iconic transformation sequence was created by Lynda Carter in behind-the-scenes decisions for the Wonder Woman television show: a spinning transformation. As the spin was refined, it involved Diana Prince making a counter-clockwise quarter turn and then a series of clockwise turns, with a mystical explosion of light, leaving her as Wonder Woman. Eventually, it was revealed that Diana Prince was powerless, until she executed the spin and became Wonder Woman. A couple of episodes would have Diana Prince attempting the spin, only to be interrupted by muggers
or having to stop the process due to fear of exposing her secret identity; in which she would not have turned herself into Wonder Woman, implying the process must be completed for her to do so.
In one episode of Challenge of the Superfriends, a reverse of the spin was shown, although ironically not by Diana Prince. Cheetah and Lex Luthor
use a time machine to conspire to alter history and prevent the rise of some of the Superfriends. Cheetah travels back to the tournament of the amazons; the winner of which will become Wonder Woman. She uses a ray to stun Diana, allowing her to win the tournament and have Queen Hippolyta transform her into Wonder Woman, wearing the same style leotard except she had blonde hair instead of Diana's dark hair. When Luthor and the other villains commend Cheetah for the successful identity theft
of Wonder Woman, she remarks "There will never be a Wonder Woman", and spins around, transforming her outfit once again into her usual Cheetah costume.
The spin was featured infrequently on Super Friends
, whenever Diana Prince needed to leave her civilian job and attend to the various crises which she and JLA teammates faced throughout the show.
The "Wonder spin" was copied briefly into the pre-Crisis comics during the period in which the comic book returned to World War II in order to correspond with the first season of the TV series, but Wonder Woman never lost her strength as Diana Prince. The spin returned a few times in the post-Crisis comic book, before the post-Infinite Crisis reboot of the series which brought the spin back as a primary feature, along with the TV show convention that Wonder Woman loses her powers in the Diana Prince identity.
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
created by Charles Moulton and Harry G. Peter. Appearing regularly in stories published by DC Comics
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
, she debuted in Sensation Comics
Sensation Comics
Sensation Comics is the title of a comic book series published by DC Comics that ran for 109 issues between 1942 and 1952. For most of its run, the lead feature was Wonder Woman. Other series that appeared were the Black Pirate, the Gay Ghost, Mr...
#1 (January 1942) and serves as the civilian
Civilian
A civilian under international humanitarian law is a person who is not a member of his or her country's armed forces or other militia. Civilians are distinct from combatants. They are afforded a degree of legal protection from the effects of war and military occupation...
and secret identity
Secret identity
A secret identity is an element of fiction wherein a character develops a separate persona , while keeping their true identity hidden. The character also may wear a disguise...
of the superhero
Superhero
A superhero is a type of stock character, possessing "extraordinary or superhuman powers", dedicated to protecting the public. Since the debut of the prototypical superhero Superman in 1938, stories of superheroes — ranging from brief episodic adventures to continuing years-long sagas —...
Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman is a DC Comics superheroine created by William Moulton Marston. She first appeared in All Star Comics #8 . The Wonder Woman title has been published by DC Comics almost continuously except for a brief hiatus in 1986....
.
Overview
Through the popularity of her Wonder Woman alter egoAlter ego
An alter ego is a second self, which is believe to be distinct from a person's normal or original personality. The term was coined in the early nineteenth century when dissociative identity disorder was first described by psychologists...
, the personality, concept, and name of Diana Prince have become ingrained in popular culture as well, becoming synonymous with secret identities and innocuous fronts for ulterior motives and activities.
First written in the earliest Wonder Woman comics, Diana Prince's role was multifaceted. Unlike the Superman
Superman
Superman is a fictional comic book superhero appearing in publications by DC Comics, widely considered to be an American cultural icon. Created by American writer Jerry Siegel and Canadian-born American artist Joe Shuster in 1932 while both were living in Cleveland, Ohio, and sold to Detective...
alter-ego of Clark Kent
Clark Kent
Clark Kent is a fictional character created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Appearing regularly in stories published by DC Comics, he debuted in Action Comics #1 and serves as the civilian and secret identity of the superhero Superman....
, who was originally little more than a front for Superman's activities and who adopted a passive "mild-mannered" persona to conceal his underlying strength, the Diana Prince identity functioned both to position Wonder Woman so that she could learn of situations requiring her intervention and to allow the character to embody feminist and other ideals espoused by Charles Moulton in more identifiably real-world contexts than the fantastic situations into which Wonder Woman herself was written. For example, Diana Prince was originally a nurse and then an officer in military intelligence, starting in the typical woman's role of secretary but gradually earning more autonomy, including the authority to interrogate espionage suspects, eventually becoming an intelligence officer in her own right and, over the years, rising from Lieutenant to Major. Although Diana Prince was frequently told not to accompany Trevor at pivotal moments of adventures because it was no place for a woman, Diana was actually the most competent person to tackle a crisis, whether by exercising her knowledge or her power as Wonder Woman, riding in with an all-girl cavalry of Etta Candy
Etta Candy
Etta Candy is a fictional character from the DC Comics Wonder Woman series.-Golden Age:In her 1940s introduction, Etta Candy is a sickly malnurished woman Wonder Woman discovers at a local hospital. When next she is seen Etta is transformed into a spirited, rotund young woman who has a great love...
and the Beeta Lambda sorority. In fact, for a period of time in the 1960s, Wonder Woman lost her powers and functioned exclusively as a non-powered Diana Prince who nonetheless experienced high adventure as a Modesty Blaise
Modesty Blaise
Modesty Blaise is a British comic strip featuring a fictional character of the same name, created by Peter O'Donnell and Jim Holdaway in 1963. The strip follows the adventures of Modesty Blaise, an exceptional young woman with many talents and a criminal past, and her trusty sidekick Willie Garvin...
-type character.
Golden Age
Diana Prince was originally the name of an Army nurse who provided the primary alias for Princess Diana (Wonder Woman) of the Amazons. In January 1942, Princess Diana met Diana Prince, who was sobbing. When Wonder Woman asked her what was wrong, Prince explained that her fiance Dan White was in South America, and she lacked the funds to go be with him. Noticing how similar they were in appearance, Wonder Woman paid Prince a large amount of money she had just earned from Al Kale's promotion of her bullets and bracelets routine; in exchange, Prince gave Wonder Woman her credentials and name. She later saved Steve from Axis forces.The real Diana Prince returned in September 1942, seeking out Wonder Woman. She asked for her identity back so that she could find work to help out her inventor husband Daniel White and their infant child. Wonder Woman agreed and even impersonated her so a husband would not know she was getting a job, but soon after, Nazi spies kidnapped Diana and planned to ransom her for one of her husband's inventions, an Anti-Aircraft Disintegrator Shell. Wonder Woman discovered the mastermind behind it was Dr Cue, a developer of diseases and gases. Wonder Woman was tied up and placed in an oven, but escaped after pretending to be knocked out by gas. Diana Prince was taken to where the shells where being tested and fell from the plane bound hand and foot while Cue used a parachute as the shell had disintegrated the plane. Wonder Woman rescued Diana and unmasked Cue, revealing him as Colonel Togo Ku, Chief of Japanese spies in America. Wonder Woman rescued Dan White and apprehended the spies. When the invention proved successful, Diana Prince relinquished her legal name and began referring to herself by her married name Diana White, and Wonder Woman resumed using the Diana Prince identity.
Diana Prince continued to work in military intelligence, eventually rising to the rank of Major. She eventually was forced into the difficult situation of working alongside her true love, Steve Trevor, while Darnell fell for Diana Prince.
When the DC Universe adopted the convention that the Golden Age adventures took place on the parallel world of Earth-Two
Earth-Two
Earth-Two is a fictional universe appearing in American comic book stories published by DC Comics. First appearing in The Flash #123 , Earth-Two was created to explain how Silver-Age versions of characters such as the Flash could appear in stories with their Golden Age counterparts...
, it was learned that Wonder Woman eventually gave up her secret identity, married Steve Trevor, and became the mother of Hippolyta "Lyta" Trevor, who became the superheroine Fury
Fury (DC Comics)
Fury is the codename shared by three DC Comics superheroes, two of whom are mother and daughter, both of whom directly connected with the Furies of mythology, and the third who is an altogether different character.-Pre-Crisis:...
. Although she had given up her immortality by marrying Trevor, this Wonder Woman was still aging at a much slower rate than her husband and sometimes met the Earth-1 Wonder Woman.
Golden Age redux
When the Wonder Woman television series debuted, with its first season set in World War II, the comics followed suit, shifting adventures back to that time. Although the DCU multiverse conventions had been set, the parallel world in which the comic adventures took place deviated significantly from the Golden Age stories that had been retroactively set on Earth-Two, following instead the setting of the TV show. The Diana Prince identity, notably, was not an Army nurse-lieutenant but, instead, a WAVESWAVES
The WAVES were a World War II-era division of the U.S. Navy that consisted entirely of women. The name of this group is an acronym for "Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service" ; the word "emergency" implied that the acceptance of women was due to the unusual circumstances of the war and...
yeoman, who was secretary for Maj. Trevor and not the commanding officer (Gen. Blankenship, replacing Col. Darnell).
Silver & Bronze Ages
Later retellings of the origins of Wonder Woman, of dubious continuity for the Earth-OneEarth-One
Earth-One is a name given to two fictional universes that have appeared in American comic book stories published by DC Comics...
Wonder Woman, excluded the story of Wonder Woman purchasing credentials from a real Diana Prince and, instead, showed her creating the identity from scratch. In some versions, the Diana Prince identity was created to become a military intelligence officer, winning the opportunity after competing against several women in a contest of skills, but in others Diana Prince was first a nurse who then followed Steve to military intelligence. In one version it just appears without explanation.
Diana Prince, the New Wonder Woman
Doctor Cyber
Doctor Cyber is a fictional character in the DC Comics universe. The character is a supervillain who fought Wonder Woman several times in stories taking place before the Crisis on Infinite Earths...
, international terrorist, who kidnapped Trevor. During this adventure, Diana Prince met and befriended blind martial arts expert "I Ching
I Ching (comics)
I Ching is a fictional, blind martial artist published by DC Comics. He first appeared in Wonder Woman vol. 1 #179 , and was created by Denny O'Neil and Mike Sekowsky.-Pre-Crisis:...
," who trained her in Asian martial arts, which Diana as a trained Amazon quickly mastered. When one of Cyber's henchwomen killed Trevor, Diana continued to work with Ching to bring down Cyber. Other adventures included sword-and-sorcery missions, supernatural villains, fighting militia sects, and helping people in trouble.
Diana left the military, opening a "mod" boutique in New York City. After rescuing runaway Cathy Perkins, who had been captured by a weird dominatrix gang, she hired Cathy to be her assistant and run the boutique when Diana was called away for adventures. One such adventure saw her being forced back into military service for one case.
The non-powered Diana Prince era ended abruptly when a sniper terrorized New York City. A shot and killed a motorist, whose car crashed into a restaurant in which Diana and Ching were enjoying lunch. Ching was killed, and an enraged Diana set off to stop the sniper. Along the way, she suffered a head injury, and the dazed Diana started operating on subconscious urges that compelled her to steal a military aircraft and head for the Bermuda Triangle, where she crashed. When she woke up, she was suffering from amnesia, and she found herself on Paradise Island, where the Amazons restored as many of her memories as possible, although her time as a non-powered adventurer could not be restored completely.
DC Comics embarked upon the powerless Diana Prince stories because, according to writer/artist Mike Sekowsky, "the sales on the old WW were so bad that the book was going to be dropped. The new Wonder Woman was given a chance -- (a last chance for the book) and it worked!" The restoration of the superpowered Wonder Woman was inspired, at least in part, by complaints from feminist advocate Gloria Steinem
Gloria Steinem
Gloria Marie Steinem is an American feminist, journalist, and social and political activist who became nationally recognized as a leader of, and media spokeswoman for, the women's liberation movement in the late 1960s and 1970s...
about the de-powering of the character.
Modernizing the classic concepts
Wonder Woman returned to man's world, adopting the Diana Prince identity again and finding work at the United Nations, first as a translator and guide and then as an agent for the UN Crisis Bureau, under Morgan Tracy. When Steve Trevor was restored to life mystically (later revealed to be the infusion of the hardy life force of Eros, the love god), he found work at the UN-related Spy on Spy service under the alias Steve Howard. Steve and Diana lived and worked together until Steve was kidnapped and slain by a man obsessed with reviving a demon.In Wonder Woman #250, Diana lost the title of Wonder Woman to an amazon rival named Orana. In spite of her loss, Diana rebelled against the Gods of Olympus and left Paradise Island determined to live her life in her alter ego. However her super heroine retirement was short lived. In the following issue, Wonder Woman #251, Orana, now calling herself the 'New Wonder Woman', tried to pick up Diana's responsibilities as a heroine. In Orana's first major battle, the red-haired Wonder Woman was shot and killed by a terrorist named Warhead. Orana's death allowed Diana to reclaim her role as Wonder Woman once again. Diana eventually left the UN Crisis Bureau and briefly served as a NASA astronaut in Houston, where she dated fellow astronaut Mike Bailey (later revealed to be operating as Ace of the Royal Flush Gang
Royal Flush Gang
The Royal Flush Gang or RFG are fictional characters in DC Comics. They first appeared in Justice League of America #43 in March 1966 under the leadership of Professor Amos Fortune.-History:...
,) before returning to a different UN program.
Still grieving the second death of Steve Trevor, Diana returned to Paradise Island, where her memories of Steve Trevor were erased in a misguided attempt to heal her emotional distress. When a Steve Trevor from a parallel world crashlanded off Paradise Island, Aphrodite altered the memories of all the world to allow him to be accepted as the Steve Trevor of this world. Wonder Woman erased all traces of her previous life as Diana Prince and established a new Diana Prince identity, becoming an Air Force captain (eventually major) serving in the Pentagon as adjutant to Col. Trevor in the Special Assignments Bureau, a special military intelligence program designed to interdict global crises before they develop.
For a while, Diana found herself torn between Steve and Maj. Keith Griggs, who was in love with Diana Prince.
This Diana Prince identity was ended during the Crisis on Infinite Earths
Crisis on Infinite Earths
Crisis on Infinite Earths is a 12-issue American comic book limited series and crossover event, produced by DC Comics in 1985 to simplify its then 50-year-old continuity...
, when an office meeting was interrupted by Hermes, demanding Diana's service to save Paradise Island and Olympus itself. Diana and Steve were married by Zeus himself, before all of history was rewritten by the events of the Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Post-Crisis
Deathstroke
Deathstroke the Terminator , originally simply the Terminator, and known by the Teen Titans as Slade, is a fictional character, a supervillain and sometimes antihero in the DC Comics Universe. He is a mercenary and assassin who first appeared in The New Teen Titans #2...
. During that adventure in the Balkan country of Pan Balgravia Diana created the false persona of Diane Prince to hide herself from the country's government spies while trying to rescue a kidnapped Barbara Minerva
Cheetah (comics)
The Cheetah is a fictional character, a super-villainess appearing in DC Comics publications and related media. Popularly regarded as the archenemy of Wonder Woman, the Cheetah first appeared in 1943 in Wonder Woman #6 , written by Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston...
. Later when Diana worked at the Gateway City Museum with Helena Sandsmark she did publicly use her well-known alias during an on-camera interview with a reporter.
When Hippolyta assumed the role of Wonder Woman and traveled back to World War II, she stayed in the home of a Nurse Diana Prince.
After Wonder Woman was broadcast worldwide killing a villain named Maxwell Lord
Maxwell Lord
Maxwell Lord IV is a fictional character appearing in comic books published by DC Comics. He is a shrewd and powerful businessman who was very influential in the formation of the Justice League International in DC Comics.-Before the League:...
, as he was controlling Superman and said the only way to stop him was to kill him, so his neck was snapped, the Amazon went into a year's exile. This exile ended the viability of her initially intended mission of being an ambassador and teacher of Amazon principles. Once she returned to public life, Diana realized that her life as a full-time celebrity superhero and ambassador had kept her removed from humanity. Because of this she again donned the persona of Diana Prince and became an agent at the Department of Metahuman Affairs, where she was ordered to help capture Wonder Woman. During a later battle with Circe
Circe (comics)
Circe is a fictional character, a villainous sorceress and a major adversary of Wonder Woman appearing in DC Comics publications and related media. Based upon the Greek mythological character of the same name who imprisoned Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey, the comic book incarnation of Circe first...
, the witch placed a spell on Diana leaving Wonder Woman powerless when in the role of Diana Prince.
In other media
The first effort at a pilot presentation for a television series was based on a comedic conceit that the homely Diana Prince saw herself as a gorgeous Amazon whenever she becomes Wonder Woman—although no one else sees such a change in her looks.
The first TV pilot movie, starring Cathy Lee Crosby
Cathy Lee Crosby
Cathy Lee Crosby is an American actress. She achieved TV and film success in the 1980s and was a co-host of the television series That's Incredible!. -Personal life:...
, was modeled primarily on the mod Diana Prince era and featured Crosby as Diana Prince, secretary to military intelligence officer Steve Trevor, but secretly operating on her own as an agent known to some as "the Wonder Woman." The SuperFriends cartoon included at least one episode featuring Diana Prince spinning to become Wonder Woman.
The most significant appearance to date has been the Wonder Woman TV series
Wonder Woman (TV series)
Wonder Woman is an American television series based on the DC Comics comic book superhero of the same name. Starring Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman/Diana Prince and Lyle Waggoner as Steve Trevor, the show originally aired from 1975 to 1979....
, starring Lynda Carter
Lynda Carter
Lynda Jean Carter is an American actress and singer, best known for being Miss World USA and as the star of the 1970s television series The New Original Wonder Woman and The New Adventures of Wonder Woman ....
. Diana Prince was in the first season the bespectacled Yeoman Prince, WAVES secretary to Maj. Steve Trevor in the military intelligence headquarters in Washington, DC. In the second and third seasons, set in the modern day, Diana Prince was an agent of the Inter-Agency Defense Command (IADC), operating at first from Washington and, in the final episode, from the Los Angeles field office.
The Lynda Carter TV series had a significant impact on the comic book. During the first season, DC Comics decided to set the comic book in World War II to match the series, using the parallel worlds conceit to explain that the Wonder Woman of Earth-One accidentally travelled both back in time and to a parallel world, where she encountered her multiversal counterpart. When the Earth-One Wonder Woman returned to the present day, the comic book remained behind in World War II to follow the adventures of that Wonder Woman. This experiment lasted a year, until the May 1978 issue returned to the present day. Once the comic returned to the present day, the comic art by Jose Delbo continued to reflect aspects of the TV series, notably the fashion-forward Diana Prince with a long ponytail which became a feature of the TV series starting in the middle of the second season. Other aspects of the TV series, most notably the "Wonder spin" transformation and the convention that Diana Prince is powerless until she transforms into Wonder Woman, became incorporated in the 2005 restart of the comic book.
Secret identity transformation
In the Golden Age, Diana eventually learned the benefits of keeping her Wonder Woman costume under her military uniform, instead of leaving it at her apartment or in a desk drawer. Her transformation often involved her running out of a room, changing clothes at superspeed, and returning to a room as Wonder Woman. Occasionally, panels would show her in mid-transformation, pulling off stockings and revealing her Wonder Woman costume under the uniform.A Bronze Age tweak gave her a new method of transformation using the magic lasso. The explanation was that Amazon scientists treated Wonder Woman's clothes with a special chemical that would respond to the vibrations of the magic lasso; whenever Diana stepped into the lasso loop and brought it up and down, her Diana Prince clothes would transform into the Wonder Woman armor.
The most iconic transformation sequence was created by Lynda Carter in behind-the-scenes decisions for the Wonder Woman television show: a spinning transformation. As the spin was refined, it involved Diana Prince making a counter-clockwise quarter turn and then a series of clockwise turns, with a mystical explosion of light, leaving her as Wonder Woman. Eventually, it was revealed that Diana Prince was powerless, until she executed the spin and became Wonder Woman. A couple of episodes would have Diana Prince attempting the spin, only to be interrupted by muggers
Robbery
Robbery is the crime of taking or attempting to take something of value by force or threat of force or by putting the victim in fear. At common law, robbery is defined as taking the property of another, with the intent to permanently deprive the person of that property, by means of force or fear....
or having to stop the process due to fear of exposing her secret identity; in which she would not have turned herself into Wonder Woman, implying the process must be completed for her to do so.
In one episode of Challenge of the Superfriends, a reverse of the spin was shown, although ironically not by Diana Prince. Cheetah and Lex Luthor
Lex Luthor
Lex Luthor is a fictional character, a supervillain who appears in comic books published by DC Comics, and the archenemy of Superman, although given his high status as a supervillain, he has also come into conflict with Batman and other superheroes in the DC Universe. Created by Jerry Siegel and...
use a time machine to conspire to alter history and prevent the rise of some of the Superfriends. Cheetah travels back to the tournament of the amazons; the winner of which will become Wonder Woman. She uses a ray to stun Diana, allowing her to win the tournament and have Queen Hippolyta transform her into Wonder Woman, wearing the same style leotard except she had blonde hair instead of Diana's dark hair. When Luthor and the other villains commend Cheetah for the successful identity theft
Identity theft
Identity theft is a form of stealing another person's identity in which someone pretends to be someone else by assuming that person's identity, typically in order to access resources or obtain credit and other benefits in that person's name...
of Wonder Woman, she remarks "There will never be a Wonder Woman", and spins around, transforming her outfit once again into her usual Cheetah costume.
The spin was featured infrequently on Super Friends
Super Friends
Super Friends is an American animated television series about a team of superheroes, which ran from 1973 to 1986 on ABC as part of its Saturday morning cartoon lineup...
, whenever Diana Prince needed to leave her civilian job and attend to the various crises which she and JLA teammates faced throughout the show.
The "Wonder spin" was copied briefly into the pre-Crisis comics during the period in which the comic book returned to World War II in order to correspond with the first season of the TV series, but Wonder Woman never lost her strength as Diana Prince. The spin returned a few times in the post-Crisis comic book, before the post-Infinite Crisis reboot of the series which brought the spin back as a primary feature, along with the TV show convention that Wonder Woman loses her powers in the Diana Prince identity.
Diana as successful businesswoman
In 2011, David E. Kelly wrote a Wonder Woman pilot for NBC, that was not picked up for air. The story takes place today in Los Angeles and character would have three identities: Wonder Woman (a superhero who fights crime), Diana Themyscira (Wonder Woman's public persona outside of costume, who is a successful businesswoman and owner of Themyscira Industries) and Diana Prince (an ordinary shy woman, the other assistant of Diana Themyscira). The Diana Prince identity would have been used to allow Diana some escape from her more recognized role as Diana Themyscira and Wonder Woman.See also
- List of Wonder Woman enemies
- List of Wonder Woman supporting characters
- Wonder WomanWonder WomanWonder Woman is a DC Comics superheroine created by William Moulton Marston. She first appeared in All Star Comics #8 . The Wonder Woman title has been published by DC Comics almost continuously except for a brief hiatus in 1986....