Every Wonder Woman Origin in DC Comics, Explained

As is the case with any character with a history spanning over eighty years, the life and times of Wonder Woman are incredibly storied. The eccentricities of her brilliant creator, William Moulton Marston, shaped the birth of the most iconic female hero of several generations, known by many all over the globe. With a character’s history as long as Wonder Woman’s comes plenty of revamps to stay fresh to their character, though— and the character of Princess Diana has seen many of those. From taking away her powers more than once to having her become an actual god, she’s seen many changes, but nothing has gotten overhauled more than her origin story.

This isn’t to say that other heroes haven’t seen overhauls to their general histories. Wonder Woman’s contemporaries at DC, Superman and Batman, have also seen large shifts to their pasts, yet the general beats of the World’s Finest origins remain the same each time. Superman was the last son of a dead world, jettisoned into space to be raised by two loving parents on Earth. Batman witnessed his parents’ murder in Crime Alley at a young age, solidifying his reverence for life. Yet with Wonder Woman, DC has strangely seen it fit to change her backstory for every major era of comics from the Golden Age to the modern day. This has led to many approaches to the character, each a new take for a new age of comic readers.

Wonder Woman’s legendary origin was established right out of the gate and played into her core themes

Much thought went into creating Wonder Woman under William Marston, Elizabeth Marston, Olive Byrne, and H.G. Peter. William Marston was a brilliant Harvard academic who even contributed to the creation of the polygraph but wished to branch out with his work.

He found comics a great medium for education and wished to create a hero who solved conflicts with love and words over bravado and fists. His wife Elizabeth encouraged this character to be a woman, and so the initial idea of Wonder Woman— originally dubbed “Suprema” before being changed by an editor— was born, a heroine who was motivated by teaching love, fighting for social justice, and empowering others through loving submission.

Wonder Woman’s origins reflected this in a rather well-executed manner. The Amazons were women who lived in a utopia before being subjugated by Hercules and some of the Gods. The queen Hippolyte freed them, and the Amazons found peace on Paradise Island— all except Hippolyte, who craved something more and, after sculpting a statue of a baby, discovered her desire was a child. Aphrodite brought the child to life at the queen’s behest; thus, Princess Diana was born.

She’d live happily for years on Paradise Island before Steve Trevor crashed, encouraging the young princess to go out into a world ravaged by World War II and save it through the power of love. The story was genius, establishing the power of a mother’s love and the solidarity between women right out of the gate. It also cemented what Wonder Woman was all about at her core, paving the way for one of the most iconic female characters in history.

One of Wonder Woman’s most lackluster eras, her Silver Age origin was the result of some behind-the-scenes mistakes

After William Marston left Wonder Woman, one of the character’s lowest eras began. DC made it clear they only printed Wonder Woman comics so that the rights to the character wouldn’t revert to him and his estate. This was made incredibly obvious when Robert Kahniger— someone famously open about not caring for the character he was writing— was left to edit and write Wonder Woman for twenty-two years.

While the Silver Age wasn’t a great time for some DC characters, it was an especially poor time for Wonder Woman due to the lack of care and nuance afforded to the character. Many of her classic foes weren’t used, the classic feminist themes of social empowerment were cast aside in favor of more basic action adventures, and Wonder Woman was more interested in men and marriage than ever before.

However, the most egregious overhaul to Silver Age Wonder Woman under Kahniger had to have been her origins. In Wonder Woman #105, “The Secret Origin Of Wonder Woman,” there was no mention of the Amazons’ imprisonment or a clay baby in sight— instead, the Amazons were a weepy bunch that had only come together because their husbands had died in some mysterious and unnamed war.

Diana herself was the child of Hippolyta and an unnamed man, presumably dead, who had her powers given to her in the crib by various Olympians. Kahniger shifted things further when he introduced Wonder Girl and Wonder Tot, two younger iterations of Diana in the vein of Superboy, that later writers would confuse as completely separate characters. This ultimately led to the creation of Donna Troy as Wonder Girl and her inclusion in the Silver Age Teen Titans. Thankfully, this origin would be slowly phased out, with Kahniger himself undoing it in 1966.

The Bronze Age Set A New Gold Standard

George Perez redefined Wonder Woman for the then-modern day when nobody else wanted to

The legendary event Crisis on Infinite Earths did something that hadn’t been done in comics before when it attempted to overhaul the lore of the DC Universe completely. The initiative was planned long before it was executed, with certain creators clamoring to reinvent some of DC’s headliners. But George Pérez was the only one open to writing for Wonder Woman, and as a result, was given complete freedom to handle the character. Readers were able to experience a truly special take on the character.

Pérez discarded a lot of the fodder that the Silver Age churned out for Wonder Woman and reverently approached the character and her world. He took her back to her Marston-era roots, emphasizing her feminist themes while further intertwining them with the increased magic of the Greek pantheon. He also took a coming-of-age angle to the character, a unique angle for a heroine generally thought to be the same age as Batman and Superman.

The Amazons were women who were killed by the evils of Man’s World and were reborn through the Well of Souls due to the blessings of the female Olympians. Their queen, Hippolyta, was the first woman to have been murdered while she was almost about to give birth to a child. The Amazons lived in a utopia before Heracles viciously attacked them, and when they retaliated, they were forever sent to live on the isolated island of Themyscira.

After millennia passed, Hippolyta started to feel an irreplaceable longing— only to learn that it was the desire to have a child. As dawn broke on Themyscira, she sculpted a baby girl, and the female Olympians (with the addition of Hermes) granted the infant Diana life. The new take on the origin was beautifully profound and was the perfect retouch to Martson’s ideas. Eventually, when Diana grew up, Themyscira almost got bombed by Ares, who was taking control of a pilot. This event brought Steve Trevor to Diana’s home and encouraged her to come to Man’s World as an ambassador of peace as Wonder Woman.

The New 52 Revealed That Wonder Woman’s Life Was A Lie

Brian Azzarello took a wild— and controversial— swing when he overhauled Wonder Woman’s past

George Perez’s origin would go relatively untouched for years after its introduction, with writers only adding little details to it as time went on. This all changed when DC wanted to reboot the lore of their universe yet again, something that led to the chaos of the New 52.

This initiative was not as well-planned as Crisis , leading to many approaches to the new status quo. Some characters had their pasts reset entirely, and others had their pasts compressed into five years. Wonder Woman fit into both camps, as at the beginning of her 2011 solo series, she had been an established heroine with some vague adventures under her belt—yet her origin would be completely rewritten for the modern era.

Brian Azzarello, the original writer of New 52 Wonder Woman, revealed to readers in the third issue of the series that its titular character had not been born of clay. Instead, she was the result of a secret affair between her mother, Hippolyta, and now-father Zeus, with the story of her sculpting being a lie to ensure her safety. As she grew up she was looked at with disdain by the other Amazons, who were not the spirits of women reborn into paradise, but instead the products of attacks led against sailors.

This revelation caused Hera to come after Hippolyta and the Amazons, turning the former into a clay statue and the latter into snakes. The reveal, while shocking, came at a strange place in the series, as it was too early for it to be effective– new readers wouldn’t be familiar with this version of Wonder Woman or her past. It also seemed like a much more cynical look at her prior origins that waved away a lot of its thematic relevance to write off Wonder Woman’s mother and sisters to focus on her other blood relations.

It felt incredibly reminiscent of the character’s Silver Age origin more than anything. While it wasn’t as kitschy, it similarly removed much of the agency from Hippolyta while sanding off Wonder Woman’s feminist themes to appeal to a broader crowd.

Ever since the Rebirth initiative, DC hasn’t made it clear what exactly Wonder Woman’s origin is

2016 heralded yet another new era for DC, only five years after the start of the New 52. While it wasn’t a hard reboot, it was a soft relaunch to touch up their public branding and streamline their major titles yet again. Veteran Greg Rucka returned to rejuvenate the series for Wonder Woman. The choice was sound, as he had handled the character prior in his fan-favorite 2003 – 2006 run.

For its first four arcs, the series had a unique release format. Every issue for each arc would be released every other month, allowing two storylines to be told alongside one another. This allowed Rucka to jump in with “The Lies” while keeping readers up to date with an arc titled “Wonder Woman: Year One.” “Year One” showed how Wonder Woman left Themyscira and found her way to Man’s World, befriending individuals like Steve Trevor, Etta Candy, and even Barbara Ann Minerva. She even easily defeated Ares, though it was later revealed that her first encounter with him was an illusion cast by his sons.

Yet something was missing and would remain for years after the fact. Since Rebirth, DC has never clarified how exactly Diana was born. The idea of the Well of Souls was brought back, and some of the New 52’s less savory elements were quietly retconned in general, but it has never been made clear whether Wonder Woman was a godly child or sculpted from clay by her mother. Some writers have leaned towards one direction more than another but have never explicitly confirmed anything.

The current Wonder Woman series, penned by Tom King and illustrated by Daniel Sampere, actively plays with this ambiguity to make Wonder Woman appear more mythical. Yet it’s both strange and frustrating that there hasn’t been a clear answer for years, something that fans hope can be resolved in the near future.