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    Wonder Woman

    Character » Wonder Woman appears in 8719 issues.

    The Amazon princess, blessed with god-like super abilities, Wonder Woman is one of Earth's most powerful defenders of peace, justice, and equality and a member of the Justice League. She is considered an archetype for many heroines outside of comic book. Her initial origin depicted her as a clay baby brought to life by patron goddess Aphrodite, but in recent years she has been depicted as the daughter of Zeus and Amazon queen Hippolyta.

    Why do idiots keep her tied to ww2

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    jointron33

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    Seriously, what the crap? She is not Captain America! Should Superman be tied to the Great Depression? Should Iron Man be stuck in the Cold War?

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    dmessmer

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    I think a lot of it has to do with the difficulty of explaining the character to a mainstream audience, especially why she wears an American flag if she comes from Themiscyra. Of all the explanations for that, the Golden Age version is the most convincing - the Nazis were clearly the bad guys, so it would make sense that if she came here to defeat them she would take on the imagery of their greatest enemy (okay, second greatest, but it would be hard to base an outfit on Russian winter). In our current world, it's harder to explain why an ambassador for peace would wear the U.S. flag, so it's easier to just refer back to her WWII origins.

    It might also have to do with her origin story. Sure, Superman came into being during the Great Depression, but he wasn't sent to Earth to end it - the character just happened to appear during that time. Wonder Woman, on the other hand, originally left Paradise Island for the express purpose of fighting the Axis powers, so her existence has always been tied to a specific historical event. Reboots and retcons have done their part to change that, but it's still hard to completely separate it from the foundations of the character.

    I'm not saying that any of these are good reasons to keep tying her to WWII, but those are the most likely ones that I can think of.

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    deactivated-59d945143d79a

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    Veshark

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    Yeah, WW2 Wonder Woman was Hippolyta, not Diana. She was a former member of the JSA and held the title before her daughter.

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    dmessmer

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    I probably should have started by asking what the original question was in reference to.

    The Hippolyta retcon is certainly not something the casual fan knows about, so it isn't going to do much to change the general perceptions of the characters for a mainstream audience (i.e. the audience a comic book company cares about the most). So in general, I think my point is still valid, though if there is a context I'm missing I could be off target.

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    jointron33

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    #6  Edited By jointron33

    The patriotic costume is basically a "peace" outfit if you will for the country she was coming to. Because of Steve's nationality, she came to America. It's not that hard. That's like saying why does spiderman wear a red and blue costume since spiders aren't red and blue.

    And the jsa retcon was stupid as hell, but than again so is John Byrne.

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    Sinisteri

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    @jointron33: The World War II origin is the true origin of the character who was sent to on a mission to bring peace to Man's World which was at war. When Perez rebooted the character, the costume based on Steve Trevor's mom's affiliation to the American flag after she died shortly after crashing on Paradise Island. That was still the origin when Hippolyta became the World War II version of Wonder Woman. History was not changed on Paradise Island during that story, but it was established that the mystical island could allow its inhabitants to exit anywhere in time. So, the origin of Diana's costume was not altered by Hippolyta's development.

    Byrne way overcomplicated both Hippolyta becoming Wonder Woman as well as Donna Troy's origin with multiple lives lived at once.

    The struggle for writers is to maintain Wonder Woman's true origin and purpose/contribution to the female audience. When you eliminate those elements, she is very much just another female superman. I still think her best attributes comes from having a foot in both the real world and mythology. And there is still enough female issues for her to champion and prove woman power today without alienating her full audience. As for the flag costume, she is wearing the colors of her adopted home. Period.

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