Diana of Themyscira, or Wonder Woman, has been continuously published in comics since the 1940s, so she has a rich, complicated, diverse history. Hereâs a brief overview, if you need a primer. Diana is a warrior princess of the Amazons, a race of women who have lived on an island isolated from the world, usually due to war and/or various forms of gender-based violence. In their isolation on Themyscira (aka Paradise Island), the Amazons have created their own advanced society and culture, including progressive ideas of justice and equality. In different versions of the story, Diana is created from clay by her mother, Hippolyta, and given life and superpowers by the gods, or is the secret daughter of an affair between Hippolyta and Zeus and gains her powers from her demigod status. She was created with a purposefully progressive, feminist ideology, and fights for truth, equality and justice. In addition to her superpowers, including strength, speed, flight, and wisdom, she wears bracelets that can stop bullets and other weapons, and carries an indestructible lasso which compels anyone touching it to tell the truth.
Hereâs the main thing: Diana is amazing. She is strong and powerful, brilliant and brave, loving and kind, committed to peace but capable of necessary violence. She is a warrior, a scholar, a diplomat, a mentor, a sister, a daughter, a leader, and a teammate. Her principles and her status as an ambassador from an all-female race of warriors have always kept her closely tied to feminism. Over the years she has become, layer by layer, beautifully and sometimes frustratingly complex. For audiences, she can often be a mirror for the conflicts of changing feminism and social justice movements, a symbol that reflects us back to ourselves, with all the accompanying discomfort and fragility inherent in loving a character like that.
