Wonder Woman: Zero to Hero

I was born in 1975. When Hanna Barbara re-launched their Super Friends cartoon in 1977, I was just a year or two off of their target audience. Still, I was watching those cartoons from an early age, and they really defined my love for superheroes and comic books later on in life. One thing bugs me now, as an adult looking back, and it’s the perception I had of Wonder Woman when I was growing up.

Left: this would happen to Wonder Woman on a weekly basis. Right: in the new millennium, Wonder Woman is given the role she deserves.

Here’s the thing. You know how we comic geeks are always giving Aquaman a hard time because all he could do (on Super Friends at least) was talk to fish? Wonder Woman was almost as useless as he was! The writers never gave her a very promienent role, despite the fact that as power levels go, she’s second only to Superman in the DC universe. Okay, granted, pre-Crisis, she wasn’t as amped up as she is in the modern era, but still—she was a founder of the League and the most powerful woman on the planet. The best the Super Friends writers could do over the course of 13 years was let her occasionally rope some monster which would invariably break her unbreakable lasso or otherwise slip away somehow. That, and she always seemed to be giving Aquaman rides in her invisible jet.

Only on Challenge of the Superfriends was she even close to matching the role she traditionally played in the comics, and even then, the writers gave her short shrift.

My perception of Wonder Woman when I was a kid was… nothing. I didn’t think of Wonder Woman as a real hero, I thought of her as someone that was in constant need of rescuing. She was no Superman, that’s for sure, and Batman had all those cool gadgets. She didn’t have a power ring like Green Lantern, she wasn’t fast like the Flash, and she couldn’t even fly like Hawkman, and that’s basically all Hawkman was good for! She couldn’t hold a candle to Firestorm, who showed up in the early 80’s and could manipulate inorganic objects on a molecular level (and who was, coincidentally, my favorite comic character until about 1989).

I know it sounds like I’m exaggerating, and to an extent, I probably am… but I’ve got DVDs to back me up. I own all the commercially released Super Friends seasons as of the time of this writing, and for the most part, I’m pretty spot on here. My childhood memories really weren’t that far off. Just watch the first few episodes of The Legendary Super Powers Show from 1984 and tell me that Wonder Woman was a valuable member of the team. You can’t, because she spent the first few episodes getting captured by Darkseid. I find myself resenting the writers of those shows as an adult. I feel as though I was robbed of a really cool experience, having a great female protagonist on the Super Friends team. My entire perspective of women, superheroes and women superheroes probably would have been completely different.

Kids born in the late 90’s got the real Wonder Woman. The Amazon who appeared in Justice League and Justice League Unlimited from 2001 to 2006 was awesome. She was powerful and took no lip from anyone. This wasn’t a Wonder Woman who would stand still while Kalibak tied her up to be taken to Apokolips. She held her own and frequently saved the lives of her teammates. This was a Wonder Woman that could be a character model for young viewers.

I hope the kids appreciate it.