Star-spangled, earnest, and totally a product of World War II. That description could be referring to either Captain America or Wonder Woman… but Captain America has a huge movie coming this summer, while Wonder Woman’s television show crashed. What gives?
On the face of it, both heroes are about equally dated. They both seem like examples of the kind of big, brassy jingoism that made sense in World War II, and doesn’t really “click” now. And they’re both very much “gee golly”-style Golden Age heroes, who are best suited to fight villains whose heads are red or giant, or both. Unlike Superman, who’s been updated a lot, and Batman, whose roots are more noir/pulp, Cap and Wonder Woman are indelibly products of the Big One.
But Captain America already has a huge new movie, which flaunts the World War II setting in a kind of Private Ryan-style war movie with supervillains. And meanwhile, David E. Kelley shopped around a Wonder Woman TV pilot to every network, with no takers. (Although Kelley insists the show isn’t dead, and he’s going to try again.) And Entertainment Weekly had a huge feature a couple months ago, in which luminaries including would-be Wonder Woman director Joss Whedon talked about the difficulties bringing the princess to the screen — with Whedon saying that we need more wonder women, but not necessarily more Wonder Woman.
Image via JD Hancock on Flickr.
So why is one World War II hero bigger than ever, while the other is languishing in biker-chick-redesign land in the comics? It’s not just because Steve Rogers is a dude. It has to do with how easy they each are to bring out of the era that spawned them.
Steve and Diana both belong to World War II
Everybody knows Captain America is a World War II hero – it’s hard to imagine his origin otherwise. The monumental struggle against the Third Reich provides a crucial motivation for Steve Rogers, a weakling, to be so desperate to enlist in the Army that he’s willing to undergo a dead risky medical procedure, turning him into the one and only “Super Soldier,” who goes and fights against the Red Skull and other Nazi villains.
But Wonder Woman is just as much a World War II hero as Cap, as the producers of her television series realized when they created her first season. There are huge chunks of her origin that make no sense without Nazis. Why did the Amazons suddenly decide to break their policy of isolation to send one of their warriors to America? Because the Nazis threatened the whole globe, even the Amazons’ secret island. Why on Earth is Diana dressed in American flag panties and a giant eagle? Because of some Amazon mumbo jumbo — but mostly to show solidarity with her allies in the fight against the Nazis.
In case you forgot it, here’s the actual origin of Wonder Woman, as told in All-Star Comics #8. Steve Trevor, the most valuable guy in the American’s spy-cracking squad, goes to bust a Nazi spy ring, only to be taken captive and put aboard a robot plane that’s bombing American shipyards. He regains control over the plane, only to crash on Paradise Island, where the Amazons realize that the Gods sent Steve Trevor. Athena and Aphrodite appear to Hippolyta and tell her that great evil threatens to consume the whole world, unless she intervenes. And America, “the last citadel of democracy, and of equal rights for women,” is in danger. So Hyppolyta decides to send the bravest and wisest of all the Amazons out into the world — dressed in a totally flagtastic costume!
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