Wonder Woman Evolution
In the book The Anxiety of Influence, author Geoffrey Klock cites Harold Bloom in the idea that any literature, which gets rewritten or furthered by another author or producer, always ends in a misreading and misprision. These ideas of misprision and misreading refer to the suspected loss of original content to be replaced with the injection of one’s own perspectives and importance found within the original story line. Examples like these can often be found in many comic book series. Klock analyzes The Dark Knight Returns through the lense of Harold Bloom and expresses the variations of the story line which differ from the original story. This post will attempt to also do this through the lense of Wonder Woman.
The first writer of Wonder Woman was WIlliam Marston, pen name Charles Moulton. Under him Wonder Woman was a powerful Amazon princess with god like powers who chose to leave the veiled island of Themyscira to aid America in World War Two. She used her lasso of truth, and her ability to deflect bullets with her wrist cuffs to combat foreign spies. She also contains powers of the gods in the shape of strength, speed, intelligence, and agility. Her powers were her greatest attribute, and her finest quality. Her powers were the baseline for the entire series and the reason for her heroism. However, as the series furthered, and the second volume was produced, the next author had a little different idea for Princess Diana.
The second author and during the silver age was Robert Kanigher. His approach with Diana was to expose her heroic qualities which were not godly. After experiencing World War II, Diana realizes how much death, destruction and pain is on Earth, and chooses to give up her godly talents to pursue martial arts and fight evil powers regardless of whether she was equipped with her lasso of truth or not. Instead of fighting crime dressed as Wonder Woman she began to adapt Wonder Woman as a secret identity as she made her life as a clothing store owner to fit in with the rest of the earthlings.This showcases Diana as a hero on the basis of her morals rather than her powers. She sees a community in need, and feels the need to help regardless if it means losing her paradise island and powers. She is the true definition of a hero in both stories just represented in different ways. This is a large shift in story line after the change in authors,
This large shift in story line contributes to the findings of Harold Bloom and Geoffrey Klock as one witnesses a misreading and misprision of Wonder Woman through the change in authors between the gold and silver age.
