Who is she? I she a feminazi like Frank Miller portrayed her? The Spirit of Truth as done by George Perez? Or something more curious, more vital than any modern authors interpretation?
William Moulton Marston created her. She's different than other Super Heroes, not because she's a woman. The reason is because of her creator. He was a psychologist, writer, feminist and had a huge bondage fetish. He wanted to be dominated by a strong, indomitable woman and created Wonder Woman to be the embodiment of his theories.
His theory was that women were superior to men because of their loving submission to men. His theory was that if women ruled the World it would be perfect.
Wonder Woman was the answer in his mind. Give girls a strong role model, someone on par with SuperMan would help change women's perception of their place. Wonder Woman was created from clay, this did away with her having a male parent. She lived on Paradise Island, an island devoid of men that is written as a utopia. She wears a costume that embodies that she has no shame in sexuality, it is rife with his fetishism. She carries a rope that makes people obey her. She leaves Paradise Island because she falls in love with a man who landed there. So she leaves with him to be an ambassador for her people in the Man's World. She's going to teach us their ways. She is also tied up, chained up, spanked, etc in the early comics.
Did his experiment work? Ah Hell yeah, she's the most visible female comic book character ever.
What's the issue with Wonder Woman? What does she have no movie? Why outside of being recognizable as the female Super hero does she suffer from an odd vagueness when you talk to people about her? Well, no other author is going to be Marlston. They haven't hired another psychologist/bondage/feminist writers to continue to write her. So she has been reinterpreted over and over again. Modern day feminists find her bondage roots to be icky, so they are shied away from. The Lasso of Obedience has become The Lasso of truth.
Women get super fucking pissy at the submission concept. It's ridiculous if you ever read a comic book forum at the venom that gets spewed when someone brings up the fact that one of her aspects is her author's S and M fetish. Also, her costume. My God, people hate the idea of changing it at all (fun fact she wore a skirt originally).
The person writing her newest run is Brian Azzarello. He has done some interesting things with her. She is now the daughter of Zeus. She is a Demi-God, trained in the art of battle by Ares. The Amazons rape and kill men in an effort to get impregnated and then kill any male infants born or sell them into slavery. Her costume, well Hell looks exactly the same. She mostly fights other Gods and he is doing a more mythological oriented book. She is also SuperMan's girlfriend (this is canon in the New 52).
Her fans have all kinds of opinions about all of this. Most think it's bullshit, that's she's been turned into nothing but SuperMan's arm candy, that she is to hot headed in the new runs of Justice League. These are the same people that hate Frank Miller's feminazi Wonder Woman. These are the same people that hate the costume change that Jim Lee did.
Now why does all of this matter? Because Marlton got exactly what he wanted. She is a feminist icon and very accurately reflects the transition in how society views women and feminists. She has changed dramatically over time, evolved as perceptions of women have. She's become independent, she is finally choosing to be with a man who is her equivalent and her equal.
I like the new Wonder Woman comics. My daughter has recently got into them and I read them when she's done. It's great to see Azzarello's attempts to ground her a bit, give her depth, make her a little less one dimensional, a little less of just an icon and more of a woman.
That's what Wonder Woman lacks that Super Heroes like Superman and Batman have. She's a Wonder, but who is the Woman? That's an aspect of her character that still needs to be told, in a Post-Feminist era, while still nodding to the original creator. That's the struggle, that's what makes her difficult to write or sum up in a few sentences. Like all women she is an enigma, something that men have a difficulty understanding.
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