Wonder Woman (Earth-Two)

Diana, Princess of the Amazons of Earth-Two, was born on the mystical Paradise Island several hundred years before becoming known as Wonder Woman. Isolated from the cruelty and corruption of men, the Amazons lived and worked in peace and obeyed the will of Aphrodite and Athena. Longing for a child of her own, Hippolyta (Queen of the Amazons) begged the gods to grant her request and turn her clay statue into a real girl. In sympathy, Aphrodite relented and animated the statue; the girl leaped off the pedestal into her mother's arms. Hyppolyta named her for the moon goddess, Diana (who became her godmother).

Hippolyta raised her daughter as an Amazon, with the privileges of royalty. Diana aged slowly, stopping aging when reaching adulthood (as did all Amazons). She surpassed most of her Amazon sisters in skills and intelligence, running faster than a deer at age five and easily uprooting a tree at three.

Diana was a contented Amazon until Captain Steve Trevor crash-landed on Paradise Island. Although she had never seen a man before, Diana was attracted to him (despite his injuries). Violating the island rule against taking in outsiders, Diana brought the unconscious Trevor back to the Amazons in an attempt to save his life. In response to her pleas, Hippolyta used the healing Purple Ray on Trevor and saved his life.

Discovering that the outside world was at war, Diana wanted to help stop it. Hippolyta refused, saying that they should not involve themselves in the ways of outsiders. However, the goddesses Aphrodite and Athena appeared to Hippolyta; they said it was time for an Amazon to travel to "Man's World" and fight the Nazis. Ares felt that he ruled the world; Aphrodite wanted to help America win, claiming it was the last citadel of democracy. A tournament was held to determine the Amazon champion; although forbidden by Hippolyta to participate, Princess Diana concealed her identity with a mask. After winning all the contests Diana revealed her identity to her mother, who feared she would never see her daughter again.

However, Hippolyta allowed her daughter to dress as Wonder Woman and travel to the outside world. Diana returned Steve Trevor to the United States, adopting the identity of a U.S. Army nurse (Diana Prince) so she could stay with Trevor as he recovered; she helped him against a Japanese agent.[6]

Diana began to appear publicly as Wonder Woman. As Earth-Two Diana Prince, she joined the U.S. Navy as a lieutenant and became Col. Darnell's secretary.[7] In actual Golden Age comics, the character joins the U.S. Army and in one occasion returned to nursing.[8] The real Diana Prince later returned and tried to assume Diana's role, since her inventor husband was having financial trouble selling his weapon to the army. Wonder Woman saved Diana when she is kidnapped by a Japanese agent trying to steal the weapon; when it is successful Diana Prince began using her married name, leaving Wonder Woman in her identity.

Diana continued fighting crime with the Justice Society of America (on Earth-Two) as their first female member, although she was relegated to secretarial work for the Justice Society (despite her super powers).[9] She was shown taking dictation and typing the team's minutes as Wonder Woman. Diana rejoined the team when it reformed and expanded (as the All-Star Squadron).[10] She continued fighting crime after the war and resisted being recalled to Paradise Island, preferring to surrender her immortality rather than her independence.[11]

During the 1950s Diana continued fighting crime; she admitted no secret identity, admitting she was an Amazon (unlike many other masked heroes, who were forced to reveal their identity by the federal government's committee on un-American activities). However, she continued to use the alias Diana Prince.[11]

During this period, Diana explored her romantic interest in her longtime crime-fighting partner, Steve Trevor. Diana revealed herself as Wonder Woman to him; although initially taken aback, Trevor married her. Diana later retired from active duty in the Navy and became a housewife, raising their daughter Hippolyta "Lyta" Trevor (named after Diana's mother).[12]

Diana rejoined the (reformed) Justice Society of America during the 1960s; she was one of the JSA members placed in suspended animation by JSA villain Vandal Savage, and was freed by Barry Allen.[1] However, she preferred to spend her time at home raising her daughter. During this time, Earth-Two Diana met her younger Earth-One counterpart.[13][14] She was later summoned by the god Mercury (with other heroes of Earth-2, Earth-1 and Earth-S) when beast-man Kull of Atlantis wanted to destroy humanity on all three earths after capturing the elders (who empowered the Marvel Family). She helped stop Queen Clea, one of his henchmen, from taking over the Earth-Two Atlantis in a story involving the Squadron of Justice. The Wonder Women became good friends.[12]

Diana was one of the Justice Society members ambushed by her earth's Superman (under the control of the Ultra Humanite) and drowned in Koehaha, the river of evil. She, Superman, Hawkman, Green Lantern, Robin and the Atom committed a number of crimes as they sought to act on their deepest desires, and fought their children/proteges (the newly formed Infinity Inc) in the process. Diana fought her daughter to a standstill and nearly killed Hawkman's son the Silver Scarab as she sought to rob a museum. Her goal was to obtain a rare herb said to confer eternal life and give it to her husband so that she wouldn't have to face decades alone when Steve inevitably died before she did. She accidentally injured Steve in the battle and took him to Paradise Island for healing. Eventually, Diana and her teammates were freed from the water's influence and she went back to her retirement with a recovering Steve.

Diana continued in her role as elder stateswoman in the superhero community until the Crisis on Infinite Earths came to Earth-Two and erased its existence. She fought well, and was protected from erasure at the end of the crisis by ascending to Mount Olympus with her husband. Both were forgotten by the history of the new Primary Earth, except for their daughter[15] (who was reformatted into the new universe as the daughter of Helena Kosmatos: Fury of World War II).

When the new, post-crisis Wonder Woman broke up a riot in Boston, she was interrupted by a woman she thought was her mother (Queen Hippolyta); Hippolyta was the golden-age Wonder Woman via time travel in her continuity. The intruder identified herself as Earth-Two Wonder Woman Diana Prince, who left Mount Olympus in order to guide Diana. She advised her post-crisis counterpart to be "the one thing you haven't been for a very long time...human".[4] She urged Diana to intervene in a fight between Superman and his counterpart, Kal-L. Having left Mount Olympus, with her gods' blessings gone, Diana Prince faded away.

In September 2011, The New 52 rebooted DC's continuity. In this new timeline, the Earth 2 Wonder Woman is the last of the Amazons, and is violent and bitter as a result. She is killed by Steppenwolf in the battle for Earth with Apokolips, when she tries to buy time for Bruce Wayne.[16] This Princess Diana is revealed to have had a daughter. The daughter as an adult has taken the name of Fury, reflecting the storyline of the original pre-Crisis Earth-Two Wonder Woman and her daughter.

In 1976, an hour-long Wonder Woman television series premiered on ABC (after the success of its 1975 pilot film, The New Original Wonder Woman). Lynda Carter was cast in the title role, with Lyle Waggoner as Steve Trevor. Using the World War II era as its setting during Season 1, the series featured elements of the Earth-Two version of Wonder Woman, including Trevor's plane crash on Paradise Island, Princess Diana's tournament victory and departure for Man's World (via the invisible plane) and the Amazon's secret identity in the War Department as Diana Prince (details of the character's origin involving her birth were omitted). Most of the villains were Nazis and Nazi sympathizers, including Baroness Paula von Gunther (portrayed by Christine Belford).

Despite strong ratings ABC delayed commissioning a second season, causing the show's production company (Warner Bros.) to offer Wonder Woman to CBS, one of ABC's primary rival networks. CBS agreed to pick up the series, if the setting was updated to the 1970s. Its title was changed to The New Adventures of Wonder Woman, and the series continued until its cancellation in 1979.

In 1978, the animated television series Challenge of the Super Friends depicted the origin of Wonder Woman in detail. Although the Super Friends were a child-friendly version of Earth-One's Justice League of America, the episode depicted Princess Diana winning the tournament and traveling to the United States in 1941 (coinciding with the character's Earth-Two history).[21]