Marc Edward DiPaolo, Wonder Woman as World War II Veteran, Camp Feminist Icon and Male Sex Fantasy

(In The Amazing Transforming Superhero)

Hmm. This is an interesting survey of how the Wonder Woman character has changed over time, but it's predicated on the idea that there is an objective, authentic ideal "original" version of Wonder Woman and her ideology which all versions of the hero either aspire towards or "appropriate" and stray from. In this sense DiPaolo basically treats the multiplicity and complexity of comic book franchises as a problem, rather than a unique opportunity for study.

This is especially silly becaue DiPaolo quite obviously does not espouse the original ideology of Wonder Woman (which is a fairly outdated version of feminism) and enbraces many of the changes that have taken place - only he avoids referring to those changes he percieves as positive as such, instead making it seem as though these are regressions to the original, ideal version. That's just not the case - the Lynda Carter TV series which he values to highly is notably different in many ways from the original comics, and these differences should not be brushed off as mere coincidence when other differences, percieved to be negative, are emphasized as proof of the "appropriation" of the character.

Superheroes exist in many different versions all at once - old versions do not disappear, they remain in our consciousness and in our libraries alongside newer versions. Rather than making evaluative statements about changes to the Wonder Woman character, I think it's much more interesting to look at why and how theose changes take place - after all, superheroes are not static meanings, but fluid elements in an ever-expanding snowflake of meanings.