Wonder Woman's Father!!

In another thread, I brought up the fact that the Silver Age Wonder Woman had a father and now I have to back that up. I went through Showcase Presents Wonder Woman Volumes 1-3 (The pain, the pain! Man was that repetitive stuff!! Not year to year but issue to issue!) Anyway after suffering through Mer-Boy, Bird-Boy and Mister Genie, these are my findings:

  1. Wonder Woman #105 (Ap'59). Origin retold and revamped. Baby Diana not sculpted from clay, not born on Paradise Island, blessed with her powers by the gods including Amazon Public Enemy #1 Hercules. Later all their men are wiped out from "the wars", with the implication that her father died with them, given her and Queen Hippolyta's grief. Then they travel to Paradise Island with Diana about 12-13 years old.
  2. WW #114 (My'60) Diana is the only child on Paradise Island.
  3. WW #130 (My'62) Hippolyta courted by Hercules not on Paradise Island. She's shown with another man in armor and helmet.
  4. WW #132 (Au'62) Hippoltya again courted by Hercules. She reveals her lost love, Prince Theno, who vanished during a daring sea voyage. He looks a lot like her suitor from #130.
  5. WW #149 (O'64) Hippolyta sculpts a statue of her lost love, not named but resembles Prince Theno. He is missing at sea and afterwards the Amazons arrive on Paradise Island, with Hippolyta holding a younger Diana in her arms.
  6. WW #152 (F'65) Hippolyta consoles Wonder Girl (teen Diana) about missing her father. This is the first time it is explicitly stated that Diana's father was lost at sea.

Therefore the Silver Age Wonder Woman had an actual father, presumably Prince Theno. However the Bronze Age reinstated her Golden Age origin of a clay statue brought to life by Aphrodite in answer to Hippolyta's prayers for a child. Of course they added another statue of darker clay that became Wonder Woman's "Black sister" Nubia in WW #204 (F'73) and #206 (Jl'73). She made two other appearance in Supergirl  #9 (Ja'74) and Super Friends #25 (O'79) as the heroine of Africa.

All other later retellings of the Earth-One Wonder Woman mention neither her father nor Nubia.

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  • Thank you, Philip! bowdown-1.gif
  • Normally I'd say "No problem!" but this one hurt! ;-)
  • It's my theory that once the Comics Code went into effect, Wonder Woman, with her Golden Age origin, could be classified as a supernatural being like a vampire. So they gave her a more normal birth with a father. Now they never say or show this Prince Theno and Queen Hippolyta being married but he is lost at sea. Plus an island populated only by women is just asking for trouble, thus the Amazons see their men massacred and flee to Paradise Island for safety. um...Girl Power!

    Also Wonder Woman was always portrayed as the most powerful Amazon but they were all mighty. In the late 50s and 60s, she became a super-Amazon with powers and abilities far beyond those of regular Amazons.

    Then there's Wonder Girl and Wonder Tot, echoing the Superman spinoffs. That lead to the Impossible Tales of the three different ages of Diana meeting as film-splices, time travel, magic, dreams until they just stopped trying to justify them and just had them all together. In one story, Wonder Girl calls Wonder Woman her sister thus exonerating Bob Haney (a bit) for the Teen Titans' Wonder Chick!

  • I would imagine they had to introduce males into the story more to avoid the implication that the Amazons were all lesbians.  That would have been more of a no-no at the time than the supernatural element.
  • Nice research, Philip! But I'm not sure why they went to all that trouble. It doesn't seem to be something that would have to come up so much, especially since it was a bit murky. Granted, kid readers are always concerned about parents and siblings, but it seems easily avoidable.

    The way you word it, you make it sound like the three WW were around first, and then various explanations arose to explain them. They actually started out as film splices of Diana through the ages, with us viewing the movie, and then they got rid of the notion of us watching a movie, and then they just...were there.

    WG referring to WW as "sister" could be an Amazonian thing, although certainly later on they became siblings in some fashion and not all the same person. That's what confused Haney--and the editors, who you'd think would notice. It's a reasonable mistake, frankly, considering that WW made no sense whatsoever and Haney assumed there was some.

    I see why they wanted to create those other identities, especially since they essentially turned the book over to WG for awhile. But it does start to bring up the question of where all these little girls are coming from!

    WW was not a book to give deep thought to, whether it involved Wonder Tot, WW's father or most anything else. But at least by the SA, they'd scrubbed it of all that "loving submission" stuff that makes the GA collections just this side (or maybe that side) of kinky.

    -- MSA

  • The amazing realization I made while going through the WW stories was that the plots were being reused every couple of months, sometimes with the same dialogue! Steve makes a dare to her that, if she loses, she has to marry him! What a romantic!

    Wonder Girl being wooed by Mer-Boy, then Bird-Boy. Then Mer-Man pops up in the grown up WW stories, then challenges Steve for her affections. Then he co-exists with his younger self!

    As for going to Paradise Island for solitude and safety, it got invaded every other issue! It was just as bad as Rann!

  • You're a braver man than I, Phillip, for daring to read those stories a second time.  I read the first volume of Showcase Presents Wonder Woman and then disposed of the book. It was the second worst collection of comics I've ever read, only beaten by the vertigo Kid Eternity.

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  • Yes, Philip, you are a FAR braver man than I.  I just wanted a simple answer to the question about Wonder Woman's father, but I am astounded at the lengths you went to, digging through those old tales. The fact that you read them all so I didn't have to deserves a medal, or something.

     

    I still haven't finished Wonder Woman: The Greatest Stories Ever Told; there's only so much zaniness my brain can take at once. Part of the reason I haven't read that many Golden Age Wonder Woman stories is the Harry Peters art; it's just too grotesque and hard to "read." 

  • Well, thanks, guys! I knew the answer was in a Wonder Girl story so that made it easier. What was shocking was how often the clues showed up! I wasn't expecting a name, Theno or comfirmation of an actual missing father. Theno seems like a male derivative of Athena, BTW.

    Probably the most interesting thing was that after saying Wonder Girl had a lost father, they never did the obvious follow-up and have young Diana find her father!

  • ...This does not contradict anything you said , Philip - And , I will admit that reading THREE volumes of SA/Kanigher WW in close succession is a bit like ingesting much white lightnin' or the juice of the Golden Apples of the Sun , it seems to me !!!!!!!!! - but I believe that , later in the SA , the traditional " clay granted the boon of real life " storyline was restored , as well as other elements .

      Starting at #156 , for about a dozen issues , WW self-consiously went into a " Golden Age " mode , and #159 has a re-telling of the origin in general , and #162 re-tells the " Diana Prince was a real Army nurse whose identity Princess Diana purchased " storyline , and it appears that GA villians such as Paula Von Gunther and the Cheetah re-appear , and I have seen it said that , during this period , " Andru and Espisito were ordered to draw in a poor approximation of H. G. Peter's style , which it took years for their reputation to recover from " , and I guess Mer-Boy and the WF and so on were booted .

      I guess this latest " up until where the ' Diana Rigg: Wonder Woman ' period begins " SP would cover  this...

      I'll say more later , but I've enjoyed Harry Peter's art , it was caetainly unusual during the Golden Age...As a kiddun' I received that 1970s Warner Books HC reprint volume of GA Wonder Woman that Gloria Stenem wrote an intro for ( And which had an incredibly academic-ly/stuffily written essay by someone - that I never could bring myself to read - as well . ) , which probably did try to tone down , in its selection of stories , the bondage/" loving submission " stuff in favor of " Women's empowerment "...

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