Justice Society's Wonder Woman Was Secretly Her [SPOILER]
The old and new versions of Wonder Woman have been a problem, but one story revealed the truth about the JSA's version of the superheroine.
Everyone who knows Wonder Woman knows the story of Diana, Princess of the Amazons. But if fans can believe it, the heroine's history with both the Justice League and the Justice Society decades earlier isn't actually due to her age -- but her mother taking up the role.
Yes, Queen Hippolyta once piloted the invisible plane herself, time-traveled, and served as a member of the Justice Society of America in the role of Wonder Woman. Continuity sticklers may complain about how many timelines and universes this confuses, but the story runs right into the origins and backstories that make these characters so rich in the first place. One day, the Wonder Woman/DC timeline will all make sense. Until then, these heroes should feel free to jump all over it.
Unless fans were reading Wonder Woman comics during the late 1990s, they may not know about Diana’s mortal death at the hands of a demon king. Long story short, Diana's death forced her ascension into Greek godhood -- but as soon as she gained that honor, she was punished for interfering in the world of man. By the orders of Athena and Hera, Diana must surrender her position to her mother, in order to punish them both for actions ill-befitting Olympus. And so it went until Wonder Woman #130, written and drawn by John Byrne, when Hippolyta as Wonder Woman first crosses paths with the Justice Society.
When her superheroics land her on the news, she catches the eye of a silver-haired Jay Garrick. He’s retired now, but can’t shake the feeling that he recognizes this Wonder Woman from his early days as The Flash. Jay eventually tracks Hippolyta down, telling her he recalls the day she saved his life -- a day she can't recall at all. Even retired, one superhero helps out another, so the two jump in her invisible plane to solve the mystery. With time travel!
Having travels back to 1942, Hippolyta and Jay track down young Garrick, and manage to rescue him from the Fiddler. Unfortunately, that’s where the time-stream goes awry. Old Flash and Wonder Woman wind up being confronted and questioned by the Justice Society. As so often happens in Wonder Woman stories, Nazis interrupt, offering Hippolyta and the older Flash to prove they're the 'good guys.' And while Jay returns to the future (to relay this story in the first place), Hippolyta decides to stay behind for a total of eight years, operating as Wonder Woman in DC's Golden Age.
Diana’s tenure as Wonder Woman resumes shortly after, but this wrinkle in the timeline could answer questions about her secret history with the JSA. If Hippolyta was time-traveling as Wonder Woman, it explains why she eventually left the JSA. Once Crisis on Infinite Earths combined the worlds, her bridge between the Golden and Silver Age superhero teams made no sense at all. This one odd Wonder Woman story solves that problem by revealing... it was her mother, instead. Who knew?