Wonder Woman. The Myth. relates the heroine’s profile to the historical context in which she was born, analyzing the characters of the character and those of the enemies she faces.
“I don’t start a war. I finish it.”
– Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman is one of the three founding icons of the DC Comics universe. In her eighty years, she has been the first, and to date most important and longest-lived, female character in the superhero world to represent values in which women have been able to identify. She saw the light of day in 1941, from the histrionic William Moulton Marston (1893-1947), a psychologist and feminist, who drew from Greek mythology the characteristics with which he shaped her, but in the comics we also find his theories on benevolent dominance and the superiority of women.
Superhero comics experienced its golden age in the 1930s and 1940s. After several unsuccessful attempts to come up with female characters, Wonder Woman arrives, not to flank a male superhero, but to enhance the peculiarities of women in which her author firmly believed. The values she embodies elevate her above all superheroes: selflessness, integrity, compassion, courage, reliability, and a sense of justice. Wonder Woman is the Warrior-Archetype par excellence.
Since her creation, Wonder Woman has been a vehicle for positive values to the point of embodying the symbol of feminist struggle in the 1970s. The catalog explores the character in historical context from her origins and her evolution as a paradigm of Western mores over the past 80 years. The book recounts the character’s universe from the sociological and anthropological perspectives of costume and culture, as well as presenting the multiple personalities of scriptwriters and illustrators, artists and authors who brought her to life.
Since the 1990s, the illustrators who have most influenced Wonder Woman’s image and made her increasingly iconic, including George Pérez, have pioneered the 1990s aesthetic, heading toward the character’s contemporary renaissance.
Concluding the volume is a special focus on Wonder Woman’s influence on haute couture and fashion, starting with the costumes she wears in her films.
Edited by.
Alessia Marchi – journalist and art curator.
