Diana Prince - Overview

Overview

Through the popularity of her Wonder Woman alter ego, the personality, concept, and name of Diana Prince have become ingrained in popular culture, becoming synonymous with secret identities and innocuous fronts for ulterior motives and activities.

First written in the earliest Wonder Woman comics, Diana Prince's role was multifaceted. Unlike the Superman alter-ego of Clark Kent, who was originally little more than a front for Superman's activities, and who adopted a passive "mild-mannered" persona to conceal his underlying strength, Prince's identity functioned both to position Wonder Woman so that she could learn of situations requiring her intervention and to allow the character to embody feminist and other ideals espoused by Charles Moulton. For example, Diana Prince was originally a nurse and then an officer in military intelligence, starting in the typical woman's role of secretary but gradually earning more autonomy, including the authority to interrogate espionage suspects, eventually becoming an intelligence officer in her own right and, over the years, rising from Lieutenant to Major. Although Diana Prince was frequently told not to accompany Trevor at pivotal moments of adventures because it was no place for a woman, Diana was actually the most competent person to tackle a crisis, whether by exercising her knowledge or her power as Wonder Woman, riding in with an all-girl cavalry of Etta Candy and the Beeta Lambda sorority. In fact, for a period of time in the 1960s, Wonder Woman lost her powers and functioned exclusively as a non-powered Diana Prince who nonetheless experienced high adventure as a Modesty Blaise-type character.