Secret Identity
Wonder Woman uses the alias Diana Prince, which was created by William Moulton Marston, as her secret identity.
During Marston's run, Diana Prince was the name of an army nurse whom Wonder Woman met. The nurse wanted to meet her fiancé, who was transferred to South America, but was unable to arrange for money to do so. As Wonder Woman needed a secret identity to monitor and look after Steve (who was admitted in the same army hospital Diana Prince worked at), and because both of them looked identical, Wonder Woman gave the nurse money to go to her fiancé in exchange for the nurse's credentials and took Diana Prince as her alias. She also started to work as an army nurse and later as an Air Force secretary.
The identity of Diana Prince played an important part in Wonder Woman's adventures during the 1960s, which featured a de-powered Diana fighting crime without her mystic powers. As she was no longer Wonder Woman, she used the Diana Prince alias while fighting crime and ran a mod boutique as a business.
The "Diana Prince" alias again gained an important role to play in Wonder Woman's adventures after the events of Infinite Crisis. Wonder Woman was broadcast worldwide killing a villain named Maxwell Lord, as he was mind controlling Superman into killing Batman. When Wonder Woman caught him in her lasso, demanding to know how to stop Superman, Maxwell revealed that the only way to stop him was to kill him, so as a last resort Diana snapped his neck. Due to the trauma of killing another person, the Amazon went into a year's exile in order to rediscover herself. Once she returned to public life, Diana realized that her life as a full-time celebrity superhero and ambassador had kept her removed from humanity. Because of this she donned the persona of Diana Prince and became an agent at the Department of Metahuman Affairs. During a later battle with Circe, the witch placed a spell on Diana leaving Wonder Woman powerless when in the role of Diana Prince.
In the current New 52 universe, Diana does not have a secret identity as stated in an interview by series writer Brian Azzarello.
Read more about this topic: Princess Diana (comics)
Famous quotes containing the words secret and/or identity:
“The secret anniversaries of the heart.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)
“The “female culture” has shifted more rapidly than the “male culture”; the image of the go-get ‘em woman has yet to be fully matched by the image of the let’s take-care-of-the-kids- together man. More important, over the last thirty years, men’s underlying feelings about taking responsibility at home have changed much less than women’s feelings have changed about forging some kind of identity at work.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)