My bicentennial Limited Collectors’ Edition JLA VOL5 NO C46 AUG-SEPT 1976
Originally written for a recent Radio 4 programme pilot about “masked men”.
In bicentennial year 1976 on first trip to the USA, I first confronted the conundrum of Wonder Woman and masks in three comics I bought.
While most of her male superhero colleagues were white collar middle class drones, hiding their Don Draper-ness behind masked all in ones, Wonder Woman, with no mask, in her garish stars and stripes pants seemed to be hiding nothing and everything.
An illegal immigrant from some mysterious place. Only Superman shares an understanding and a mask free disguise in a pair of geek glasses. Wonder Woman’s mask was being smart and plain. Apart from a brief 60s Emma Peel style experiment as a karate kicking mod boutique owner, her alter ego Diana Prince was, depending on the era, a drab military intelligence officer, a multilingual interpreter at the United Nations, and only in the mid 70s getting some status as a deputy to the male head of the UN Crisis Bureau. A talented worker bee in a state hive. In an office full of male colonels or detectives Diana Prince is often in the background, quietly overhearing crucial information.
Aged 8 I first saw Wonder Woman in a mask. In one comic, a white mask sent by an enemy attaches itself to her face. But in the companion issue, a reissue of one of creator William Marston’s original bondage themed stories from 1943, Wonder Woman is tied up in a leather gimp mask and heavy chains to try to escape from a tank of water; Houdini Style. It’s all for charity. A twisted and schizophrenic society girl, Priscilla Rich, aka The Cheetah, ties her up with her own unbreakable lasso.
Wonder Woman escapes of course, tearing off that leather mask with her teeth, and maintains a kind of chaste innocence throughout. Like a lot of women who began work in World War Two, she just gets on with things, whatever the male idiocy around her. And a battle is set up in the comics of controlled and seething female emotions that can be unleashed for good or ill. There is plenty of testosterone-fuelled madness, too. But in the hands of its male writers, Wonder Woman’s mask-less Amazonian super power is balanced by her alter-ego: an invisibility mask of ordinary female-ness. And a lot of bondage imagery.
It is interesting how the notion of ‘the mask’ is adapted to superheroines in different cultures around the world. In the West the everyday identities the superheroes hide behind are wealthy, white collar, and educated. But Wonder Woman’s Filipino counterpart, Darna, is decidedly blue collar, with a basic education, living with her grandmother in a poor rural neighbourhood. Darna’s mask is therefore being one of the anonymous unskilled workers who mop floors and serve behind shop counters, largely ignored by the wealthy and powerful city folk.
The Indian superheroine Shakti is another example. Her alter ego, Chanda, begins as an unassuming housewife who is manipulated and dominated by her violently abusive husband. It is only when Chanda is possessed by the vengeful power of the goddess Shakti that she is able to kill her abusive husband and become an avenging angel for other oppressed women. So the comic creates a kind-of Incredible Hulk scenario, with the meek and mild housewife acting as a mask for the statuesque blue superheroine.
And then you get heroines like Super Aunty, from the 2025 Indian tv melodrama Divya Prem, a mother and small business owner who only adopts a masked identity to hide her magical ‘golden goddess’ powers from her young daughter.
When you look at how the American superhero genre has been re-interpreted and localised around the world, one of the most striking differences is how the concept of a secret identity mask is treated. English-speaking superheroines hide behind a mask, or a cowl, or a wig, or a pair of glasses, because their alter egos are usually people (or professions) with high social status. Whereas in non-English-speaking cultures the alter egos are often cleaners, downtrodden housewives, mothers, geeky schoolgirls, etc. etc., who are often ignored by society. So their lack of social status is their mask.