1. Who created Wonder Woman?
2. Was there a live-action Wonder Woman before Lynda Carter?
3. Why did the TV series setting change from 1942 to 1977?
4. Is the series currently airing in syndication?
5. Is the series available on video or DVD?
6. Where are Lynda Carter and Lyle Waggoner today?
7. Is it true Waggoner and Carter didn't get along, and that's why Steve was written out?
8. Wasn't there going to be a second live-action Wonder Woman series?
9. What's the status of the Wonder Woman feature film?
10. Are there still Wonder Woman comics being produced today?
11. What happened to Steve Trevor in the comics?
12. Why is Wonder Girl in the TV Series different from Wonder Girl in the comics?
13. What is fan fiction?
14. Why doesn't the archive accept NC-17 or X-Rated fanfic?

1. Who created Wonder Woman?
   Psychologist William Marston (under the pen name Charles Moulton) and artist H.G. Peters created Wonder Woman, who first appeared in a back-up story the Winter 1941 issue of "All-Star Comics" published by All-American Comics (which would merge with DC Comics in 1944). She next appeared in Sensation Comics in January 1942 before moving to her only monthly title, Wonder Woman, in the summer of 1942. Marston wrote Wonder Woman until his death in 1947.
   
   
2. Was there a live-action Wonder Woman before Lynda Carter?
   There were, in fact, two. Due to the success of the campy Batman programme, in 1967 Batman and Green Hornet producer William Dozier commissioned a Wonder Woman pilot from MAD Magazine writers Stan Hart and Larry Siegel. The pilot was subsequently re-written by Batman writer Stanley Ralph Ross, and a 5 minute presentation or screen test was shot. The campy, surreal "Secret Life of Walter Mitty" version of Wonder Woman involved a mousy, dowdy 27 year old Diana Prince played by Ellie Wood Walker who lived with her domineering mother. The project was never greenlighted.

   A live-action Wonder Woman movie of the week was produced for ABC television in 1974 and starred blonde Cathy Lee Crosby as a mod version of Diana Prince that again bore little to no resemblance to the recognisable Golden Age comics book character, but instead seems to have been based on the de-powered, "Emma Peel" clone Diana Prince who briefly (1968-1973) starred in the Wonder Woman comics published by DC Comics under editor Mike Sekowsky. The telefilm's ratings were abysmal, and the pilot never went to series. Instead, a new pilot was commissioned from Stanley Ralph Ross, who returned Wonder Woman to her WWII-era roots, and unknown Miss World Lynda Carter was cast as Diana opposite former Carol Burnett ensemble castmember Lyle Waggoner as her love interest, war hero Steve Trevor.
   
   

3. Why did the TV series setting change from 1942 to 1977?
   Despite excellent ratings for the series of 1 hour specials in 1975 and 1976, and the run of 6 episodes in 1976-1977, ABC cancelled the series. Warner Bros., who owned both the TV series and DC Comics (publisher of the comics) sold the series to CBS who decided to do away with the period World War II setting, modernising the series. The Wonder Woman costume was significantly altered (to be even skimpier), as was the film stock and writing staff. Diana Prince joined the ranks of Jaime Sommers and Charlie's Angels as a "touch chick" and the series became just another late 1970s female spy show as all of the trappings of the comics were dropped one by one (Paradise Island, the Amazons, the invisible plane, Wonder Girl, and lastly, Steve Trevor as love interest). In the last episode of the series produced, "The Man Who Could Not Die", which was in effect the 3rd season premiere, Diana Prince had moved from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles, and had given up wearing her glasses, wore her hair down, and Steve had been replaced as love interest by an invulnerable new character, Brett Cassidy. The series was cancelled in September 1979 due to low ratings.
   
   
4. Is the series currently airing in syndication?
   Wonder Woman aired in syndication on cable channels fX and SciFi Channel, however it is not currently on either network's schedules.
   
   
5. Is the series available on video or DVD?
   You can now pre-order the 3-disc set of the original ABC series (1975 - 1977) starring Lynda Carter as Yeoman Diana Prince/Wonder Woman and Lyle Waggoner as Major Steve Trevor on DVD! Extras include commentary on the pilot by Lynda Carter and producer Douglas Cramer, as well as an exclusive featurette "Beauty, Brawns and Bulletproof Bracelets: A Wonder Woman Retrospective", and all 13 epsiodes (The New Original Wonder Woman, Wonder Woman Meets Baroness Von Gunther, Fausta: The Nazi Wonder Woman, Beauty on Parade, The Feminum Mystique pt.1 & 2, Wonder Woman vs. Gargantua, The Pluto File, Last of the Two Dollar Bills, Judgement from Outer Space pt 1 & 2, Formula 407, The Bushwackers, and Wonder Woman in Hollywood). Order you copy now, which will be shipped July 29, 2004!
   
   Columbia House Home Video Club (and Columbia House Canada) offers the ABC (1975 - 1977) and CBS (1977 - 1979) series on video tape only as part of their monthly "TV Greats" subscription service. Each tape is $19.95 plus shipping and handling, and each NTSC VHS video cassette contains two episodes of the series in a hard shell case with liner notes by Ed Gross. All of the ABC episodes are available, and the CBS episodes are available except for The Pied Piper, Amazon Hot Wax and My Teenage Idol is Missing due to music rights. Unfortunately, included on the Amazon Hot Wax tape is The Starships Are Coming (which guest stars Tim O'Connor, who played Andros in the ABC series), and included on My Teenage Idol Is Missing is Murderous Missiles. Until Warner Bros. irons out the legal mess, those episodes have been screened in syndication, but are not available for sale.
   
   
6. Where are Lynda Carter and Lyle Waggoner today?
   Lynda Carter starred in two series after Wonder Woman was cancelled, Partners in Crime (also called 50/50) co-starring Loni Anderson, and Hawkeye co-starring Lee Horsley. She also appeared in over a dozen made for TV movies in the 1980s and 1990s, and most recently appeared as Governor Jessman in the low-budget independent comedy Super Troopers, and provided the voice of the Norns in Bethesda's upcoming game for PC and Xbox Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. A devoted wife and mother, Carter is married to Robert Altman.
   
   Actor/comedian/former mayor of Encino, CA, Lyle Waggoner continues to act, and most recently made an appearance as himself on the hit Fox TV series That 70s Show. However, he is best known for founding Star Waggons Inc., the largest supplier of RVs for use as studio location trailers to the entertainment industry, in 1979.
   
   
7. Is it true Waggoner and Carter didn't get along, and that's why Steve was written out?
   According to TV Guide's Televisionary, there was quite a bit off on-set tension by the time the series moved to CBS. Said the columnist:
   

   [Waggoner] believed he was going to co-star as Maj. Steve Trevor, Wonder Woman's hunky guy-pal, when he signed onto the series but soon saw his part grow ever smaller. "That may have been true at first, in the days when Lynda still said please and thank you," a former associate on the series said of Waggoner's equal-billing notion. "Then one day someone told her she was a star, and she simply didn't want anyone else in the same scene. She feels Lyle brings the show's energy level down. As for him — well, you can't say anything bad about Lyle because the only time he ever becomes angry is when he's ignored. Maybe he's angry now, I don't know. But at least he isn't the one who throws his hairbrush across the stage when he is."

   For his part, Waggoner tried to take the high road and avoid kvetching in public. "Lyle isn't on the set often enough to form a relationship with Lynda, good or bad," his publicist said. "They're cordial and that's it." The actor himself soft-pedaled any resentment. "Just say," he said with a slight smile, "the spotlight is not willing to be shared." Four years later, he couldn't even muster that. "Lyle can't think of anything positive to say about her," his representative said when asked for a comment in 1981, "so why say anything?"

   But the actor, who was beaten out by Adam West for the lead in Batman before landing an announcing gig on The Carol Burnett Show, didn't take himself or his part too seriously, which probably helped him weather any tension on the show. "How realistic can you get with a gal who picks up 10-ton boulders?" he said. "It's hard sometimes not cracking up, the situation gets so bizarre."

   Not that Waggoner minded much. After a former life selling encyclopedias, he understood how lucky he was to have steady employment. "I don't knock what I'm doing," he said. "It's an on-the-air show and I'm a working actor. There aren't all that many around. When you take a role, you accept the territory."

8. Wasn't there going to be a second live-action Wonder Woman series?
   In 1989, when the Batman film became a huge success after 10 years of failed attempts at brining the character to life, DC Comics President Jeanette Kahn believed it was time to introduce more more comics characters to life-action, and Wonder Woman was high on her list. The character was optioned, and in the late 1990s, producer Deborah Joy Levine (who had successfully developed Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman for television) wrote a Wonder Woman pilot for NBC designed to bring the Amazon Princess to life and up to date. Her Diana was a professor of Greek History at UCLA, and "exemplifies the young '90s female—spirited, smart and peace loving, but she can also kick butt when she wants to." Casting began, amid much hype, in 1998 and then halted as the script went through major re-writes. When NBC dropped out, the project languished and then finally died.
   
   
9. What's the status of the Wonder Woman feature film?
   Warner Bros. has had a Wonder Woman feature film in development for some time, and actor/producer Sandra Bullock had been attached to the project. A draft of a script by Todd Alcott which would have focussed on Wonder Woman (Bullock) passing on her mantle of crime fighter to a young protege, Wonder Girl Donna Troy, was summarily rejected. Leonard Goldberg, the producer, stated in December 2001 that "We have a script, and we're in discussions with Sandra, her representative and the studio. We're discussing what changes need to be made to the script so that we are all enthusiastic about going forward." However, the project continues to be in "development hell" with no form shooting date and no final script, and no actress signed to play the part despite persistent rumours. While actors Lucy Lawless (Xena, Warrior Princess) and Jennifer Aniston (Friends, The Iron Giant) both expressed interest in the press, neither actress has ever been approached for the part by the WB.
   
   In August, 2003 it was announced that Warner Brothers has hired writer Laeta Kalogridis to come up with a new draft for the proposed Wonder Woman movie. Kalogridis was a writer and executive producer on The WB's short-lived Birds of Prey TV series, which was also based on a DC Comics property. The site reported that Kalogridis will be starting Wonder Woman from scratch, writing a completely new script dealing with the origins of the character. Also, it was reported that Philip Levens (Smallville) is writing his own screenplay for a Wonder Woman feature film.
   
   For the latest Wonder Woman feature film news, be sure and check out Comics2Film!
   
   
10. Are there still Wonder Woman comics being produced today?
    Wonder Woman comics have been published continuously by DC Comics since DC merged with All American Comics in the 1940s, with a few notable interruptions. In 1968 the title went on a six month hiatus for retooling, and again in 1986 after the "Crisis on Infinite Earths" mini-series ended with Princess Diana being regressed to the clay from which she was formed. In December of that year, Wonder Woman #1 hit the stands with a completely re-vamped Diana and Paradise Island, thanks to writer/artist George Perez. The comic is currently being written and illustrated by Phil Jiminez, and a one-shot tabloid-sized adventure, Wonder Woman: Spirit of Truth written by Paul Dini and fully-painted by Alex Ross, was released in December 2001.
    
    
11. What happened to Steve Trevor in the comics?
    In the 1960s (known as the Silver Age of comics), DC Comics had a practice of creating alternate universes where characters from different eras dwelled and actually aged, married, had children, and even died. The Justice League would perpetually cross over with their "Earth-1" counterparts—the Justice Society from the Golden Age comics— and it was revealed that the Golden Age Diana had married Steve Trevor and born him a daughter, Hippoltya (Lyta) Trevor. Shortly before Crisis, Steve Trevor and Wonder Woman finally wed as their Earth-1 (Golden Age) counterparts had done. However, that reality was destroyed when the multiverse merged, and one single Earth remained and Diana reverted to the clay from which she had been formed.
    
    When George Perez re-launched the character in the late 1980s, Steve Trevor was no longer written as a love interest for Wonder Woman, who was at that time approximately 18 years old. Steve, an Air Force Colonel in his 40s, crashed on Themyscira when his plane was sabotaged by one of Ares' minions who had possessed his co-pilot and was trying to bomb the island. Steve was returned to Man's World by the Princess. However, he fell in love with and married Lt. Etta Candy, his aide, and is a mentor and friend to Diana in the current comics. Steve's mother, Diana Trevor, was a WWII pilot whose plane went down on Paradise Island during WWII, and she died fighting the monsters imprisoned beneath the Island that had tried to escape from the gate the Amazons guard as part of their punishment by the Gods. It was Diana Trevor's gun that Queen Hippolyte used to administer the final "test" before Diana could go to Patriarch's world, the "flashing thunder" that Diana deflected with her silver bracelets.
    
    
12. Why is Wonder Girl in the TV Series different from Wonder Girl in the comics?
    After Marston's death, Robert Kanigher took over as scripting Wonder Woman and in the late 1950s used a number of devices to tell stories about Princess Diana as a baby and young girl, and these flashback stories referred to Diana as "Wonder Tot" and "Wonder Girl" respectively. However, stories that had all three incarnations of the Princess interacting confused the public as well as the DC Comics writing staff, who assumed that Wonder Girl was an independent character. When DC launched a "junior Justice League" called The Teen Titans, Wonder Girl was among them.

    "Wonder Girl" was re-invented as Donna Troy, an orphan adopted by Diana and raised on Paradise Island by Queen Hippolyte. Donna first appeared in The Brave and the Bold in the summer of 1965, and by the time The Feminum Mystique aired in the fall of 1976, was an established and well-known character in a very popular Superhero team. However, the ABC season was based on the Golden Age Wonder Woman comics, and rarely referenced anything from the post-Marston era. Drusilla sports a different costume from any worn by Donna or Diana in the comics, and is presented in the series as the Queen's daughter, not a foundling or adopted daughter.
    
    

13. What is fan fiction?
    

    "Fan Fiction" is fiction based on a television series (or film, novel, rpg, etc.), written by fans. Fanfic—by and large—is not scripts but prose. While some have chosen to write their fanfic in teleplay form, those are few and far between. Pieces range in length from vignettes (1000 words) to short stories to full blown novels (50,000+ words). Fan fiction has existed in print since the turn of the century pulp magazines, but fanfic as we have come to know it today began in the late 1960s and early 1970s Star Trek fandom. Fanfic was collected in APAs (Amateur Publishing Associations) and circulated through the post, and more commonly in "fanzines"—not-for-profit anthologies of short stories, poems, novellas, and novels usually accompanied by fan artwork, published by fans and sold at cost through the post and at conventions like MediaWest, an annual 'zine con in the Midwest. Many professional authors (Jean Lorrah, A.C. Crispin, Peter David, and Susan Garrett, to name a few) had their start in fanzines.

    Since the web hit big in the early 1990s, fanfic has spread through the on-line media fan community like wildfire, even moving from tradition genre subjects (SF, Fantasy, Horror, Espionage, Police Dramas) to rather unconventional ones (Sitcoms, Medical Dramas, Soap Operas). Many fanfic writes on the Internet, AOL and other forums have never seen a fanzine, and their first introduction to fanfic were the on-line Usenet newsgroups and archives of fanfic written by print fandom media fans writing on-line—which inspired them to write their own.
    
    

14. Why doesn't the archive accept NC-17 or X-Rated fanfic?
    In a nutshell, it is because the archivist wishes to present the character as close to her television incarnation as possible, and does not wish to preserve or encourage sexually explicit Wonder Woman fan fiction which reduces the character to a mere fetish object. The archivist reserves the right to refuse to archive a work of fiction which contains bondage, sado-machochism, nonconsensual sex, sexual promiscuity, beastiality, "damsel in distress" fetish material, or any graphic depictions of sex.
    
    The archivist is perfectly aware that there are other forums for this type of material out there; this web site is not one of them.
    
    

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