Most Powerful Superheros

The most powerful and often the most underrated superhero in my opinion has to be Wonder Woman. She had the beauty and grace of your average supermodel, but combined with the strength and morality that was normally only assigned to male superheros.

When we talk about women in superhero comics they are generally portrayed as the bad guys, sometimes deliberately so and at other times merely misunderstood pawns manipulated by the real male bad guy.

William Moulton Marston using the pen name Charles Moulton created Wonder Woman back in 1947. Incidentally Marston also created the Systolic Blood Pressure test, which in turn lead to the creation of the lie detector test. His work in this area convinced him that women were more honest than men.

With this in mind Marston decided to create a superhero that embodied all the pre existing male superhero characteristics, but combining the attributes that he believed were inherent in the female gender.

Marston spent most of his life championing the causes of women advocating the need for strong female archetype and in his interview in 1943 in the The American Scholar' Marston is quoted 'Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power..'.

With the creation of Wonder Woman Marston has given the world a female superhero that provides the very attributes that up to her creation were only embodied in men. Women had for the first time a role model that showed strength whilst not sacrificing her femininity. That could exist in the male dominated world of male superheroes and hold her own next to them. Her continuing popularity is testament to the need for this strong female role model even in today's society.

Resources for this article:

www.wonderwoman-online.com

Learn more about this author, Sharon Cawley.
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