8 Strangest Romances In Wonder Woman Comics

Few superheroes are quite as iconic as Wonder Woman. While she is best known for being a superhero connected to the Greek gods, she has also been a UN ambassador, a military leader, a god, and (most notably for this list) a paragon of love.

Indeed, Wonder Woman has repeated stated that she quite literally loves everyone. The character was created by William Moulton Marston to champion love and female empowerment. As such, Wonder Woman’s comics have always pushed boundaries with their romantic depictions, but some of these relationships are definitely stranger than others.

8 Diana And Her Invisible Jet

There have been a lot of different versions of the Invisible Jet over the years. Originally, Wonder Woman could not fly, so she needed the jet for transportation. However, her origins were rebooted in 1987, she was given a new set of powers, including flight (and for the record, DC’s numerous reboots will come up a few times throughout this list).

One version of her Invisible Jet was known as Orb and was a sentient shape-shifting being that fell in love with Diana. It eventually gave its life in a tragic act of sacrifice, but that did not stop the Amazon from flying around in Orb’s invisible hollowed-out corpse.

7 Leslie Anderson And Ferdinand The Not-Quite-Minotaur

Writer Greg Rucka took over the Wonder Woman title in the early 2000s, delivering a truly unforgettable narrative. One of the new characters he introduced was Diana’s personal cook, Ferdinand, a master chef who prepared vegetarian dishes for the Amazon and her staff a the Themysciran Embassy. With his bull head and humanoid body, Ferdinand is related to the original Minotaur, though as he is from Kithira—and not the Cretan city of Minos—he reminds others that he is not technically a Minotaur.

Leslie Anderson was a brilliant inventor and businesswoman who was one of the two heads of Cale-Anderson Pharmaceuticals. The other leader of the company was the villain Veronica Cale. When Leslie learns of the various illegal actions Cale has performed, she leaves her former business. Soon, she and Ferdinand are flirting like junior high students, awkward yet clearly infatuated with one another.

6 Hippolyta And Zeus

This might not seem strange to those whose main introduction to Wonder Woman was the 2017 movie, but for decades, the official story of Diana’s origin was that her mother Hippolyta sculpted her from clay and gave her life, giving her a form of “virgin birth.”

In 2011, the DC Universe rebooted under a new imprint called The New 52. Diana was given a new origin story as the daughter of both the Amazon Queen Hippolyta and the Greek god Zeus. This was quite jarring for fans familiar with Wonder Woman’s past.

5 Wonder Woman And Steve Trevor…And Manno The Merman…And Birdman…And Mister Monster

Recent Wonder Woman comics have acknowledged that she is polyamorous, something which makes sense for a character who claims to quite literally love everyone. As such, her having multiple fiances is not inherently strange. However, back in the Silver Age comic Wonder Woman #155, she ended up engaged to four different characters in the course of a single page and most of these characters were rather surprisingly inhuman romantic matches.

The Silver Age is notorious for its over-the-top silly hijinks, and this is a great example of the era’s zaniness. The last of her potential husbands, Mister Monster, is handsome when he does good deeds and monstrous when he commits acts of evil. With a name like Mister Monster, it should not surprise people that he was a person of somewhat dubious character. But can anyone really envision Diana with Birdman or a Merman either?

4 Minotaur Meet Cute

As was stated before, Ferdinand is not technically a minotaur due to not being from Minos–or at least he did not consider himself to be one during the pre-Flashpoint continuity. The most recent version of Ferdinand is a lot more depressed and lonely, so how he defines his identity may have changed with his circumstances.

When he meets Eirene the Minotauress, each one immediately connects with the other, saying they had both always felt alone. It is a beautiful start, a classic meet-cute moment, and a point of affirmation for each of them. Ferdinand immediately takes Eirene off to cook her a delicious vegetarian meal for their first date. It’s incredibly sweet, but this is not exactly a conventional romance.

3 Veronica Cale And Diana

In Wonder Woman: Rebirth (and specifically in the story “Godwatch”), Diana offers donors a chance to bid on a date with her as part of a charity event. While Bruce Wayne bids quite a lot for a chance to go on a date with the Amazon princess, he is out-bid by Veronica Cale.

This is one of Cale’s first meetings with Wonder Woman in the Rebirth era. And to be clear, this is not strange because it is a same-sex relationship but because Wonder Woman is a superhero on a date with a supervillain bent on destroying her. Veronica Cale was originally conceived of as a sort of Lex Luthor for Diana, and so it is just about as out-of-character as seeing Lex and Superman sipping milkshakes together.

2 Etta Candy And Cheetah

Both Etta Candy and Cheetah have undergone numerous reinventions over the years. The original Cheetah from the 40s had no powers but was just a skilled burglar and brawler. Meanwhile, Etta Candy has traditionally been portrayed as a white woman in a secretarial role. In the 90s-2000s, Etta was married to Steve Trevor, traditionally considered Diana’s primary lover.

In Wonder Woman: Rebirth, Etta was reinvented in a number of ways. Meanwhile, Cheetah (specifically the third Cheetah, Dr. Barbara Ann Minerva) is retconned to be a brilliant archaeologist and philologist who deciphers the Amazon language and helps teach Diana to speak English (this is before she becomes a villain). These two strong women become an item. They care for one another and have great chemistry. However, their relationship—like their new personalities—strongly contrasts decades of comics’ continuity, and it is this change from past continuity that makes this a particularly strange romance.

1 Steve Trevor And Etta Candy

Most people think of Steve Travor as Diana’s primary love interest. After all, he has quite literally been dating her since the Golden Age of Comics, while he was also in love with her in the recent DCEU films. Furthermore, the two characters engage in some sort of romantic behavior in the DCAU’s Justice League cartoon, the Super Friends cartoon, and the 70s live-action TV series. Basically, people take it for granted that these two should be together.

But during the post-Crisis period of the 90s and 2000s, Steve Trevor was actually married to Etta Candy. Even after the reality-altering story Infinite Crisis changed the continuity of DC Comics and undid many of the more controversial parts of DC’s past, Steve and Etta’s marriage endured. It says a lot that their marriage was stronger than the fabric of reality. Unfortunately for them, it could not survive DC Editorial decisions.

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