On Diana, the Secret ID, & Relatability
Those who demand that Wonder Woman have a secret identity, like the old days, don't bother me that much. It's just nostalgia really. But the justifications some offer smack of “false solution.”

We don't need a character with a dual identity to identify with the character. How many of us have secret dual identities ourselves? And the character is a wish-fulfillment fantasy anyway, right?

The trick, I think, is to write the character as human, rather than have her "turn into" a human.

I think Byrne showed me the way to do it. Not that the Byrne run is a masterwork of plot & script, but he pointed me in the direction I intend to take, even if he himself blew past it to have weird stories about Di turning to clay or becoming a goddess.

Diana, who I've been referring to as Diana Themyskiras, is a human being. She is a celebrity, a superhero, & a scholar. Much like the characters in Monkeyman & O'Brien--an Arthur Adams concept I seriously recommend--or a little like a more socially adjusted Reed Richards. She's not in her Wondie togs doing Justice League superhero fights all the time. She has friends, she wears civilian clothes, she eats, she hunts, she dates, she does lots of stuff. Sometimes she dismantles rampaging giant late-Atlantean robots unearthed by modern archaeologists. Occasionally she assists in negotiating with extra-terrestrial empires that are threatening to invade Earth.

She's a master linguist, a monster hand-to-hand combatant, & learned some physics-bending magic/psionics/superscience from her Amazon training. She has a vague passing familiarity with ancient Hittite, pre-Homeric proto-Hellene culture, & some other lost cultures that her people preserved memories of. She's picked up a little knowledge of modern engineering & micro-biology--a lot for a layman, not much by professional/specialist standards--as it can help her deal with weird crises.

Don't think of her superhero nature as this strange costumed identity that has nothing to do with flesh-&-blood existence. It's not Iron Man armor, or the like. Her powers are capacities that she has all the time. Meanwhile, she could be working as a university lecturer, or an advisor to Interpol, or what have you. Her costume, on the other hand, is less important, & gets pulled out where she wants a heraldic presentation, or just togs she doesn't mind getting dirty.

Being a superhero is sort of her job. Think of someone you know who's a fireman, or a physician, or even a postal worker. Are they putting out fires/seeing patients/delivering mail all the time? Of course not. But they are still recognizably that person, even if at other times they're acting more as a spouse or parent or baseball fan.

I'm going to write some stories that explain this idea.

Oh, look! Some quotes:
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http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showpost.php?p=9948684&postcount=22
I do think she lacks some relateability (not a great amount, mind you), but that mostly comes from writers not showing small moments. Things like being tired in the morning, getting her hair cut, awkward moments, being in dilemma. The list goes on.
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http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showpost.php?p=9946151&postcount=19
Back to Diana… So imagine some Sunday, Diana needs to run down to the local jungle pet store to pick up some gorilla scent masking room fresheners, she obviously isn’t going to wear the bullets and bracelets… so have her show up in normal street clothes and go shopping.

The clerks know she is wonder woman, the customers know she is wonder woman but really, its just Diana to them…

This way, she can go out on dates, she can run errands, she can do stuff that heroes need to do, but doesn’t need to wear the star spangled panties…or white super spy suit... or red cyclops eyeglasses.
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Yeah Yeah Yeah, Uh-huh Uh-huh Uh-huh, as the boys in Z sang ("Lucky Jones," which I fanonically consider the unofficial theme song of the Wonder Girl & the Young Justice kids). Here's the thing.

Show her with Donna, doing simple homey things in the apartment. What? They don't still have the apartment? Well, wherever one of them is living now. Cooking, making jokes, talking about Dick guys. Also, I kind of want to bring back Di's love of appliqué stars & "Wonder Princess" outfits so Donna can mock it.

Have her babysitting some friend's kids, teaching them some kind of useful skill (sewing comes to mind, maybe for darning the darn costume?) while also singing some ancient Amazon-Hittite song & teaching them that at the same time. (By the way, comicdom needs some more supporting cast characters with kids.)

Have her drag her boyfriend off to some Latin American beach for vacation. She can get into some trouble (no, not that kind of trouble) for story purposes, but this is a good place for Al to draw her just being happy & having a good time--in a thong. (Have I mentioned that if I write the book, I want Al Rio to rotate with José Luis García-López on art? No? Well, I do.)

Oh yeah. For further disconnection from Fighting Crime & Monsters, the boyfriend can be a non-super. Not Tom Tresser or the like, but say, Clarence the mild-mannered history professor. (Although I have this lurking plotbunny that asks for her to briefly date John Henry Irons, I really don't think that tying her to one of the JLA boys works long-term.)

Also, there's a possible intersection with a different kind of fantasy than Fighting Extraterrestrials & Monsters. Di is a celebrity. She gets invited to Fashion Week, designers concoct clothes for her, she gets asked to be a guest (& unofficial additional security) at various hoity-toity events, she gets (in various ways) to manhandle rare gems & objets d'art. She also is able to jet off to obscure countries to act as an election observer, negotiator, or hostage rescue agent. Wealth! Glamour! Power! Exotica! Thrills! Much of which should be real-world based, not, you know, alien tiger-men from Stavromula Sigma fighting the Gloops of 501 Centauri for the Mha-K-Gupphen--nor another freaking "intrigue on Olympus" story.

Now, about Diana Prince as a character. It's untrue that I don't like Diana Prince. I've been working out a backstory for her. I could see making her the star of the book. But in my fan-imagining, Diana Prince is the child of Mr & Mrs Prince, & while she may have programmed to think she's Wonder Woman, that doesn't mean she's actually Diana Themyskiras. :evil grin:

Ahem. Seriously, though, my take on Wonder Woman is somewhere between Hellboy & Angelina Jolie (& the aforementioned Monkeyman & O'Brien). She's a big-time celebrity, a quasi-political figure, a sex symbol, knowledgeable on various weird things historical magical & otherwise. All of that is within the context of her being a human being, not just a cartoon or a plasticene doll painted in primary colors.