Wonder Woman is a popular character by name but not by history.  If you were to ask someone about Batman's origin story, they would probably know his parents were murdered so he learned crime was bad.  If you were to ask someone about Superman's origin story, they would probably know that his planet blew up and he was raised by good-hearted Midwesterners.  But ask people about Wonder Woman's origin, and you'll probably get confused looks.  It's the result of Wonder Woman lacking the ubiquity of her male counterparts, and to be fair, plenty of non-geeks are probably just as ignorant of many superheroes' origins.  However, those superheroes are rarely set next to two of the most famous superheroes of all-time.

Because Wonder Woman's origin is mostly unknown, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice has room to play with it as opposed Superman or Batman where the confines are strictly mandated by geek culture.  Geeks don't care as much about Wonder Woman, and so her original origin is being tossed out for something more "modern" and "realistic".  Hit the jump for more.

wonder-woman-comics-origin

According to producer Charles Roven [via Badass Digest], Wonder Woman will be a demigod fathered by Zeus.

Devin at Badass explained that her original origin is much more interesting:

[T]he Amazons were created by the gods using the souls of all the women murdered by men. There was, when it was all said and done, one soul remaining, the soul of the unborn daughter of the first woman to ever be murdered by a man. That woman was Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, and she molded a figure of clay and gave to it the soul of that unborn girl. The clay was animated and became Diana, who was gifted abilities from the gods.

That sound cool, unique, and thematically worthwhile, or at least more so than Batman deciding to fight crime because it directly affected his life.

However, the Zeus thing comes from DC's "New 52" comics, where the clay is only a legend, and the reality is that Diana is born from Zeus having sex with Diana's mother, Hippolyta.  I'm not sure how this is better than the clay thing.  It's not more "realistic", and maybe Batman v Superman has decided just to rip-off Thor and say that the greek gods are highly-advanced space aliens.

I admit that Wonder Woman is a tough sell, but if it's going to be a tough sell, at least go with the origin that's thematically interesting.

In happier news, here's a picture of Ben Affleck wearing a t-shirt that says "Team Batfleck" [Update: We've been told this is photoshopped.  Good work, photoshopper.  In a related story, we have no happier news]:

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