One of the most foremost characters in the history of Wonder Woman, and one of the characters with the most confusing histories. As we will come to learn, anything Wonder Woman related ends up being confused at one point or another.
Originally Etta was just a random character who was the leader of her college sorority. She helped Wonder Woman on a random case. Random character. Random Case. Random random random. She began showing up more and more however, and we saw that she was a little bit of a bigger girl then most at the time, especially for comic books. She also really liked chocalate and eating the food substance. In fact nearly every single page we saw of her in the Golden Age of Comics had her either eating or thinking about the delicious food once. She also liked saying Woo! Woo! a lot whenever she marched into battle or whenever really. Silly silly Etta was one of the most different characters within the Golden Age of Comics because she was different. Most of the time supporting characters were the person with a different gender and different hair color. Etta had spunk, had originality she was one of the funnest characters back then and is always remembered well by people if not comically at least.
Etta was generally the same character for years until George Perez came along. Sure she had some slimming down, and wasn't always saying Woo! Woo! all the time anymore, but she was still fun loving and spunky. In the George Perez reboot she was still a bit spunky and bad ass, but was now in love with Steve Trevor and her weight was actually an issue she took seriously. In fact she almost had a little bit of a grudge against Diana, but it wasn't much of one.
The two then took a little bit of a different relationship in the recent 2006 reboot, (well not to recent anymore I guess) and became magically younger, very younger. Probably 10 to 20 years younger. She also became secret agent-lite. Her and Diana got along very well. Well mostly. She became jealous of her husband, who was recently promoted towards head of the DMA (Department of Metahuman Activities) along with her friend Wonder Woman. When she was given an offer by members of the secret agent organization Checkmate she accepted. She spied on Diana for a while. When Diana found out she wasn't mad of course, forgiving her friend.
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| Can't find a good image, but she was secret agent-lite, trust me! |
Nice round-up. I must say. George Perez's Etta is a real wet-blanket. Gail Simone improved her somewhat, but she's still missing Etta's essential love of life.
ReplyDeleteIm a fan of Marstons WW [ Great Hera, who isnt ] but as entertaining as the Candy was, my enduring memory of her is from the early 80s when she joined the military alongside Diana.
ReplyDeleteWhat I dont like about this new version is that old trope that Etta is/has to be jealous of Diana and her friendship with Steve. Itd be nice for once for writers to portray "large" girls as comfortable with themselves, not insecure or jealous re other women.
But Ettas an entertaining enough character and her recent "conversion" to Checkmate as an undercover agent bodes well for her status as a supporting character.