Some versions of her costume have been problematic, yeah, but when I was a seven year old girl spinning around and around in my room, pretending my army uniform was transforming into a gold bustier etc., I wasn’t imagining that I was becoming sexy. I was imagining that I was becoming powerful, important, a force for good in the world. And if Wonder Woman makes it possible for the people who grew up on her image to look at a woman in revealing garments and imagine, even subliminally, that she’s a powerful force for good in the world, then yay for Wonder Woman.

I think a dissertation would be and entertaining read if what you say about Marsten is true.

The weird superpower of the dissertation as a genre is to make absolutely any topic dull. I accidentally wrote a dissertation chapter about ritual sex (I started my research with a question about why T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound et al. were so obsessed with the brand-new academic field of anthropology. Turns out the answer was ritual sex. Oops.) The chapter was only recognizable to my dissertation committee as academic writing at the point when I’d rendered it boring to everyone, including myself. There’s something really sad about eighty-seven pages on ritual sex with not one lively paragraph left.

That said, you can probably find some scholarly stuff about Wonder Woman at ComicsResearch.org

I have to disagree with you about Wonder Woman’s appearance though. I think it misses the essential feminist message of her character. She’s an Amazon, who lives in Man’s World (her words). She likes men, but she does not need them.

The character as portrayed in the comics is a positive role model for women. To throw that away because she’s wearing something no more risque than what a circus performer might wear (which can be said for most superhero costumes) I think is unfair. She was the first person on the cover of MS Magazine. They didn’t think the outfit was sexist, so what’s changed?

Don’t get me wrong, your point about women in comics is dead on, but you picked, in my opinion, a bad example. Artists like Cliff Chiang (Wondeer Woman) and Mahmud Asrar (Supergirl) have done a great job in providing positive, less sexual, heroines while still creating dynamic feminine heroes in their comics.

I think a better example of over sexualization would be what Guillem March did with the upcoming Catwoman #0 cover. Or have seen what they’ve got Harley Quinn wearing these day!

as an aside, all the bondage powers WW had in the beginning where retconned about the same time you were watching Linda Carter on TV. You know, back when she was a ninja for a few years.