Next to Steve Trevor and Hippolyta, nobody has been a part of Wonder Woman’s adventures as much as Etta Candy. Unlike them, there have been huge stretches of the series where Etta disappeared from the cast and her portrayal has varied much more wildly through the years.
Etta shows up in Sensation Comics #2 as a student at Holliday College where she’s a leader in one of the sororities. Wonder Woman’s engaged in a battle of wits with Doctor Poison (yes, the villain from the Gal Gadot movie) and needs to distract some Axis spies. She contacts the Holliday Girls and Etta leads them in distracting the villains. It’s no great sacrifice: the girls were always shown as happy to flirt with men.
My memories of Etta from the few Golden Age stories I’d read were mostly negative: William Marston and artist Harry G. Peter present her as a fat young woman constantly obsessing over Candy. Reading the Golden Age Wonder Woman Omnibus I discovered I was wrong. Yes, Etta’s a glutton constantly complaining about not having enough candy or losing it in a fight but she’s also daring, unflinching in the face of danger and extremely capable in a fight. She’s also a Texan heiress.
Etta continues attending college and fighting alongside WW until 1950, then she vanishes. In 1960 she returns in Wonder Woman #117. She’s once again a college student (DC’s reference guide from the 1980s, Who’s Who quips that having stayed in college so long she’s clearly a genius who’s racked up multiple degrees) accompanied by three sorority friends: toy-loving Tina Toy, tiny Lita Little and tall Thelma Tall. They crop up in several more adventures but they’re just a cheerleading section for Diana rather than mixing it up with villains Golden Age-style. After four stories Robert Kanigher dropped them; even when he rebooted the series to tell Golden Age stories he didn’t include Etta.
That left her MIA until the Wonder Woman TV show included Etta Candy (Beatrice Colen) as a character but this time a corporal rather than a college girl. When DC followed the show’s first season and shifted the comic book to World War II (the Wonder Woman of Earth 2 if that means anything to you) they brought back Etta Candy too. Once again she was military, which became part of her character from that point on. She also got a subplot of her own involving a Frenchman romancing her for ulterior motives, but the WW II era wrapped up before we learned his agenda.
When the Earth-One Wonder Woman adopts a military secret identity again, Etta returned as a military member and new buddy for Diana Prince. Regrettably she wasn’t a fighter here either and her struggles with weight were probably her main characteristic (with Diana grumbling about how men in Man’s World are so shallow not to see past the surface).
Etta got better storylines in the George Perez reboot. Perez wrote her tougher and more capable, plus Steve was
now a friend to Diana rather than a boyfriend. That freed him up to start dating Etta. Perez planned to marry them off in his final issue but wires got crossed and he was told to hold it over for the next writer. Ironically William Messner-Loebs, who took over the book, didn’t get around to marrying them either.
Since DC’s New 52 reboot Etta has been rebooted to be both black and lesbian; with Steve back as Diana’s lover, Etta’s now dating Barbara Minerva, the Cheetah. I’m a few years behind on Wonder Woman so I’m not sure if any of that’s changed.
#SFWApro. Art by Peter, Peter again, Ross Andru and Perez. All rights to images remain with current holders.
Steve Trevor was literally there from the first story, a backup feature in All-Star Comics #8 that preceded Diana’s series in Sensation Comics. Shot down over Paradise Island, he’s the first man Diana ever saw. She saves his life by developing new Amazon healing technology. Having fallen in love with him she opts to become Wonder Woman, travel with him to “Man’s World” and fight injustice there (Robert Kanigher was one of several authors to 
along with Kanigher, we had several stories 
In 1991, the George Perez era of Wonder Woman came to an end with #62. Though really, everything that’s happened since has built on his foundation; even Greg Rucka’s 
and Diana’s insecurities to torment and distract her. Unfortunately this version of Psycho is less interesting a reboot than the 
It turns out Circe (who was using Psycho to distract Diana) has been gathering the various stolen artifacts for a mega-ritual which summons most of the pantheons out of wherever they dwell when they stop being worshipped (it’s a little unclear). The Roman pantheon attacks Olympus to claim it from the Greeks. The Egyptian gods rise in Salem, where Dr. Fate hangs out. Thanagarian gods appear in Chicago, where Hawkman and Hawkwoman operate. Other deities manifest elsewhere. The Bani-Migdhall Amazons and the Cheetah are involved as agents of Circe.
It’s a good, action-packed arc which doesn’t stint on the character side of things. As witness Silver Swan does break free of her hubby’s control and start to rebuild her life. She even succeeds — when Phil Jimenez brought the Silver Swan back, she had a new identity, so presumably this incarnation turned out okay.
The story involves some leftover “bestiamorphs,” the monstrous creations of Circe, and a cabal of rat creatures created by alien DNA that the Titans (the former Teen ones, not the Greeks) once battled. And mysterious dreams in which Donna sees through Diana’s eyes and vice versa. It turns out it’s all a scheme by Circe, who was behind the ET rat creatures as well as her bestiamorphs. Why? No clue. I’m not sure we ever learned (time will tell). It’s fun seeing Donna and Diana meet, but at the same time it’s a little unsatisfying. Given all the history they used to have together and no longer did, I suspect that was inevitable.
My repeated observation (
Mighdal, an isolated community of Amazons, vastly more brutal than the women of Themiscrya. They sell weapons and mercenary services, reproduce by kidnapping men (as most of the locals are Middle Eastern, these Amazons are dark-skinned) and dispose ruthlessly of anyone who gets in their way. Eventually Diana learns that when Circe arranged the murder of Theseus’ Amazon wife Antiope a handful of Amazons there completely misinterpreted events, turning them hostile to both the men and women of the outside world. Diana tries to explain the error but since none of them know Hippolyta is still alive, they don’t believe Diana’s claim to be her daughter — come on, she’d be thousands of years old! Wonder Woman has to battle the Amazons, the Cheetah and then when she finally wins over the queen, an angry usurper murders the queen and sends out Shim’tar, a seemingly ustoppable warrior woman who kicks Diana’s butt hard. Ultimately, with the help of Hermes, she discovers Shim’tar is powered by the Girdle of Gaia, linked to Diana’s lasso, so by pitting the lasso’s pure energy against Shim’tar’s tainted abuse of the Girdle, Wonder Woman destroys her foe. Bana Mighdal is apparently destroyed, though I believe it (or at least its former inhabitants) turn up again.
•Old foes. In these thirteen issues, Perez reboots three pre-Crisis adversaries, to varying success. First came Barbara Minerva, the post-Crisis version of 
Next up, the post-Crisis Silver Swan. Surprisingly for a guy who loves mythology, Perez skipped 
And finally we get Circe, who markedly improves on Dan Mishkin’s version. It turns out the part of Greece Wonder Woman visits is under control of Circe, who lives on an isolated island but uses her shapeshifted slaves (“beastiamorphs”) to monitor the area in animal form; work against her and you die. The resistance sees Wonder Woman’s presence as a chance to get free; Circe sees her as a prophesied threat (as did the Mishkin version, but the prophecy’s easier to understand here).
discussing.
Fraser Sherman's Blog 