About the Superfriends version of Wonder Woman:
She was not created from sand or clay in the cartoon.
They never said she was anything but Princess Diana, daughter of Queen Hippolyta. It was still Paradise Island, and Diana retained the title of Princess, even if they didn’t use it throughout her Superfriend incarnation.
We don’t know if they had their secret identities because it never was referred to. That does not mean that they did not have them.
Including the ghastly (but kinda cool, in an Earth-Bizarro way) origin from about 1956 or so (WW #105) where she had a daddy and a mommy and (IIRC) where daddy taught her all about how to be a super-hero. :: shudder :: (I read a reprint of it a while back, and now can’t remember where…any ideas Hastur?)
Fenris
Hell, let’s go on an alternate-timeline tangent…
I remember an old SF episode where the Legion of Doom went back in time and mucked with the heroes’ origins. Hence:
-Baby Kal-El’s rocket was diverted; I believe they sent it to Mars instead.
-Giganta (or whatever her name was) snuck into the contest on Paradise Island and beat Wonder Woman, thus getting the tiara and bracelets for herself.
-Lex Luthor jumped into Hal Jordan’s test rocket and took his place meeting Abin Sur. He boldly walked into the Legion of Doom HQ after that. “Look, it’s Green Lantern!” Lex: “Wrong, it’s the Green Luthor!”
This thread just wouldn’t be complete without a link to Seanbaby’s hilarious Superfriends page, where you can see some of the other oddball characters created for the cartoon, like Apache Chief, El Dorado, Samurai, and Black Vulcan (with his amazing never-drawn-the-same-way-twice costume).
I thought the Superfriends cartoon glossed over Diana’s creation.
I know they had the “Bullets and Bracelets” Contest to pick Wonder Woman, that Diana won, her mother forbade her to be in and she disguised herself. She got the outfit, boots, Tiara, Belt and Magic Lasso, and the Invisible Jet.
There was even an episode where the Legion of Doom was trying to get rid of the 3 powerful members of the Justice League, Cheetah (being WW’s arch-enemy) snuck her onto Paradise Island, entered the contest and won with rigged bracelets, becoming WW, but after returning to the Legion of Doom, returned to Cheetah, getting rid of WW. I always thought Cheetah should have become an evil WW, after winning.
As far as I know there were no secret identies.
Black Lightning was originally going to be on the show. However, the Powers That Were had problems with giving Tony Isabella (creator and writer of Black Lightning) royalties so they ever so slightly changed the character. Tony’s a little bitter about this, yes.
Apache Chief and Giganta share an origin. There was a powder that Apache Chief had to quest for that would magnify a person’s emotional state at the time in addition to granting the ability to grow. Apache Chief had noble intentions for finding the powder. Thus, he became more noble and heroic. Giganta, however was being selfish and evil (she’d overheard the explanation about the powder and decided to seize the power for herself) and became more so.