Minor hijack – now that I think of it, just what special powers did Batman actually have? I don’t remember that he did anything overly heroic. He just beat up on bad guys, drove a cool car, and climbed up the sides of buildings.
Batman doesn’t have any super powers. He’s just a regular guy (who needs a lot of therapy) who knows how to defend himself, aprehend criminals (psychos?), and be a detective… and he’s VERY good at it.
Dave Stewart: Wonder Woman is made of clay? Since when did this happen? Boy am I out of the comic loop.
Yeah, I always liked that about batman. Of course, enough machinary and defying the lawas of physics because the author doesn’t knwo them does the same job.
Not strictly relevant, but I always wondered why no-one ever shot robocops lower jaw. Did he have some amazingly invisible plastic or something?
Wonder Woman is not made of clay now, she was originally a clay statue sculpted by her mother, Queen Hippolyte, and brought to life by Aphrodite (pre-crisis) or the Godesses of Olympus (post crisis) Hippolyte longed for a child and the Godesses answered her prayer.
Cool method of conception eh? (and very handy on an island populated exclusively by women) No stretchmarks for Hippolyte!
So they meant it when they said Wonder Woman had feet of clay…
Not to mention the Klingons and the Romulans.
http://www.dccomics.com/features/ww/chap3.html tells us:
So, she’s been flying for more than 42 years.
So, Wonder Woman didn’t fly, she just rode on air currents? Does this mean birds don’t really fly?
A Radio Shack Wonder Woman comic book published in the late 1970s/early 1980s, which extolled the virtues of Radio Shack’s then-new acoustic modem for the TRS-80, showed Wonder Woman and Wonder Girl flying.
Or at least gliding.
I think they were trying to give her flight, at the time, without actually calling it “flight”. “Gliding on air currents” was used, but personally I thought it was lame.
There is a new comic out, called Wonder Woman: Spirit of Truth. There is some pretty amazing flash animation for it
here, showcasing the really impressive painted art by Alex Ross. The story looks true to WW’s mission statement of bringing peace to man’s world (something she has expressly tried to do since she was created in or about 1940, regrettably with a lack of success).
This was actually supposed to be someone’s cue to give me Donna Troy’s current origin… [tapping foot impatiently]
Wonder Girl’s (Donna Troy’s) origin is really messed up, because of the re-boot of WW in 1987 - if WW inspired WG, then why was WG (a stalwart of the Teen Titans) around before WW? A big editorial continuity error.
She has had a couple of explanations for her existence. The current one is that she is actually a magical clone of WW. Sorry, I don’t know the exact details.
Dave Stewart wrote:
Well, I think the Freudian sexual imagery here is blatantly obvious.
Superman, Green Lantern, and all those male flying heroes have real powered flight. They drive themselves through the air, thrusting toward their objective with their fists protruding out in front of them like battering rams.
Wonder Woman – and, for that matter, the X-Men’s Storm and the Saturday-morning live-action heroine known as “Mighty Isis” – are simply carried along on currents of air, wafting in the breeze like little helpless princesses. They don’t fly so much as float. It’s like one big new-agey commercial for Summer’s Eve[TM]*.
[sub]*) Freshness has never been simpler![/sub]
Ah, well, she can fly now, and seems to be coming into her own again after years of shoddy writing. In Kingdom Come (set in the near future), she armours up and wields a sword forged by the god Hephaestus (which is so sharp Superman cuts his thumb on it). Wonder Woman then kills a very dangerous villain with the sword, stabbing him from behind so that the blade pokes through his chest, when he is on the verge of crushing a helpless cowering male magician. The Freudian interpretation of that is obvious!
I just thought I’d point out that Rogue has powered flight and Jean Grey can levitate and they’re on the same team as Storm. Plus since Storm controls the wind, her ability is essentially equivalent to powered flight.
Additionally, Isis summoned the “zephyr winds that blow on high” all by herself, so I would count her in the “powered flight” column. She even says “fly” when chanting the incantation.
Hey, at least it isn’t still the 70’s where (if I remember the very few issues of Wonder Woman that I bought) her strength could be totally sapped when her hands were bound by a man.
Ahem Yes, thank you author. That’s a little bit more about your psyche than we needed to know.
Personally, I’ve never like WW. Now Batgirl (or Oracle at this point), yowza. 
Otto wrote:
Oh, sure, Isis could tell the wind what to do, but look at her when she takes off! Is she leaping into the sky with one fist forward like Superman does? Heck no! She just stands there with her arms stretched out at 45-degree angles to her sides, letting herself get “swept up by the moment” as the Zephyr Winds blow her skirt up.
What is it with Superman’s flight, anyway? I remember years and years ago, some engineering students mailed a letter to DC Comics containing mathematical proof that Kal-El’s body was aerodynamically compatible with true flight, but what the hell is his means of propulsion? How can he accelerate? Changes in speed, only, that is; I do understand that a change in diretion at a constant speed is also acceleration, so I have no problem with his being able to go into a banking turn.
Has anyone ever come upon a satisfactory explanation of this phenomenon?
You forgot Supergirl. (The original, I mean. ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES!!!)
As for how Kryptonians fly, John Byrne’s explanation is that it’s psychic; IOW, they think about it really, really hard.
Oh brother.
While we’re on the subject, what’s the deal with the Mighty Thor, dragged around by his fruity hammer? Of course, he is responsible for using his godly strength to thrust his hammer in the direction of travel.