DC Finally Remembers Wonder Woman's Black Twin, 47 Years Later
A few weeks ago, a lot of people who make "complaining about outrage culture" a central part of their identity got very very outraged at DC Comics for announcing Nubia: Real One, a young adult graphic novel (expensive kids' comic) about Wonder Woman's black twin sister. Videos of the "angry person ranting at the camera" type have already declared the comic, which won't even come out until around the time we're all getting our coronashots, as "woke garbage" about the "wokest blackest SJW Wonder Woman yet." Yeah! DC is clearly pandering by introducing this character now, in the year ... 1973?
See, Wonder Woman's classic origin is that she was a baby-shaped lump of clay that the Greek gods decided to imbue with life, because that's the sort of shit Greek gods liked to do (thus explaining all the sentient clay dildos running around Greece). But in Wonder Woman #206, released 47 years ago, we find out that there were actually two magical baby golems, one made out of light clay and one made of dark clay. Guess which is which.
Tragically, baby Nubia was stolen by Mars, the god of war, who trained her to murder the Amazons one day (but also gave her a floating island full of muscular shirtless dudes who do her bidding, so he wasn't that bad as an adoptive dad). Of course, this leads to a big fight between Nubia and Wonder Woman, which is tricky for both of them because they're evenly matched -- it's like fighting yourself on a tinted mirror. Then they decide it would be more fun to join forces and make fun of Mars for being a sad wimp.
Wonder Woman found out that Nubia was her twin sister soon thereafter ... and that was her last regular appearance. She popped up next as a guest star on a Supergirl comic, only to get bitten by a poisonous man-shark and spend most of the issue in bed. Her appearance on the '70s Wonder Wo(ooooo)man TV show was cancelled, but at least she got a cool doll and a TV ad out of it.
And that was about it for Nubia as Wonder Woman's sister. Over the years DC introduced various alternate versions of her (even the most obscure DC character has 37 variants) but none stuck around for too long. Despite that, fans have been writing stories and making (occasionally NSFW) fan art of her for decades, and it's easy to see why they find her so inspiring: her original stories established her as someone raised to be evil whose goodness shone through. More of this, DC.
Follow Maxwell Yezpitelok's heroic effort to read and comment every '90s Superman comic at Superman86to99.tumblr.com.
Top Image: DC Comics
