Our Lady Of Themyscira

I've just seen a whole lot of Wonder Woman-themed "syncs" this morning, and I wanted to collect them here:

First, a WW-themed cigarette ad from the 1970s, found on the Kleefeld on Comics blog:

Then, a Virgin Mary/Superman mashup -- that, revealingly, rather resembles Wonder Woman -- by artist Soasig Chamaillard (via io9):

And Jay Bone just tweeted a drawing of Michelle Obama as WW just before I sat down to write this:

I then began to think of alll the symbolic similarities between the Virgin Mary and Wonder Woman:

1. Red-and-white color scheme
2. Sometimes uses a cape
3. Field of stars on blue background on costume
4. Golden "crown"/halo/tiara
5. Dark hair (sometimes painters will go blond on VM...though WW has been depicted this way as well
6. Bird imagery (on WW's top and the Holy Ghost painted near Mary)
7. Lasso/Snake imagery
8. Special powers
9. Both derived from Greco/Egyptian goddess imagery (Isis/Athena)
10. "Virginal" qualities: while WW has been often paired with Steve Trevor, there nevertheless remains a strangly "virginal" aspect about her...living on an island devoid of men.

Given the last attribute, it is strange that DC Comics would recently choose to so publicly pair Wonder Woman up with Superman...unless you consider another Mary:

Tons have been written on the Jesus symbolism with Superman...

The union of Jesus and Mary Magdalene has deep deep esoteric meaning, which of course keys into the collective unconscious of the public and immediately draws them to the story. As does the general iconography of WW and VM, both deriving from the same ancient, primal, archetypal "well."

The image of WW/VM/MM is generally quite positive (you know, except when they tempt newly-liberated Seventies women to start smoking), and I do like seeing them scattered about the Internets --

--they are a good corrective to the unimaginable hatred towards women I've seen over the last month or so, evidenced in the psychopath who was stalking females in the comics industry and the "burn the witch" imagery stemming from the Pussy Riot trials.

Speaking of the latter post, this picture of DC Comics character Pandora is a Mary Magdalene stand-in if I've ever seen one:

Given the apparent "Judas" symbolism of the Phantom Stranger in the story, this connection would bear further research in another post.