Stan Lee had a knack for creating vibrant, larger-than-life characters who were somehow both grounded in reality and the most magical thing you have ever seen, from the Amazing Spider-Man to the Fantastic Four and the Uncanny X-Men.
Stan The Man once crossed the line into DC’s Distinguished Competition, but did you know that it was during his historic run with Jack Kirby that transformed Marvel Comics into that competition?
In addition, he wrote a full miniseries for them, collaborating with some of the top comic book artists to reimagine the Justice League of America, one of the genre’s most famous super-teams ever! Beginning in 2001, DC started publishing “Just Imagine…”, a collection of What If scenarios in which Stan Lee essentially reimagines DC’s elite squad with his own flair.
Nowhere is this more clear than in the narrative of Stan Lee’s Wonder Woman, which produced characters that preserve the JLA’s core characteristics while otherwise being completely separate beings.
Because although Lee’s Wonder Woman and the original Princess of Themiscyra have some obvious similarities, their stories could not be more dissimilar, and because getting to witness Stan Lee and Jim Lee collaborate is a treat in and of itself. Without further ado, here is Stan Lee’s Wonder Woman Origins Explored!
Prior to explaining further, we have a very minor request.
Please subscribe to our channel if you enjoy our work. It may seem like a tiny gesture to you, but it means a lot to us.
The Legacy of a Different Pantheon – The Paradise Valley of Cuzco!
Jim Lee is now a household name in Washington, DC. He has been employed by the business for 20 years in some form, and after Geoff Johns left DC in 2018, he has taken on the roles of chief publisher and creative director. Even though he is currently one of the most important players in the comics industry, in 2001 he preferred to concentrate only on his illustration job.
Because, as absurd as it seems, he was more dedicated to generating comics at the time than to controlling them. With the launch of Image Comics in 1992, he gave being an executive a fair shot, but within five years, he found himself returning to his roots as an illustrator and storyteller.
But do not allow all of this explanation to lead you to believe that Jim Lee is just another creative who can not help but create—he is, in fact, perhaps the most significant comic book artist of the twenty-first century. His artwork has typically been regarded as being almost mythical, and it was his ideas for the Uncanny X-Men that served as the inspiration for the animated series that debuted in 1992.
Because some of this work will leave you speechless, Just Imagine Stan Lee and Jim Lee producing Wonder Woman is as much a monument to Stan’s storytelling skills as it is to Jim’s artistic prowess. Case in point, the opening panels of this issue, give you a succinct yet dreamy recap of all you need to know about where Stan Lee’s Wonder Woman comes from. In the Just Imagine… universe, Wonder Woman doesn’t come from Paradise Island, she isn’t the daughter of a Greek warrior goddess, and she wasn’t made out of clay.
She comes from the mystical land of Peru, whose myths and legends inspired this Michael E. Uslan-devised plot. The issue opens with a regal depiction of the legendary Incan ruler Manco Capac; a man whose story is so mythical that his people thought him to be a divine figure.
There are a couple of mythological origins for Manco Capac in Incan mythology; the first one calls him the son of Viracocha- the Incan creator deity- and says that he lived on the outskirts of a fabled valley with his brothers and sisters and that when the time came, he conquered that valley and ruled over the Incan Empire as its first high king. The second story calls Manco Capac the son of the Incan Sun God Inti and the Moon Goddess Mama Quilla, and it is this tale that Uslan chose to base this story upon.
The comic begins with a recollection of Manco Capac’s legend. Eons ago, the legendary Son of God rose from the holy Lake Titicaca and was sent to the mortal realm but with one purpose; to find the land upon which the Golden City of Cuzco could be created. He was given the Golden Staff named Tapac-Yauri by his Father and told that his journey would end when he found a piece of land where his staff would sink completely into the ground.
No one can say how long or how far Manco Capac and his followers journeyed to create this Incan City of Wonders, but what we can say is that they found their destination. After fighting off hordes of evil men and eviler demons and spirits, Manco Capac finally found a place where his staff sank straight into the ground beneath his feet.
He would go on to create Cuzco- the mightiest city of the Incan Empire- on that land and then pass away having fulfilled his purpose and passed the reins of the empire to his son. Cuzco used to be the center of civilization for the Incan peoples back then, but today, it was nothing more than just another ruin for rich people to exploit; and that’s where we meet Stan Lee’s version of Wonder Woman, though she doesn’t know this yet herself.
A Warrior at Heart and an Activist by Choice – Meet Maria Mendoza!
Stan really loved his alliteration, huh? Besides Clark Kent, most of the members of his version of the Justice League were renamed to fit his signature naming style, and Wonder Woman was no exception, though she was exceptional in that she was the only member of his League not originally from America. Maria Mendoza is a young Peruvian woman who has a strong sense of morality and justice and possesses the drive to do good in the world.
She is the daughter of the judge of a little Peruvian town called Santa Atalaya, and by rights, her life should have been spent conducting archaeology surveys and conducting conservational missions, but the sad truth of her existence is that she has grown up under the thumb of a ruthless Latin American mobster. Called Armando Guitez, this blemish on the face of humanity has terrorized and ruled over Santa Atalaya for decades and has even managed to sink his fangs into the site of ancient Cuzco thanks to his many connections.
Like most villains operating in the most mystical continent of the world, Guitez’ men inevitably began exploiting the ruins of Manco Capac’s legacy and digging day in and day out searching for hidden treasure without worrying about damaging such an important piece of world history even more than they already had. We meet Maria Mendoza for the first time mulling over all the things we’ve just told you, as she looks over her people’s pride and heritage, which was destined to remain lost to time and greed.
Her reverie was broken by an archaeologist employed by Guitez by the name Steve Trevor, and he could tell by Maria’s face that she was not the kind of lady who would take the desecration of her culture lightly. Maria was highly suspicious of him at first, especially given that he worked with Armando, but she calmed down when she heard what he did for a living. Trevor quipped that Maria was quite the crusader after he heard her talk passionately about the ancient ruins, and confided in her that he held the same views that she did on the man.
He was actually trying to work under Guitez to ultimately undermine him and help preserve the artifacts the right way; by shipping them off to a museum. He had already sent a couple of ancient runes recovered from the site to Los Angeles, but before he could speak any further, he froze in his tracks, and not because Armando had found him associated with a potential problem, but because both he and Maria heard monstrous footsteps approaching them from the direction in which Cuzco lay; and Steve was not so curious as to risk his life and find out what was creating that noise. He grabbed Maria and sped away in his jeep, as we see an ethereal purple clawed-foot rush a tablet underneath itself.
The Sins of the Father catch up with the Daughter
Once Steve has driven them safely back to Santa Atalaya, he figures he might as well shoot his shot with this amorous Peruvian beauty and asks her out for breakfast but she simply replies that she must go see her father. This makes sense, because her father is the Judge of Santa Atalaya, and if anyone holds a position of power strong enough to help her out the right way, it’s him.
But when she goes to plead with him to stop Armando from exploiting their village and heritage to further his depraved goals, he ends up revealing to her that he cannot do that because of an agreement they made years ago. See, Maria is a single child, and she has never known the love of a mother. Her whole life, she was raised by her father, and that’s because when she was an infant, her parents were stopped by a band of thugs who shot her mother dead and robbed her father blind.
She had been told this story in the context of a random farmer early on in her life, but she now realized that her father had been telling her his own story all this time. However, there was a small problem, because Maria had assumed that this is where that story ended and is also why her father ended up becoming a judge later on in his life.
But Judge Mendoza revealed that his rise to the position of Juez of Santa Atalaya was not so simple as that. He told her that after the bandits left, the cops arrived on the scene. Now, any decent law-abiding citizen would obviously assume that they were there to help him, and that is also where Mendoza’s mind went; but he witnessed first-hand just how corrupt the human soul could become, as he was forced to give up his car to the crooked cops and watch them split the profits after selling it off.
That day, he vowed that he would never allow himself to be silenced again, and he formed an alliance with Armando Guitez to presumably enact revenge on those police officers. Maria is shocked by this and tells her dad that Guitez is the devil, but he curtly responds by telling her he is well aware of Armando’s true nature but he has borne this secret for too long to get out of it now without facing serious consequences.
Maria realizes the precarious position her father had put himself in, just as Armando sneaked up from behind and started leering at her. The disgusting mobster imposed himself on Maria and told her that she would be his one way or another; it wasn’t a matter of choice in his eyes, but Maria remained defiant, and her father ended up paying the price for it.
The Death of a Father and World-Ending Revelations – Armando Guitez’ Horrifying Secret
While he was hearing the complaints of the citizens of Santa Atalaya- most of which were directed towards Armando and the police who were on his payroll- Judge Mendoza kept lamenting his decision to side with Guitez. Presently, he was hearing the pleas of a terrified farmer who swore that a demon was attacking his fields but that Armando’s men were blocking him from doing anything.
The Kingpin of Santa Atalaya enters the courtroom, cool as you like, and has the dissident battered black and blue by his paid lap dogs while the helpless Guitez could only sit and watch. As Armando declared that those who dare to cross him shall incur his wrath as this man had, we see another villager slip out of the back of the courtroom.
He was trying to contact the President of Peru in an attempt to get outside help in dealing with the situation at hand, but Armando saw him and pursued him, which led to the rebel committing suicide, believing that at least this way, he’d die with some dignity. Judge Mendoza was shocked by this development whilst Guitez simply orders his men to clean the dead man off the streets.
He chastises Mendoza for being too lenient to Santa Atalaya’s residents when the Judge makes the fatal mistake of responding by saying that everyone deserves a fair hearing. As soon as he said it, Armando’s men ganged up on him and took him captive. The Judge was then transported to Guitez’ mansion where his fate would be decided upon. Maria Mendoza, having witnessed all of this take place, ran to the one person she thought could help him; Steve Trevor.
Now whether it was out of an innate desire to help people, a sense of heroism, or a matter of simple attraction, we couldn’t tell you, but Steve agreed to help Maria break into Guitez’ mansion and rescue her father. The duo manages to use a bit of misdirection and sneaky seduction tactics to get past the guards, but Maria gives Steve the slip once that is done because she believes him to be working with Armando thanks to his ID tag.
She runs inside the mansion and finds her father in a clearing with at least a dozen other hostages and a pistol-brandishing Armando Guitez. Judge Mendoza defiantly stands up to the mobster and tells him that he cannot openly defy the law anymore, but Armando simply replies by shooting one of the hostages dead and implying that Mendoza would meet the same fate.
The Judge is undeterred by this tactic and threatens to go to the Governor in what turns out to be his last act, because Armando promptly shoots him in the head, thus removing the last real obstacle in his path. Maria is broken by this; she had to risk her life and break into a criminal’s mansion to rescue her father only to see him die in cold blood.
So, while Armando gloats about finally having her all to himself, she resolves to take him down by doing whatever is necessary and makes a break for it after kicking him in his proverbial grapefruits. Guitez scrambles to tell his men to stop shooting at his bride-to-be, as Maria runs deeper into his mansion looking for an escape route. Instead, she is pulled into a secret chamber by Steve Trevor who reveals to her the real reason for Armando’s excavation project.
Turns out, Manco Capac’s Golden Staff didn’t sink into the ground just to check how loose the Earth was for construction; it was planted there by the Sun God’s Son to ward off evil spirits from attacking Cuzco above, and to keep his city safe from any supernatural threats that could arise in the future.
As a result, several powerful evil entities were sealed into rune stones and stored underground, thanks to the power of the Tapac-Yauri. But Armando Guitez had found the hidden levels of the city of Cuzco, and was now a hair’s breadth away from obtaining power that could topple all of civilization.
Steve had managed to ship the two most powerful runes to L.A., but he suspected that Guitez knew what he was up to, and that was pretty much confirmed for us when Armando entered the room guns-blazing and took out his treacherous archaeologist. He corners Maria and tells her that it is his fate to marry her and become the ruler of the world by unleashing pure evil unto it, and it turns out that it wasn’t just the ramblings of a mad man.
The Rise of the Incan Sun Goddess and Protector of Mankind – Wonder Woman!
When Armando Guitez attacked Steve Trevor, the latter dropped one of the runes that housed an evil spirit sealed away by Manco Capac himself. Now, as Guitez was cornering Maria Mendoza, this spirit took on the form of a hideous creature and started stalking Armando, but bizarrely enough, the Peruvian was unafraid. Armando taunted the evil spirit and called his own personal depravity much stronger than it. He embraced the evil spirit-body, mind, and soul- and was imbued with all of its powers.
Maddened by the abilities he had just received, the monstrous Guitez then broke open another rune and engaged its sealed spirit in a battle for the ages. The two embodiments of evil clashed with each other in a burning rage, but in the end, it was Armando’s malevolence that won out, and he was able to absorb this spirit as well.
Believing the rest of the people at the excavation site to be dead- owing to the cave-in he had just caused- Guitez makes his way to his private jet and starts his journey to Los Angeles to absorb the powers of the 2 runes Steve Trevor clandestinely sent there and become truly unstoppable. But in his rush to gain more power, he ended up neglecting Maria Mendoza, and that would be his biggest mistake.
Because while Armando was off in pursuit of potentially world-ending powers, Maria stumbled upon something that could help her save it instead. Initially, she thought she was going crazy because she started hearing a voice that told her she was the chosen one and that it was time for her to take her rightful place as the protector of all life on Earth. But then it came before her; a staff so Golden that its sheen would’ve blinded a regular mortal.
It is revealed that Maria Mendoza was prophesized to find the legendary Tapac-Yauri that was wielded by the Son of the Sun God Himself to become the latest incarnation of the Sun Goddess on Earth- Wonder Woman! We must point out, though, that she doesn’t give herself this name, but we’ll get to that in a bit. Maria discovers that the Tapac-Yauri basically gives her god-like powers.
She is able to lift Steve Trevor and bring him out of the excavation site without breaking a sweat. Oh, and did we mention that she can fly as well? Maria has a hard time accepting the fact that her life has changed so drastically in such a short period of time, but Steve Trevor’s dying words help her strengthen her resolve. He basically confirms that the prophecy of the return of the Protector of Mankind was about her, and that encourages Maria to not treat the Voice of the Gods with a hostile intent.
She listens, as they explain to her how to wield the Tapac-Yauri, and how it is her duty to purge evil and defend the weak & innocent. Maria turns out to be an exceptionally fast learner because she is able to use the Golden Staff to locate Armando Guitez in Los Angeles and engages him in a battle. Their fight takes them all over the neighborhood where the mysterious Church of Eternal Empowerment operates, and leaves most of that area levelled; what else do you expect from a clash between two literally mythic figures?!
Armando keeps lugging boulders at Maria while she learns how to fight and use her powers literally on-the-fly. She manifests a shield and then a mystical cable to restrain Guitez, remarking how natural it all felt, and wondering whether there had been other Protector Sun Goddesses before her.
After engaging in a rather tiring game of tug of war with Armando, she is able to finally avenge her father when she drops him on the top of a building and zaps him with her Staff, dispelling the evil spirits and ending Guitez’s life, permanently. She lands near the Hollywood sign, exhausted and completely unaware that a certain gossip newspaper’s editor-in-chief had noticed her night-time shenanigans and taken quite the liking to her.
After waking up, she wanders around Los Angeles musing that it was actually useful having English as a mandatory subject in her educational course back home because she was clearly going to read it. As she thinks to herself about how L.A. would actually be more enticing than she originally thought, she comes across The National Exposer and sees something that gives her an idea about how she could get a job; and quick.
She reaches the head office of the publication and meets with Mike Willard, having signed up to become his assistant. While the two of them were supposed to have a formal interview, they are completely smitten with each other, and Mike takes her on without even evaluating her because he wants her by his side. Maria thinks to herself how exciting all of this is- she is in a foreign land, with godly powers, besides the most-attractive man she has ever seen and hunting the superhero that she herself had now become; Wonder Woman!
How is Stan Lee’s Wonder Woman different from Diana of Themiscyra?
So as you can tell already, there are significant differences between Maria Mendoza and Princess Diana. Besides the obviously divergent trajectories of their life’s journey, there is also the matter of how their powers function. Wonder Woman is a literal goddess, imbued with superhuman capabilities since birth: she has superhuman strength, agility, endurance, and reflexes, and she also possesses a degree of immortality as well as the innate power of flight.
By contrast, Maria Mendoza’s powers are given to her by the Tapac-Yauri and can only be used when she transforms into Wonder Woman. And speaking of the Tapac-Yauri, the way that these two women use technology also differs quite a bit. Wonder Woman possesses 3 iconic pieces of tech that make her such a formidable opponent: the Invisible Jet, which is a rather self-explanatory method of transportation perfect for concealing her when she is traveling on clandestine missions. The Bracelets of Submission are like the Aegis Shield, in that they can reflect most attacks that they come into contact with.
And finally, there is the Lasso of Truth, created by Hephaestus himself, which acts as the ultimate method of restriction and lie-detection in the DC Multiverse. By contrast, Maria Mendoza only has access to the Golden Staff of Manco Capac, but it works out in her favor as a sort of three-in-one mechanism. When Maria takes flight, the Tapac-Yauri becomes invisible, thus preventing humans and enemies alike from figuring out the source of her power.
When Maria reverts to her human form, the staff transforms into a bracelet that also stores her divine uniform within it. And as for the Lasso of Truth, it’s given a couple of braids and called a cable here, but it’s clear what the inspiration behind the said cable was. And though it doesn’t force Maria’s enemies to become paragons of truth after coming into contact with it, it is nigh-unbreakable, which is close enough.
So you can see that while Maria Mendoza and Diana Prince share some key similarities- their personalities, their hopes & dreams, and even their life trajectories- there are things that clearly set them apart from one another, and it makes them feel even more fascinating somehow.
Marvelous Verdict
So, there are a few things that did put us off about Stan The Man’s idea of Wonder Woman; because Maria Mendoza’s priorities switch from righteous vengeance to porking a blonde guy real quick, and the way she flips on her seduction switch is frankly alarming. But that’s just us nit-picking at the details of a story that is clearly faithful to the ideals of its inspiration.
When you read Maria Mendoza’s story, you are reminded of every version of Wonder Woman at the peak of their respective popularities, and by that metric, we’d say that Stan Lee did a great job at re-imagining the literal heart and soul of DC. Just Imagine Stan Lee with Jim Lee creating Wonder Woman gave us a version of the Amazonian Princess that we didn’t know we needed until we got her, and now that we have, we can’t stop gushing over her. Thanks, Stan.