When We First Met - When Did Wonder Woman First Fly Her Invisible Jet?

CBR

By Brian Cronin

Published Jun 18, 2012

Every week we spotlight the various characters, phrases, objects or events that eventually became notable parts of comic book lore. Not major stuff like "the first appearance of Superman," but rather, "the first time someone said, 'Avengers Assemble!'" or "the first appearance of Batman's giant penny" or "the first appearance of Alfred Pennyworth" or "the first time Spider-Man's face was shown half-Spidey/half-Peter." Stuff like that. Here is an archive of all the When We First Met features so far! Check 'em out!

Today we take a look at three notable Wonder Woman firsts! The first time she flew in her invisible jet, the debut of the Diana Prince secret identity and the first time Wonder Woman exclaimed, "Merciful Minerva!"

First up are two simple ones, as they debuted in the first issue of Wonder Woman's ongoing monthly feature in Sensation Comics #1 (by William Moulton Marston and H.G. Peter).

First off, the issue opens with Wonder Woman flying her invisible plane (not yet a jet)...

Words cannot describe how much I love the fact that they do not bother to explain WHY Wonder Woman has an invisible plane. She just does. Deal with it, suckers!!

Commenter Basara makes a good point that it is originally a plane when it first debuts, not a jet.

Up through Wonder Woman #44, it still had a propeller (although it had traveled into the stratosphere, as noted by commenter Scott, in #26)...

The next issue, though, was a recap of Wonder Woman's origin (as a female reporter came to Paradise Island to learn Wonder Woman's story) and the plane has now become a jet...

Wonder Woman #99 (Ross Andru and Mike Esposito's second issue as the artists on the title) debuted the new look for the invisible jet, the look the jet would have for years to come...

_________________________________________________________________________________

Later that issue, Wonder Woman gained the most awesome secret identity ever...just something she grabbed off of some crying lady she ran into...

According to comic book logic, there are exact duplicates of most of us on every street corner in any large city.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Reader Shurron F. asked when was the first time that Wonder Woman exclaimed, "Merciful Minerva!"

Well, early on, Wonder Woman just took her cues from Steve Trevor and the U.S. military...

but eventually her go-to phrase was "Great Aphrodite!"

However, "go-to" is a bit of a stretch as she used a LOT of different exclamations over the years.

One common early one was to make some reference to characters from mythology (who, of course, to Wonder Woman, are quite familiar and not just characters) (like "Atalanta's Arrows!"). My favorite was...