When Was Wonder Woman's Unbreakable Lasso of Truth First Broken?

In "When We First Met," we spotlight the various characters, phrases, objects or events that eventually became notable parts of comic lore, like 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.

Today, we look at the first time that Wonder Woman's unbreakable Lasso of Truth well, you know, broke.

Interestingly, Wonder Woman's lasso was not actually present when she first came on to the comic book scene. When she debuted in 1941's All-Star Comics #8 in a short story by William Marston and H.G. Peter (which was designed to be a preview for her upcoming lead feature in Sensation Comics), the only weapon that she had was her bullet-deflecting bracelets.

She did not even have her famous invisible plane until the first issue of Sensation Comics!

It was then not until Sensation Comics #6 (by Marston and Peter) that she finally got a lasso. The lasso was a lot different when it was first given to Wonder Woman in the comics. Queen Hippolyta had the chain links that made up her magic girdle removed and turned into a powerful, unbreakable lasso. After receiving the lasso, Wonder Woman prayed to Aphrodite and Athena and they then visit her and reveal that they have given her lasso a special property - anyone bound by it must obey Wonder Woman!

The interesting aspect of all of this is something that really didn't come about until the second generation of comic book writers, which is namely that no one really ever QUESTIONED the initial set-up of comic books back in those days. No one notices that Clark Kent is Superman because the comic books SAID so. It was only later on that writers said that hey, WHY do people believe that and came up with various explanations to show why people believe Superman and Clark Kent are different people.

Similarly, the lasso is said to be unbreakable, so it was treated as if it was unbreakable.

However, even well into the THIRD generation of comic book writers in the 1980s, the lasso remained unbreakable.

Finally, though, the Pre-Crisis version of the lasso was cut by Aegeus in Wonder Woman #307 (by Dan Mishkin, Don Heck and Sal Trapani)...

Thanks to reader Daniel L. for the head's up for this one!

That was it for the Pre-Crisis version of the lasso. It also officially became the Lasso of TRUTH for the first time following Crisis on Infinite Earths in Wonder Woman #2 (by George Perez, Greg Potter and Bruce Patterson)...

While it was now officially a Lasso of Truth, it was even MORE magical than it was before!

That is, until it was tested by something that challenged the notion of truth itself...

Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='The Queen of Fables causes some trouble']

In his second story arc as the main writer on JLA, Mark Waid had the League take on the Queen of Fables (a Gail Simone creation) who had the ability to turn the world into, you know, fables. Wonder Woman was pricked by a thorn and she became Sleeping Beauty and she was only awakened by the kiss of Aquaman (close enough to a prince).

In JLA #49 (by Waid, Bryan Hitch, Javier Saltares, Paul Neary and Chris Ivy), the League attacks the Queen of Fables but the Queen is assisted by famous mythological beings like Paul Bunyon and guess what, to beings who do not exist, the rules of Wonder Woman's lasso have no meaning...

Luckily, Wonder Woman was able to force the issue with her remaining pieces of the lasso and used them to force the Queen of Fables to see the truth of the world and see beyond the fables...

Once defeated, all the changes the Queen of Fables made to the world went away and so Wonder Woman's lasso returned to normal.

A year or so later, Joe Kelly, Doug Mahnke and Tom Nguyen took over as the creative team on JLA.

In their first full story arc, "Golden Perfect," Wonder Woman is fighting a bad guy in a situation where there was no easy answer (a boy is taken from his mother, but he is "destined" to be taken by the land itself) and so the "truth" of the situation was a bit subjective. Wonder Woman kept pushing the issue, however, and so she ended up with the lasso breaking!

Truth was now broken all over the world (2+2 now equaled 3, stuff like that) until Wonder Woman atoned for her "sins" and fixed the lasso in JLA #64...