Superheroes, when you think about it, have progressed and grown through the years in many of the same ways that the GLBT movement has grown. In the 1950s, heroes like Superman/Clark Kent and Wonder Woman/Diana Prince walked among us but harbored a potent secret that both empowered them and alienated them. Similarly GLBT men and women, in the 1950s, lived with double identities, acting straight while harboring their true powers within.

How wonderful then to discover the phone booth that facilitates a whirlwind transformation to one’s true self in the character of Superman – or to relish the bat cave where Batman and Robin retreat into an enclosed, dark sanctuary.

But Wonder Woman, in many ways, is a character who can’t fit in, and perhaps this is why we love her – and why she’s ended up on our cover as the super-diva of all super-divas, explored in this issue starting on page 40.

Wonder Woman, remember, comes from a world populated by women; when she comes to America, she can’t begin to understand – and remains consistently bemused by – the strange, violent troubles created by a male-dominated society. As gay comic creator Phil Jimenez points out in our feature, Wonder Woman can not only overpower men, she’ll go one better and rise above the situation, maintaining her approachable, sexy, feminine mystique all the time.

She’ll make you love her, then she’ll kick your ass – all in the name of freedom, truth and the “old red, white and blue” as the theme song went. She is in the world but not of it.

That brings us to our more recent inheritors of the superhero title – Zena the Warrior Princess, Sydney Bristow of “Alias” and Buffy the Vampire Slayer – who, unlike the Bionic Woman and Wonder Woman, operate independently of a male counterpart in their efforts to rid the world of conventionally, mainstream evildoers in places of power. Importantly, our super-divas of today are very much “out”. They live in the world as themselves, they solve their own problems, and they’re still sexy and approachable. Even Wonder Woman, in her latest incarnation for the revival issues put out in recent years by DC Comics, shed her Diana Prince identity to be Wonder Woman all the time – out and proud.

What does having powerful superwomen dominating the airwaves and comic book shelves do for us?

For one thing, it teaches our sons and daughters – and many of us gender-progressive GLBT couples are raising kids these days – that they needn’t hide their true selves, that they can be different, whether that means being a gay or lesbian adolescent, or whether that simply means being a kick-ass girl. One of the best things about “Buffy”, another gay comic creator, Joan Hilty, points out in our feature, is the use of the horror genre employed as a lighthearted metaphor for the horrors of high school, with even coming out issues openly addressed in the series.

The feminist message from the super-divas is that girls and boys can be not only as tough as men, they can be better than men, improve a male society, and still have relationships with men – all at once. The GLBT message from our super-divas is that we can be out and proud and who we are; that it’s not always easy being different, even if you’re better, but that fighting your battles while staying in touch with your inner truth is always the best way. The human message from the super-divas is simply to kick evil’s ass, while maintaining a cool hairstyle (or dozens of them, in Sydney Bristow’s case) and an amazing outfit.

So, whatever you can take from our lesson from super-divas, “Go in peace my daughter,” as Queen Hyppolyte says in one episode to “Wonder Woman”, “And remember that, in a world of ordinary mortals, you are a Wonder Woman.”

Or if that’s too sentimental a quote for you, take another one from the Woman herself: “I can avoid that bullet faster than you can shoot it.”