Flashback Friday: Wonder Woman's Spinning Costume Change

Each Friday, I take one of the entries from my old Super Posts and expand it into its own featured article.

This week: Wonder Woman's Spinning Costume Change!

For her first several decades of existence, Wonder Woman changed into her superhero costume like a normal person. Sometimes she would do it very quickly, but it was still essentially the old-fashioned way. Wonder Woman #212 (April 1974) changed it so she transforms via spinning lasso. Julius Schwartz was the new editor on the series and disliked spending time on heroes changing into their outfits, so he asked Len Wein to come up with a way to make it instantaneous.

In the Wonder Woman tv show (1975-1979), Wonder Woman changed into her costume by spinning really fast. In the pilot, it seemed to imply just changing her clothes really quickly...

...but in the show proper, it became more of a magical effect. Note that the choice for changing this way came from Lynda Carter and the previous lasso transformation seems to have had no bearing on the decision.

The earliest instance of the change making its way to the comics seems to be Wonder Woman #229 (January 1977), and this make sense, because the issue before sets up the new status quo of Wonder Woman being on Earth-2 during World War II, to better match the tv show.

However, it wasn't standard at this point, since the very next issue shows her simply darting into the ladies' room.

But then Wonder Woman #231 (March 1977) shows a spin with accompanying flash of light.

It's hard to track because the story won't always show the transformation on-panel or will show it in a way that could be considered either shorthand or a different depiction of changing altogether, depending on how you wanted to look at it. But it showed up again in #235 (July 1977), and I'm willing to consider that as a show that this was now the standard transformation...for this era.

By no means did this become her standard transformation for good. In fact, she was back to transforming with her lasso by 1978. But it never disappeared completely, and I'll show a couple of examples throughout the years.

Two takes on it from 1982 by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez for DC Licensing:

Super Friends, "The Darkseid Deception" (1985):

Wonder Woman #177 (December 2001), which is based on Garcia-Lopez's art above:

Justice League, "To Another Shore" (2005):

Wonder Woman #4 (December 2006):

Wonder Woman #600 (June 2010):

She also spins to transform in Reign of the Supermen (2019). So, like with most things in the Wonder Woman franchise, it's very inconsistent. But it's tied to Wonder Woman in the public consciousness, so it keeps coming back.