dearlenbaugh wrote:

In the final panel of the story, the Navy Lieutenant tells Trevor to take a hike as she walks away arm-in-arm with Superman!




Under the Department of Small Details, I'm going to point out what was certainly a case of one of your brain neurons misfiring, friend (because I know you know better). At that time---and I waited until the issue in which that story appeared was identified, to be sure---Diana Prince was a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army.


She was commissioned in the Army and went to work for U.S. Military Intelligence in "Top Secret", from Wonder Woman # 99 (Jul., 1958). She would have been commissioned, of course, as a second lieutenant. But in all of the U.S. armed forces, promotion from O-1 to O-2 is an administrative procedure---unless a second lieutenant/ensign is a complete and total foul-up, and I mean, complete, he will be promoted to first lieutenant/lieutenant (junior grade)---and it occurs after two years, so by the time of WW # 130 (May, 1962), Diana would have been a first lieutenant.


In all fairness, DC always blurred the issue of Diana Prince's rank, or even her branch of service. While artist Andru and Esposito generally drew the uniforms properly, the colourist usually rendered them in a peculiar shade of lavender-grey that neither the Army, nor the Air Force ever used for its uniforms. And the scripts tended to address her as simply "Lieutenant" Diana Prince. (Only the Navy and the Coast Guard have a rank that is simply "lieutenant".)


Then, in "Once a Wonder Woman", from WW # 166 (Nov., 1966), Diana is promoted to captain (O-3), but this development is quickly forgotten, as subsequent tales refer to her, again, as a lieutenant.



The whole matter of Diana Prince's military career is shelved (except for a brief mention, in WW # 196 [Sep.-Oct., 1971], where it is explained that she resigned her Army commission somewhere between issues # 178 and # 179 [Sep.-Oct. and Nov-Dec., 1968]) throughout the period when she was a powerless adventurer and then in the first few years of her return as a costumed super-heroine. In WW # 228 (Feb., 1977), the series shifts to depict the adventures of the Earth-Two Wonder Woman during World War II---to tie the title in with the The Adventures of Wonder Woman television series, whose first season was also set during WWII.


The TV series, for whatever reason, made the wartime Diana Prince a yeoman in the Navy, so the comic-book series did the same thing---even though it contradicted the actual Golden-Age Wonder Woman tales.


The comic-book series returned to the adventures of the present-day Earth-One Amazing Amazon with issue # 243 (May, 1978), where Diana Prince was still working as a troubleshooter for the United Nations. In issue # 248 (Oct., 1978), she resigns from that job, and in # 251, earns a spot as a civilian astronaut-trainee for NASA.


Then, in WW # 256 (Jun., 1979), she quits NASA and goes back to work for the United Nations. ("Fickleness, thy name is Diana")


After all those years of civilianhood, the armed services reënter Diana's life, in "The Man with All the Angles", from WW # 272 (Oct., 1980). This was the last issue of a four-issue arc that essentially reset the series to its original format. The magic of Aphrodite restores Colonel Steve Trevor to Earth with no-one being the wiser and then puts Diana back in uniform---this time as a captain in the U.S. Air Force.


In WW # 300 (Feb., 1983), she's promoted to major, and that's the last significant development in her muddled military career before the 1985 Crisis wiped out everything.