Steve Trevor
1908 - Steve Trevor is born on a farm in Oklahoma.
1917 - 9-year-old Steve's father becomes a pilot with the Lafayette Escadrille in Frace during WWI, regularly engaging the German Luftstreitkrafte.
1918 - 10-year-old Steve becomes a boyscout.
1919 - 11-year-old Steve's father returns from the war.
1923 - 15-year-old Steve learnes to fly his father's Curtiss JN Kenny biplane, introducing cropdusting to the family farm.
1925 - 17-year-old Steve earns the rank of Eagle Scout, using his development of cropdusting in his hometown as his service project.
1926 - 18-year-old Steve joins the army.
1928 - 20-year-old Steve becomes an army pilot.
1932 - 24-year-old Steve becomes an army intelligence operative.
1939 - 31-year-old Steve is assigned to gather intel on the Tribunal but is found out. In his escape he crashes on Themyscira, and is found by Hippolyta She leaves the island to bring him home, falling in love with him during the journey, and choosing to remain with him as he battles the Axis forces in Europe and confronting Cylvia Cyber.
1940 - 32-year-old Steve & Hippolyta investigate an attacked American submarine, and discover Queen Clea's ongoing coup for the Atlantean throne. Hippolyta frees the imprisoned Princess Eeras and helps her retake the Atlantean Throne. Clea is placed under house arrest as an imprisoned royal.
1941 - 33-year-old Steve supports Hippolyta joining the Justice Society when they form after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
1942 - 34-year-old Steve becomes an operative of the newly created OSS. He is captured, along with entire allied batallion, by Isabella Maru, and freed by Hippolyta. They infiltrate Gerald Shugel's labs to save the soldiers held prisoner. Will Everett sacrifices himself to save them, absorbing the radiation of an experimental reactor.
1944 - 36-year-old Steve kills Helmut Streicher when he and Wilhelm Reiter are defeated by Hippolyta at the Battle of the Bulge.
1945 - 37-year-old Steve & Hippolyta persue Cylvia Cyber onto her satellite to stop her from finding Themyscera and stealing Hippolyta's power. Cyber is finally killed in the ensuing battle. With the war over, Hippolyta returns to Themyscera. Steve Trevor returns to Army Intelligence when the OSS is disolved.
1951 - 43-year-old Steve marries Lila Brown, his attache.
1959 - 51-year-old Steve is killed in the field and buried in Arlington cemetery. An Amazonian falcon is present during the ceremony.
All of the classic comic heroes have built in love interests, some more successful than others. For every Clark & Lois or Barry & Iris, there's a Bruce & Julie or Hal & Carol. Even with all those examples, however, it's kind of impossible to find another relationship as complex as the one between Diana and Steve Trevor. Comics spend the next eighty years trying to work out how to get these two together in a way that emulated their original stories, and I think we've finally worked out why. Let us know what you think!
Steve Trevor's Comic HistorySteve Trevor debuted right alongside Wonder Woman in All-Star Comics #8, his crash landing in the bay off of Paradise Island the inciting incident that set off Wonder Woman's whole story. For the first several Wonder Woman stories by character creator William Moulton Marston, Steve would be confined to his military hospital bed, where Diana was disguised as his nurse. He would continually escape from the hospital to go off on a mission where he would work with Wonder Woman, often winding up injured, and heading right back to the hospital where he would proceed to explain to Diana that she was a great girl, but she was no Wonder Woman. Eventually Steve had a clean bill of health and he would go back to working for army intelligence, with Diana often outside the room hearing his missions so that Wonder Woman could assist him.
This was very much the entire framing device for the early Wonder Woman stories. Steve was always the voice of Marston, eagerly championing Diana and her strength and celebrating her victories with no indication that it ever impugned his masculinity or strength to do so. In fact, it was that very quality that made Steve so appealing, both to Diana and the constant civilizations of scantily-clad warrior women they encounted. The things he did for his country. |
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In later Wonder Woman stories, particularly after Marston's death, Steve's role grew smaller and smaller. Soon, he was really just giving Diana her mission at the beginning of the story, serving more as the M to her James Bond. It's certainly true that the particular relationship between Steve and Diana was a tricky one for other writers to depict, but I also really do think that series writer Robert Kanigher worked very hard to make comics that featured female characters, and so I believe his choice to largely leave Steve out of the story came from a good place. Steve would eventually die, was later resurrected, then died again, was resurrected again... he was generally around, but Wonder Woman's story really didn't include him that much... He was more a relic of the Golden Age. This was especially true over in Earth 2, where the Golden Age Steve and Diana were now married and had a daughter named Lyta Trevor who would go on to join Infinity Inc as Fury, and wind up inadvertently part of the Sandman universe. Our main timeline Steve and Diana were eventually married in the final issue of the original comic run before their whole timeline was reset in 1987's Post-Crisis George Perez series, which re-imagined Steve as an older man and more of a father figure for Diana.
The New 52 restored Steve to his role as the main love interest for Diana (once they got past the weird Wonder Woman Superman romance thing they seemed to need to get out of their system) This relationship was a little strained up until the 2016 Rebirth series, where writer Greg Rucka and artists Nicola Scott and Liam Sharp wove a much more intricate and nuanced relationship between these two characters, finally establishing them in the modern DC timeline for the first time in decades. |
The Case For Golden Age SteveThrough most of the history of Wonder Woman, there's been a fundamental disconnect with Steve Trevor. The role he was meant to play is obvious, but as Diana's story was constantly changing over the years it got further and further from a place where that role made sense. Yes, Steve can be depicted as a crashed pilot, but what really made him work was his role as a wartime intelligence officer. It drove not just their relationship, but the entire plot. Also, Steve isn't really meant to be just a passive part of Diana's story. He was right there at her side, making them much more of a partnership.
This clear distinction between a classic Golden Age story and their modern depictions is usually not a big problem, except that Wonder Woman's story never really managed to find new secure footing. In almost all the most successful takes on modern Diana, Steve is no longer a part of her regular life. The groundbreaking 2017 movie included their relationship but was set in WW1, and even the animated series had to bring Diana back in time to WW2 to have her interact with Steve. Of course, we've made a particular change to our timeline to create a version of Diana's WW2 adventures. It seemed a little sacrilegious to have Steve's relationship be with Hippolyta instead of with Diana, but once we put it in place, it suddenly created a much simpler and more perfect version of this story than we could have made otherwise. |
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Our Steve Trevor StoryWe've made the very simply decision to have Steve Trevor's story play out almost exactly like it does in canon, with only one simple change; Diana simply isn't a part of it. When he crashes on Themyscera, it's Queen Hippolyta that takes him back to man's world, falls in love with him, and works with him as he fights axis forces in Europe. Rather than having to struggle to make him fit into Diana's world, he fits perfectly into this new story, creating a partnership that does wonders in defining both characters.
This lets us really thoroughly define Steve and his place in history; we got to play with the history of aviation both in World War 1, and in civilian aviation. We got to learn about the history of various wartime intelligence agencies like the Office of Strategic Services, and the CIA. We even got to do some research into the history of boy scouting thanks to the fantastic suggestion from my wife that Steve was a Eagle Scout. Letting Steve exist as a pilot, spy. and hero of World War 2 is really the only way to do him justice, and his place in the history of Wonder Woman just feels so much more complete. Hippolyta does need to return to Themyscera after the war, which gives their relationship bittersweet end. He of course will go on to on to marry and have his own life, but we know that Hippolyta is always going to remember him as the love of her life. |
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