I was going through a stack of books from my childhood, and I came across a well-thumbed coffee table reprint of original wartime Wonder Woman comics.

Like a lot from childhood, it was familiar, lovable and more than a little odd.

You know, like the names you gave dolls or stuffed animals when you were really little. What were you thinking? I had a possibly homemade blue velvet horse with a white yarn mane and tail named -- and this shows early sparks of creativity -- Blue Horse, and a plastic doll named Susie Baby Honey Bennett. She was apparently a stripper.

I was an adolescent when the "Wonder Woman" TV series starring Lynda Carter and Lyle Waggoner was on, and I never missed an episode. While other kids were going roller skating or traumatizing younger siblings, I finished all my homework so I could sit on the edge of the couch and imagine being able to pull doors off hinges and run faster than cars and look that good in a bathing suit.

Because that's essentially what she was wearing. And the weird part is that she was wearing the same thing in the wartime comic books. You would have thought she'd have to wear a wrap or a hat or something, but no.

She did actually start out in the first issues with a skirt on. The debut Wonder Woman comic recounted how Steve Trevor, who was blond and much more crudely drawn than Lyle Waggoner, crashed his plane on an island inhabited by immortal Amazons (played by Debra Winger and Cloris Leachman). The queen's daughter, the beautiful Princess Diana, carried him out of the wreckage and immediately did what your mother told you not to do: fall madly in love with the first man you pick up.

The queen held a contest to find the strongest and fastest Amazon to return Capt. Trevor to America, but she wouldn't let Diana enter. And here we have the first lesson in superhero disguise: If you put something over your eyes, even your own mother can't tell who you are.

It wasn't even a hood or a ski mask: It was a cartoon burglar mask, like raccoons wear. There was one mysterious masked entrant in the contest! And she lost!

No, she won, of course, and wasn't Mom surprised.

"Good luck, honey; I made you this extremely brief star-spangled onesie to wear. Nice and inconspicuous. And boots, because nothing says crime-fighting athlete like a pair of red heels. Call when you get to America, and don't tell them you're an immigrant."

So she went off to America in her invisible plane. Wonder Woman was a great pilot and a heck of a jumper, but she couldn't actually fly. Besides, she had to carry Steve. He was recovering from a concussion, mostly unconscious and frankly kind of a load. Holding him under the armpits and dragging him through turbulence in a skirt wouldn't have been dignified even if she could have done it.

How to stay close to the man she loved and protect him while guarding her secret identity? Put on a WAAC uniform and a pair of glasses. Yes, kids, it's just that simple. With my glasses on and my hair in a bun, I have to show my boyfriend my driver's license or he tries to order coffee from me.

Wonder Woman didn't have many cool gadgets like Batman, though she did have a prehistoric cell phone known as the mental radio. It was a little toy Greek temple with a screen, and it broadcast telepathic signals over very long distances. It didn't plug into anything, so it must have had WiFi, yet Wonder Woman hooked her crown to it with a cable (coaxial?).

Right after she got glasses, she traded the skirt for shorts. Her creator's widow said, "It was too darned hard to draw in action pictures. Besides, it would have been up over her head most of the time."

Poor Steve wouldn't have had a clue who was rescuing him. Superman had red boots, too.