| Baroness Paula von Gunther | |
|---|---|
Wonder Woman captures Baroness Paula von Gunther, art by Harry G. Peter |
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| Publication information | |
| Publisher | DC Comics |
| First appearance | Sensation Comics #4 (April 1942) |
| Created by | William Moulton Marston, Harry G. Peter |
| In-story information | |
| Abilities | Brilliant strategist and scientist; Amazon training |
The Baroness Paula von Gunther is a fictional character, a DC Comics villain that battled Wonder Woman as her first recurring arch-nemesis and, eventually, her closest ally.
Baroness Paula von Gunther originally debuted in Sensation Comics #4.
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Baroness Paula von Gunther first appeared as a foe of Wonder Woman. She battled the Amazon numerous times as an agent of the Gestapo. She murdered many individuals, kept a small group of women as personal slaves, tortured them routinely, was for a time the leader of all Gestapo operations in the United States, in her first appearance forced American female citizens into becoming Nazi spies at a spy school using drugs and hypnotism on some of them, attempted to kidnap a Colonel using an invisible ray on a ship while impersonating a high-society lady enabling a U-Boat to capture the people, stole Wonder Woman's lasso while she was in prison and tried to steal secrets from security officers after her previous attempts of hypnotism failed. She suceeded n capturing Wonder Woman with it and bound her hand and foot to a wooden pole using it. However Wonder Woman got of the pole and broke open a cage freeing a young boy. He untied her hands, but Gunther returned and stopped Wonder Woman by pointing a gun at her back. However Freddy lassoed Gunther, and Wonder Woman defeated her plan. She once tried to monopolize America's milk supply and charge high prices for it so that its people would have weak bones and fall before the stronger-boned Nazis after buying all the milk of a company for five years with seven million dollars. She discovered Wonder Woman's weakness in her first appearance, that if her bracelets were chained by a man she became as weak as an ordinary woman. While monopilizing milk, her men lassoed Wonder Woman and bound her hand and foot with chains. She was bound to a railway truck, but freed herself.
Von Gunther was finally captured and revealed that she had worked for the Nazis because they held her daughter Gerta captive. Von Gunther reformed and pledged her loyalty to Wonder Woman after Gerta was rescued. Von Gunther even put her own life in peril to save Wonder Woman from a burning munitions plant, suffering third-degree burns and a horribly scarred face.
Von Gunther went to trial, but Wonder Woman acted as her defense and got her off. Murder charges had to be thrown out on double jeopardy, because Paula had previously been tried, convicted... and executed for that crime in the electric chair, but her henchmen had revived her with an electrical machine she had invented after the Doctor gave her body to them(Sensation Comics #7). Wonder Woman also dramatically revealed Paula's scarred face to the jury, which was moved by Paula's heroic self-sacrifice and acquitted her of the remaining espionage and sabotage charges. (Wonder Woman (vol. 1) #3.)
Paula returned to Paradise Island with her former slave girls and her daughter to live and undergo Amazon training. Queen Hippolyte molded fine features on Paula's face, which the goddess Aphrodite blessed and magically converted into Paula's new face.
Paula became the Amazons' chief scientist, spending part of her time on Paradise Island and part aiding Wonder Woman from a hidden underground laboratory beneath Holliday College. Her daughter Gerta also was a scientific savant, although her experiments sometimes led to accidents that needed Wonder Woman's help to fix. Gerta's enlarging ray, for example, was instrumental in helping Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor return to human size after escaping Atomia's atom world, but also accidentally unleashed the menace of the Bughumans. At one point her devices revived Wonder Woman, and another time the Justice Society of America.
Her Earth-1 counterpart differed only slightly, as Baroness Paula von Gunta. The Earth-1 von Gunta appeared in Wonder Woman (vol. I) #163 and 168, before presumably following a similar path as the Earth-2 Paula and moving to Paradise Island to become an adopted Amazon and chief scientist.
The Earth-1 Paula was asked to replace Hippolyta as Amazon queen during a coup d'état, which was abruptly ended when the goddess Kore appeared to enlist the Amazons in a battle against the Anti-Monitor during the Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Following the events of the Crisis on Infinite Earths, it was revealed that Baroness Paula von Gunther fought Hippolyta during the time-traveling queen's World War II adventures as Wonder Woman.
This Von Gunther was a mistress of the occult and became the human host for the evil wandering spirit, Dark Angel. Dark Angel became a dedicated foe of Hippolyta and was inadvertently responsible for the origin of Wonder Girl (Donna Troy).
Donna Troy was able to defeat Dark Angel, and at some point Dark Angel separated herself from von Gunther. The Baroness was last seen living among the Amazons.
Eventually it was revealed that Dark Angel was not a mystical spirit but an extant multiversal doppelganger of Donna Troy.
It is not yet known how, if at all, the continuity-altering events of Infinite Crisis altered Paula's history.
Pre-Crisis, Paula von Gunther had standard Amazon powers, such as superhuman strength capable of breaking chains and leaping great heights, speed and stamina enough to deflect bullets and other projectiles from her Amazon Bracelets. She was also a skilled hand-to-hand combatant.The greatest of her abilities was her intelligence.
Post-Crisis, von Gunther was empowered when possessed by Dark Angel, who had vast powers and was able to perform a variety of feats including mind control, altering her size, teleportation and altering the time stream.