Darna, the Filipino Superhero Who Is Also a Village Girl

Darna wears a winged tiara and a star-spangled bustier, flies and has superhuman strength — which is why she could be called the Filipino version of Wonder Woman. The difference, as JSTOR Daily frames it, is that unlike the Amazon princess she is also a family-minded village girl. Both are comic-book characters, not figures from history.

That combination is the tradition she comes from. The scholar Soledad S. Reyes argues that komiks offered readers exceedingly accessible ways of retelling stories that belonged to the lore of the common people — their myths, epics, legends and tales — and that their appeal lay less in exotic plots and settings than in a consistent affinity with the Filipino underdog.