Wonder Woman debuted in All-Star Comics No. 8 in December 1941, but was inexplicably unable to prevent the Pearl Harbor invasion. Over the ensuing decades, this cartoon sexpot has excited adolescent minds -- both male and female -- in a way '50s pinup Betty Page never could.

And 2001 may be the biggest year yet for the babe in the star-spangled girdle. A new book, "Wonder Woman: The Complete History" by Les Daniels and Chip Kidd, is an oversize, art-heavy tome that reminds us that for sheer fetishism alone, comic books are as potent as Playboy. A Wonder Woman live-action film is under development by producer Joel Silver; Sandra Bullock and Mariah Carey have been mentioned as possible stars.

And now, a few months shy of her 60th anniversary, Wonder Woman has a new artist guiding her destiny at DC Comics: a devoted fan whom she inspired to escape a life in the slums.

Wonder Woman, Phil Jimenez says, changed his life -- and he wants to return the favor. His personal tale is more unlikely than any superhero plot: As a kid living in government-funded housing in Orange County, Calif., Jimenez saw comic books as his escape from a dead-end childhood. If Wonder Woman could better the world in her pursuit of truth, Jimenez figured, he could tap into that energy. He moved to New York and eventually ended up nabbing the much-coveted spot of drawing his beloved inspiration at the precocious age of 30.

Of course, it is true that in one sense comic books are merely the talismans of continuing generations of emotionally and sexually stunted nerds who come out in force to crowd their favorite artists at suburban comics conventions. But for some, like Jimenez, comic books forge a path to self-actualization.

Two current cultural offerings explore this idea. Michael Chabon's recent bestseller, "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," characterizes the eternal yearning for happy endings that keeps comics selling. In Chabon's World War II saga, these two cousins create comic-book superheroes to battle the Nazis in a spasm of wish fulfillment springing from their own powerlessness. In addition, the cartoon tales empower Clay to accept his nascent homosexuality.

And in the film "Unbreakable," M. Night Shyamalan's muddled but ambitious follow-up to the wildly successful "The Sixth Sense," the director depicts the obsessions of a comic-book collector (Samuel L. Jackson). Crippled by a congenital disease, the man searches for a real-life superhero, who may or may not be Bruce Willis.

Back in the late 1980s, when Jimenez was coping with a childhood on welfare, he sought solace in fantasy. And like Chabon's teenage Clay, cartoon superheroes also unleashed the gay boy inside.

Wonder Woman -- a defiant Amazon from a female Utopia called Paradise Island -- was created by a pop psychologist named William Moulton Marston, who wrote under the pseudonym Charles Moulton. (He also invented the polygraph.) Marston, unlike naysayers of the era, saw educational value in the proletariat art of comics and lobbied on their behalf. A scholar of mythology, Marston endowed his lass with the wisdom of the gods, even as she ran about in a scanty costume. A backlash came in 1943, according to Daniels and Kidd's book, when a horny soldier wrote to praise the buxom crime fighter and her magic lasso, which had stirred thoughts of sexual bondage. Marston was ordered to tone down his character. The next year, one of his colleagues resigned, bristling at the still-potent sexual symbolism.

Jimenez was entranced by the character; he spent hours alone sketching her. While immune to her sexual charms, Jimenez was inspired by her mission: to pacify warlike men and achieve world peace. This superhero, he decided, could play a role in his salvation too. He hatched a scheme: He would go to college in New York to learn comic-book illustration, then work on Wonder Woman at DC Comics.

Beneath these pop-color daydreams, however, lay a desperate motive: "If I did all these things and accomplished all these goals, then maybe being gay would be OK with my family." In 1989, at 19, Jimenez enrolled in New York's School of Visual Arts, studying under legendary cartoonist Will Eisner, who wedded film noir to comics with "The Spirit" series. But after two years, Jimenez's funds ran out, ending his education.

Great Hera! Three weeks after leaving school, Jimenez sent in some drawings to DC Comics -- and was hired. His boss was a man named Neil Pozner, whose mandate as the company's new "talent director" was to groom novices. The muscled, goateed Pozner was Jimenez's first real-life superhero. "When I saw him, I fell instantly in love." But still closeted, Jimenez held his tongue, channeling his sexual energy into the "Teen Titans" and "Robin" series.

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