Despite its problems (and there are many, even though the comics were progressive for their time just by featuring a female superhero) I enjoyed the first five Wonder Woman comics a lot more than I enjoyed the first several Superman ones. Maybe it was just refreshing to see some female representation. But Wonder Woman actually had a moderately developed backstory, unlike Superman's bare-bones one (although both their backstories change and deepen). With that setup, reading it felt less like watching only action that seems to reset every issue and more like reading episodes of a larger story that I could potentially get invested in.

Early Superman (and Tintin) work really well as wish-fulfillment characters because they are so normal. The characters don't have developed personalities or backstories to work with and around, and so readers can easily imagine themselves in the characters' places. However, it's also harder to care about a character that seems so flat - or at least that's what happened to me with Superman. Wonder Woman, on the other hand, has that same broad-strokes personality but comes with a lot more backstory, and so appears more like a character than an archetype or a vehicle for the reader. Paradise Island is shown and its history is explained, while Krypton doesn't even get its name and is hand-waved away. Before becoming a superhero she was a princess, not an ordinary citizen. Instead of being a superhuman alien raised as a normal child (so normal children can identify with their upbringing), Wonder Woman enters society as an adult.

Is this just an indication of Marston developing his character more at the start? Did he feel the need to justify Wonder Woman's powers more than Superman's creators did?  It's interesting that the first female superhero is also the first one we've read that has any kind of universe outside issue-to-issue crimefighting.