Created by writer William Moulton Marston and artist Harry G. Peter, the character debuted in 1947 in Wonder Woman #24 as the villainous alter-ego of Nina Close, a victim of domestic spousal abuse suffering from dissociative identity disorder.

[1] She would get a post-Rebirth reformulation by writer/artist Sanya Anwar in 2021's Sensational Wonder Woman #13-14 as Natalia Close (née Nina Solorzano), a troubled social media personality and influencer who develops the lethal alter-ego of a criminal mastermind named the Mask.

William Moulton Marston, the Mask's creator, was a psychologist who conceived many of Wonder Woman's Golden Age foes as allegories for psychological and moral motifs, but he also used villain characters to represent mental illness.

As such, the Mask (as well as Wonder Woman's nemesis the Cheetah, a more recognizable Marston creation debuting four years earlier) illustrated then-current perspectives on what is now understood as dissociative identity disorder.

Contemporary reformulations of the character by writers Allan Heinberg and Sanya Anwar have reflected changing worldviews regarding mental illness, but have maintained the emergence of the Mask persona as a protective response to trauma.

Anwar's Mask has a more complex psychological makeup, struggling with several dysfunctional familial relationships and stress related to the upkeep of a seemingly perfect social media persona.

Wonder Woman was drawn into the emotionally intense battles between millionaire industrialist and amateur trekker Brutus Close, his frail and tormented wife Nina, and his associate Fancy Framer one day when she was flying back from Paradise Island and came across a plane in distress.

The Mask reappeared in the Silver Age when a magical duplicate of her and several other opponents of the Justice League of America was used in an elaborate plot by the Demons Three to trick the JLA and free themselves.