Hanna-Barbera animator Darrell McNeil recalls the twins were created by Norman Maurer, the Super Friends series developer/story editor.

[2] Jayna's distinctive hairdo was based on that of an animation checker at Hanna-Barbera, while the pointed ears were inspired by the character Spock from the Star Trek franchise.

The twins' personalities were heavily based on Donny and Marie Osmond, who were extremely popular at the time and had their own show on ABC as well.

[3] The characters were introduced to comics in issue #7 of the Super Friends tie-in series (cover-dated October 1977, but published in July), by E. Nelson Bridwell and Ramona Fradon.

In 2019, however, the characters enjoyed a revival when DC published a six-issue Wonder Twins miniseries, written by Mark Russell and drawn by Stephen Byrne.

Eventually, as teens, the pair escapes the circus and hides on a planet where a space villain called Grax (an enemy of Superman) has established his headquarters.

The twins decide to travel to Earth and warn the Justice League, which is how they come to replace Wendy and Marvin (who were planning on retiring as heroes anyway) as their sidekicks.

The heroes arrange for the kids to live with an old scientist named Professor Carter Nichols and they even take secret identities as Johan and Joanna Fleming.

[6] In 1996, the twins were introduced into post-Crisis DC continuity in the series Extreme Justice as escaped slaves of an alien overlord.

During their fight with the JLA, Zan becomes an ice golem, a water monster, and a demonic-looking whirlpool, while Jayna becomes a griffin, a werewolf, and a sea serpent.

[10] In a 2002–03 storyline by Peter David and Todd Nauck in Young Justice, they help avenge the murder of Empress' parents, wearing uniforms which resembled T-shirts and jeans.

[11] In late 2003, they appeared in the fourth issue of the Marvel-DC intercompany crossover miniseries JLA/Avengers, which was written by Kurt Busiek and illustrated by George Pérez.

[12] In Superpowers, a 2017 backup series in Cave Carson Has A Cybernetic Eye, cartoonist Tom Scioli offers a slightly different version of the origin of the Wonder Twins, set on an alternate Earth.

[14] Similarly, Zan was able to transform into anything tangentially related to water or ice, including a frost giant in the "Demons of Exxor" episode.

In addition to their powers of transformation, the two share a telepathic link, enabling one to alert the other over a distance when in dire circumstances, as revealed in the episode "The Village of Lost Souls".