Pre-Crisis During most of the
Golden Age,
Silver Age, and
Bronze Age of Comic Books, Ares was called Mars. His visual depiction remained faithful to Harry G. Peter's original design throughout the Golden and Silver Ages: a brawny, clean-shaven figure in Greco-Roman battle armor with entwined serpents emblazoned across the breastplate. In the character's first appearance, his armor was gold. Subsequent Golden Age appearances vary the armor's coloration, rendering it as bronze with green filigree, and later as pale violet with bronze
filigree. Mars' Silver Age appearances maintained Peter's character design, but altered the color to gray. His debut appearance sees Mars seeking to realize his vision of eternal war and conflict in the world of man. He is chiefly opposed by
Aphrodite, goddess of love, who seeks to realize a contrary vision of loving civilization. The men who worship Ares kill each other and their weaker brothers, selling women cheaper than cattle. When Ares taunts Aphrodite with his successful plans, Aphrodite creates a new race of women, the
Amazons, from clay. They build a city-state called Amazonia, where they create a
women-centered civilization for spreading the gospel of Aphrodite's Way. They are stronger than Ares's men.
Hippolyta is granted a golden girdle that makes her invincible. From this base, he seeks to defeat the Allied cause in World War II, sending thoughts of conquest, deception, and greed into the Axis leaders via
astral projection, but he finds himself repeatedly thwarted by the Amazon champion Wonder Woman. When Wonder Woman rescues
Steve Trevor from Mars, the War God orders his three lieutenants to capture her. The Earl of Greed is sent and enlisted German aid, along with convincing the Dean of Holiday College to rob it, but was imprisoned after failing. The Duke of Deception gains Japanese help and captures Wonder Woman, but she escapes before she leaves Earth, and he is imprisoned. The Count of Conquest gains Italian help and, by trickery, succeeds in shackling Wonder Woman and Trevor and brings them to Mars. Greed and Deception are released while Wonder Woman is imprisoned in the dungeons. However, with the help of
Etta Candy's spirit form, Wonder Woman escapes and overpowers Mars, whose Iron Palace is destroyed by his weapons, though he survives. The Duke of Deception tries many times to defeat Wonder Woman, but fails despite his cunning and incredible technology, and Mars finally strips him of his mighty appearance, showing him to be a weak, toothless man. The Duke of Deception, after being set with the female slaves, causes them to rebel and briefly rules Mars. Mars repeatedly tangles with Wonder Woman on
Earth-One and
Earth-Two. During a period when Diana abandons her powers to live among the world of men, as the Amazons retreat temporarily to another dimension, Mars (calling himself Ares this time) and his children Phobos, Deimos, and Eris battle the Amazons to secure from Hippolyta the secret to domination of all dimensions of existence. Later, he enlists his descendant Helen Alexandros to become
Silver Swan. His final scheme before the history-changing battle of
Crisis on Infinite Earths is to ally with Hades and the
Anti-Monitor to subdue the Gods of Olympus. As Wonder Woman engages him in final battle, Steve Trevor frees the gods, and Hades' wife Kore appeals to her husband with a message of love, leaving Mars isolated.
Post-Crisis Despite being
Zeus's son, Ares never fit in with the other gods of
Olympus and creates his own realm, the
Areopagus. Aphrodite, the patron of the Amazons, swears that her women will save the world with love from the hatred and warfare of Ares. Through his deceit and manipulations, Ares deposes
Hades and becomes ruler of the underworld. Ares attempts to destroy the Amazons, using
Hercules against them, who sacks the island, but
Diana is born and raised just in time to fight Ares as Steve Trevor's plane, driven by one of Ares's human puppets, crashes into Paradise Island. His plot is to instigate a nuclear war between the
United States and
Russia, but Diana traps him in her magic
lasso and shows how this would lead to his own disappearance, with no one to worship him. Ares tasks her with "saving mankind from themselves", promising to return if she fails. Although Ares abandons his plans, he possess an unimportant criminal Ari Buchanan and changes his name to "Ares Buchanan". He climbs the business ladder by providing high-tech weapons for gang wars. As Buchanan, he has a relationship with his lawyer, Donna Milton, who is
Circe in disguise, although not even she knows it. Milton conceives a daughter,
Lyta Milton, who possesses a great amount of magic. Ares did not care much about Donna, shooting her while she was pregnant. Circe, as Donna, later tries to help Diana out of a trap laid by Ares. She uses the last of her forces to shoot a gun that produces a sort of mini-black hole that absorbs Ares. Diana, the child, and she survive. As opposed to ancient times, the roles of various gods are shown to have altered somewhat according to modern practices and beliefs. Accordingly, the faith-based power Ares's father Zeus receives proves to be very much diminished. Other gods such as
Athena, Aphrodite, and Ares began to gain more power due to the appearance of the computer age, love never diminishing, and conflict remaining consistent. Thus, the three godly siblings eventually take over Olympus. Realizing that conflict proves to maintain his strength over the output of war, Ares changes his title to the God of Conflict. To celebrate this change, he alters his appearance to a more approachable visage. His rule under this name proves to be short-lived, though, as Hades is overthrown and Ares is all too eager to take up the mantle of God of the Dead.
Family reunited Realizing that a crossroads for the gods of Olympus is at hand, Ares confides in his half-sister
Cassie Sandsmark about a future war. In exchange for additional powers, he asks only for her love. He travels to
Themyscira and kidnaps his daughter Lyta, who is under the protection of the Amazons. Circe confronts Ares and is surprised to learn of his new godly title. She agrees to remain as his consort and to raise their daughter in the Underworld. During Ares' family bonding with Cassie, he blesses her with a powerful lasso able to expel Zeus's lightning in times of anger. Ares appears to Cassie repeatedly to warn her about "
the coming war". In the "
Titans Tomorrow" storyline, the
Teen Titans are thrown 10 years into the future, where Cassie has inherited the mantle of Wonder Woman after Diana's death. She is also referred to as "Ares's champion". Ares later appears to Cassie, informing her that the gods are leaving this plane and Zeus is taking the power he had granted Cassie. In exchange for acknowledging their siblinghood and becoming his champion, he offers her some of his power, saying only that she would be "more powerful than [she has] ever been". The full extent of Cassie's powers has not been revealed, though some indication exists that she has retained all of her former powers at this point. In
Amazons Attack!, it revealed that Ares left Circe and kidnapped their daughter to raise on his own. As Lyta and he were only spoken of during the storyline, their presence is yet unknown. Cassie is confronted by Ares' son, Lord Lycus, whom Ares has sent to interfere with Cassie's powers.
Death Shifting himself into the future, Ares steals the dead body of Wonder Woman and brings it back into the present. He manipulates several villains to use the body to create his bride and chief agent
Genocide. He imbues this new creature with his own magical dominance, causing the new being's persona to be not only more deadly but completely obedient to him. Ares's plans to destroy the present-day Wonder Woman go awry when Diana destroys Genocide, leaving the monster's dead body to drown in the ocean. Angered, Ares commands a son of
Poseidon to cause a swarm of deadly sea creatures to attack Themyscira and the new island nation of Thalarion. During this battle, Diana deduces that Ares is the grand manipulator and confronts him. Not allowing Ares much time to gloat in his latest masterpiece of war, Diana takes a battle axe and strikes Ares's head, splitting his helmet in two.
After death Despite being gone from the mortal world, Ares is still manipulating events to destroy the Amazons. His next plot involves the birth of
five male children by five random Amazons. Once they are born, he takes them under his wing before Ares is banished from Themyscira both in body and spirit by his father Zeus.
The New 52: Wonder Woman (2011–2016) . In
The New 52 continuity, Ares is commonly referred to as War. His first appearance in this new continuity is in
Wonder Woman (vol. 4) #4, where he is depicted as a bald, aged man with a white beard. Due to the revelation that Diana is the demigoddess daughter of Zeus, their new dynamic is that of half-brother and half-sister. War's calves and feet are permanently smeared with blood. He appears in a bar in
Darfur, where his brother
Apollo tries to convince him to side with him in his quest to take over the rein of Olympus. He is revealed to be Diana's former mentor in
Wonder Woman vol. 4 #0, a stand-alone issue published in September 2012 set in the past. He takes Diana under his tutelage because of her vast potential in combat, and teaches her the ways of the warrior. Their relationship is like a father-daughter relationship. However, they part ways when Diana is asked by Ares to slay the
Minotaur, but is unable to bring herself to kill it. This show of mercy makes her a failure in Ares' eyes. Over time, Diana learns she can trust Ares to protect their youngest brother, the infant Zeke, and his mother Zola. Alongside their British brother Lennox, Hera, and the
New God Orion, they form a dysfunctional family unit that seeks to protect the baby from the
First Born, their eldest brother, who had been imprisoned by Zeus eons ago. In
Wonder Woman vol. 4 #23, Wonder Woman's group clashes with First Born in London, where Ares raises an army of soldiers and fights First Born himself after Wonder Woman is temporarily incapacitated. First Born overpowers Ares and prepares to kill him to usurp his position of god of war. Wonder Woman regretfully drives a spear through both of them, as it is the only way to stop First Born. In his last breath, Ares forgives and commends his former pupil, stating that she did what he would have done. Hades manifests to take Ares to his afterlife, and announces that Wonder Woman has taken on his position as god of war. Appearing to Wonder Woman in an apparition, counselling her on the ongoing conflict with the First Born, he tells her not to call him War anymore, as that is her name—she refers to him instead as Ares.
DC Rebirth: Wonder Woman (2016–present) In the
DC Rebirth reboot, Wonder Woman's origin is retold in the "Year One" storyline. A group of people called the "Sear" terrorizes a mall where Diana and her friends are exploring. They have been infected with the Maru virus, which causes them to lash out in homicidal rage, though Diana and Steve Trevor defeat them, and
Barbara Ann Minerva discovers Sear is an anagram of Ares. The god of war attacks shortly after this discovery. He reveals his desire to spread the virus across the world in major locations with the hope of turning most of the human population into warring killers to fuel his power. Diana offers him Themyscira's location in exchange for him sparing everyone, though Ares discovers she has no memory of its location; as a sacrifice of leaving the island, Diana was barred from returning by losing knowledge of how to return. Accepting her new role to save mankind, Diana, with the help of the patron gods in animal form, subdues Ares with the Lasso of Truth. Diana and her friends are given the locations where Ares has the virus sent and Diana is christened as Wonder Woman for her heroics. Soon after, Ares' sons Phobos and Deimos conspire to free Ares from his imprisonment on Themyscira. They coerce
Veronica Cale into aiding them by kidnapping the soul of her daughter, Isadore. Several years later, Cale and her associate
Doctor Cyber still have no luck finding the island. Cale plots against Phobos and Deimos, and he recruits the sorceress Circe into trapping the twins into the bodies of two
Doberman Pinschers. Years later, the mysterious tree that had been growing on Themyscira is teleported to the false island that Wonder Woman had originally thought was her home. During a battle with
Cheetah, a drop of Wonder Woman's blood opens a portal to inside the tree. There, Wonder Woman and Veronica Cale encounter both Isadore Cale and an attractive, nude man who introduces himself as Ares. Diana had not faced Ares in Year One, but his sons in disguise. Themyscira serves as Ares' prison once he is calmed of his bloodlust with the love of Aphrodite, and Phobos and Deimos plot to gain access to kill their father and take his role, gaining his power. The gods alter Diana's memories to make her think she has returned to the island so she could never try to find the real Themyscira, thereby granting access to darker forces. Isadore becomes his ward in the meantime. He gives her the clue to how to defeat his sons: with love, not hatred. Once his sons have been defeated and bound by the Lasso of Truth, Ares reveals Isadore cannot leave without being split from her physical and astral forms. She can live with the Amazons, however, and thus have a life where she will not age. Later,
Darkseid's daughter Grail is imprisoned in the tree with Ares. Ares, inspired by the hope of justice, manipulates Grail into killing him with the Godkiller sword. This frees him of his imprisonment. Soon after, Wonder Woman encounters Ares, this time resembling the missing Steve Trevor, on a battlefield in Durkovia. ==Powers and abilities==