Little is known of the earliest life of Hypnota until the waning days of World War II. Wonder Woman first encounters Hypnota in early 1945, when the entry of a masked girl into Army Intelligence Headquarters results in the theft of defense plans with the help of a hypnotized Steve Trevor.  Wonder Woman recovers the plans but fails to capture the girl who had stolen them.   The documents are stashed in a cloak that Wonder Woman tracks to Hypnota the Great, a show in which audience members are often hypnotized.  Attending the show the following evening, Diana Prince is impressed by Hypnota's powers and changes into Wonder Woman to confront Hypnota directly.  Discovered her powers don't work on the Amazon, Hypnota flees but not before hypnotizing several audience members, including Trevor, to come with her.  When Wonder Woman gives chase, she is ambushed and knocked unconscious, then bound with her own lasso.  Hypnota orders the hypnotized audience members to kill Wonder Woman.  She dodges their attack and managed to awaken Trevor and together they subdue the audience but Hypnota again flees.  When they catch up with the hypnotist, the find only Serva the assistant who claims that she also has been hypnotized by Hypnota and that the real criminal is long gone.

Binding Serva in a magic lasso, Wonder Woman learns Hypnota's origin.  As part of their stage act, Serva shoots at Hypnota but in one session, she actually strikes,  Hypnota undergoes surgery but the process unlocks part of the brain that has been heretofore unknown and allows the projection of hypnotic blue rays,  Hypnota commands the doctor and nurses to forget the entire affair and destroy all medical records and returns to work on the show.   Serva becomes the first victim and is mentally subjugated by Hypnota, forcing her to cover Hypnota's crimes. Wonder Woman takes Serva into protective custody not realizing that Hypnota is actually following Serva to strike once more at Wonder Woman.  Finding her in Wonder Woman's apartment, she once more mentally assaults Serva, leading Wonder Woman to hide her at Holliday College.  Serva, still under Hypnota's control, attempts to cause accidents for Wonder Woman that would result in her death.  Dodging them, Wonder Woman resolves to take the fight to Hypnota.

While they gather clues on Hypnota's activities, a visit from the Ambassador from the planet Saturn is interrupted by an apparent Army strike.  The ambassador is injured and while recovering he explains there has been a long operational slave ring delivery humans to Saturn as workers.  This years long underground operations involved a shadowy figure that in time is revealed to be Hypnota.   Wonder Woman gives chase and finds Serva a slave once more but this time, the full truth emerges.  Hypnota is in fact Serva's twin sister, masquerading as a man to fool the public and using the identical appearance of the two sisters to create further distraction.  Wonder Woman, the Holliday Girls and the U.S. Army all converge on Hypnota simultaneously, resulting in her capture and defeat.  The disrupted slave trade staves off renewed war between Saturn and Earth and Hypnota is taken into custody by the Amazons (Wonder Woman #11).