Wonder Woman

Name: Diana Prince
Base of Operations:  Washington, D.C.
Profession: Amazon princess, secretary to Colonel Darnell, U. S. Military Intelligence
First Appearance:  All-Star Comics #8, December 1941-January 1942

Origin:  In 1941 American military Steve Trevor crashed off the shore of Paradise Island, home of the legendary Amazons. Fortunately for Trevor, his body was discovered by Queen Hippolyta's daughter, Princess Diana. Diana nursed Trevor back to health and in doing so fell in love with him.

From Trevor the Amazons learned that the outside world was engulfed in a world war, one which could eventually threaten the existence of Paradise Island. The Amazons' patron goddesses, Athena and Aphrodite decided that they should send an Amazon back with Trevor to help in the battle against evil. To determine which Amazon would accompany Trevor, they held a contest involving various feats of skill and strength. Queen Hippolyta forbade her daughter to enter the contest, but Diana, wishing to be near Trevor, disguised herself and entered the contest anyway. Diana won the competition and as a result was permitted to leave Paradise Island with Steve Trevor.

Once in the United States Diana took the name "Diana Prince" as a secret identity and entered  the military. There she became secretary to Colonel Darnell of U.S. Military Intelligence.

In her adventures Wonder Woman was aided by the Holliday Girls, a sorority led by Diana Prince's friend Etta Candy.

Powers:  Wonder Woman was possessed of enormous strength and a large number of skills. Among these skills was the ability to deflect bullets with her metal bracelets. Wonder Woman could also ride the air currents as if flying. She also possessed a magic lasso with which she could force people to tell the truth. The original version of Wonder Woman did not derive her powers  from the Greek gods. Instead they were apparently innate to all Amazons--all she need do was concentrate.

Though extremely powerful, unlike Superman, Wonder Woman  was not invulnerable. A bullet could injure her just as it would an ordinary mortal and a blow the head of sufficient force could knock her out. Wonder Woman could also be rendered powerless if her bracelets were chained together or if she was tied with her own lasso.

History:  William Moulton Marston Phd was a respected psychologist of the early twentieth century. Of particular interest to Marston was the emotional responses of human beings and their relationship to human physiology. This led Marston to develop the earliest version of the modern lie detector or polygraph. Marston wrote five books and contributed to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Encyclopaedia of Psychology, the American Journal of Psychology, and several mainstream magazines (perhaps most frequently to Reader's Digest). Marston was also an early feminist who supported the cause of women throughout his career.

In the early Forties Dr. Marston was an educational consultant for National Periodical Publications Inc. and All-American Comics Inc. He noted that there while there were many male superheroes in the pages of comic books, there were few if any superheroines. He mentioned this to Max Gaines, the head of the All-American line, who expressed interest in the idea of a female superhero. He asked Moulton to create just such a superheroine.

Marston drew upon Greek myths about the Amazons and his own theories regarding women to create Wonder Woman. To write the comic strip he adopted the pen name "Charles Moulton," created by combining Max Gaines' middle name with that of his own. With artist H. G. Peter he created the visual  image of Wonder Woman that has changed but little over the years.

It should be pointed out that Wonder Woman was not the first superheroine. At All-American Comics Inc. alone she is predated by both the Red Tornado and Hawkgirl. Both of those characters are predated by two characters from newspaper comic strips--the Woman in Red (possibly the first female costumed hero) and Tarpe Mills' Miss Fury.

Wonder Woman made her debut in All-Star Comics #8, December 1941-January 1942--a portion of her origin was added as an extra eight pages to the magazine. Her entire origin appeared the following month in Sensation Comics #1, January 1942. Wonder Woman proved to be an overnight success. With All-Star Comics #11, June-July 1942 she would become the official secretary of the Justice Society of America (she would not become a full fledged member until much later). Her solo magazine debuted that same summer, cover dated summer 1942. During much of the Golden Age Wonder Woman appeared regularly n four different magazines:  Sensation Comics, Wonder Woman, Comic Cavalcade, and All-Star Comics. For a short time in the Forties there was even a Wonder Woman newspaper strip.

Despite its success, Wonder Woman became a source of controversy between its writer, Dr. Marston, and its editor, Sheldon Mayer. In Les Daniels' DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World's Favorite Comic Book Heroes, Mayer is quoted as saying, "Marston's idea of feminine supremacy was the ability to submit to male domination." A greater source of controversy between the two men was the bondage imagery that appeared more and more frequently as the series progressed. Sensation Comics #6, June 1942 featured a story which centred upon a "girl roping" contest held by the Amazons on Paradise Island. The contestants would rope other Amazons and then tie them up (the prize in this contest, which Wonder Woman naturally won, was the golden lasso which compels individuals to tell the truth). A story published in 1948, finished shortly before Dr. Marston died, featured seventy-five panels with images of bondage, some involving more than one person. Mayer suspected  "There was a certain symbolism that Marston engaged in, which was very simple and very broad."  Mayer's suspicion that Dr. Marston was intentionally employing sexual symbolism in the comic strip may not have been without good reason. When asked whether male readers would object to such a strong, female character, Marston simply replied, "Give them an alluring woman stronger than themselves to submit to and they'll be proud to become her willing slaves." In the August 1942 issue of Family Circle, Marston  stated, "Women are nature-endowed soldiers of Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, and theirs is the only conquering army to which men will permanently submit--not only without resentment or resistance or secret desires for revenge, but also with positive willingness and joy!" It then seems possible, and even very likely, that Marston was using  bondage imagery with some purpose in mind. Regardless, editor Sheldon Mayer attempted to keep the bondage which appeared in the comic strip as written by Marston to an absolute minimum. Despite this, it is likely that any symbolism intended by Dr. Marston was lost on the children who read Wonder Woman, as Les Daniels points out in DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World's Favorite Comic Book Heroes, "Kids were inclined to accept these scenes as games of capture and escape..."

Unfortunately, in 1944 Dr. Marston contracted polio. He died three years later in 1947, at age 53. While H. G. Peter continued as artist, Robert Kanigher took over as writer. The Wonder Woman series did not change too drastically with Kanigher's scripts. The Greek gods played a reduced role in the series and there was less emphasis upon Diana's Amazon heritage. There was also a sharp decline in the amount of feminism espoused in the series.

If a precise time could be settled upon for the end of the Golden Age Wonder Woman, it would perhaps be 1954. When Dr. Frederic Wertham launched his crusade against comic books, one of his foremost targets was Wonder Woman. In his book Seduction of the Innocent (published in 1954), Wertham outlined his various accusations against the superheroine. Wertham believed Wonder Woman to be a "phallic woman," the fantasy image which Sigmund Freud theorised little boys have of a woman with a hidden penis, who not only behaves much like a man, but who also wishes to deprive men of their manhood. He maintained that Wonder Woman was then a frightening image for little boys (never mind that she has always had a large male following) and a poor role model for little girls. It should come as no surprise that Wertham also believed that Wonder Woman was a lesbian. He apparently thought that only a lesbian would extoll women in speeches to be strong and independent. He quite obviously thought that Wonder Woman's relationship with the Holliday Girls was a little too close for comfort. There can be little doubt that the bondage imagery which played such a large role in Wonder Woman as written by Marston had a hand in shaping Wertham's views of the series, however unjustified many of those views were.

It must be noted that by today's standards Wertham would be considered both sexist (his view of a woman's proper role in society appears to have been rather limited) and homophobic (not only did he consider homosexuality a mental illness,  but he found homosexual undertones in even the most innocent of situations). Regardless, Seduction of the Innocent would change the comic industry in general and Wonder Woman in specific. Largely due to Wertham's attacks, the Comics Code Authority was formed to enforce, in the words of the industry, "the most stringent code in existence for any communications media (sic)." With regards to Wonder Woman, the current of feminism that had once run so strong throughout the comic strip vanished for nearly  two decades. Once strong and independent, Wonder Woman became more concerned with getting Steve Trevor to the altar. From 1959 onwards the stories would grow increasingly ludicrous,  featuring such entities as Merman, the Amoeba Man, and Egg Fu. Even Wonder Woman's origin was retconned so that her powers were derived from the Greek gods rather her highly trained Amazon mind. Having moved so far from  William Moulton Marston's original concept, it is then perhaps fitting to say that the Golden Age Wonder Woman ceased to be with Seduction of the Innocent and the Comics Code Authority.

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