LEGENDARY HEROES #47

WONDER WOMAN

In an October 1940 article in Family Circle magazine, psychologist William Moulton Marston discussed the unfulfilled potential of the comic book medium.  Max Gaines of DC Comics saw this article and hired Marston as an "educational consultant" for DC.  Marston was already famous for inventing the polygraph machine and decided to create a new type of hero who would triumph over evil, not with fists, but with love.  His wife Elizabeth said, "Fine, but make her a woman".  Marston pitched the idea to Gaines who gave him the go-ahead, and Wonder Woman was born.  She was an unconventional hero, a liberated woman with the character and strength of Superman but with the allure of a beautiful woman.  Marston's personal situation played a role in his creation, as he based the resemblance of Wonder Woman upon his wife Elizabeth and their "life partner" Olive Byrne.  His stories also included his ideas on DISC theory - Dominance, Inducement, Submission, Compliance - and Wonder Woman often used psychology to best her foes.  Marston described bondage and submission as a "respectable and noble practice" and many of the women in the comic book were pictured in bound situations.  Wonder Woman's first appearance was in All Star Comics #8, December 1941, which actually hit the newsstands on October 21, 1941.  She appeared in her first feature in Sensation Comics #1, January 1942, and got her own title six months later in the Summer 1942 issue of Wonder Woman #1.  Marston wrote all of the stories and they were illustrated by Harry G. Peter.

In the origin story Steve Trevor, an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army, crashes his plane on Paradise Island, the isolated homeland of the Amazon warriors ruled by Queen Hippolyte.  The Queen's daughter, Princess Diana, nurses Steve back to health and falls in love with him.  When the Goddess Aphrodite declares that it is time for an Amazon to travel to "man's world" and fight the evil of the Nazis a tournament is held to determine the Amazon champion who will do so.  Diana wins the competition, is outfitted with a new costume and becomes Wonder Woman, and returns with Steve Trevor to the outside world.  She adopts the identity of Army nurse Lt. Diana Prince, and eventually she is hired to work for Steve as his assistant in the War Department.  Wonder Woman is assisted by the Holliday Girls, a sorority from a local women's college, who are led by Etta Candy who becomes one of the central characters in the early comic adventures of Wonder Woman.  Wonder Woman is depicted as a masterful athlete, acrobat, and strategist, trained and experienced in many ancient and modern forms of armed and unarmed combat, including Amazonian martial arts.  She possesses incalculable superhuman strength, speed, flight, and semi-immortality.  She wears a pair of arm bracelets known as the Bracelets of Submission that can deflect bullets, and wields a golden Lasso of Truth to subdue her enemies.  Her tiara is a razor-edged throwing weapon like a boomerang.  She occasionally wears ceremonial golden armor with golden wings, a chest plate, and a helmet shaped like an eagle's head, and carries a magical sword that is sharp enough to cut the electrons of an atom.

William Moulton Marston drew inspiration from early feminists for his stories and "Suffering Sappho" became Wonder Woman's famous catchphrase.  After Marston's death in 1947, DC Comics began downplaying the sexuality and feminism of Wonder Woman.  Dr. Fredric Wertham, a child psychologist who believed that comic books were the leading cause of juvenile delinquency and abhorrent behavior in children, wrote a book "Seduction of the Innocent" in which he alleged a lesbian subtext to the relationship between Wonder Woman and the Holliday Girls, and referred to Wonder Woman as the "lesbian counterpart to Batman", who he thought had homosexual tendencies.  After this DC really downplayed the feminist angle.  They had the first female superhero and didn't know what to do with her!  By 1968 they had Wonder Woman voluntarily surrendering her Amazon powers and costume in order to run a boutique and fight crime with the assistance of a couple of private eyes.  They even killed off Steve Trevor.  Then in 1971 one of the most powerful feminists and social-political activists in the country, Gloria Steinem, took a stand against what DC had done to de-power Wonder Woman.  She placed Wonder Woman, in full costume, on the front cover of the first issue of Ms. magazine in January 1972.  Gloria Steinem grew up reading Wonder Woman and was offended by what had happened to her.  She also wrote an essay for the first issue of her magazine that heralded the importance of Wonder Woman as a feminist role model.  Steinem wrote, "Marston invented Wonder Woman as a heroine for little girls, and also as a conscious alternative to the violence of comic books for boys".  DC comics returned Wonder Woman's costume and powers with issue #204 in January 1973, and has maintained the image and content ever since.

Like Superman and Batman, Wonder Woman had a daily comic strip that ran in newspapers from May 1, 1944 until December 1, 1945.  The strip was syndicated by King Features with stories by Marston and art by Peter.  In March 1974, ABC-TV produced a movie of Wonder Woman with Cathy Lee Crosby as the superheroine.  It was intended to be a pilot for a series but failed.  Instead ABC developed an adaptation closer to the character's roots with Lynda Carter in the role and Lyle Waggoner as Steve Trevor.  This new pilot aired in November 1975 and became a series beginning in April 1976.  The first season was set during WWII, like the comic book series.  Then "Wonder Woman" moved to CBS for two seasons (1977-1979) but was set in contemporary times.  Wonder Woman had been considered for a TV series much earlier, in 1967, by William Dozier who had created the "Batman" series with Adam West.  He produced a five-minute short intended to promote the idea to the networks, with Linda Harrison as Wonder Woman, but the series was never realized.  Throughout the 1960s Wonder Woman was portrayed in Pop Art by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, and for many decades appeared regularly in DC animated series.  Then in 2017 Wonder Woman came to the big screen as portrayed by Gal Gadot, with a sequel in 2020.  For 80 years Wonder Woman has continued her adventures in comic books, not just as a superheroine but as a strong feminist, and October 21 is recognized as Wonder Woman Day, commemorating the date of her first appearance in comics.