Wonder Woman Unbound (3 page)

Olive, Marston’s domestic partner, was also well educated, and she had extremely close connections to the birth control movement. Her mother, Ethel Higgins Byrne, opened America’s first birth control clinic in 1916 alongside Olive’s aunt, Margaret Sanger, birth control’s most famous advocate.
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That Marston was the de facto son-in-law of such a pioneering feminist likely strengthened his own feminist leanings. He saw the women in his life achieve great things and thought that all women could do the same if given the chance.

In the late 1930s, Marston became the consulting psychologist for
Family Circle
magazine, and his article “Don’t Laugh at the Comics” caught the eye of All-American Publications’ publisher, Max Gaines. The article discussed the growing popularity of comic books, praising Gaines in particular for the success of Superman, and Gaines hired Marston to be on All-American’s editorial advisory board. Several parental and educational groups were upset about comics and thought they were harmful to children, arguing that they were too violent and kept children from reading “real” books. In response, many comic book publishers hired panels of experts in education and psychology to review and approve their books. In a 1943 article in
American Scholar,
Marston stated that “it seemed to me, from a psychological angle, that the comics’ worst offense was their blood-curdling masculinity.” In response, Marston pitched a female superhero to All-American editor Sheldon Mayer to give young readers an alternative to all of this male-dominated violence. Marston called her “Suprema the Wonder Woman,” which Mayer wisely shortened.

Marston wrote his comics under the penname Charles Moulton, a combination of his and Gaines’s middle names. H. G. Peter drew Wonder Woman’s origin, as well as nearly every single Wonder Woman story until 1958, in three different series:
Comic Cavalcade, Sensation Comics,
and
Wonder Woman.
Not much is known about Peter, or what he thought about Marston’s feminist themes, but his nearly two decades of drawing the character suggest that he wasn’t particularly bothered by them.

Peter had a unique style that was notably different from the work of his younger peers at DC Comics. He had drawn cartoons for humor magazines and worked on a number of comic strips, and he had an old-fashioned, cartoonist technique. Many of the young artists on superhero comics drew female characters in a sexualized way, with made-up faces and exaggerated figures. Peter didn’t much go for overstated figures or skimpy clothes, and his faces were pleasant instead of provocative. Because of Peter, when Wonder Woman debuted she looked unlike any other comic book woman on the newsstands, and this distinctive style gave consistency to her early adventures.

Wonder Woman’s origin story began in
All Star Comics
#8 in December 1941 when an American fighter pilot, Steve Trevor, crash-landed onto Paradise Island, the home of the mythical Amazons. Thousands of years earlier, the Amazons had been imprisoned by Hercules in his quest to accomplish his famous twelve labors. The ninth labor was to capture the girdle of Hippolyte, Queen of the Amazons, which he did through trickery and deceit. After the Amazons escaped from Hercules, they quit the aggressive, violent world of men and were led by Aphrodite to a hidden island where only women would reside.
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Once there, Queen Hippolyte sculpted a baby daughter out of clay who was given life by the gods, and she named her Diana.

It was Diana who rescued Steve and took him to the Amazons’ hospital. Men weren’t allowed on Paradise Island, and Aphrodite and Athena told the queen that Steve had to be returned to America. However, the outside world was at war and Steve carried important military information. The goddesses declared that an Amazon warrior must go back to America with him because “America, the last citadel of democracy, and of equal rights for women, needs your help!”

Queen Hippolyte held a tournament to find an Amazon champion. She didn’t let Diana enter because she didn’t want to lose her daughter, but the adventurous Diana disguised herself and entered the tournament anyway, winning it easily. She became Wonder Woman, donning a star-spangled outfit so that she would be recognized as a friend of America. She flew Steve home in her invisible plane and established a secret identity as Diana Prince, Steve’s nurse and later his secretary, so she could stay close to her charge. When any danger arose, Diana Prince transformed into Wonder Woman and foiled the fiendish plans of whatever villain she encountered.

While
Wonder Woman
was ostensibly just a fun comic for kids, it also tied in closely with Marston’s psychological theories. In 1929, Marston released
Emotions of Normal People,
which described his approach to psychology and presented DISC theory, a method of explaining human interactions. DISC (dominance, inducement, submission, and compliance) broke down all human relationships, be they parental, educational, romantic, or otherwise, into two binary relationships: active versus passive and antagonistic versus favorable. In an antagonistic relationship, the active participant was dominant, forcing the passive participant into an unpleasant compliant role. Marston argued that most psychological problems came from these kinds of relationships. In a favorable relationship, the active participant induced the passive participant into pleasant submission. Marston thought this provided “a double dose of pleasantness attached to the process of learning.” Harsh dominance led to forced compliance, while kind inducement led to willing submission.

Marston claimed that men were more likely to be dominant, while women were more likely to excel at inducement and submission, though they were by no means submissive. Women were more loving and selfless and thus more willing to happily give of themselves to others, but they were also far better suited to inspire this sort of behavior in others. Because of this, Marston contended that “women, as a sex, are many times better equipped to assume emotional leadership than are males.” Women’s superior ability to rule was biological, and, Marston wrote, “there isn’t love enough in the male organism to run this planet peacefully. Woman’s body contains twice as many love generating organs and endocrine mechanisms as the male.” The rule of dominant men led society to violence and strife, and Marston stated that “only when the control of self by others is more pleasant than the unbound assertion of self in human relationships can we hope for a stable, peaceful human society.” Female rule was humanity’s best chance for this peace.

Marston thought that this female rule was fast approaching. In an article in the February 1942 issue of
Tomorrow
magazine, Marston wrote that “the future is woman’s—as quickly as she realizes her present frustration, and her tremendously powerful potentialities […] Women will lead the world.” In his 1937
New York Times
interview, he declared that “the next one hundred years will see the beginning of an American matriarchy—a nation of Amazons in the psychological rather than physical sense.” Once World War II began, he argued that women’s participation in the war effort would give them even more strength and speed up this coming matriarchy. Wonder Woman comics were his way to prepare young readers for this inevitable revolution.

Marston’s editor, Sheldon Mayer, said that Marston “was writing a feminist book, but not for women. He was dealing with a male audience.” Women were well on their way to taking over the world, and men needed to get out of the way. Marston stated, “these simple, highly imaginative picture stories satisfy longings that ordinary daily life thwarts and denies. Superman and the army of male comics characters who resemble him satisfy the simple desire to be stronger and more powerful than anybody else. Wonder Woman satisfies the subconscious, elaborately disguised desire of males to be mastered by a woman who loves them.” The vast popularity of comic books offered a way to reach the malleable minds of America’s male youth. Wonder Woman comics were essentially Marston’s psychological theories masquerading as superhero adventures.

But his theories weren’t without their flaws. A matriarchy maintains an unequal society, just with reversed roles, and Marston optimistically refused to entertain the idea that power would corrupt women as much as it did men. Furthermore, while the idea that women were superior to men was rare and progressive for its time, Marston’s concept of gender relied on reductionist generalizations. The female aptitude for love was both maternal and sexual, reducing women to a Madonna/whore stereotype. Marston’s theories idealized women and sexualized their power, basically stating that they were better suited to rule solely based on their ability to fulfill the desires of the men they subjugated. There is a sort of fetishism inherent in Marston’s theories that says much more about what Marston was into than about gender relations and feminism.

However, comic books aren’t psychology textbooks. The sexual undercurrents in
Wonder Woman
were buried below the surface.
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In a genre entirely reliant on idealized heroes, Marston’s female idealization as embodied in Wonder Woman becomes much less problematic. Though inspired by DISC theory and the dubious implications therein, the nature of comic books simplified these messages. They were adventure stories for kids that presented simple, surface-level messages about a strong and capable heroine, and children flocked to the book.

Wonder Woman
outsold
Superman
at times, with upward of five million kids reading each issue. The character was an instant success. She launched in the back of a team book already filled with established heroes, but starred in three series of her own less than a year later. Given the widespread popularity of comics at the time, both boys and girls would have devoured her adventures. Marston may have had some complicated and problematic theories at play in his comics, but they worked primarily as pure superhero fun for Wonder Woman’s legions of fans.

The Women of
Wonder Woman

Although Marston and Peter were the primary forces behind Wonder Woman, the feminist message of the comics extended behind the scenes, where several women played important roles in the character’s development. Women were very rare in the comic book industry, but the
Wonder Woman
team put Marston’s belief in the superiority of women into practice, relying on their advice and putting them in positions with real responsibility.

Marston’s partners were key to the creation of Wonder Woman. When Marston wanted a superhero who would be motivated by love and not violence, Elizabeth insisted that the hero had to be a woman, declaring “Come on, let’s have a Superwoman! There’s too many men out there.” Olive is often credited as the inspiration for Wonder Woman’s appearance, most notably her bullet-deflecting bracelets. Olive was fond of large, metallic bracelets, and Marston co-opted the look for his new heroine.

When Wonder Woman expanded to a second comics series in the summer of 1942, she did so with a noteworthy associate editor, Alice Marble. Marble was an eighteen-time Grand Slam tennis champion who was named the Associated Press Athlete of the Year in 1939 and 1940. After retiring from tennis, she was excited by the arrival of a female superhero and worked on
Wonder Woman
for several years. Although her title was largely ceremonial, Marble was credited with writing the regular “Wonder Women of History” feature, which spotlighted a famous woman in each issue.

Wonder Woman
had another female in editorial, Dorothy Roubicek. Unlike Marble’s ceremonial role, Roubicek worked down in the trenches at All-American Comics. Roubicek was the first female assistant editor in the main offices, and along with her usual editorial duties, All-American publisher Max Gaines tasked Roubicek with handling the advisory board’s objections to some of the content in
Wonder Woman,
a significant job given that
Wonder Woman
was a bestselling book and the objections were stern. Some sources suggest that Roubicek wrote a few
Wonder Woman
stories in the early 1940s, but there is no evidence to back that up. Nonetheless, Roubicek was a key player at All-American, alongside Gaines and Mayer.

Although it’s unlikely that Roubicek wrote
Wonder Woman,
there was another woman who definitely did. Joye Murchison was Marston’s assistant from 1944 until his death in 1947. When Marston became ill with polio and later cancer, Murchison helped him write the comics, scripting several herself. Although she wasn’t credited at the time, today her name is listed in reprints of the original stories and she is officially the first woman to ever write Wonder Woman.

On the art side, H. G. Peter was the sole credited artist on most of Wonder Woman’s early stories, but he worked with a studio full of artists. Peter took care of the layouts and the main characters, but other artists would help with side characters and backgrounds. There were a few women in the crew who helped Peter with the inking and occasionally some penciling, though the only name we know is Helen Schpens. Several issues were also lettered by Louise Marston, Marston’s daughter-in-law.

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