The original Wonder Woman was a circular story of re-education, whirling through lessons on gender and power dynamics. One recurrent teaching was mastery over one’s drive to dominate, and choosing submission to the greater good instead. In Wonder Woman #8 (Spring 1944), the Atlantean Princess Octavia petitioned Wonder Woman to be her mentor. Octavia was unusually tall, strong, and hot-tempered. In their first meeting, ...
Centuries after the Amazons landed on Paradise Island, Diana was born. On her fifteenth birthday, she pledged herself to Aphrodite’s service and received her Bracelets of Submission, made from the indestructible metal, Amazonium, found only on Paradise Island. It seems safe to infer that the Amazons have all adopted such ceremonial bracelets made from this mighty metal by the time ...
Fun Fact: Wonder Woman's Magic Lasso was not part of the character's original design. Her creator, William Moulton Marston (aka Charles Moulton) added it as a story element to solve a problem—excessive force.The lasso is well known for its power to compel its captives to tell the truth, forcing them to confess their crimes and reveal embarrassing private thoughts. What ...
“What’s this?” I asked my mom, my eyes riveted to the TV screen. A beauty queen wrapped in an American flag tossed a rope around two criminals who seemingly had tried to kill her boyfriend. “That’s Wonder Woman.” Her nonchalant answer made it clear she’d completely missed the fact that my world had just exploded. At three years old, the ...
I once read that Marston wrote every single Wonder Woman story during his lifetime, including four stories in each issue of Wonder Woman, single episodes Sensation Comics and Comic Cavalcade, and the syndicated newspaper strip, plus a few odds and ends. That makes a whopping 211 tales in just six years–an astounding accomplishment, especially when you consider that nearly all superhero comics at the time were written ...
The Amazons were not the first women created by the gods. That distinction belongs to Pandora, the first woman, the “Eve” of Greek mythology. Unlike Diana and Galatea, who were rewards from the Goddess of Love for her worshippers’ devotion, Pandora was created as a punishment. The Titan Prometheus had defied Zeus, stealing fire from Olympus and giving it to ...
In Wonder Woman #1, Marston compared Diana’s birth to the myth, “Pygmalion and Galatea,” in which a sculptor became so enamored of his creation that Aphrodite brought the statue to life to become his bride. As presented in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Pygmalion dismissed women as shameless prostitutes and committed himself to bachelorhood. However, he loved the idea of women, even if he found the ...
In Wonder Woman #1, a panel showing an Amazon woman beating back her abusers with broken chains to reclaim her personhood was indeed worth a thousand words. The image of the Amazons wielding the chains that imprisoned them as tools of their emancipation conjures suffrage era imagery. In 1908 Suffragette Edith New led a protest where several women chained themselves to the ...
Like all the Amazons, Queen Hippolyte enjoyed a bountiful life brimming with every happiness—save one. After centuries of personal development and self-actualization, and ruling over a thriving nation, her heart ached for a different kind of love. She longed for a child. Unfortunately, Aphrodite’s gender restrictions presented a significant impediment to motherhood—but that was okay because Marston had read Pygmalion, the ...
My Magic Bracelets Both of my grandmothers were delightfully indulgent of my Wonder Woman love, helping me construct costumes from household items. For instance, one hot Saturday afternoon after my weekly cartoon ritual, I wanted to play Bullets and Bracelets. Billie, my mother’s mother, had the idea to fashion protective bracelets from toilet paper rolls. My grandparents believed at age ...
Paradise Island The battle with the Hercules and the Greeks marked the end of Amazons’ participation in men’s affairs, but also the beginning of their own isolated civilization. Guided by Aphrodite, the Amazons discovered a hidden island where they could build a new world. In the original comics, it was called Paradise Island. Later, George Pérez dubbed it Thermyscira, after ...
Note: This post builds on The History of Hercules and Herstory of Hippolyte. The legend of the Amazons unfolds on page two of Wonder Woman‘s first issue, told through a scroll Wonder Woman dropped shortly after she arrived in America. A Smithsonian archaeologist called the manuscript “an ancient document sought for centuries — the History of the Unconquerable Amazons!” Marston’s Amazon-centric ...
A Tale of Two Olives When I began researching William Moulton Marston in the early 1990s, it struck me as odd that two of his collaborators shared the name Olive—Olive Byrne and Olive Richard. Olive Byrne had assisted Marston in his research for Emotions of Normal People in the 1920s. Olive Richard was a magazine columnist who interviewed him a few times ...
As an immortal embodiment of the indomitable feminine spirit, Wonder Woman’s character lends herself to the exploration of big ideas. Fortunately writer Steve Orlando really likes to play with big ideas. A few months ago, in Wonder Woman #750, he laid out Diana’s values: 1. No one is beyond redemption.2. Always question power.3. Seeking the truth is an act of ...
In 2016, the year leading up to the release of her eponymous movie, Wonder Woman was named the United Nations’ Honorary Ambassador for the Empowerment of Women and Girls. The initiative was announced in October, which also coincided with the 75th anniversary of her comic book debut. It was designed to promote the UN’s goals of gender equality and female ...
The controversy surrounding Wonder Woman’s appearance goes all the way back to the beginning. The character’s visual design was a collaboration between Marston and artist H. G. Peter. Like Marston, Peter was much older than the other comic artists of his day. Both men were completely on board with women’s empowerment, in terms of both gender equality and sexual expression. ...
Sadie Elizabeth Holloway was a wonder among women. Born in 1893, she emigrated with her parents from the Isle of Man, an island situated in the Irish Sea between Ireland and Great Britain. Elizabeth was a force to be reckoned with—stubborn, fierce, and tough as nails. The fiery trailblazer earned three degrees at a time when the very idea of ...
One Comic Book Writer’s Extraordinary ResuméWonder Woman’s creator, Professor William Moulton Marston, was a peculiar figure in the comic book industry. The creators of Superman (Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster) and Batman (Bob Kane) were all children of Jewish immigrants in an anti-semitic America. They were in their twenties when their brainchildren first donned their capes. By the time Marston ...
What’s so special about the Girdle of Hippolyte? One rewarding aspect of reading Wonder Woman is how her story weaves through a broad literary world, from classical mythology to Shakespeare, endowing fantastical comics with a palpable sense of reality. That is rarely the case with other superheroes. If you look up Krypton in the Encyclopedia Brittanica, you will learn about ...