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 ...
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 ...