Wonder Woman Unbound (4 page)

Before Steve Trevor came crashing in, Diana had never met a man or interacted with the outside world, and her entire existence was spent in an all-female utopia. Queen Hippolyte described Paradise Island by saying, “With its fertile soil, its marvelous vegetation—its varied natural resources—here is no want, no illness, no hatreds, no wars. […] That is why we Amazons have been able to far surpass the inventions of the so-called manmade civilization! We are not only stronger and wiser than men—but our weapons are better—our flying machines are further advanced!”

The Amazons had divine benefits on top of their technological and societal superiority, including eternal life, so long as Hippolyte retained her magic girdle.
*
The queen made it clear that their utopia would remain so long as “we do not permit ourselves to be again beguiled by men!” Paradise Island was a means for Marston to illustrate, albeit in fanciful form, the benefits of a female-ruled society.

In her early adventures, Wonder Woman was often described as possessing “the beauty of Aphrodite, the wisdom of Athena, the strength of Hercules and the speed of Mercury.” But these qualities applied to every Amazon. Hippolyte declared that the Amazons were “a race of Wonder Women!” Princess Diana wasn’t especially gifted among her Amazon sisters; in the tournament to decide the Amazon champion, all competed fiercely in the twenty-one grueling challenges, and all of them had the ability to be a Wonder Woman in the world of man. This athletic prowess wasn’t limited to Amazons either. In
Wonder Woman
#23, Queen Hippolyte spoke directly to female readers and stated, “You girls can develop strength and courage like our Amazon youngsters if you lead clean, athletic lives and realize the true power of women!”

Wonder Woman had no past tragedy to resolve, no anger or sorrow burning deep within her. Instead, she grew up in the world’s most idyllic environment and became a hero to help others and spread Amazon values. While a lot of superheroes had a sidekick to help them in their crime fighting, Wonder Woman developed an entire network of powerful women.

In America she had the Holliday Girls, the members of the sorority Beeta [
sic
] Lambda at Holliday College. The Holliday Girls first appeared in
Sensation Comics
#2, when Wonder Woman took their marching band to distract a group of Nazi spies by having a dance. Once Wonder Woman gave the word, each Holliday Girl subdued her dance partner and handcuffed him. The Holliday Girls were led by Etta Candy, a rotund young woman who loved chocolates. Etta’s appearance was a stark contrast to the svelte, wasp-waisted women depicted in most comic books, and Etta was a brave and heroic leader who was always in the thick of the fight beside her friend Wonder Woman. Whatever the adventure, the Holliday Girls were involved. In fact, the Holliday Girls were more useful to Wonder Woman than the American military, often showing up to help her fight the Nazis or Japanese way before any soldiers arrived on the scene.

Wonder Woman’s Amazon sisters also helped her battle villains and defend the planet, fighting alongside her and providing her with advanced technology. The brilliant and inventive Amazons had knowledge that far surpassed what was available in the world of men. Wonder Woman regularly used the Amazons’ mental radio for contacting the Holliday Girls, Paradise Island, or Steve, and she also had access to their teleportation and time travel devices when the need arose.

When these women worked together, they were unstoppable. Although they regularly used force to stop villains, violence wasn’t the only option. Wonder Woman frequently tried to talk to criminals and show them that another path would be a better choice.

Wonder Woman’s general approach to women was to encouragingly point out their own strengths and set them free of the dominant men in their lives. When Marva, the wife and assistant of the evil Dr. Psycho, lamented that “Submitting to a cruel husband’s domination has ruined my life! But what can a weak girl do?” Wonder Woman told her to “get strong! Earn your own living—join the WAACs or WAVES and fight for your country! Remember the better you can fight, the less you have to.”
*
Employment was always Wonder Woman’s first suggestion to help women gain independence.

Instead of busting Gloria Bullfinch, a store owner whose employees were being mistreated by her fiancé, Wonder Woman and the Holliday Girls hypnotized Gloria and made her think she was an employee at her own store. Once she saw the appalling conditions, she snapped out of her hypnotic state, left her fiancé, improved conditions, and doubled the workers’ wages, declaring “Wonder Woman made me work like you and now I understand!”

Noting the dancing abilities of the villainous Cheetah, Wonder Woman exclaimed, “You’re a born dancer—your dancing could attract
millions
of admirers! Oh, Cheetah, why don’t you dance and make people
love
you?” Superman and Batman never offered encouraging suggestions for alternate career paths to Lex Luthor or the Joker, but Wonder Woman saw the good in everyone.

Although male villains were left to the police or the military, Wonder Woman usually took female villains to Reform Island, a smaller companion to Paradise Island where criminals were rehabilitated by the Amazons. It first appeared in
Wonder Woman
#3, and its inmates included some of Wonder Woman’s most notorious enemies, like the Nazi spy Baroness Paula von Gunther and Priscilla Rich, the Cheetah. Wonder Woman believed that even criminals had the potential to learn the Amazon way of life.

Baroness Paula von Gunther became the poster girl for the transformative effects of Reform Island. Gunther was a Nazi spy with a group of female slaves at her command. She first appeared in
Sensation Comics
#4, where she kidnapped women and brainwashed them to become Nazi agents. Ultimately, she was sent to Reform Island, but she escaped. Rather than merely recapturing Paula, Wonder Woman took the time to talk to her and learned that her daughter, Gerta, was in the hands of the Nazis. Wonder Woman rescued Gerta, and Paula pledged herself to rehabilitation, even saving Wonder Woman from a fire and burning herself terribly in the process. Wonder Woman represented Paula at her trial for her past criminal deeds and had her sent back to Reform Island, where she soon became the Amazon’s chief scientist. Her transformation was so complete that she was able to leave Reform Island and work on Paradise Island, and later moved to a secret laboratory in the United States. A recurring character in Wonder Woman comics, she became a staunch ally who used her scientific genius to help Wonder Woman. Her female slaves were sent to Reform Island as well, where they were taught the benefits of submitting to a loving authority instead of the cruel and dominant rule of their former mistress. Reform Island was a busy place, resulting in an ever-growing network of women who lived the Amazon way of life.

*
Wonder Woman was relaunched in 1987 during DC Comic’s companywide reboot following
Crisis on Infinite Earths,
an event meant to streamline fifty years of DC’s continuity into one simple universe, and has been rebooted several times since.

*
National and All-American Publications later formally merged and became National Periodical Publications in 1944. In the early days of comics, it was not uncommon for publishers to set up a new company for almost every book they published. The motivation behind this was that if a book failed, that company could be shut down easily without affecting the rest of the publishing line. Many comic book publishers were actually conglomerates of several smaller companies, housed in the same location and run by the same people.

*
Later stories tweaked this origin slightly. Kal-L became Kal-El, and his powers came from Earth’s yellow sun.

^†
Shazam is an acronym for the sources of Captain Marvel’s powers: the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles, and the speed of Mercury.

*
However, Captain Marvel resembled Superman to such a degree that DC Comics sued Fawcett for copyright infringement in 1941. After a decade of legal battling and facing a declining comic book market, Fawcett settled with DC in the early 1950s and shut down its comics division. Amusingly, DC licensed and later bought the rights to Captain Marvel and the whole Marvel family in the 1970s. DC still publishes Captain Marvel comics today, though he is now called “Shazam” to avoid conflict with Marvel Comics’ Captain Marvel, originally an alien named Mar-Vell who first appeared in 1967. In current Marvel comics, the mantle of Captain Marvel has passed to Carol Danvers, who stars in a critically acclaimed eponymous series written by Kelly Sue DeConnick.

*
For instance, many medical schools capped female enrollment at a ridiculously low 5 percent of students.

*
Marston had two children with Elizabeth and two children with Olive. They all lived together as one family, and Marston and Elizabeth worked while Olive stayed home raising the kids and running the household.

^†
Ethel took the fall when the clinic was quickly shut down by the police, and the conditions of her release from prison demanded that she never be involved in such clinics again. Spared prosecution by her sister, Margaret Sanger was able to continue with the movement and eventually make birth control available to all women.

*
In order to never forget the cruel treatment of Hercules and the brutal nature of men generally, the Amazons adapted the shackles they wore while imprisoned into bracelets. Wonder Woman’s famous bullet-deflecting bracelets weren’t just a handy tool but a constant reminder of this injustice, and they turned an object of oppression into an object of strength.

*
Marston’s bondage fetishism was a constant subtext in
Wonder Woman
comics that had some dark implications, but to unlock it all requires a fairly intimate knowledge of Marston’s other work. It would’ve been over the heads of the vast majority of comics readers.

*
Mythologically speaking, Hippolyte’s girdle was a
zoster,
a belt that represented a warrior’s power and heroism. Hercules was tasked with taking Hippolyte’s girdle because it was the ultimate symbol of a leader’s power. To possess her
zoster
was absolute proof that he had conquered his foe. Marston appears to have had a similar take on Hippolyte’s girdle: all of the utopian aspects of the island were rooted in the queen possessing this symbol of power and would disappear if a man possessed this power. Usually only male heroes earned this symbol of power, and through violence, but Marston showed that this power in the hands of a woman equaled peace and utopia.

*
The WAACs were the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, the women’s branch of the US Army. The WAVES were Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, a women’s branch of the US Navy.

2

Damsels in Distress

W
onder Woman is inarguably the most famous female superhero in the history of comic books, but she wasn’t the first. Comic book historian Trina Robbins found that the earliest costumed heroine was the Woman in Red, a policewoman named Peggy Allen who wore a red robe and mask to fight crime.
*
The Woman in Red first appeared in Nedor Comics’
Thrilling Comics
in March 1940, well over a year before Wonder Woman debuted. After a few sporadic stories, the Woman in Red last appeared in 1945. Several other female heroes predated Wonder Woman, including Timely Comics’ Black Widow, Quality Comics’ Phantom Lady and Miss America, and the comic strip heroine Miss Fury.
^†

These Golden Age heroines had short life spans, often just appearing in a backup feature of a series for a few issues before disappearing. Headlining their own comic was rare and always short-lived. With 56 issues of
Wonder Woman
, 106 issues of
Sensation Comics,
and 29 issues of
Comic Cavalcade
released in the 1940s, no other super-heroine came close to matching Wonder Woman’s presence on the newsstands. The female characters who did regularly appear in superhero comic books broke down into two categories: love interests and villains.

Nearly every male superhero had a love interest who served a variety of purposes. Often captured by nefarious types, she afforded the hero opportunity to demonstrate his prowess when he saved her. Upon her rescue, she would become his cheerleader, fawning over the hero and professing his greatness, and by constantly rejecting her advances, the hero proved his dedication to crime fighting, forsaking all else for his noble mission.