Introduction to DC Comic;s Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman is by far the most popular female comic-book superhero of all time and marketed by DC as one of their three top franchises

William Marston introduced the character in All-Star Comics #8 in 1941. She became the lead character in Sensation Comics in 1941 and got her first solo book in 1942.

Wonder Woman fights evil while hoping to unlock the potential of a humanity she doesn’t always understand and is usually torn between a mission to promote peace and her own warrior upbringing. Marston wanted to promote his feminist belief in the superiority of women and Wonder Woman was his ideal powerful beauty.

Marston wanted his character to be “tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are”, combining “all the strength of a Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman”. His character was a native of an all-female utopia of Amazons who became a crime-fighting U.S. government agent, using her superhuman strength and agility, and her ability to force villains to submit and tell the truth by binding them with her magic lasso.

The character was originally named “Suprema” but was replaced with “Wonder Woman”, a popular term at the time that described women who were exceptionally gifted.

Wonder Woman’s origin differs from Superman and Batman as hers doesn’t depend on her suffering some traumatic childhood event or being one of a kind. While she is special in that she was made from clay and blessed by the Gods, what makes her different is that are super not just as an individual but because of who she is, but because of who her friends and family are.

As I mentioned in the introduction post, Wonder Woman’s history has undergone some changes over the years, though a few elements remain consistent in all of her depictions. She is the princess of the Amazons, a race of women who live free of men on Paradise Island (later named Themyscira). After growing up on this island, Wonder Woman (whom the Amazons name Diana) journeys to man’s world on a mission of diplomacy and peace.

Wonder Woman’s Origin (“Introducing Wonder Woman,” All-Star Comics #8):

In William Marston’s original story, the Amazons lived without men, so Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, crafts a baby from clay and prayed to the goddess Aphrodite. Aphrodite was benevolent and imbued the clay with life, just as she had given all the clay Amazons life. She is raised by a group of women who groomed her into being an intelligent and formidable warrior who values intelligence and instruction. As she grew the other Amazons marveled at how strong and fast the young girl was (“She’s swifter than Mercury!”), the general implication was that she got her powers through being an Amazon, who were similarly strong and powerful. Enter U.S. Army Intelligence pilot Steve Trevor, who while flying his fighter across the Atlantic Ocean in search of Two Nazi agents named Von Storm and Fritz who hijacked an experimental robot plane and attempted to bomb an army airfield., runs out of fuel and he crashes on Paradise Island. He is found by Diana and Mala, who recover him and bring him to their hospital, though they and the other Amazons show surprise at a man on Paradise Island. Diana spends several days nursing his wounds and slowly begins to fall in love with him. Her mother, Queen Hippolyta reminds the Amazon that men are forbidden to set foot on Paradise Island, much less remain there. She declares that as soon as Trevor is fit for travel, he is to be returned to the United States. She then, tells Diana that in ancient Greece they were the foremost nation. But Hercules attacked them and was defeated due to Hippolyta’s magic girdle, so Hercules resorted to trickery and stole the girdle, his men then enslaved and chained the Amazons. Hippolyta later appealed to Aphrodite and was freed and her girdle returned to her, the Amazons took the enemy fleet and traveled to a new island, however they would always wear bracelets to remind them not to succumb to men. Hippolyta shows the magic sphere, which was given to her by Athena after they defeated the army of Hercules, and with which she can see the past, present, and even predict the future, which has made the Amazons an advanced race. Hippolyta then shows her the magic sphere, given to her by Athena after they defeated the army of Hercules, which allows her to see the past, present, and even predict the future, and has made the Amazons an advanced race. During Steve Trevor’s convalescence, Hippolyta and Diana use the Magic Sphere to divine the nature of his arrival on the island. They look into the past and learn about Trevor’s secret mission. After the goddesses of the Amazons, Aphrodite and Athena appear before her, Hippolyta decrees that an Amazon agent should be sent to the United States to aid the Americans in their fight against the Nazis. She holds a great tournament to determine which of her warriors should act as their good will ambassador. Diana wants to participate in the tournament, but Hippolyta forbids it. Diana disguises herself with a simple mask and enters the tournament anyway. She masters every competition and becomes one of two finalists to compete in the “Bullets and Bracelets” competition.Diana defeats her opponent, Mala, because she deflects all five bullets while Mala is unable to deflect the fifth bullet and is wounded in the arm; After winning, Diana then reveals her true identity to the crowd. Hippolyta agrees to allow Diana to travel to the United States. She provides her with a patriotic costume and bestows upon her the name of Wonder Woman and officially allows he to escort Trevor home, make her people known to the world, and to help fight against the evil megalomaniacal Axis forces.

In 1941 Wonder Woman took the lead in Sensation Comics #1, “Wonder Woman Arrives in Man’s World”

The story picks up with Wonder Woman in her invisible plane as she returns Steve Trevor to America. After dropping him at the hospital, she gets a job working for promoter Al Kale. She later quits after learning that Kale is crooked. When she returns to visit a recovering Steve Trevor, as Wonder Woman, she bumps into a nurse named Diana Prince who looks just like her. Using the money she earned from Kale she convinces the nurse to let her take on her identity.

Disguised as the nurse, Diana visits Steve. Once fully recovered Steve returns to work with Army Intelligence and chases down a spy ring. Diana saves Steve’s life again and helps him bust up the spies. When Steve returns with tales of a Wonder Woman, people are skeptical, but his nurse Diana Prince knows the truth.

The real Diana Prince would later return, September 1942, seeking out Wonder Woman. She asked for her identity back so that she could find work to help out her inventor husband Daniel White and their infant child. Wonder Woman agreed, and even impersonated her, so her husband would not know she was getting a job. Nazis kidnapped Diana thinking that she is Daniel’s wife, planning to ransom her for one of her husband’s inventions, an Anti-Aircraft Disintegrator Shell. Wonder Woman apprehends the spies and the real Diana Prince relinquishes her legal name and begins referring to herself by her married name Diana White, and Wonder Woman resumed using the Diana Prince identity.

She would become the secretary to General Darnell ( and forged papers who was the head of Army Intelligence, once in this position she would quickly attain the rank of lieutenant. In the real world though, any role in Army intelligence, even as the secretary was still a rare position for a woman to hold. What this did was more or less a creative convenience to get her close to Steve Trevor and receive the information she needed to pursue her mission as Wonder Woman.

Wonder Woman #1 1942

The first issue of the solo Wonder Woman title was a 68-page comic which included the following stories:

“The Origin of Wonder Woman”: This story takes place prior to the Wonder Woman story in All-Star Comics #8, makes two minor retcons, and one important addition, to the Wonder Woman origin story originally in All-Star Comics #8.

Retcon #1: Wonder Woman gets her magic lasso before leaving Paradise Island in this story. In Sensation Comics, she didn’t get the lasso until issue #6. Retcon #2: Steve Trevor receives a promotion to Major after returning from Paradise Island. In Sensation Comics, he wasn’t promoted until issue #6.

The addition to Wonder Woman’s origin is the entire tale of Diana’s birth from molded clay by Hippolyte’s hand under the direction of Athena and brought to life by Aphrodite and the original creation of the Amazons from clay by Aphrodite.

“Wonder Woman Goes to the Circus”: Wonder Woman brings children to King’s Colossal Circus, performs in the big ring, and with the help of Etta and Steve, investigates a rash of elephant deaths by poisoning which threatens to close the circus

“Wonder Women of History – Florence Nightingale”: a profile of Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), who sacrificed personal happiness to nurse soldiers on the Crimean War front and throughout her life.

“The Master Plan of Paula Von Gunther”: Suspecting Paula von Gunther of leaking military secrets, Diana and Steve visit her in prison, where Paula is aided in her subterfuge when the magic lasso accidentally falls into her hands

“The Greatest Feat of Daring In Human History!”: When Etta’s brother is attacked by spies, Wonder Woman and Etta trail them from Texas to Mexico City, where Wonder Woman fights a bullfight and stops a secret Japanese invasion of Mexico. Diana continued to perform as an open crime fighter after World War Two and resisted being recalled home to Paradise Island after the war preferring to give up her immortality than leave her life of independence and personal identity.

Diana continued to perform as an open crime fighter after World War Two, she resists being recalled home to Paradise Island after the war, even giving up immortality so she could pursue a life of independence and personal identity.During and after World War II, stayed in her military position stayed fighting crime solo and alongside the other Golden Age Superheroes in the Justice Society of America (on Earth-Two). She was their first female member though relegated to subservient duties performing as an actual Secretary for the Justice Society despite her superhuman strength and abilities. Diana would later leave the team and rejoin when it reformed as the All-Star Squadron. During this time (June, 1942) she even went toe-to-toe with Superman (Kal-L of Earth-Two) when she discovered that the United States was planning to create the atomic bomb.

During the 1950s, Diana continued operating as a super-powered crime fighter as she had admitted to having no secret identity and stated herself to be a legendary Amazon, unlike many of the other masked heroes of the JSA who were forced to either reveal their secret private identity or stop operating by the Federal government’s Committee on Un-American Activities. This, of course, was not truly accurate on Diana’s part as she continued to use her alias of Diana Prince.

It was during those years that Diana began to explore fully her romantic interests in her long-time crime fighting partner, Col. Steve Trevor. After a period of courtship, Diana revealed her alias of Diana Prince to Trevor. Initially taken aback by the revelation, Trevor and Diana would eventually marry and Diana later retired from active duty in the US Navy, deciding to become a housewife where she raised their daughter, Hippolyte “Lyta” Trevor named after Diana’s mother.

By the 1960s Diana had rejoined the reformed Justice Society of America (but only after the other members force her to undergo more than a year of trials before she’s allowed back in), though preferring to spend her time raising her daughter as a stay at home mother. Diana would meet her younger Earth-One counterpart during this time and the two became good friends, occasionally inviting the younger Amazon to Earth-Two to enjoy a home cooked meal that the retired General Trevor would usually cook.

Who was the Golden Age Wonder Woman?

Wonder Woman’s original powers included super strength, super speed, intelligence, and was impervious to harm. She was, as Marston described, a strong, smart, generous, loving, affectionate, and alluring superheroine who would later become a feminist icon.

Bracelets of Submission: Indestructible steel cuffs worn by all Amazons of Paradise Island which serve as a reminder of the years when the Amazons were subjugated under the rule of the treacherous Hercules. Years after gaining their independence, however, the Amazons continued to wear the Bracelets as a symbol of their past oppression. time in which they pledge themselves to Aphrodite.

Used primarily as a defense artifact, the Bracelets of Submission were also used on the trial game known as “Bullets and Bracelets”, in which an Amazon would deflect bullets using only their bracelets. The bracelets presented a disadvantage, as they would remove the wearer’s strength if any man would weld chains on them Wonder Woman continued to wear a pair of these metal cuffs, but the design and model of the cuffs changed over the years which she has used to deflect gunfire, small missiles, and other projectile weaponry.

The history behind the Bracelets of Submission was originally developed by Wonder Woman creator, William Moulton Marston who got the inspiration for their creation from the bracelets that his lover Olive Byrne, the model of Wonder Woman’s original character – wore frequently.

Tiara: Wonder Woman wears a small, golden (sometimes silver) tiara adorned with a red star, which is a symbol of her status as the princess of Paradise Island.The tiara can be used as a throwing weapon, similar to that of a boomerang. With her level of super-human strength, Wonder Woman is capable of cutting very durable substances, a prime example being when she cut Superman’s throat to temporarily disable him

Wonder Woman wears a small, golden (sometimes silver) tiara adorned with a red star, which is a symbol of her status as the princess of Paradise Island.The tiara can be used as a throwing weapon, similar to that of a boomerang. With her level of super-human strength, Wonder Woman is capable of cutting very durable substances, a prime example being when she cut Superman’s throat to temporarily disable him Magic Lasso / Golden Lasso of Truth: Wonder Woman’s primary weapon that is a magical golden rope that forces anyone it captures to obey when ensnared. In the Golden Age, the lasso was formed from Aphrodite’s girdle, which gave it indestructible and its magical properties that were granted by the Goddess herself. The powers forced whoever was bound within it to obey the commands of whoever held the other end. This effect could be used on larger groups of people, although this reduced its efficiency. In addition to being unbreakable, the lasso was also infinitely elastic.

Her costume design was originally rooted in American symbolism and iconography, which included her signature star symbols, a golden eagle on her chest, crimson red bustier, white belt, and a dark blue star spangled skirt/culotte. Throughout the Golden Age her outfit went through a few minor changes but basically remained the same:

Supporting Cast: Allies and Rogues

Allies

Steve Trevor: Wonder Woman’s Lois Lane

Trevor was a military officer who was an effective fighter against normal humans but was no match for superpowered villains. Trevor would continue to pursue his talents as an active military soldier over the years while he sought to woo his “Angel”, the superpowered Amazon Princess. Diana would later reveal her double identity to him and the two would marry and have a daughter.

Etta Candy (Sensation Comics #2)

Etta Candy was Wonder Woman’s frumpy, yet high-spirited and vivacious young woman with the “can do” attitude and best friend and the “sidekick” of Wonder Woman. Etta first appeared in Sensation Comics #2 (1942) and was a stark contrast to the svelte, wasp-waisted women depicted in most comic books at the time.

Etta was a student at Holliday College during the early years of World War II. In the winter of 1942, Etta and her friends the Holliday Girls met the Amazon super-hero Wonder Woman and frequently helped her on adventures. Throughout her adventures with Wonder Woman, she is known for her moxie, her love of candy, and for her trademark call “Woo! Woo!”

Holliday Girls (Sensation Comics #2)

The Holliday Girls were a band of girls from the “Beeta Lamda” and “Beta Lambda,” sorority at Holliday College in Washington, D.C., and friends of Wonder Woman, serving as the backup to the Amazon princess, though they had a penchant for getting in trouble themselves.

Rogues Gallery

The villains Wonder omanW face in the Golden Age where largely connected to WWII, which was occurring at the time, many would eventually become part of her permanent rogue’s gallery.

Baroness Paula Von Gunther (Sensation Comics #4)

Baroness Paula Von Gunther was WW’s first major nemesis. She was a member of the noble class in pre-Republican Germany and was an agent of the Gestapo. She murdered many individuals, kept a small group of women as personal slaves, tortured them routinely, was for a time the leader of all Gestapo operations in the United States. One of her nefarious schemes involved monopolizing America’s milk supply by buying all the milk of a company for five years at the cost of seven million dollars. She then planned to charge high prices for it so that Americans would be unable to buy it which would cause them to have weak bones and fall before the stronger-boned Nazis. Hey, it was an easier time and Big Milk controlled the economy.

She also was able to discover Wonder Woman’s weakness ( having her bracelets were chained by a man she became as weak as an ordinary woman) in her first appearance.

Von Gunther was finally captured and revealed that she was being blackmailed by the Nazis who held her daughter Gerta captive. Von Gunther reformed and pledged her loyalty to Wonder Woman after Gerta was rescued. Von Gunther even put her own life in peril to save Wonder Woman from a burning munitions plant, suffering third-degree burns and a horribly scarred face.

Wonder Woman vouched for Paula in court and she was found not guilty. Paula would return to Paradise Island with her former slave girls and her daughter to live and undergo Amazon training. Queen Hippolyte molded Paula new facial features, which the goddess Aphrodite blessed and magically gave Paula a new face. Paula would become the Amazons’ chief scientist, spending part of her time on Paradise Island and part aiding Wonder Woman from a hidden underground laboratory beneath Holliday College.

Mars /Ares (Wonder Woman #1)

The God of War who operated from his base on the planet Mars. Mars sought to realize his vision of eternal war and conflict in the world of man and was the rival of Aphrodite, goddess of love, who sought to realize a contrary vision of loving civilization. It was Ares and his vision for the Earth that made Aphrodite mold from clay and breath life into a new race of women, the Amazons, for spreading the gospel of Aphrodite’s Way.

Duke of Deception (Wonder Woman #2)

The Duke is a servant Mars, most likely a minor god who existed for thousands of years, who was one of Wonder Woman’s most persistent foes and one of the biggest recurring villains of the Golden and Silver Age. He embodies deceit, confusion, and treachery, using his godlike powers of illusion, shape-shifting, and influencing minds to further the cause of war.

Doctor Psycho (Wonder Woman #4)

One of the Duke of Deception’s creation, Doctor Psycho was ridiculed as a child for his small stature and strange appearance which causes him to grow up to be highly sexist and misogynistic. Before he went mad and turned to crime after being framed for a crime by a rival who stole the only girl he ever loved, he was a brilliant student. He would later acquire occultic abilities, though he was originally intended to be an archetypical mad scientist.

Cheetah (Wonder Woman #6)

Priscilla Rich was a beautiful dancer and philanthropist who developed an odd sort of inferiority complex/split personality. When she is eclipsed by Wonder Woman at a charity event and failed to kill her during an escapology act, Priscilla retreats to her room and collapses before her makeup mirror. There she sees an image of a woman dressed like a cheetah. “Horrors!” she cries, as she gazes at her evil inner-self for the first time. “Don’t you know me?” replies the reflection. “I am the REAL you—the Cheetah—a treacherous, relentless huntress!” The image commands her to fashion a Cheetah costume from a cheetah-skin rug. “From now on,” intones the reflection, “when I command you, you shall go forth dressed like your TRUE self and do as I command you…”

Doctor Poison (Sensation Comics #2)

Doctor Poison or Princess Maru (disguising her gender with a bulky hooded costume and mask) was the leader of a Nazi spy ring whose ultimate goal was to wreak havoc by contaminating the Army’s water with “reverso”, a drug which would cause people to do the opposite of what they are told.

Giganta (Wonder Woman #9)

Giganta was originally a gorilla who was super-evolved into a malicious red-haired strongwoman by Professor Zool. When Zool’s mutation machine goes haywire and somehow reverts the world to an earlier stage, Giganta joins a primitive tribe to attack Wonder Woman but is defeated. When the world gets to the Golden Age of humanity, Giganta causes trouble by encouraging a rebellion, which Wonder Woman stops. When the world returns to normal, Giganta is still in her “strongwoman” form. Giganta is ultimately subdued and captured by Wonder Woman and taken to Themiscrya for rehabilitation. While in prison on Themiscrya, she joins a rebellion of prisoners started by the Saturnian slaver Eviless and became a member of the criminal team Villainy Inc.

Circe (Wonder Woman #37)

Circe is based on the Greek mythological witch and sorceress of vast power, and specializing in illusion and transformation spells.

Angle Man (Wonder Woman #62, names Angle Man in #70)

Before he was a costumed supervillain, he was originally a clever schemer who “knew all the angles”

Hypnota the Great ( Wonder Woman #11)

Hypnota was a stage magician who concealed that she was really a woman via masculine costume and false facial hair. Hypnota gained her powers when she was accidentally shot in the head during the rehearsal of one of her act’s illusions and underwent experimental surgery to save her life. The surgery also released a “blue electric ray of dominance” from her “mid-brain,” granting her the ability to mesmerize others with a glance. The blue color of the electric rays was meant by Dr. William Moulton Marston to be allegorical of the dominance emotion that was involved in Hypnota’s attempts at controlling others which she used for both in her stage act and in crime, including the selling of her mesmerized victims to slave merchants from the planet Saturn. Like many of Wonder Woman’s enemies, she is sentenced to prison on the Amazon penal colony Transformation Island, but in 1948[ she and seven other female super-villains escape and pool their talents as Villainy Inc.

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No look at Wonder Woman in the Golden Age would be complete without talking about the one thing that defines this era: Bondage, (not of the fiscal sorts) and phallic symbolism abounding.

Before creating and writing Wonder Woman, William Marston was a research and consulting psychologist, writing extensively about what he perceived to be psychological differences between the sexes. Marston believed that women are inherently more honest, giving and trustworthy than men. Some of his work focused on the influence of dominance and submission on emotional states, including a study of sorority initiation rituals. Many of these ideas found their way into the Wonder Woman comics in one form or another.

Many of these ideas found their way into the Wonder Woman comics in one form or another as almost all of Marston’s Wonder Woman comics contain a full-sized panel of Wonder Woman in some bondage situation or situations that involved Etta Candy and her sorority sisters, the Holliday Girls.

Many of the covers during Marston’s career featured men holding Wonder Woman in chains or shackles, or bound with rope.

While working on the discovery of the early lie detector he discovered through his studies that women were statistically more honest than men, leaving him to believe that women were the superior gender. He believed that women’s natural “love allure” was the key to a safe society of submission (hence where the bondage comes in).

When Marston submitted the script for the first iteration of Wonder Woman, he explained “Wonder Woman’s Amazonian origins in ancient Greece, where men had kept women in chains, until they broke free and escaped. ‘The NEW WOMEN, thus freed and strengthened by supporting themselves (on Paradise Island), developed enormous physical and mental power.’” His comic, he said, was meant to chronicle “a great movement now under way—the growth in the power of women.”

On Paradise Island, being controlled by women was a fun, pleasant activity. Everyone in the panel below is clearly having a good time. But out in the world of men, bondage became a harsh critique of patriarchy. Being controlled by a man was always unpleasant and oppressive for Wonder Woman and her friends.

While it was nothing unusual for superheroes to be bound occasionally, the bondage imagery in Wonder Woman was vast and extensive. Needles to say, some look at the bondage imagery mainly as metaphors for Marston’s theories. While he refrains from any other interpretation and draws a rather simplistic conclusion claiming that, after all, Wonder Woman got loose each time and that was “undoubtedly feminist, empowering, and redemptive”. It has also been argued that this bondage metaphor, while odd for a children’s comic, holds up in theory. In practice, however, there were certain fixations in Marston’s employment of the metaphor that complicated the message that feminism was wrapped up in a fetishism that occasionally took a dark turn and clouded Wonder Woman’s progressive aims.

Overall, the goal of the bondage imagery that pervaded Marston’s creation and six years of stories was two-fold: first, it was to serve as a metaphor for the oppression women suffer in patriarchal society, and second, to add an erotic element so that young readers found themselves associating submission with love, through what Marston called “sex love training.” (Chances are you were nodding in agreement until you got to that last part and then maybe you felt dirty; its okay same thing happened here.)

Check out Comics Alliance’s Kinkiest Moments In Golden Age ‘Wonder Woman’ Comics for some laughs and awkward groans.

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When William Marston passed away in 1947, he left behind a contract that gave DC Comics the right to exclusively publish Wonder Woman comics as long as they continued to keep the title going. If they ever stopped publishing it, the ownership would permanently revert to Marston’s estate. This has made Wonder Woman one of the longest-running superhero comics in history.

As the Golden age end and the Silver Age began a series of writers including Robert Kanigher and Denny O’Neil would take over the writing responsibilities after Marston’s death. With the new writers in the late 40s and 50s, Wonder Woman went through many changes such as er feminism was toned down, her origin stories revisited, and deepened.

I will be covering these in the next installment: Wonder Woman in the Silver Age.