It's no secret that i'm a giant nerd. while i may no longer regularly buy the "big name" super hero comics, i still have great affection for them, insofar as the characters themselves are, to me, great ideas based on tried-and-true literary concepts. it's sort of a bummer that most heroes have to have their parents offed in the first act, but let's be honest, a moment, shall we? these days when i hear of talented people i particularly enjoy being married, having kids, etc, i almost instantly go "oh..." and my respect for them goes down a notch. is that rude? yeah, probably. it's also temporary, i might add. it also doesn't apply to the chosen few exceptional couples out there who happen to be made up of both funny/artistic/musical/great partners. is it my own bias? yes and no. truth be told, how can you go on an adventure of gigantic proportions if you have family ties (not the TV show, snarky bastards) to constantly worry about. this jaded sentiment led to, i believe, the "canceling out" (for lack of better phrase) of the marriages of both Spider-Man and Superman. oddly enough, i'm anti- this. i personally really liked the marriages of both characters, again because they're spouses seemed on equal footing. Spider-Man had the nerd-wish fulfillment of being married to a hot redhead (who also supported him and his mission), and Superman's wife, Lois Lane, was a take-charge kind of get-in-the-trenches type (in recent years; they thankfully dropped the swooning act in the 1980s). same holds true for the Fantastic Four: they're an adventuring family, so no one is staying home questioning why the hero has to go save the world but yet can't find a second to spend with his/her family/spouse/children (one of my most hated fantasy tropes; it even infects Watchmen, both comic and movie, and that's written by one of my all-time favorite comics writers. not to mention that the stereotypically whiney female is also a superhero! jesus, fuck). well, i've gone far afield, so i'll try my best to bring it all back home.
So yeah, Wonder Woman. it should come as no surprise that despite being considered by many to be one of the most recognizable and best of DC's stable, she is consistently in a sort of B level limbo. believe it or not, there has almost never been a continuing Wonder Woman series. it gets a decent run, sales lag, it's cancelled, someone goes "wait a minute, assholes, it's fucking Wonder Woman for fuck's sake!" and relaunches it with a new creative team and a new #1! whoo-hoo. i'm actually shocked that in the first wave of DC new 52 cancellations, WW was not amongst those chopped. not because the book sucks; it's actually one of the few i can stomach! it's just, hey, Wonder Woman is a guhr-rill, and they do NOT buy comics (a lie, by the way. nor do they only buy smartsy-farsty "graphic novels" like i like; women do like superheroes!). i'm here to tell you: Wonder Woman is the shit.
it may not come as any surprise to many of you (i feel i use that phrase too often. oh well), that i'm a big WW fan. not for the obvious reason, either, or at least, not just for the obvious reasons.
carumba.
i think my earliest exposure to Wonder Woman was probably the Super Friends cartoon. by the way, that show does not hold up with age. i tried watching it a couple years ago, and i was like "hoooo, boy"! i don't know that she left much of an impression on me then, but a few years later, i remember seeing reruns of what many continue to think of as THEE template by which all Wonder Women should be measure: the live action TV show starring Lynda Carter.
prepare for ass-kicking, suckahs.
This did in fact leave a HUGE impression on me, and probably for the reasons you're thinking. to be honest, i didn't understand a lot of what i was feeling at the time. i was 6 or 7. but i knew something was stirring, not even a mouse, and at the risk of getting graphic, it was the open door to a whole new world of something-or-other. i know, that was not only not graphic, it was the opposite of graphic. borderline nonsensical, even. just fill in the blanks mentally. actually, DON'T! no one needs to think about my childhood boners.
it's okay, we're all feeling it.
I think what i'm trying to say is, WW for me is not just tied up with some sexy stuff, though there is some of that. i really do remember watching the show as a kid and enjoying it. i'm sure, as was my wont at the time, i pestered my folks with a lot of inane questions they didn't have the answer to, like how does spinning around change ones clothes, etc. and i don't even know if the show still holds up, but it's a pretty big chapter in the life of everyone's favorite amazon (or, the only amazon anyone actually knows, save maybe some greek scholars or something).
now, if you've stuck with me long enough to wade through comic geekery and references to pre-adolescent priapism, this is where i get into the actual matter i wish to discuss. the truth behind Wonder Woman, which is not so secret, but not many seem to know. until rather recently, i counted myself amongst those benighted masses. here it is: Wonder Woman is (well, started out as, anyway) some freaky shit!
anyone who knows me knows i identify as a Feminist (boner jokes notwithstanding). sadly, i'm not Addi's favorite feminist, but apparently she is my BFF (also, please kill me for using the term BFF; also please go here for an excellent blog/podcast [blodcast?] and also to get this inside-iest of inside jokes: http://additwigg.com/blog/). it's not particularly easy to make people comprehend this, being a straight white dude and all. i'm not going to complain, because women's struggles have been, if i were to estimate 100,000,000,000,000 times worse than mine have been/ are/ will ever be (and frankly, mine aren't that great *cue violin*). Feminism teaches us that the political is the personal, which is why Feminists (myself included) are constantly being told to relax and that shit is "just a tv show/movie/book/video game/comic/et al". the truth is that nothing is ever "just" anything: there is almost always a hidden agenda, even if it's unconscious. that's the case in the vast overwhelming majority of life. take for instance the supposed love of women of Bill Clinton. no one ever goes "well, politically speaking, maybe things were slightly better for American women during his presidency." oh, no, it's constant references to his being "sharp" and "silver tongued" and well groomed and the like, as if women are raccoons to be distracted by shiny objects. that's a perfect example of what i'm talking about. so no movie/book/tv show etc etc etc is without this underlying bias in favor of the status quo. anything radical is usually destroyed or subjugated. it sometimes works in the opposite way, but not often. almost never in fact. one could point out the Beatles: started bubblegummy, end up druggy. but even then, i'm not convinced they were all that radical. art is a tricky thing, eh wot.
this is where Wonder Woman comes in.
i've rambled quite a bit, so hopefully you've stuck with this.
Wonder Woman was created in the early 1940s by a man named William Moulton Marston. a toothy mouthful by any stretch of the imagination. Marston was a psychologist and one of the inventors of the lie-detector test, which is actually featured in an early WW story involving a Nazi collaborator. Marston had the distinction of being a psychologist in the 194os who did not hate comic books. in fact, he saw them as having a great untapped potential to teach and mold children. he wrote an article saying as much in an issue of Family Circle of all things (my mom used to buy that mag, and all i can say is it sure must've been different in the 1940s, because in the 1980s it was pretty much recipes and crap like that), which was seen by Maxwell Gaines, father of William Gaines (who would later go on to found the much maligned, but awesome, EC comics and Mad magazine, which were both hated by Psychologists of the time, though that was the 50s; what a difference a decade makes...), and creator of what is essentially the comic book as we know it today (that is, the actual format, not the concept of comics writing etc). Gaines hired Marston as an educational consultant for the company that would eventually become DC comics. Marston, along with his wife, began to conceive of a female superhero, one who would stand head-to-head with the already incredibly popular Superman and Batman. she would be strong, intelligent, beautiful, and fully independent. despite being as strong as Superman, her aim would not be to triumph over evil with might, but with Love. she was ultimately a teacher and protector, and stood for all that Marston saw as good in Woman. she was... SUPREMA.
say what?!
kidding! well, kinda. obviously, it's not the character pictured above which is from Alan Moore's run on Supreme (a comic i can say i've never read). but Marston initially did want to call his Amazonian creation Suprema. the fuck's that about? DC editor Sheldon Mayer renamed the character Wonder Woman, and the rest is history. as far as that goes, anyway.
what a lot of people may not know is that William Moulton Marston, on top of being a psychologist and comics fan in some manner, was also a Feminist. Feminism has gone through many different forms, so the Feminism of his day was not so much the Feminism of my day. nevertheless, his intent with Wonder Woman was to educate people to the idea of the liberation of women. he was not creating an unbiased, objective work. WW was started out, essentially as propaganda (a loaded term, certainly, but one befitting the intent of the creator). but he wasn't just trying to instill gender equality in the minds of young people oh no. Marston was not just a shrink and Feminist. no, he was also something of a freaknik. he was not only married, but lived in a polyamorous situation with another woman, a former student, and his wife and the other lady were totally into it! on top of all that, he was super into bondage and submission, he himself being the submissive.
clearly Freaky-Deaky.
Wonder Woman. insofar as it was able in the staid 1940s, was entirely an attempt to break down the fabric of conventional relationships, including marriage and family. this is not jaded surmising from a current day nut spouting deconstructive critical theory, this is straight from the horse's mouth. the entire initial run of the WW comic was about WW herself leaving the all-female Paradise Island because of the incursion of man. not mankind, mind you, but A man. the much put-upon (and rightly so! he's a shitty character) Steve Trevor crashes into the midst of the idyllic upbringing from which Diana AKA Wonder Woman springs. as an aside, Diana herself is not the product of a "proper" union betwixt male and female. she is created from clay by her mother, queen of the Amazons, and given live by Aphrodite, the goddess of love. if you think to yourself that this is bat-shit crazy, you're right! i don't have a problem with it, and surely as comic origins go its in keeping with the oddity of them all. but it certainly does stand out. she wins a contest to become Wonder Woman, the Amazons emissary to "man's world", where she will teach world peace through loving submission to strong yet gentle female authority, which Marston refers to as "Love Allure".
WW's very attire is tied up in this use of submission and bondage. her primary weapon is the Magic Lasso, which not only compelled those ensnared to tell the truth, but in early issues forced them to comply with any command. it was sometimes even used against Wonder Woman herself. the bracelets which she famously uses to deflect bullets are signifiers of a bondage relationship, the idea that willing submission creates strength... or something. apparently her physical appearance was modeled after the 3rd member of the Marston polyamory set, Olive Byrne (including the bracelets, although how she walked around wearing them in the 1940s and how she explained such is beyond me).
so what evidence is there to support this claim of Wonder Woman being a BDSM tractate? the initial run of the comic (written by Marston under the psuedonym "Charles Moulton" with art by H.G. Peters, who is seemingly forgotten and not known for doing much else) is rife with imagery involving bondage, domination, Amazons wrestling each other, people being tied up, forced to kneel before their captors, and many other examples. it's often pointed out in histories of the comics, to varying degrees of "oh my lord!" to "ain't this awesome?"
um...
(p.s. - this is from an actual WW comic, not some freaky underground porn parody)
pay special attention to the words of the Amazon queen.
note that there are MANY binding games. many.
there is some speculation as the whether or not artist H.G. Peters shared Marston's particular predilection. i'm not sure how anyone can look at these panels and wonder that. outside of porn or maybe freaky-deaky art books, where else have these types of images been shown in such painstaking detail? i mean, come on.
these themes were obviously later softened, and then almost completely taken out, turning WW into just another ripping yarn of comic book escapism. this lesser known side of Diana's mission is almost completely gone from the more recent retellings of her origin. as a kid, i knew Wonder Woman as being as strong as Superman, but a woman. nothing really on her attempt to bring peace to man's world through love and, well, bondage. the flip side, Wonder Woman as example of how one might live one's life in an alternative fashion was never presented, for good or ill. frankly, the whole bondage thing, it's not for me, but i'm not gonna judge it. who am i to criticize. would i let a woman dressed as WW tie me up? probably not ( i can't say "definitely not!", because who knows?), but others might, and hey, good for them. i digress. the point isn't how this effects me and my life, the point is that whether or not people see/have seen it, initially at least, those elements were there, and they were, for lack of a better term, meant to be "preachy".
sadly, not everything in these early WW's is super progressive. Diana has a sidekick named "Etta Candy" who is portrayed as being fat and obsessed with food. she's not depicted as anything but comedy relief, as well as something of a bother that WW general has to rescue, leading to one of these bondage situations. Wonder Woman herself admonishes Etta for eating too much, saying she'll never catch a man like that. Etta poo-poos the notion, saying "what can you do with a man? candy you can eat!" it's a bizarre question in a book all about sex (however covert). in one story, Etta promises to lose 10 pounds (which is clearly meant to be a joke, as it would have no effect on her overall appearance). by the end, she tells Diana that she doesn't like her "new" self, and begs in all caps "GIMME MY CANDY!" cue wah-wah-wah-ahhhhh sad trombone effect. here's i'm not fat shaming, i'm pointing out that Etta's fatness and love of food is not celebrated nor shown to be a positive thing in any way, somehow undermining the Feminism inherit in much of the rest of early Wonder Woman stories.
World War II, despite being the ultimate expression of male dominance created by unchecked aggression, is wholly justified in the Marston stories. Ares (god of war) and Aphrodite are arguing whilst on Olympus, the brutish Ares smugly pointing out that he is winning, as the whole world is at war! MWAH-HA-HA-HA! Aphrodite calmly states that when the USA wins ("and they WILL win!"), it will be her turn, as the world will no longer see any point in war, and Love will rule supreme. alternative though that message may be, it is still jingoism, and by its very nature therefore not progressive.
as ever, i'm bad with endings. i'll simply wrap up by saying this: if you are able (and some of you may be) to read these early Wonder Woman comics, either via the library, springing for the moderately priced reprint volumes, or "other means" *ahem* perhaps digital, i highly recommend them. bondage/submission stuff aside, they are generally five shades of batshit insane, and therefore awesome. shit, i didn't even mention the jousting matches on the backs of giant kangaroos!
i'll leave you with this image, which both my 7 year old and 37 year old selves love for different reasons (my 7 year old self may have been able to spot rockin' bods, but he wouldn't know good snark to save his life):
not impressed by this lame attempt to return to WW's bondage roots, obviously.
