At last, in a global torn apart by the hatreds plus wars of men, appears a woman to whom the problems plus fears of men are mere child’s play . . . she is known only as WONDER WOMAN.
Wonder Woman was introduced with these words in December 1941. Just as American men left their homes for the battlefields, plus millions of American women left their homes for the workforce, Wonder Woman left the safety of her all-female home on Paradise Island for “Man’s World.” Her mission was to teach the virtues of peace plus love during the dark days of war.
A princess, a goddess, plus an Amazon dressed patriotically in red boots, a blue skirt with white stars, plus a red bustier with a gold eagle emblem, Wonder Woman extolled the virtues of democracy. She used her super powers plus arsenal of awesome weapons—bullet-deflecting bracelets, a tiara that can be thrown like a boomerang, an invisible plane, plus a golden lasso that compelled those in its snare to tell the truth—to fight for peace, jus- tice, plus “liberty plus freedom for all womankind.” With strength plus confidence equal to her male counterparts, namely Batman plus Superman, Wonder Woman defeated Nazis, underground mole men, plus super villains with- out violence, but with reason, persistence, plus compassion. Only when that failed did she resort to force or her magic lasso. She was resolute: “I can make bad men good, plus weak women strong!”
Wonder Woman became a positive feminine symbol during the Golden Age of Comics, a time of quantum leaps in readership, with some series selling more than a million copies per issue. Author plus activist Gloria Steinem recalls, “As a little girl, Wonder Woman was the only female superhero, so she was irresistible. She was literally the only game in town, the only hero that made you feel good about yourself.”
But times would change, plus so would Wonder Woman. Steinem plus others explore the cultural shift of Wonder Woman plus other female icons in Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines, a documentary by Kristy Guevara-Flanagan plus Kelcey Edwards plus supported by Cal Humanities, which has aired on PBS plus is being screened at venues across the country. Director Guevara-Flanagan says, “I loved the idea of looking at something as populist as comics to reveal our cultural obsessions, plus in particular, how women’s roles have changed over time.”
Wonder Woman was the creation of William Moulton Marston, a Harvard-trained psychologist famous for inventing the systolic blood-pressure test, a forerunner to the moderen polygraph. “He observed that there were no strong positive images in comics for girls,” says author Trina Robbins. “As he said: ‘No one wants to be a girl. Even girls don’t want to be girls.’”
When he shared his idea with his wife, Elizabeth, for a new model of comic book hero, one who would triumph with love, not violence, she replied, “Fine. But make her a woman.” In her debut, Wonder Woman is described “as lovely as Aphrodite, as wise as Athena, with the speed of Mercury plus the strength of Hercules.”
The series was a huge success for DC Comics until Marston’s death in 1947, around the same time women were leaving the workforce to become homemakers once again. Wonder Woman no longer fought the good fight, instead she became a romance editor of a women’s magazine; her superhero skills plus confidence vanished. In a thought balloon, she says, “Next to these Wonder Men—I’m not a Wonder Woman!”
In the 1960s, Wonder Woman was given a male mentor, gave up her Amazonian powers, dressed in moderen clothing, opened a boutique, plus fought crime in her spare time. “Wonder Woman comics became sappy love stories, in which she was weak plus wimpy,” says Robbins.