Wonder Woman's Origins and Other Occurrences

Concept to creation

Wonder Woman first appeared in All Star Comics #8 cover dated December-January (1941-1942) which hit the newsstands on 21 October 1941.¹  She was created by William Moulton Marston who wrote Wonder Woman’s adventures under the pseudonym Charles Moulton.

“Wonder Woman began on a college campus”² where Marston was influenced by suffragists.  While Marston was at Harvard, British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst gave a lecture, in December 1911, a block away from the renowned institution.³  Pankhurst’s group included the suffragists who chained themselves to the railings of Downing Street, demanding women’s right to vote.

Marston never forgot the suffragettes’ chains.  The shackles and, apparently, Marston’s own BDSM (bondage and discipline, sadism and masochism) fantasies contributed to Wonder Woman always ending up bound in Wonder Woman and Sensation Comics in the 1940s.

In his book Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World’s Most Famous Heroine, Tim Hanley compared Wonder Woman with Captain Marvel a.k.a. Shazam in terms of frequency of getting tied up.  Wonder Woman won.  Hands down.

Olive Byrne, Marston’s former student, became Marston’s second life partner.  Byrne is the niece of Margaret Sanger, the pioneer of the birth control movement.  This piece of information first came to light, for a mainstream readership, in Jill Lepore’s The Secret History of Wonder Woman.  Marston being in a polyamorous relationship with women has been “common knowledge” since over a decade before Lepore’s book.

Marston greatly admired Sanger who wrote Woman and the New Race.

Sanger declared, “The basic freedom of the world is woman’s freedom.  A free race cannot be born of slave mothers.  A woman enchained cannot choose but give a measure of that bondage to her sons and daughters.”⁴

Woman’s freedom is the reality and the philosophy upon which Wonder Woman operates.  The word “chain” (with or without affixes, in base or conjugated form) appears 16 times in Sanger’s book; the word “bondage” appears 8 times.  Chains and bondage populate Wonder Woman’s adventures in the golden age of comics.

Olive Byrne began wearing bracelets (the basis for Wonder Woman’s) in November 1928.⁵  Apart from Olive Byrne’s inspiration, Wonder Woman’s bracelets “helped Gaines with his public relations problem that she could stop bullets with them; that was good for the gun problem.”⁶

Guns were already a problem in American society in the 1930s.  “The first significant federal law aimed at curtailing gun violence, the National Firearms Act of 1934, enacted a series of measures aimed mostly at stemming the spread of ever-more destructive weapons into the hands of criminals at a time of spiraling gangland violence.”⁷

While literature was brimming with Amazons in the 1910s, Marston’s passion for the Amazons was also significantly influenced by his wife Elizabeth Holloway who loved and “took a lot of courses in Greek”⁸ in college.  “In 1911, an ‘Amazon’ meant any woman rebel–which, to a lot of people, meant any girl who left home and went to college.”⁹  After college, Elizabeth earned a law degree and passed the bar.  Marston met Elizabeth years before Harvard, so while Wonder Woman somewhat “began on a college campus,”² she actually began long before Marston encountered Emmeline Pankhurst in 1911.  For other beginnings and early inspirations, see also Lepore’s The Secret History of Wonder Woman.

Marston was well-known throughout the 1930s.¹⁰  He gained the attention not only of Maxwell Charles Gaines, later to become the publisher of Wonder Woman, but was also in touch with other people (writers, artists, publishers) in the business.  An example is the correspondence via letters between Marston and Al Capp, creator of Li’l Abner, in 1939.¹¹

It is common knowledge among Wonder Woman fans that Marston was hired by Gaines upon reading Marston’s article in Family Circle in 1940.  Gerard Jones finds this questionable.

In an interview, Jones said, “There are some mysteries about the creation of Wonder Woman, and maybe always will be–but I’m pretty well convinced that Marston and Gaines came up with the character together, and that whole ‘Marston wrote a column for Family Circle on his own and Gaines saw it and contacted him’ is made up.”¹²

Jones had expressed this belief 10 years earlier.  In his book Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book, Jones wrote, “Marston’s article about comics in Family Circle in October 1940 certainly reads as if he were already promoting a comic book idea in tandem with Gaines.”¹³

So, when was Wonder Woman created?

Marston had been obsessed with women’s strength all his life.  “In fact, Wonder Woman was not Marston’s first publication to attempt to use popular culture to spread his views on sexism.  His first effort was a 1932 novel called Venus With Us, a sexcapade starring Julius Caesar and a lot of strong women.”¹⁴

In 1937, “Marston held a press conference” and declared “women would one day rule the world.”¹⁵

Marston’s desire to put a strong woman into the pulps and comic book pages was also fueled by Jack Byrne, Olive Byrne’s brother.  In 1929, Jack Byrne told would-be writers, “Woman interest is permissible, but must not overshadow action-adventure elements”  (Byrne qtd. in McCourtie 8).  McCourtie listed Jack Byrne as editor of Fiction House’s Action Stories.¹⁶  Marston took the words of his “brother-in-law” seriously.  Fiction House published Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, and “pioneered several genres in the comic book medium, including jungle and science fiction.”¹⁷

The FictionMags Index lists Jack Byrne as an author with contributions from 1927 to 1941.¹⁸  Jerry Bails’ online Who’s Who of American Comic Books lists Jack Byrne as writer and editor.¹⁹

In her book The Great Women Superheroes, a portion of which was reprinted in The Superhero Reader, Trina Robbins wrote,

As early as 1937, Marston and comic book entrepreneur Max Gaines had discussed the creation of a comic book super-heroine….  (Great Women 3-4; Superhero 54)

Marston and Gaines came up with several concepts that they hoped would attract women readers, including a female version of Tarzan named Diana (after the classical goddess of the hunt), but none was immediately translated into comic book form.  However, in 1941, Marston’s heroine at last debuted, first in All Star Comics no. 8, and one month later in Sensation Comics no. 1.  (Great Women 4; Superhero 54)²⁰

Fredrik Strömberg bills Trina Robbins as “the world’s first and still foremost comics ‘herstorian’”²¹; and Les Daniels acknowledges Robbins’ renown “as the foremost female creator of underground comics.”²²

Tarzan is a creation of Edgar Rice Burroughs who “can take credit for originating Queens as well as Kings of the Jungle,”²³ i.e., Tarzan spawned a number of imitations including Sheena, a co-creation of Will Eisner and Jerry Iger.

It is not surprising for Gaines and Marston to have met in the 1930s because of their connections, and because of Marston’s desire to find venues (academic research, novel, magazines, what else?) to spread his views in.  For other venues, see also Lepore’s The Secret History of Wonder Woman or use Google.

DC Comics in its early days was divided into two publishing houses: One was headed by Harry Donenfeld and managed by Jack Liebowitz; the other headed by Max Gaines with Sheldon Mayer as editor.  Donenfeld published Superman and Batman.  Gaines published Wonder Woman.  The two houses merged in the 1940s.  And, lest I forget, Gaines is largely known for being the father of American comic books.

Before the publication of Superman, Donenfeld took over Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson’s company.  Major Wheeler-Nicholson discovered Superman in 1935 from Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster who also submitted Superman to Gaines in 1936.  For Superman’s and DC Comics’ origins, see also Gerard Jones’ Men of Tomorrow, Larry Tye’s Superman and R.C. Harvey’s “Who Discovered Superman.”

Marston initially submitted “Suprema, the Wonder Woman” to Gaines, but editor Mayer deleted Suprema.

Two of a number of popular strong men before Superman’s appearance were Tarzan and Popeye (and there was Hercules from millennia ago).  Marston used strong men as his benchmark for his strong women, precisely to bring home the point that women are as strong as men.

The word “superhero” had been around before the comic books came into the scene, and “that prefix ‘super’ was everywhere in 1933.”²⁴

Wonder Woman began as a concept for the pulps in the 1920s due to Marston’s kinship with Jack Byrne, but she twirled into a comic book superhero in the 1930s.

As I see it, Superman had inspired Gaines and Marston even before he appeared in Action Comics #1 in 1938.  Gaines had known about Superman since 1936, but Superman had no history of publishing success before 1938, so Gaines and Marston could not pin their hopes on him.  Tarzan, among others, seemed like a more viable template at the time.  When Superman finally appeared in Action Comics #1 and subsequently proved himself to be a phenomenal hit, Diana the female Tarzan was retooled to Diana the female Superman.  “The success of the Superman character naturally led to imitation, and new superheroes popped up almost faster than a speeding bullet.”²⁵

The Tarzan-inspired Diana, Suprema and Wonder Woman are one and the same.  “What’s in a name? that which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet”  (Juliet, Romeo and 2.2.43-44).

Marston wrote Wonder Woman's adventures under the pseudonym Charles Moulton precisely because Wonder Woman is a co-creation of Maxwell Charles Gaines and William Moulton Marston.  Also, as different sources reveal, Elizabeth Holloway is a co-creator of Wonder Woman.

What hiatus?

A number of sources claim that Wonder Woman has been in continuous publication since her first appearance with the exception of a brief hiatus in 1986.  What hiatus?  Wonder Woman has been in continuous publication since her first appearance in 1941. 

Wonder Woman the comic book, not Wonder Woman the character, was in brief hiatus in 1986.  Unfortunately, 1986 is not the only hiatus year mentioned in cyberspace or elsewhere.  Superman had his own bouts with publication hiatus yet these dry spells are rarely mentioned, if at all.

DC Comics rebooted its universe and massacred its characters via the 12-part series Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985.  This move resulted in cancellation and/or renumbering of DC Comics titles.  In 1986, The Legend of Wonder Woman by Kurt Busiek and Trina Robbins was published in four issues.  The first issue of volume 2 of Wonder Woman cover dated February 1987 was released in late 1986, months after The Legend of Wonder Woman.

If the unflagging tale – that DC Comics needed to publish Wonder Woman at least four times a year or the copyright would revert to Marston’s heirs – were true, then DC (with five issues released in 1986) certainly succeeded in keeping Wonder Woman.

In an interview, one of Marston’s granddaughters revealed that DC has had total control of Wonder Woman since 1993.²⁶

The yoni and the phallus

A number of sources claim that Marston invented the lie detector.  Not exactly true.

Marston invented the systolic blood pressure component of the modern polygraph.

“The polygraph literature variously attributes the origins of the modern polygraph machine to Benussi (1914) or to Larson….  But in many ways we can trace the idea of using psychophysiological recordings–in particular, systolic blood pressure–to measure deception in laboratory and legal settings to William Moulton Marston.”²⁷

Wonder Woman’s magic lasso is Marston’s symbol for the lie detector.  Anyone bound by the lasso is compelled to tell the truth.  The lasso, with its loop or hole, is a yonic symbol.

“Wonder Woman’s magic lasso is her most notable possession and a link to the original and modern myth of the invincibility of the polygraph.”²⁸

Current iterations of Wonder Woman show her wielding swords – sometimes just a sword – and a shield.  The sword is a phallic symbol.  A number of Wonder Woman fans regard this symbolism as violative of Marston’s vision.  With the shield and the American-flag uniform, a number of fans now claim Wonder Woman has essentially become the female Captain America – is that a far cry from being the original female Superman?

One can argue that the Amazons of ancient Greek mythology use various weapons including swords.  Amazons are known for their skill in archery.  Aren’t arrows phallic?  Wonder Woman still uses the lasso now and then, but rarely anyone celebrates the occurrence/s.

Wonder Woman is an Amazon, so any weapon is fair game.  (But the symbolism!)

DC Comics may be veering away from bondage scenes reminiscent of Wonder Woman comics in the 1940s.  Who knows?  Artistic license guarantees all sorts of representation.

“William Moulton Marston died in 1947, but Wonder Woman and the legend of his work at the National Research Council creating the polygraph live on.”²⁹

To be or not to be

In an interview in 2016, Wonder Woman scribe Greg Rucka confirmed that Wonder Woman is queer.³⁰  In Wonder Woman #12 cover dated February 2017, Diana mentioned, “Kasia.  Her name is Kasia,” to Steve Trevor who had asked if Diana had anyone special back home.³¹  This is supposed to be proof of Wonder Woman’s queerness.  H’m.  We’ll see.

In Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman #48 (written by Jason Badower, not Greg Rucka), Wonder Woman officiates a lesbian wedding and tells Superman, “Clark, my country is all women.  To us, it’s not ‘gay’ marriage.  It’s just marriage.”³²

Trina Robbins maintains that regardless of Diana’s sexuality, “William Moulton Marston provided a haven for girls in the pages of his comics, away from Man’s World” (150).³³

I am of the opinion that if Marston created Wonder Woman as lesbian, then she should be lesbian; if created as heterosexual, then she should be heterosexual.  But, Marston did not specify Diana’s orientation, and we are left with spectra of possibilities (hints were never confirmed).

Was there ever a need to specify?  Let us not forget: Marston created Steve Trevor for Wonder Woman – and Wonder Woman was created for the world.

Wonder Woman growing up in a potentially, if not outright, homosexual environment does not make her homosexual.  Gay men and lesbians growing up in or engaging this predominantly heterosexual world never made them, us, heterosexual.  I use “us” to identify myself as an openly homosexual person.

Whatever direction DC Comics leads Wonder Woman to, I stand by Wonder Woman.

United?³⁴

Wonder Woman was made an Honorary Ambassador of the United Nations for the Empowerment of Women and Girls on her 75th birthday on 21 October 2016.  Less than 2 months later, she was removed because petitioners claimed, among other things, that she is “large breasted” and “scantily clad.”³⁴

The ones (women, men, pets, magic ink to swell the signatures to 45000, et al.) who petitioned against Wonder Woman may have inalienable image issues that they can not think beyond their own brand of sexism.

The petitioners acted like villains.  Giganta should represent them.  But then again, they might petition against the giant woman, too.  I can imagine them complaining that Giganta grows too large that they can see her cunnus when they, “Look! Up in the sky!”³⁵

Notes

For the cited Web sites and pages, please make sure the hyphens (if any) are correctly in place when copying a particular URL from this work and pasting to your browser’s address bar to avoid getting an error message.

¹U.S. Copyright Office.  Catalog of Copyright Entries (Periodicals).  Part 2, new series.  Vol. 36.  Nos. 1-4, January-December 1941.  Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1942.  397.

²Jill Lepore.  The Secret History of Wonder Woman.  New York:  Vintage Books, 2015.  xiii.

³Lepore 11.

⁴Margaret Sanger.  Woman and the New Race.  Pref. Havelock Ellis.  New York: Eugenics Publishing Company, 1920.  94.

⁵Lepore 143.

⁶Lepore 196.

⁷Robert J. Spitzer.  “Guns Were Much More Strictly Regulated in the 1920s and the 1930s than They Are Today.”  News at Home.  History News Network, 14 June 2015.  Web.  8 Jan. 2017.  <historynewsnetwork.org/article/159513>.

⁸Lepore 347.

⁹Lepore 17.

¹⁰“A Biography of William Marston, Creator of Wonder Woman (Web Exclusive, Extended Version).”  Marin Theatre Company, n.d.  Web.  4 Jan. 2017.  <www.marintheatre.org/productions/lasso/lasso-of-truth-marston-bio>.

¹¹Lepore 415-16.

¹²Tyler Weaver.  “The Golden Age – An Interview with Gerard Jones.”  Tyler Weaver,  26 Mar. 2014.  Web.  4 Jan. 2017.  <tyler-weaver.com/the-golden-age-an-interview-with-gerard-jones/>.

Tyler Weaver.  “The Golden Age – An Interview with Gerard Jones.”  Tyler Weaver’s Blog.  Goodreads, 26 Mar. 2014.  Web.  22 Jan. 2017.  <www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/5981358-the-golden-age-an-interview-with-gerard-jones>.

The article is no longer existent in <tyler-weaver.com>.  The interview can still be found in <www.goodreads.com> which retains the link to <tyler-weaver.com>.  When clicked, the link shows a page with an “Error 404” message.

¹³Gerard Jones.  Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book.  New York: Basic Books, 2004.  352.

¹⁴Joe Sergi.  “Tales From the Code: Whatever Happened to the Amazing Amazon – Wonder Woman Bound by Censorship.”  Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, 29 Oct. 2012.  Web.  5 Dec. 2016.  <cbldf.org/2012/10/tales-from-the-code-whatever-happened-to-the-amazing-amazon-wonder-woman-bound-by-censorship/>.

This article also shows the first page of Marston’s October 1940 Family Circle article “Don’t Laugh at the Comics.”

¹⁵Lepore 169.

¹⁶William B. McCourtie.  Where and How to Sell Manuscripts: A Directory for Writers.  5th ed.  Springfield, MA: Home Correspondence School, 1929.  8.

¹⁷Henry Andrews.  “Fiction House.”  Comics Through Time: A History of Icons, Idols, and Ideas.  Vol. 1.  Ed. M. Keith Booker.  Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2014.  140.  4 vols.

Accounts of Fiction House’s reign can be gleaned from biographies of Will Eisner and Jerry Iger found in the Net and in varied publications including comic-book history books.  The book Fiction House: From Pulps to Panels, From Jungles to Space from IDW Publishing is set for release on 25 April 2017.  As of April 2017, the date of release of Fiction House is 30 May 2017.

¹⁸“Byrne, Jack.”  Stories, Listed by Author.  The FictionMags Index, 14 Nov. 2007.  Web.  12 Nov. 2016.  <web.archive.org/web/20071114025444/http://www.philsp.com/homeville/fmi/s329.htm>.

¹⁹“Byrne, Jack.”  [Search result.]  Who’s Who of American Comic Books 1928-1999.  The Jerry Bails Project, last updated 18 Oct. 2006.  Web.  12 Nov. 2016.  <www.bailsprojects.com/bio.aspx?Name=BYRNE,+JACK>.

²⁰Trina Robbins.  The Great Women Superheroes.  Northampton, MA: Kitchen Sink Press, 1996.  2-14.  Excerpt rpt. in The Superhero Reader.  Eds. Charles Hatfield, Jeet Heer and Kent Worcester.  Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2013.  53-60.  JSTOR.  <www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt24hvr5.12>.

Trina Robbins.  [Inquiry regarding Wonder Woman’s conceptualization and creation.]  Message to Robert Baytan.  20 Jan. 2017.  Facebook.

Trina Robbins discussed female superheroes in her book The Great Women Superheroes.  The Wonder Woman piece was reprinted in The Superhero Reader which I also cited because of its availability online.  The Superhero Reader can be viewed from JSTOR and the ebook can be purchased from Google Play, eBooks and other ebook sellers.  Kitchen Sink Press is no longer existent, but the owner still publishes reading materials under a different company name.  The print copies of The Great Women Superheroes and The Superhero Reader can be ordered from Amazon, eBay, etc.

²¹Fredrik Strömberg.  “Robbins, Trina.”  Comics Through Time: A History of Icons, Idols, and Ideas.  Vol. 2.  Ed. M. Keith Booker.  Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2014.  750.  4 vols.

²²Les Daniels.  “Underground Comics.”  Comix: A History of Comic Books in America.  New York: Bonanza Books, 1971.  176.

²³Denis Gifford.  “Jungle Kings and Jungle Queens.”  The International Book of Comics.  London: Hamlyn, 1984.  102.

Tarzan is not the first jungle person in literature.  He is predated by Mowgli (who frogspawned Tarzan) and Rima whose tales can be found in Rudyard Kipling’s Many Inventions and W.H. Hudson’s Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest, respectively.  Both books are in public domain and can be downloaded free of charge.  Mowgli and Rima have appeared in various media since.  Kipling’s and Hudson’s works are also available as ebooks at Google Play for a steal.

Sheena, arguably the most famous jungle queen, has an in-story origin strikingly similar to Tarzan’s.  And, Sheena’s link to Tarzan and Fiction House, which is linked to Jack Byrne, who is linked to Marston, apparently contributed to Gaines and Marston conceptualizing Diana.

Let me remind the reader, though, that the jungle hero concept is just one of “several concepts that they hoped would attract women readers” (Robbins: Great Women 4; Superhero 54).

²⁴Jones 94.

²⁵Robbins 2.

²⁶Marc Tyler Nobleman.  “Interview with (Another) Granddaughter of Wonder Woman’s Creator.”  Noblemania.  Blogspot, 11 May 2014.  Web.  12 Nov. 2016.  <noblemania.blogspot.com/2014/05/interview-with-another-granddaughter-of.html>.

²⁷National Research Council.  The Polygraph and Lie Detection.  Committee to Review the Scientific Evidence on the Polygraph.  Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education.  Washington, DC:  The National Academies Press, 2003.  291.

²⁸National Research Council 295.

²⁹National Research Council 296.

³⁰Matt Santori-Griffith.  “Exclusive Interview: Greg Rucka on Queer Narrative and Wonder Woman.”  Comicosity, 28 Sep. 2016.  Web.  6 Jan. 2017.  <www.comicosity.com/exclusive-interview-greg-rucka-on-queer-narrative-and-wonder-woman/>.

³¹Greg Rucka (w), Nicola Scott (a).  “Year One: Part Five.”  Wonder Woman #12 (Early Feb. 2017), DC Comics: N. pag.

³²Jason Badower (w, a).  “A Day in Our Lives: Part 1 of 1.”  Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman #48 (2015), DC Comics: N. pag.

³³Trina Robbins.  “Wonder Woman: Lesbian or Dyke?”  Heroines of Comic Books and Literature: Portrayals in Popular Culture.  Eds. Maja Bajac-Carter, Norma Jones and Bob Batchelor.  Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.  145-152.

Trina Robbins originally presented this paper at WisCon 30 in May 2006.  For more on WisCon, visit <wiscon.net>.

This paper can be found free of charge from the Net.  Visit <www.girl-wonder.org/papers/robbins.html>.

³⁴Giganta is a super villain who has the ability to enlarge herself to several hundred feet.

I initially wrote a slightly different “United?” in the comments section of Tim Hanley’s blog.  Check out:

Tim Hanley.  “Wonder Woman Is No Longer an Honorary UN Ambassador, and That’s Some BS.”  Straitened Circumstances.  Wordpress, 13 Dec. 2016.  Web.  6 Jan. 2017.  <thanley.wordpress.com/2016/12/13/wonder-woman-is-no-longer-an-honorary-un-ambassador-and-thats-some-bs/>.

³⁵Joseph McCabe.  100 Things Superman Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die.  Chicago, IL: Triumph Books, 2016.  36-37.

“Look!  Up in the sky!” is a line from the radio show The Adventures of Superman which first aired on 12 February 1940.  The famous Superman line was originally “Up in the sky!  Look!” and became “Look!  Up in the sky!” by 1 March 1951 (McCabe 36-37).

Other references

Busiek, Kurt (w), Trina Robbins (w, a).  The Legend of Wonder Woman #1-4 (May-Aug. 1986), DC Comics.

Hanley, Tim.  Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World’s Most Famous Heroine.  Chicago, IL: Chicago Review Press, 2014.

Harvey, R.C.  “Who Discovered Superman.”  Columns: Hare Tonic.  The Comics Journal, 6 Jan. 2014.  Web.  30 Aug. 2016.  <www.tcj.com/who-discovered-superman/>.

Potter, Greg (w), George Perez (w, p), Bruce Patterson (i).  “The Princess and the Power!”  Wonder Woman #1 (Feb. 1987), DC Comics.

Shakespeare, William.  “Romeo and Juliet.”  The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.  Ed. W.J. Craig.  London: Henry Pordes, 1987.  835.

Tye, Larry.  Superman: The High-Flying History of America’s Most Enduring Hero.  New York: Random House, 2012.

Wolfman, Marv, et al. (w), George Perez (p), Dick Giordano, et al. (i).  Crisis on Infinite Earths #1-12 (Apr. 1985-Mar. 1986), DC Comics.

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This piece is continued in "William Moulton Marston's Connection to Margaret Sanger."  <robertbaytan.blogspot.com/2017/04/william-moulton-marstons-connection-to.html>.