by Hanley, Tim
Steinem and Edgar both addressed the problem, with Edgar mentioning “the distorted and villainized Nazis and Japanese” and Steinem discussing “highly jingoistic and even racist overtones.” However, this was quickly tempered with excuses. Steinem put the blame on the artist, writing that “Wonder Woman’s artists sometimes fell victim to the patriotic atmosphere of World War II.” After discussing the problematic art of these stories, Steinem began the next paragraph by stating that “compared to the other comic book characters of the period, however, Wonder Woman is still a relief.” While they acknowledged the problems, the immediate downplaying swiftly brushed them aside as inconsequential.
It was a similar situation with Wonder Woman’s nationalism and participation in the war effort. With America in the midst of the wildly unpopular Vietnam War, peace and nonviolent conflict resolution were prevalent trends. Again, Steinem acknowledged Wonder Woman’s involvement in the war, writing that “some of the Wonder Woman stories preach patriotism in a false way,” and that these stories contained “superpatriotism.” However, she downplayed these problems by arguing that “much of the blame rests with history” and “a nation mobilized for war is not a nation prepared to accept criticism.”
However, Wonder Woman fought in World War II more than any other DC Comics superhero, both on the front lines as Wonder Woman and in the defense department as Diana Prince. Many in the 1970s were upset about a war in Vietnam to depose a leader with anti-American beliefs, but Wonder Woman did that often in the 1940s. She regularly ousted local leaders across the globe who worked with the enemy or promoted un-American ideals, replacing them with American-style democracies and leaders who supported the Allies. The Golden Age Wonder Woman was more than patriotic; she was a bona fide agent for the American military, fighting its wars and spreading its values.
After running through the potentially problematic aspects of Marston’s Wonder Woman, Steinem wrote that “all these doubts paled beside the relief, the sweet vengeance, the toe-wriggling pleasure of reading about a woman who was strong, beautiful, courageous, and a fighter for social justice.” Troublesome aspects of the past could be downplayed because there were so many better things to talk about. To be fair, the degree of racism in early Wonder Woman comics is debatable and her superpatriotism, however prevalent, really wasn’t the main point of the character. However, this tendency to dismiss parts of Wonder Woman’s past put Steinem and her friends on a slippery slope to missing Marston’s message entirely.
Racism and superpatriotism were at least mentioned before being downplayed, but there was no discussion of bondage in any of the celebratory Wonder Woman articles, despite the fact that there was a fair bit of bondage in the Ms. Wonder Woman book. Overall, 15 percent of the panels in the book had bondage imagery. The chart above also shows some impressive individual numbers, with someone tied up in 32 percent of the panels in “When Treachery Wore a Green Shirt” and Wonder Woman herself tied up for 26 percent of “The Mysterious Prisoners of Anglonia.”
The Ms. Wonder Woman book well represents Marston’s use of bondage, ranging from the fun binding games of Paradise Island with Wonder Woman tied to a pole to the brutality of Dr. Psycho ripping the soul from her body and chaining it to a wall.* Even though they didn’t directly address bondage, Steinem and her group nonetheless showcased it, but omitting bondage from their discussion led to ignoring submission as well. The heart of Marston’s feminist theories, submission was the thread that connected nearly everything he ever wrote. He was an advocate of the loving authority of women and the world peace that it would bring, but no one mentioned submission, DISC theory, or his utopian vision of the future.
This omission may have been intentional. Both Steinem and Edgar quote Marston’s distaste for the “blood-curdling masculinity” of other superhero comics, a line from an article he wrote for the American Scholar. In the next paragraph of that very article, Marston talked about the appeal that a strong heroine had for boys, writing, “Give them an alluring woman stronger than themselves to submit to and they’ll be proud to become her slaves!” Neither Steinem nor Edgar brought up that bit.
Having left out bondage and submission, there was no groundwork laid for Marston’s message of female superiority. Steinem saw traces of such a message but was unsure about it. She wrote that “females were sometimes romanticized as biologically and unchangeably superior” and that the comics “hint that women are biologically, and therefore immutably, superior to men,” but “sometimes” and “hints” are hardly strong terms. Ultimately, Steinem asked incredulously, “Is the reader supposed to conclude women are superior?”
The answer, of course, is yes. That was the entire point. The superiority of women was the core message of the book, and Steinem kept missing it. She concluded that Wonder Woman was so busy stopping bad guys and saving the world that she “rarely has the leisure to hint at what the future social order ought to be,” but the entire purpose of Wonder Woman comics was to prepare young readers for the inevitable coming matriarchy. It was squarely focused on the future social order, and everything Marston said about his comics reinforced that point.
An important component of this disconnect between Marston and Ms. was who they believed the book was for. Marston was writing for boys, to get them used to strong, loving women and to prepare them for the transition to matriarchy. For Steinem, Chesler, and Edgar, however, Wonder Woman was meant to be for girls.
The most prominent theme that ran through all three women’s essays was that Wonder Woman was a role model for female readers. Reflecting on reading Wonder Woman comic books as a young girl, Edgar asked, “Who could resist a role model like that?” Chesler wrote that “the comic also underlines the importance of successful female role models in teaching women strength and confidence.” A huge portion of Steinem’s essay was about reading Wonder Woman comics as a young girl and how much Wonder Woman meant to her growing up. She called Wonder Woman a “version of the truisms that women are rediscovering today: that women are full human beings; that we cannot love others until we love ourselves; that love and respect can only exist between equals.” When Steinem put Wonder Woman on the first cover of Ms. and adopted her as a feminist icon, it wasn’t because the mod Diana Prince desperately needed some feminism. It was because women and girls needed the Amazon Wonder Woman as a role model. As originary matriarchy shows, liberal feminists were always in search of a feminist past; with Wonder Woman they found an established role model who could be a symbol for everything they were trying to become.
Steinem listed the values that Wonder Woman represented; not surprisingly, they were the core tenets of liberal feminism:
“Strength and self-reliance for women”
“Sisterhood and mutual support among women”
“Peacefulness and esteem for human life”
“A diminishment both of ‘masculine’ aggression and of the belief that violence is the only way of solving conflicts”
Sisterhood and self-reliance were especially emphasized in the Ms. Wonder Woman book. The largest section of the book was titled “Sisterhood,” and in her preface Steinem wrote that “Wonder Woman’s final message to her sisters almost always contained one simple and unmistakable moral: self-reliance.” Which is true. However, Marston’s focus on self-reliance was because women were superior and could do a better job than men. For Steinem and her friends, self-reliance was a key part of their belief in self-improvement. It was to make them less dependent on men, not to ready them to take over the world.
This association of Wonder Woman with the liberal feminist focus on self-improvement caught on quickly. For example, in the July 1973 issue of Sister: The Newspaper of the Los Angeles Women’s Center, a cartoon showed Wonder Woman snatching a speculum from a male doctor and announcing, “With my speculum, I am strong! I can fight!” Taking control of your sexual health was an important principle in liberal feminist self-reliance, and Wonder Woman was right there, a role model leading the way.
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nbsp; Self-reliance and sisterhood were important components of Marston’s Wonder Woman as well. The liberal feminist version of Wonder Woman wasn’t a radical reinterpretation of the character; she was a modern update, building on certain aspects of the old while setting aside others. Compared to Kanigher’s Wonder Woman or the mod Diana Prince, this incarnation of the character probably had the most in common with Marston’s vision.
It’s quite impressive that Steinem and company were able to translate Marston’s particular feminism into something that resonated with a modern audience. It was a fascinating evolution of the character, and one that made Wonder Woman relevant for the first time in decades. While it may have been an inaccurate depiction of Marston’s Wonder Woman, what’s more significant is that Wonder Woman meant so much to these women and that they were able to remake her into a massively popular feminist icon. Authorial intent is important, but writing isn’t a one-way street. What resonates with readers and what they see in a character is just as relevant, and Steinem and her friends saw a fantastic role model in Wonder Woman.
However, one problem remains: the articles were written as if these liberal feminist beliefs were Marston’s actual intent. They celebrate the “original” Wonder Woman but are fairly inaccurate in that respect. What’s happened since is that the Ms. take on Wonder Woman has overwritten Marston’s actual intent for Wonder Woman.
The Ms. Wonder Woman book has been the premier resource for the history of Wonder Woman for some time. For decades, there was nowhere else to see the old comics, and Marston’s other writings were largely unknown. As such, the articles by Steinem and her friends are often viewed as definitive accounts of the early years of Wonder Woman. This cleaned-up, role-model Wonder Woman has become the only Wonder Woman. Much like Steinem and her friends read Wonder Woman comics through the lens of their own feminism, many since have read the same comics through the lens of Steinem. Marston’s brand of feminism is largely forgotten, and it is often quickly dismissed or downplayed when it comes up.
Epic Comic Book Fail
Steinem and Edgar both had high hopes for Wonder Woman’s return to her Amazon roots. They were well aware of her recent comic book history; Edgar noted that “like many of us, she went into a decline in the fifties,” and Steinem decried the mod Diana Prince era and its depowered heroine. Both were excited to have Wonder Woman back as a fully powered superhero and were particularly pleased that a woman, Dorothy Woolfolk, would be editing the book.
The Amazon Wonder Woman returned in January 1973 in Wonder Woman #204, but it didn’t start well. A sniper was loose in the city and his first victim was “Dottie Cottonman, women’s magazine editor.” Starting off the issue by killing off a women’s magazine editor after a women’s magazine had enthusiastically endorsed this new direction for the book was an odd choice. That the editor’s name was an obvious analogue for Dorothy Woolfolk was just in poor taste. Despite being announced as the book’s editor, Woolfolk wasn’t at the helm for Wonder Woman’s relaunch. She’d been replaced by another editor. What editor could have possibly had the short-sighted, imbecilic idea to simultaneously disrespect a colleague and offend any new liberal feminist readers who bought the book because of Ms.?
It was Robert Kanigher, back in the Wonder Woman fold again, writing and editing the series.* His four years away from the book hadn’t changed his style at all. Kanigher’s first issue did achieve the goal of ending the mod era and reestablishing the Amazon Wonder Woman. I Ching was killed by the sniper four pages in, and after developing amnesia due to a blow to the head, Diana was drawn back to Paradise Island, where her memories and powers were restored. Her origin was retold through this memory restoration, a combination of Marston and Kanigher’s origin tales. It included both the despondent women who had lost their husbands and the Hercules story, and Hercules was still the source of a quarter of Wonder Woman’s abilities despite the inclusion of his villainous actions. Ultimately, Wonder Woman returned to America where her alter ego, again Diana Prince, got a job as a translator at the United Nations.
In the next two issues it was revealed that Nubia, a mysterious black Amazon, was Diana’s sister, and they fought each other before teaming up to fight a dragon and then Mars, the god of war. After that, the series became rehashes of old Kanigher stories. Kanigher slightly rewrote one of his old ideas, and a new artist would draw it. For example, “The Chessmen of Doom!” from Wonder Woman #55 became “Chessmen of Death!” in Wonder Woman #208, though Kanigher didn’t even bother to change the title for most of the stories. Kanigher’s second tenure on Wonder Woman only lasted eight issues, likely due to the fact that he only wrote three original scripts. He was replaced by Julius Schwartz as editor and a team of new writers with Wonder Woman #212.
The book wasn’t doing well in sales, so Schwartz decided to add regular guest stars by having Wonder Woman perform twelve tasks in order to be readmitted to the Justice League of America. Thus, a Justice League member could be in the book each month to supervise her tasks. The idea of Wonder Woman having to prove herself to a bunch of men was a problematic plot, and it likely lost most of any remaining new feminist readers. If the letters page was any indication, very few women were reading the book.
Schwartz edited the book until Wonder Woman #227, when it again switched hands, this time to Denny O’Neil. The book went through two more editors before the decade ended, including Ross Andru, Wonder Woman’s penciller during the Silver Age. Incidentally, all of them were men, as were all of the writers and artists. Whatever hopes Steinem, Chesler, and Edgar had for the series were quite thoroughly dashed.*
Moving off the page and into television, Wonder Woman starred alongside Superman, Batman, Robin, Aquaman, and others in the animated series Super Friends. The program premiered in 1973 and was part of ABC’s Saturday morning cartoon lineup until 1986, and it’s been shown in reruns ever since.† The animated Wonder Woman, voiced by Shannon Farnon, didn’t particularly embody any sort of feminist values, apart from being a female hero on a mostly male team. Superman did the heavy lifting, while Batman and Robin did the investigating. Wonder Woman’s tasks often involved her invisible plane, which she used to scope out dangerous areas or to fly Aquaman to the ocean so he could summon an aquatic beast to help the Super Friends. Her animated self was bland, but there was another version of Wonder Woman that proved to be both popular and powerful: the live-action TV show starring Lynda Carter.
In Her Satin Tights, Fighting for Her Rights
In February 2008, the cover of Playboy magazine featured model and reality “star” Tiffany Fallon as Wonder Woman. Apart from the boots, Fallon was completely nude and a Wonder Woman costume was painted on her body. Reaction to the cover was passionate, and the blogosphere was outraged with this depiction of a feminist icon as a sex object. Interestingly, what many bloggers took issue with wasn’t the picture itself but the blurb on the inside of the cover that called Fallon “a modern-day Lynda Carter.” Heidi Meeley of comics fairplay wrote: “What bothered me more then [sic] the ass shot was the comparison of the woman on the cover to Carter.” A comment to a post by blogger Rachel Edidin asked: “How exactly did Tiffany Fallon earn the right to be called a modern-day Lynda Carter? Ugh.” Lisa Fortuner of Newsarama argued that comparing Fallon to Carter was ridiculous, stating that “when [Carter] put on that uniform in the 70s she was a role-model for little girls. She was their superhero, […] a symbol of idealism and power and capability.” In contrast, Fallon was simply “a reality TV Queen they thought looked hot in the costume.”
For many women today, Lynda Carter is Wonder Woman, and her version of the character is the definitive take on their feminist hero. One of those women is Tiffany Fallon herself, who said, “I grew up watching the TV show with Lynda Carter and I just always admired her.” The Wonder Woman TV show is by far the most well-known version of the character, and it was strongly rooted in the liberal feminist take on Wonder Woman.
Warner Bros. had tried to bring Wonder Woman to
the small screen twice before Lynda Carter took the role, but neither version did well. First, in 1967 a Wonder Woman sitcom inspired by the live-action Batman show was written, but it didn’t even shoot a full pilot before it was scrapped. Then in 1974 a Wonder Woman TV movie was made with Cathy Lee Crosby as a blonde Wonder Woman. The movie didn’t much resemble the comic books; it was a spy adventure with Wonder Woman working on behalf of the government in a star-spangled jumpsuit to track down a stolen list of undercover agents. She had gadgets rather than magical items; for example, instead of a lasso she had a golden rope hidden in her belt that combined with one of her bracelets to create a grappling line for scaling walls. The TV movie didn’t perform well enough to warrant a further series.*
Trying to capitalize on the current popularity of Wonder Woman as a feminist mascot, producer Douglas Cramer put together a new television movie in 1975. Likely influenced by Ms.’s focus on the Golden Age Wonder Woman, the movie was set during World War II. It starred Lyle Waggoner as Steve Trevor, Cloris Leachman as Hippolyta, and former Miss World USA Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman / Diana Prince. The movie aired on ABC in November 1975, and after two more specials in April 1976 it premiered as a series the following fall. The entire first year of the show was set during World War II.