by Jill Lepore
36. BHRM, “Memories of an Unusual Father,” 9–12.
37. Olive Ann Marston Lamott, interview with the author, July 15, 2013, and OBR to BHRM, undated but c. 1944, in the possession of BHRM.
38. MM told me about this when I interviewed him; BHRM writes about it in his memoir, and OBR writes about it in her diary—e.g., March 1, 1936: “Sunday. Had ‘Marston Forum’ in evening with all expressing themselves freely. M. recited. B. told story as did Dunn. O.A. on [?] O.A. very tragic.”
39. Diary of WMM, entry for June 23, 1935, in the possession of BHRM.
40. BHRM, “Memories of an Unusual Father,” 6–9.
41. Olive Ann Marston Lamott, interview with Steve Korte, August 25, 1999, DC Comics Archives.
42. Diary of WMM, entry for September 29, 1940. MM’s still got his IQ test: MM, IQ test questionnaire, November 17, 1940, as administered by WMM, in the possession of MM. At age six, Byrne Marston was in the third grade when his brother Donn and his sister, O.A., entered kindergarten. BHRM, “Memories of an Unusual Father,” 9–10. And November 1937 clipping in EHM’s Mount Holyoke alumni file, Mount Holyoke College Archives.
43. Pete, Byrne, Donn, and O.A. Marston, “The Marston Chronicle,” no. 1, July 18, 1939, in the possession of BHRM. And see Diary of OBR, entry for July 6, 1939: “Children getting out a weekly newspaper. Very cute—called The Chronicle.”
44. MCG, “Narrative Illustration: The Story of the Comics,” Print: A Quarterly Journal of the Graphic Arts 3 (Summer 1942): 12. Gaines quotes LB in this essay, which includes, as an illustration, the cover of Wonder Woman #1.
45. The story of the birth of both comic books and Superman is told in many places, but see especially Gerard Jones, Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book (New York: Basic Books, 2004); Bradford W. Wright, Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), chapters 1 and 2; Les Daniels, DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes (Boston: Bulfinch, 1995); and Jean-Paul Gabilliet, Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic Books (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2005), translated by Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen, chapter 2.
46. Robbins and Yronwode, Women and the Comics, 50–59.
47. Wright, Comic Book Nation, 9, 13.
48. Wilson Locke, “Amazona, the Mighty Woman,” Planet Comics #3, March 1940.
49. OBR, “Don’t Laugh at the Comics,” Family Circle, October 25, 1940, and BHRM, interview with Steve Korte, summer 1999, DC Comics Archives.
50. BHRM, “Memories of an Unusual Father,” 27–28.
51. BHRM, interview with the author, July 14, 2013.
22. SUPREMA
1. Gardner Fox with Bill Finger, “Batman Versus the Vampire, Part Two,” Detective Comics #32, October 1939. Ellsworth is quoted in Daniels, DC Comics, 34.
2. Batman’s debut: Bill Finger, “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate,” Detective Comics #27, May 1939; United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939). See also Adam Winkler, Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America (New York: Norton, 2011), 63–65, and Jill Lepore, “Battleground America,” New Yorker, April 23, 2012.
3. Bill Finger, “Legend: The Batman and How He Came to Be,” Detective Comics #33 (November 1939), and Bill Finger, “The Legend of the Batman—Who He Is and How He Came to Be,” Batman #1, Spring 1940.
4. Sterling North, “A National Disgrace,” Chicago Daily News, May 8, 1940, and Bart Beaty, Fredric Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005), 113.
5. Stanley J. Kunitz, “Libraries, to Arms!” Wilson Library Bulletin 15 (1941): 671; Slater Brown, “The Coming of Superman,” New Republic, September 2, 1940; and “Are Comics Fascist?” Time, October 22, 1945. On librarians’ responses to comic books, see Carol L. Tilley, “Of Nightingales and Supermen: How Youth Service Librarians Responded to Comics Between the Years 1938 and 1955,” PhD diss., School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University, 2007.
6. OBR, “Don’t Laugh at the Comics,” Family Circle, October 25, 1940.
7. Marston describes reading comic-book scripts as a consulting psychologist in WMM, “Why 100,000,000 Americans Read Comics,” American Scholar 13 (1943–44): 41–42. He does not give a date. Marston does not usually appear on the list of Gaines’s advisers. One odd exception is Wonder Woman #14, Fall 1945, when he is listed as a member of the board: “Dr. Wm. Moulton Marston, Member of American Psychological Association; Fellow, American Association for Advancement of Science.” Notably, in this issue, all of the Wonder Woman stories were written by Joye Hummel, and the “Wonder Women of History” feature, a profile of Abigail Adams, is only two pages instead of four. Information on the formation of the board, as well as its role, can be found in the papers of several of its members. See, e.g., Josette Frank on how she came to join the board in a letter to Mary Alice Jones, April 15, 1954, a copy of which is in the Lauretta Bender Papers, Brooklyn College, box 16, folder 6.
8. Clara Savage Littledale, “What to Do About the ‘Comics,’ ” Parents’ Magazine, 1941, 26–27, 93. Hecht’s advisory board was aided by a board of “Junior Advisory Editors,” whose members included the child stars Shirley Temple and Mickey Rooney. On Littledale and the history of Parents’ Magazine, see Lepore, Mansion of Happiness, chapter 7. Another booster of True Comics was the Parents’ Institute. See Harold C. Field’s reply to Marston’s 1944 American Scholar essay, letter to the editor, American Scholar 13 (Spring 1944): 247–48. True Comics is a terrible comic book. Even Stanley Kunitz admitted, “I must confess, despite my sympathetic interest in the experiment, that I am a little skeptical of the ultimate educational value of fighting comics with comics” (“Libraries, to Arms!,” 670).
9. MCG to unspecified, memo, undated but c. October 1940, DC Comics Archives.
10. “A Message to our Readers,” More Fun Comics #72, October 1941. And see Amy Kiste Nyberg, Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998), 9–10. David Hajdu suggests that the editorial advisory board was purely for show; see Hajdu, The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), 45. But this is simply wrong. Gaines called on his advisory board all the time; Frank, Bender, and others who served on the board in the 1940s read scripts and offered commentary. As Frank explained in 1943, “To the best of my recollection, every member, in accepting this assignment, stipulated that he or she would serve only if the service could be real, and signified an aversion to serving on any board that would be merely ‘window dressing.’ ” See also Frank to Mary Bruhnke (Mrs. Charles S. Liebman), January 28, 1947, Child Study Association of America Papers, Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota (hereafter CSAA Papers), box 15, folder 138, in which Frank outlines the duties of the editorial advisory board in great detail.
11. “I had a talk with Mr. Childs yesterday, and as he pointed out to you, Dr. Marston’s name will be eliminated as a member of the Editorial Advisory Board on all issues which will come out during the month of January.” MCG to Josette Frank, Octo-ber 15, 1941, CSAA Papers, box 24, folder 239.
12. This remark of EHM’s is quoted by MM in “Elizabeth H. Marston, Inspiration for Wonder Woman, 100,” New York Times, April 3, 1983. See also: “My mother was a prime mover in getting Wonder Woman going. She nagged him for years: ‘We need a woman super hero, never mind the guys, we’ve got enough.’ ” MM, interview with Steve Korte, July 29, 1999, DC Comics Archives.
13. EHM to JE, January 11, 1973, in the possession of JE; “Marston Advises 3 L’s for Success,” New York Times, November 11, 1937.
14. WMM, “Why 100,000,000 Americans Read Comics,” 42–43.
15. Ibid. Marston offers this same explanation in WMM to Coulton Waugh, March 5, 1945, WW Letters, Smithsonian. Waugh was preparing a book about the history of the comic strip: Coulton Waugh’s The Comics (New York:
Macmillan, 1947) is one of the fullest early accounts of the medium, although its treatment of Wonder Woman is quite brief.
16. Anthony Tollin, “Sheldon Mayer: The Origins of the Golden Age,” Amazing World of DC Comics #5 (March–April 1975), 2–12.
17. Sheldon Mayer, 1975 DC Convention: Wonder Woman Panel, transcript in the DC Comics Archives. Les Daniels, who interviewed Mayer, reports that Mayer first met Marston when Gaines brought Marston onto the editorial advisory board: “In 1941, Mayer met Marston for dinner at the Harvard Club in New York, and an agreement was reached, initially calling for Marston to offer advice on ways to make comic books more psychologically beneficial to young readers.” Daniels, DC Comics, 58–59.
18. WMM to Sheldon Mayer, February 23, 1941, WW Letters, Smithsonian.
23. AS LOVELY AS APHRODITE
1. WMM to Sheldon Mayer, February 23, 1941, WW Letters, Smithsonian.
2. “Harry G. Peter was the artist. Doctor Marston chose his concept of WONDER WOMAN over the other drawings presented to him.” MWH to JE, May 21, 1972, Steinem Papers, Smith College, box 213, folder 5.
3. Mayer, quoted in Daniels, Wonder Woman, 24.
4. Sheldon Mayer, 1975 DC Convention: Wonder Woman Panel, transcript in the DC Comics Archives.
5. “Man o’ Metal,” Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics #7 (July 1941). Peter’s earlier comic credits: “Let’s Get into a Huddle,” Famous Funnies #85 (August 1941). And see Dan Nadel, Art in Time: Unknown Comic Book Adventures, 1940–1980 (New York: Abrams ComicArts, 2010), 28, with a reproduction of Man o’ Metal from nos. 13, 14, and 15 of Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics (1942), pp. 29–58.
6. MCG to George J. Hecht, November 10, 1941; Hecht to MCG, November 10, 1941; MCG to Hecht, November 14, 1941, in CSAA Papers, box 24, folder 239.
7. Robbins and Yronwode, Women and the Comics, 60.
8. On the wealth of women artists working in cartooning and comic strips in the 1920s and 1930s, see ibid., chapters 2 and 3; and on the relative absence of women in the comic-book industry in the 1930s and 1940s, see chapter 4. Most comic-book publishers were averse to hiring women artists. The exception was Fiction House, which, according to Robbins and Yronwode, employed more than twenty women (ibid., 51–52). Judith Schwarz asserts that Rogers was a lesbian (Radical Feminists of Heterodoxy, 69–72). But Rogers married the artist Howard Smith in the 1920s, and in 1933 they moved to a farmhouse in Connecticut. In the 1930s, Rogers hosted a popular radio show about animals. Alice Sheppard, “Howard Smith,” Archives of AskArt, accessed on January 3, 2014, at http://www.askart.com/askart/artist.aspx?artist=11211519. See Trina Robbins, ed., Miss Fury by Tarpé Mills: Sensational Sundays, 1944–1949 (San Diego: Library of American Comics, 2011). For more on female comic leads of the 1940s, see Mike Madrid, The Supergirls: Fashion, Feminism, Fantastic, and the History of Comic Book Heroines (Exterminating Angel, 2009), 1–29.
9. Daniels, DC Comics, 61.
10. Henry George, An Anthology of Henry George’s Thought, ed. Kenneth Wenzer, 3 vols. (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1997), 1:201.
11. HGP’s occupation is listed as “Artist, newspaper,” in the 1900 federal census, when he was living in a boardinghouse in San Francisco. He gave his birth date as March 8, 1880, and indicated that both of his parents were born in France. 1900 United States Federal Census; place: San Francisco, CA; roll: 106; page: 7A; enumeration district: 0262; FHL microfilm: 1240106. More details about Peter’s life are difficult to find, largely because, after his death in 1958, his estate fell into the hands of dealers, who have been selling off his papers and drawings, one by one, for years, to private collectors. In 2003, for instance, Heritage Auctions sold a number of Peter’s drawings, a page of a Wonder Woman script, one of Peter’s work schedules, along with Peter’s address book (Heritage Comics 2003 March Comics Signature Sale #806, Lots 5634, 5635, and 5636). In 2002, Heritage Auctions sold one of Peter’s original concept drawings of Wonder Woman (Heritage Auctions October 2002 Comic Auction #804, Lot 7434). I haven’t been able to identify the owners of these and similar materials and have therefore not been able to consult them.
12. See, e.g., “Hear Remarks on Equal Suffrage,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 7, 1906.
13. Edan Milton Hughes, Artists in California, 1786–1940, 3rd ed. (Sacramento: Crocker Art Museum, 2002), 1:406; HGP’s entry can be found on 2:872. My date for the courtship comes from a Valentine made by HGP and sent to Fulton, dated Febru-ary 14, 1907. Heritage Comics 2003 March Comics Signature Sale, Lot 5636.
14. “Newspaper Artists Will Make Exhibit,” San Francisco Call, June 1, 1904, and “Newspaper Artists to Exhibit Their Work,” San Francisco Bulletin, May 29, 1904. And see the specific mention of Fulton’s work at that exhibit in “Newspaper Artists’ Exhibition,” Camera Craft ([July?] 1904): “Adonica Fulton, of the Bulletin, showed twenty drawings with a wide range of subject and treatment. Her ‘French Poster,’ was strong and well suited to what it was intended for.”
15. An illustrated note from Roth to Fulton is reproduced by Ken Quattro in a blog post chronicling his fantastic investigation into Peter’s relationship with Ed Wheelan: Ken Quattro, “The 1905 Comic Fan,” The Comics Detective, February 13, 2011, http://thecomicsdetective.blogspot.com/2011/02/1905-comic-fan.html. HGP also tended to draw western and animal scenes. For an example from this period, see HGP, “Animals of Prey,” pen and ink drawings, in the Outing Magazine 56 (1910): 673. A copy of the marriage certificate of HGP and Adonica Fulton was auctioned in 2003: Heritage Comics 2003 March Comics Signature Sale, Lot 5636.
16. Display ad for Judge in Printers’ Ink 90 (1915): 57.
17. “H. G. Peter,” Printers’ Ink, February 26, 1920, p. 161.
18. In 1920, HGP was listed in the federal census as living as a lodger in Staten Island, working as a newspaper artist. In the 1925 NY census and the 1930 and 1940 federal censuses, he and his wife are listed as living at 63 Portland Place, Richmond, New York. In 1925 HGP listed his occupation as “Artist”; in 1940, he said he was a newspaper artist. 1920 United States Federal Census; place: Richmond Assembly District 1, Richmond, New York; roll: T625_1238; page: 8A; enumeration district: 1586; image: 1257. New York State Archives, Albany, New York; State Population Census Schedules, 1925; election district: 12; assembly district: 01; city: New York; county: Richmond; page: 12. 1930 United States Federal Census; place: Richmond, Richmond, New York; roll: 1613; page: 3A; enumeration district: 0122; image: 431.0; FHL microfilm: 2341347. 1930 United States Federal Census (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 1930), T626, 2,667 rolls. 1940 United States Federal Census; place: Richmond, New York; roll: T627_2760; page: 8B; enumeration district: 43–54. According to the 1880 census, Adonica Fulton’s mother, Mary J. Fulton, was born in Ireland and in 1880 was a widow with five children. Year: 1880; place: San Francisco, California; roll: 78; family history film: 1254078; page: 581B; enumeration district: 191; image: 0440.
19. Captain America Comics #1, March 1941, appeared on newsstands on December 20, 1940.
20. HGP’s original 13 × 18.75–inch drawing of the character, with the exchange between HGP and WMM, was sold at auction by Peter’s estate, through Heritage Auctions, in 2002. It sold for $33,350 and remains in private hands. It is reproduced in Roy Thomas, “Queen Hepzibah, Genghis Khan, & the ‘Nuclear’ Wars!” Alter Ego #23 (April 2003), 5. A drawing of a naked Wonder Woman, signed “H. G. Peter,” is reproduced in Craig Yoe, Clean Cartoonists’ Dirty Drawings (San Francisco: Last Gasp, 2007), 58–59. The attribution is almost certainly spurious.
21. On the episode involving Vargas and the U.S. Post Office, and on the history of pin-ups more generally, see Joanne Meyerowitz, “Women, Cheesecake, and Borderline Material: Responses to Girlie Pictures in the Mid-Twentieth-Century U.S.,” Journal of Women’s History 8 (1996): 9–35.
22. HGP, concept drawing, 1941, in the possession of Stephen Fishler, Metropolis Comics, New York. Fishler bought this drawing from a collector who purchased
it “about thirty or forty years ago.” Stephen Fishler, interview with the author, January 6, 2014.
23. Alberto Vargas, centerfold, Esquire, July 1942, 33–34.
24. WMM, “Wonder Woman Quarterly #1, Episode A,” typed script dated April 15, 1942, p. 2; compare to WMM, “The Origin of Wonder Woman,” Wonder Woman #1, Summer 1942, panel on lower left corner of p. 1A.
25. WMM, “Wonder Woman #2, Episode A,” typewritten script, undated, DC Comics Archives, p. 5. Compare to “The God of War,” Wonder Woman #2, Fall 1942, panel on p. 3A.
26. “Introducing Wonder Woman,” All-Star Comics #8, December 1941–January 1942. On “Charles Moulton” as the middle names of MCG and WMM, see Steve Ringgenberg, interview with William M. Gaines, May 12, 1998, DC Comics Archives.
27. “The Adventure of the Beauty Club,” Wonder Woman #6, Fall 1943; WMM to Coulton Waugh, March 5, 1945, WW Letters, Smithsonian; “Dr. Poison,” Sensation Comics #2, February 1942; “A Spy in the Office,” Sensation Comics #3, March 1942; and “Introducing Wonder Woman,” All-Star Comics #8, December 1941–January 1942.
28. WMM to FDR, December 12, 1941, WMM, FBI File.
29. Alder, Lie Detectors, preface, 200–210, 250.
30. WW comic strip, June 16, 1944.
31. “Who Is Wonder Woman?” Sensation Comics #1, January 1942, and Sensation Comics #3 (March 1942).
32. Diary of OBR, entry for August 28, 1941, in the possession of BHRM. OBR had also studied shorthand in the summer of 1927, at the Miller School of Business. See OBR, résumé, 1951, in the possession of BHRM.
24. THE JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA
1. Nyberg, Seal of Approval, ix, 25.
2. Anthony Comstock, Traps for the Young (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1883), introduction.
3. Nyberg, Seal of Approval, 2–3, 22–27.
4. MCG to The Most Reverend John F. Noll, D.D., March 10, 1942, Bender Papers, box 16, folder 1.