Wonder Woman Unbound (17 page)

She was also very concerned about being a good wife, and asked Steve, “How can I become your wife 100% of the time—and also fulfill my mission as an Amazon and help anyone in distress?” If Wonder Woman married Steve and continued her superheroic mission, she wouldn’t be able to be a proper wife and give him all of her attention. She cemented this point in another issue, stating, “It would be unfair to marry you unless I could be a full-time wife!” She pled with Steve to be patient and wait for her and the day when her abilities would no longer be needed.

Along with this newfound romantic inclination came jealousy; it was rather unwise to trifle with the affection of an Amazon. As a teen, Wonder Girl dated Ronno the Mer-Boy, a half-boy, half-fish from the mer-people city near Paradise Island. She wore his seashell fraternity pin and they went to his sea dances, but Wonder Girl was very covetous of his attention. When Ronno danced with a mermaid, Wonder Girl left in a huff, thinking, “I’ve had enough! And to think of all the time I spent making myself pretty for that ungrateful wretch!”

Steve often faced a jealous Wonder Woman, but with a twist. When he had to pick the real Wonder Woman out of a group of Wonder Woman robots and kissed them all to do so, Wonder Woman was furious. When Wonder Woman disguised herself as a movie star and Steve was attracted to her, she was again irate. Wonder Woman’s biggest rival was herself.

These identity issues continued with Diana. In the Golden Age, Wonder Woman and Diana had always been separate personalities, one the real woman and the other merely a disguise. In the Silver Age, the two sides conflated and Wonder Woman wanted Steve to appreciate both sides of her personality. When he ditched Diana to spend time with Wonder Woman, she called him two-faced. When he rhapsodized about Wonder Woman in front of Diana, she later thought, “The nerve of Steve! Always praising
Wonder Woman
in my presence as if I were just a wooden post! He never says a single nice thing about my eyes—or my hair—or my figure!” While she was livid when Steve was interested in an exact copy of herself, at the same time she wanted him to be in love with her
secret
identity.

Wonder Woman always got over her jealous feelings, but the men were much more difficult. If Steve was in a Silver Age issue of
Wonder Woman,
chances were that marriage was going to come up; the man was nothing if not persistent at proposing to Wonder Woman. She always politely declined, not with an outright refusal but by saying she couldn’t yet marry him and asking him to be patient. That rarely soothed Steve’s hurt feelings, and he was prone to outraged comments like:

• “Angel—if you really cared for me, I should be able to convince you within the next thirty seconds to marry me!”
  
• “I don’t care whether you think it’s fair or not—I want you to marry me!”
  
• “I’m getting sick and tired of hearing that excuse, Wonder Woman!”
  
• “I’m tired of waiting around for you to make up your mind! I’ve had enough!
  Goodby!
  ”
  
• “If you really loved me—you’d let nothing interfere! I’ve had enough of waiting! I’m through! I’ll marry the next girl I meet! I don’t care
  who
  —or
  what
  she is!”
  

To calm his outrage, Wonder Woman submitted to ridiculous contests to prove her love. In one, if Steve picked Wonder Woman out of a crowd three times in twenty-four hours, she’d have to marry him. In another, marriage was again the “prize” if Wonder Woman had to save Steve three times in twenty-four hours. Not only did Wonder Woman agree to these silly contests, but Steve cheated; he marked Wonder Woman with a tracking device so he could find her with ease to win the first contest, and then planned the second contest on a day when he was testing dangerous aircraft, failing to mention that fact when he made the bet. Steve always just failed to win, but not before making Wonder Woman submit to inane activities to prove she still cared for him.

In
Wonder Woman
#118, Steve came to the conclusion that Wonder Woman refused to marry him because she was interested in someone else, and he used government spy equipment to stalk her to see if he had a rival. Upon finding her with Mer-Man, the grown-up Mer-Boy, Steve tried to show her that he was braver and stronger, insisting that she pick one of them, but Wonder Woman refused. This love triangle became a common feature, with both Steve and Mer-Man trying to prove themselves more worthy of her affections by coming up with ridiculous competitions.

The rarely tactful Steve handled the situation with constant irritation, reading into everything Wonder Woman said and did. In
Wonder Woman
#132, Wonder Woman was distracted while out bowling with Steve, upset that he’d brushed off Diana to go out with her. For no discernible reason, Steve thought that she was actually thinking about Mer-Man, and he went on a tirade laden with aquatic-based insults. When Wonder Woman got a strike without even looking, Steve exploded, “Now you’re trying to make a fool out of me! […] You’d never act that way with your boyfriend, the half-man, half-fish!”

Both Wonder Woman and Steve had issues with anger and jealousy, but the core of their feelings was completely different. Wonder Woman’s problem was one of identity. With Diana Prince no longer just a mask to fit in but now part of who she was, Wonder Woman felt that Steve, by rejecting Diana in favor of Wonder Woman, was rejecting half of herself. Thus she was furious when Steve was interested in robot doppelgangers and herself in disguise. Steve was attracted to other forms of herself, just not the one she most wanted him to love. She wasn’t really angry with Steve but with her own dual nature.

Steve, on the other hand, was angry with Wonder Woman. Paranoia was the hallmark of Steve’s fury, and he manufactured things to be upset about and read her dedication to her mission as a lack of affection for him. No matter how many times Wonder Woman proved she loved him, it was never enough. Steve felt he was entitled to the life he wanted with the woman he wanted, and anything less was unacceptable. This unbalanced gender dynamic was a hallmark of the Silver Age, and Cold War culture generally.

Lois Lane

At first glance, life had improved for Lois Lane at the dawn of the Silver Age. Her days writing the lovelorn column were far behind her; now she was a top reporter at the
Daily Planet.
Lois got her own comic book series in 1958, a rare occurrence for a female character. The only problem was that the series wasn’t called
Fearless Journalist Lois Lane
or
Lois Lane: Intrepid Reporter;
it was called
Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane.
Even in her own series, Superman still got top billing and Lois was defined by her relationship to him.

In
Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane
#17, the staff of the
Daily Planet
threw Lois a surprise party celebrating the anniversary of her joining the newspaper. While discussing her many scoops, Jimmy Olsen pointed out, “It seems you owe your career to
Superman! All
your big scoops are about him!” Lois disagreed, citing three stories she had written without the aid of Superman years before when she was first hired as a reporter. However, as she recounted each scoop, Superman recalled that he had been involved in all of them without Lois knowing. He decided, “I … er … won’t hurt Lois’ feelings! Let her think she got her first scoop all by herself!” She was a top reporter now, but it was all because of Superman.

An advertisement for the launch of
Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane
included a fact sheet on Lois. It gave her occupation (reporter), hair color (brunette), age (twenty-two), weight (121), and the last line listed her goals. It read, “
AMBITION:
To become
Mrs. Superman.
” Lois’s quest to marry Superman was the main plot of her series from the get-go.

Nearly every issue of the series featured a scheme to make Superman fall for her. Lois heard the adage that “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” so she took a leave of absence from the
Daily Planet
to become a chef. She wore a new, exotic outfit every day to entice Superman with the many varieties of woman she could be for him. She used an experimental youth ray to rid her twenty-two-year-old self of any wrinkles.

Lois also hid herself from Superman anytime she thought she wasn’t desirable enough. She went out of her way to avoid Superman when a growth ray turned her into “the fattest girl in Metropolis.” Lois took more drastic action when she was hypnotized into thinking she had the face of a cat, encasing her entire head in a lead box so Superman couldn’t see her, even with his X-ray vision. Marrying Superman was her primary concern, and she’d do anything to make it happen or to prevent any setbacks.

However, Lois didn’t love Superman because of his winning personality or their shared interests. She was only interested in his strength and heroism, a point hammered home by the ease with which Lois was prepared to ditch Superman for any other strong and heroic man who came along. Time travel was common in the Silver Age, and Lois instantly fell in love with a local hero named Samson in ancient Rome, then with Robin Hood in medieval England. In the present day, when an alien named Astounding Man arrived on Earth in a spaceship and immediately proposed to her, Lois agreed to marry him and leave Earth right away. She even fell for Clark Kent when she mistakenly thought he was roughing up a rude pedestrian, thinking, “Whatever got into Clark? I’ve always
liked
him, but now, he’s so manly, I could
love
him!” None of these relationships worked out, but they showed that Lois was keen for any man who met the masculine ideal of the time.

Unfortunately for Lois, the fellow she was most interested in treated her like an impetuous child. The Man of Steel regularly took it upon himself to manipulate Lois in order to “help” her see the error of her ways. In the first story of the first issue of
Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane,
Lois was in disguise doing research for an article, and Superman decided, “I’ll have to teach her a lesson for using such tactics to get a story!” He then faked the death of Lois’s story subject, causing a distraught and weeping Lois to exclaim, “Oh dear me—how stupid I was to try a hoax like that! I’ll never, never do it again!”

Superman’s aim was to get Lois to stop being so curious and impetuous, but in teaching her lessons all he did was cause her extreme grief. During her disguise-wearing lesson, Lois believed that someone had been killed because of her and was beside herself with grief. In another story, Superman told Lois not to touch a box of objects from another planet, and when she did he pretended that Lois had developed Kryptonite vision that caused him terrible pain whenever she looked at him. Lois felt so terrible about hurting the man she loved that she decided to move to Alaska, where she was unlikely to ever see him again.

Superman’s sense of superiority to Lois often manifested itself in angry and hurtful outbursts. When teaching Lois a lesson, this anger was staged, but Lois’s tears were real. After she touched Superman’s space artifacts, Superman yelled, “You little idiot! I warned you to keep
hands off!
Now you’re a menace to my life! Go far away! Get lost!!” His outburst resulted in Lois crying for most of the remainder of the story, until Clark came to Alaska with a fake antidote to cure her “condition.” Superman’s response to Lois’s extreme grief was chuckling about how “the biggest laugh of all is that Lois never did have Kryptonite vision!” He never told her the whole episode had been a ruse.

At times, Superman’s anger was genuine. In
Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane
#16, Superman gave Lois a signal watch so she could alert him if she was ever in trouble. After Lois used it for several nonemergency situations, Superman responded to her last alarm thinking, “Now she’s stuck in a revolving door! This is
it!
Here goes my temper!” As Lois thanked him for saving her, Superman exclaimed, “
PEST!!
” and told her that he’d take the watch back if she didn’t stop wasting his time, while a crowd of people watched and laughed. Lois was so upset that she later refused to use her watch after she was captured by a gang of villains and was nearly killed by a bomb in the process.

Superman treated Lois terribly. Their relationship resembled that of an irate, unfit parent frustrated with his child. Superman didn’t see Lois as a capable adult, but as a nuisance that he needed to straighten out, and he had Lois in tears with his condescending, patronizing attitude in nearly every issue. Even in her own series, Lois wasn’t treated with any respect.

In the Golden Age, Wonder Woman and Lois Lane had very little in common, but they found themselves in a very similar situation in the Silver Age. Their superpower disparity made no difference at all. They were subject to the same oppressive gender dynamics in their unconsummatable relationships. Their angry beaux made them jump through hoops, be it an inane contest to prove their love or an elaborate ruse to teach them a lesson. Steve and Superman both lashed out angrily when they were frustrated, and Wonder Woman and Lois had to appease them.