Wonder Woman Unbound (33 page)

In a fight scene in
Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes
#231, Shadow Lass kicked Mano and Colossal Boy punched Validus, while the Persuader was just swinging at air against Mon-El and Ultra Boy, but the Empress handled Brainiac 5, Element Lad, and Sun Boy with ease. The Empress was also especially good at fighting the Legion’s most powerful member, Superboy. She hammered the Boy of Steel with her energy blasts and in one issue encased him in a force field that put him in a state of suspended animation. Aware of his one weakness, the Empress wisely carried around a piece of Kryptonite; her ultimate plan was to control Superboy with the Kryptonite and use him to reconquer Venegar. The Empress may have lacked the death blow powers of the rest of the Fatal Five, but her many abilities made her a more effective fighter than anyone else on the team.

What’s most striking about the Emerald Empress is that her portrayal had nothing at all to do with her being a woman. Female villains tended to use their sexuality against their opponents, be betrayed by some sort of inherent compassion, or use villainy only as a way to try and marry the hero. The Empress did none of this. Her only concern was power. She gained amazing powers with the Emerald Eye, took power on her home planet in a swift coup, and saw her union with the Fatal Five as a means to regain power over Venegar and then the entire galaxy.

Using her sexuality was unnecessary because she had such immense strength at her disposal. Compassion or emotion never came into play either; she was completely ruthless and focused. In fact, her teammates were far more emotional than she: Validus was a cauldron of rage, while the Persuader and Mano were constantly angry and often lost sight of the mission at hand because of it. Only Tharok was as even-keeled as the Empress, and he was half-robot. The Empress was strong, rational, and cunning and lacked any of the stereotypes associated with female characters. At her core, the Emerald Empress was first and foremost a villain, and everything else was secondary. Being a woman didn’t define her; it didn’t even come into play.

For Diana Prince, her gender was at the heart of the character. Everything about Diana was rooted in an attempt to make her a modern, normal woman. This was Diana’s defining quality, to such an extent that she didn’t actually have a personality, particularly in the early issues of the mod era. The story wasn’t ruled by the author considering what Diana would do, but rather by an attempt to depict a character who acted as a male author thought a woman would: loving clothes, falling in love, and being emotional. The result was one-dimensional; Diana was a combination of stereotypical female reactions and feelings instead of an actual, fleshed-out character. There was no Diana the person, just Diana the generic woman.

Lagging Behind the Times

Despite the best of intentions, the mod Diana Prince paled in comparison to her fellow female characters. Once ahead of her time, the times had left her behind. The idea of stripping the genre’s strongest, oldest, and most famous female character of her superpowers ran contrary to the contemporary movement toward female empowerment. Diana engaged in all of the stereotypes and clichés that other female characters had escaped and real-world women denounced. Ultimately, it was so bad that the depowered Wonder Woman resulted in feminists leading a campaign for a return to the feminist heights of the Golden Age.

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Having a character named the “Invisible Girl” was a spectacular, unintentional metaphor for female characters in the Silver Age.

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The issue included stirring dialogue, with Superman declaring, “Diana … in another second or so, I’ll feel like kissing you—and we both know I
shouldn’t!
” and Diana responding, “Right you are—darn it!” Superman always knows best. It’s another Denny O’Neil issue, by the way, not to pick on the poor guy. Seriously, he’s done a lot of excellent comic books. Just not any with Wonder Woman in them.

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The title of this story was “I Am Curious (Black)!”—an obvious homage to director Vilgot Sjöman’s Swedish art house film
I Am Curious (Yellow),
which addressed social issues and included a brief interview with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The film was also fairly sexually explicit and was banned or protested in several American states after being labeled pornographic.

^†
In the end, the baby’s father was found alive in a Viet Cong prison camp, and when he came home Lois returned Little Moon to him.

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There’s a reason that people talk about
Green Lantern/Green Arrow
instead of
Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane
in terms of race relations in the Bronze Age. The stories were somewhat hackneyed and contained racial stereotyping despite their attempt at a progressive message. It may not be surprising to learn that these four issues were written by Robert Kanigher. Still, this was a significant shift for the series that had Lois spending time on real-world problems instead of obsessing over marrying Superman.

^†
Dorothy Roubicek,
Wonder Woman’s
assistant editor during the Golden Age bondage situation, went on to marry William Woolfolk and return to DC Comics as a full editor.

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The Lois Lane adventures in
The Superman Family
were mostly old reprints from
Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane,
but occasionally there were new stories. The first of these involved Lois working alongside the S.I.A. (Secret Intelligence Agency) to track down a dangerous assassin, but within a few issues Lois was back to her old reporting job. Her romance with Superman was back as well, rekindled even before the
Superman Family
merger.

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While it’s commonly believed that Batgirl was brought into the comic books because of the popularity of Yvonne Craig’s Batgirl on the
Batman
TV show, her comic book debut actually predated her television debut.

*
The Batman Family
was published from 1975 to 1978, when it was merged with
Detective Comics.
Barbara Gordon remained a congresswoman until 1980, when she lost her bid for reelection. She returned to Gotham City and became a member of the Humanities Research and Development Center, where she led the social services department.

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The team wasn’t only diverse in terms of planet of origin, but in gender too; Lightning Lad, Cosmic Boy, and Brainiac 5 fought alongside Saturn Girl, Shrinking Violet, and Phantom Girl.

9

Restoration and Re-creation

T
he novelty of a new Wonder Woman initially gave the series a slight sales bump, but the book soon returned to its unimpressive numbers. O’Neil and Sekowsky’s attempted portrayal of a modern woman didn’t go over well, particularly with modern women. Chief among those disappointed with the comic was Gloria Steinem, a writer and political activist who had become the face of feminism in America. She had been a fan of Wonder Woman as a child and wanted her to return to her Amazon roots. Steinem was also friends with DC Comics’ owner Steve Ross, and occasionally stopped by the DC offices in New York City. She lobbied for the old Wonder Woman to return, and DC soon announced that the mod era would end with January 1973’s
Wonder Woman
#204; Diana Prince would be Wonder Woman again. Pleased by the news, Steinem splashed the return of Wonder Woman across her new project.

The women’s liberation movement was growing rapidly, and Steinem wanted to introduce its ideas and values to a mainstream audience, so she and her associates launched Ms. magazine in 1972. Most women’s magazines at the time were of the
Ladies Home Journal
and
Good Housekeeping
variety, focused on recipes and cleaning products and how to keep a proper home.
Ms.
was an alternative to these magazines and discussed women’s issues, politics, and the feminist lifestyle. It was an instant success, and when the first issue hit the newsstands in July 1972, Wonder Woman was on the cover.

She was a giant, striding forward, with half of her body in an average American street on the left and the other half in a Vietnam War scene on the right. The image suggested that Wonder Woman could be a force for good in both worlds; in one hand, she rescued a group of buildings with her golden lasso, and with her other hand she swatted a fighter plane out of the sky. A sign in the town read “Peace and Justice in ’72” while the magazine’s headline declared “Wonder Woman for President.” The issue included an article by Joanne Edgar about the history of Wonder Woman that ended with the news that she would soon return to her Amazon roots. They also reprinted a few pages from William Moulton Marston and H. G. Peter’s first Wonder Woman story from
All Star Comics
#8.

Ms.
also had a book-publishing division, which put together a collection that reprinted twelve Golden Age Wonder Woman stories.
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The book was prefaced by an article on the history of the Amazons by Phyllis Chesler and a lengthy introduction by Steinem. The comics were divided into four sections: “Origins,” “Sisterhood,” “Politics,” and “Romance,” and Steinem provided a brief introduction for each as well.

After years of decline and increasing irrelevance, Wonder Woman teamed up with the women’s liberation movement to restore the character to her former glory. The editors at
Ms.
were fans of the original Wonder Woman and saw her as a feminist icon. Edgar wrote that she hoped the new direction for the series would “return our heroine to the feminism of her birth,” and Steinem echoed these sentiments, writing that she wanted to see “the feminism and strength of the original Wonder Woman
—my
Wonder Woman—restored.”

However, when the women at
Ms.
talk about “the feminism of her birth,” they’re referring to the Marston era. His feminism was complicated, filled with contradictions and some troubling fixations. With their celebration of the original Wonder Woman, Steinem and her friends glossed over the more problematic bits of the character and focused on the areas that reflected their own modern feminist beliefs. Their depiction of Wonder Woman restored parts of the original, but ultimately they re-created Wonder Woman in their own image for a new generation.

The Liberal Feminism of
Ms.
Magazine

Ms.
magazine has rightly been called “the most widely recognized publication of liberal feminism.” At the core of feminism is the idea that women deserve the same social and political rights and privileges as men, but the women’s liberation movement grew rapidly and branched off in innumerable directions. “Liberal feminism” is a term that described a wide range of these many branches. Words like “liberal” can be tricky because yesterday’s “radical” is today’s “liberal” is tomorrow’s “conservative” as more and more radical voices emerge. It’s a term with shifting meanings. But for the early 1970s, “liberal feminism” is a good description for Steinem and
Ms.
magazine, especially in contrast with more radical feminist beliefs.
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Many radical groups thought that patriarchy was so pervasive that every aspect of society was rooted in male dominance, and so they’d have to tear it all down to accomplish anything for women. Working with the government or participating in things like marriage and traditional child rearing was seen as colluding with the enemy. Instead, radical feminists banded together to come up with ways to fix society on their own.
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Some thought that marriage was a way to keep women down and that traditional romantic love was just a fantasy; some decided that lesbianism was the way to go. Others looked to science and hoped that artificial reproduction could free women from the shackles of the nuclear family and domesticity and maybe even eliminate the need for men altogether. Whatever the specifics of the plan, the overarching theme among radical feminists was that society was rigged against women and that true liberation could only come from escaping the existing structures. It wasn’t women who needed to change, but the world as a whole.

Liberal feminists were not as extreme. Rather than replacing oppressive societal structures, they tried to work within existing systems to improve the lives of women. One of the first groups to come out of the women’s liberation movement was the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966. NOW’s Statement of Purpose, written by Betty Friedan, declared: “The purpose of NOW is to take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all the privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men.” The Equal Rights Amendment was of paramount importance to NOW and liberal feminists, and notable leaders including Friedan and Steinem appeared before Congress to support it. Equality was the ultimate aim, and both Friedan and Steinem led a march through New York City in 1970 as part of the Women’s Strike for Equality.