Wonder Woman Unbound (36 page)

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 She’d been replaced by another editor.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.

The initial TV movie was a fairly faithful adaptation of Wonder Woman’s origin story from
All Star Comics
#8 and
Sensation Comics
#1. In what was probably not a coincidence, these were the two stories that opened up the
Ms. Wonder Woman
book too. The first year of the series followed the same basic setup as Marston’s comics: Steve Trevor was a pilot and Diana Prince was his secretary who would turn into Wonder Woman whenever danger arose. The show even borrowed some characters from the original comics, with Etta Candy becoming a coworker of Diana’s and Paula von Gunther showing up as a villain for an episode.

Carter played her dual role with the same contrast as the Marston years. Her Wonder Woman was vibrant and bright, a brave and confident heroine, while her Diana Prince was a meek and dowdy wallflower. Carter captured both sides well, especially in a scene where she explained her life in America to her sister, Drusilla. As Wonder Woman, she nobly declared, “If the Nazis win, the whole world would be subjected to slavery. I feel that by staying here, I can help in some small way towards preventing this catastrophe.” She then pulled the classic spin change, and in her Diana garb she giggled and said that working for the military “allows me to stay close to Steve … Major Trevor. I work for him.” Carter’s Wonder Woman focused on being a hero and her Diana was a doe-eyed gal in love with Steve.

Marston’s utopian message made it into the initial TV movie as well, but it was soon undermined. Queen Hippolyta exclaimed, “I named this island ‘Paradise’ for an excellent reason: there are no men on it. Thus it is free of their wars, their greed, their hostility, their barbaric, masculine behavior.” She added, “We are stronger, wiser, and more advanced than all those people in their jungles out there. Our civilization is perfection!” This sounds like Marston on paper, but the way it was played on screen told a different story. Cloris Leachman’s Hippolyta was more feminazi than feminist, slightly crazed and full of hatred for men. These words weren’t said with the peace and serenity of a noble queen but with a sneer of contempt.

Furthermore, Wonder Woman soon found herself disagreeing with her mother’s take on humanity, and on men in particular. Throughout the first season, Hippolyta wanted her daughter to come back to Paradise Island for good and get away from the corrupting influence of man’s world, but she always refused. Wonder Woman saw the good in men, American men like Steve Trevor in particular, and didn’t find them barbaric like her mother did. Just like Steinem downplayed Marston’s focus on the superiority of the Amazons, so did the TV show, and the similarities with
Ms
.’s take on Wonder Woman continued from there.

While Steinem and Edgar downplayed the racist elements in Golden Age Wonder Woman comics, the TV show just eliminated race altogether. Almost everyone on the show was white, even in the background. The show also changed the focus of the war. The original Wonder Woman fought the Japanese more than the Germans, but on the TV show the war was solely between the Americans and the Nazis. The Pacific front didn’t come up. This made the show even whiter, eliminating Asians from the equation. They avoided the issue of racism entirely by not having any other races on the show, which in itself is rather racist.

Steinem and Chesler also expressed concerns about Wonder Woman’s warmongering and “super-patriotism,” but the Wonder Woman TV show reframed the entire war. By turning World War II into a fight just between America and the Nazis, the war became a battle between the forces of ultimate good and the forces of ultimate evil. No villains in the history of the modern world were more evil than the Nazis. It wasn’t just a fight between warring nations but, as Wonder Woman told Drusilla, this was freedom versus slavery, with the fate of the entire world in the balance.

Bondage was ignored as well. Wonder Woman got tied up from time to time, and used her lasso on the occasional villain, but it didn’t amount to much. Batman and Robin got into far more elaborate bondage situations each week on their TV show. While Marston’s
Wonder Woman
was an intentionally kinky book, the only thing remotely titillating about the TV show was Wonder Woman’s outfit.

The net result was a show that lacked nuance. Steinem and her friends portrayed a cleaned-up, modernized Wonder Woman that sidestepped a lot of the complexities of Marston’s tenure, but the Wonder Woman TV show erased any potential problems entirely, presenting an ideal version of the character. The good versus evil, freedom versus slavery version of the war was a simplified setting, and within this setting Wonder Woman became the representative of the ultimate good. She was a hero who was powerful, independent, and virtuous, but who was
only
powerful, independent, and virtuous. Wonder Woman wasn’t just cleaned up; she was, to borrow Wright’s term for past matriarchies, sanctified. Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman was heroic and wholesome, with nothing impeachable about her character, making her an excellent role model.

Helping other women was a big part of the show, and anytime a female character was poorly treated by a man, Wonder Woman would speak up. For instance, when she was interrogated by a female Nazi agent who was constantly insulted by her male commanding officer, Wonder Woman told her, “Fraulein Grabel, you are a woman of great intelligence and should not be taking orders from that man.” Wonder Woman later declared, “Women are the wave of the future and sisterhood is stronger than anything.”