Wonder Woman Unbound (46 page)

Star Sapphire

“
Mr. Jordan,
puh-lease!
From now on …
”
Showcase
#22 (September/October 1959).

“
Night and day … day and night …
”
Green Lantern
#1 (July/August 1960).

the two sporadically went out on the town …
Green Lantern
#6 (May/June 1961).

“
Carol Ferris, in the absence of her father …
”
Green Lantern
#7 (July/August 1961).

“
the young and pretty ‘boss’ …
”
Green Lantern
#18 (January 1963).

“
from a world tremendously in advance …
”
Green Lantern
#16 (October 1962).

“
As our future queen you must be made …
” Ibid.

“
She doesn’t seem to realize that men …
” Ibid.

“
She acts as if a man could be …
” Ibid.

“
I feel so weak … so helpless …
” Ibid.

Using her impressive powers …
Green Lantern
#26 (January 1964).

6. Conforming to the Code

Fredric Wertham and the Seduction of the Innocent

“
Superman (with the big S on his uniform …
” Wertham,
Seduction of the Innocent,
34.

“
they live in sumptuous quarters …
” Ibid., 190.

“
the lesbian counterpart of Batman …
” Wertham,
Seduction of the Innocent,
192.

“
the homosexual connotation …
” Ibid., 192.

FN Recent research by Carol Tilley shows …
Carol L. Tilley, “Seducing the Innocent: Fredric Wertham and the Falsifications That Helped Condemn Comics,”
Information & Culture
47, no. 4 (2012): 383–413.

“extremely sadistic hatred of all males …
” Ibid., 193.

“
for boys, Wonder Woman is a frightening image” …
Ibid., 193.

“
Her followers are the ‘Holliday …
” Ibid., 193.

“
even when Wonder Woman adopts …
” Ibid., 234.

“
They do not work. They are not homemakers …
” Ibid., 234.

“
Wonder Woman is not the natural daughter …
” Ibid., 234.

“
if it were possible to translate a cardboard figure …
” Ibid., 235.

Suffering Sappho!! Was Wonder Woman a Lesbian?

“
that nearly half of the female love relationships …
” Marston,
Emotions,
338.

“
in several cases, well-adapted love …
” Ibid., 338.

“
the pick of the women who the average man …
” Havelock Ellis,
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume II: Sexual Inversion
(New York: Random House, 1942, orig. publ. 1897), 222.

male homosexuality was a purely dominant …
Marston,
Emotions,
252–253.

“
with regard to the possibly deleterious …
” Ibid., 339.

FN “the excessive amount of passion response …
” Ibid., 339.

“
girls and women who indulge in this …
” Ibid., 338.

“
with the invaluable aid of my collaborators” …
Ibid., 338.

one of the most, if not
the
most, detailed …
Ibid., 299–313.

“
excited pleasantness of captivation …
” Ibid., 300.

“
about three-fourths of the girls …
” Ibid., 311.

“
it seems undoubtedly to be the fact …
” Ibid., 313.

“
Bona Dea is a woman’s goddess exclusively …
” Marston,
Private Life of
Julius Caesar,
114.

“
very young girls, some of them still …
” Ibid., 123.

“
Cassandra felt the hands of several women …
” Ibid., 124.

Etta swinging a piece of candy …
Sensation Comics
#3 (March 1942).

paddled by a hooded girl …
Sensation Comics
#4 (April 1942).

bound, blindfolded, and left in the middle …
Wonder Woman
#12 (Spring 1945).

“
grand mistress of spanks and slams” …
Wonder Woman
#22 (March/April 1947).

“
By Sappho’s stylus …
”
Wonder Woman
#6 (Fall 1943).

watch a movie in Sappho Hall …
Comic Cavalcade
#12 (Fall 1945).

he stated outright that all of the Amazons were lesbians …
Trina Robbins, “Wonder Woman: Lesbian or Dyke? Paradise Island as a Woman’s Community,” paper presented at WisCon 2006, available at
www.girl-wonder.org/papers/robbins.html
.

Steve carrying Wonder Woman across a brook …
Sensation Comics
#94 (November/December 1949).

bringing her flowers …
Sensation Comics
#97 (May/June 1950).

The Changing Content of Wonder Woman

“
suggestive and salacious illustration …
” 1955 Comic Code, in Nyberg,
Seal of Approval,
168.

“
sex perversion or any inference to same …
” Ibid.

The Real World Carries On

For the social activism of women in the 1950s, see
Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945–1960,
ed. Joanne Meyerowitz, specifically: Susan Rimby Leighow’s “An ‘Obligation to Participate,’” Dorothy Sue Cobble’s “Recapturing Working-Class Feminism,” Ruth Feldstein’s “I Wanted the Whole World to See,” Dee Garrison’s “Our Skirts Gave Them Courage,” and Margaret Rose’s “Gender and Civic Activism in Mexican Barrios in California”; and Lynne Olson’s
Freedom’s Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970.
For information concerning women and sexuality in the 1950s, see Wini Breines’s
Young, White, and Miserable: Growing Up Female in the Fifties,
David Halberstam’s
The Fifties,
and Brett Harvey’s
The Fifties: A Women’s Oral History.

“
All you have to do is perform a few feats …
”
Wonder Woman
#136 (February 1963).

Interlude 2: Letters and Advertisements

Advertisements

Jewelry ads featuring smiling women …
See National Diamond Sales in
Wonder Woman
#192 (January/February 1971); and Woodstock-inspired jewelry in
Wonder Woman
#193 (March/April 1971).

a model “especially for girls” …
This ad first appeared in
Wonder Woman
#183 (July/August 1969).

Iverson cut any mention of their girls’ bicycle …
Wonder Woman
#186 (January/February 1970).

In
Fantastic Four,
the ad showed a young man …
Fantastic Four
#47 (February 1966).

young man was replaced by a young woman …
Millie the Model
#147 (March 1967).

7. Wonder Woman No More

Wonder Woman comics from the Bronze Age are collected in four full-color, softcover
Diana Prince: Wonder Woman
volumes, comprising her mod adventures from
Wonder Woman
#178 through
Wonder Woman
#203. A brief portion of her later adventures as the Amazon Wonder Woman are collected in
Wonder Woman: The Twelve Labors,
comprising
Wonder Woman
#212 through
Wonder Woman
#222. DC comics from this era are collected primarily in
Showcase
volumes, with special volumes for specific, famous story lines. Marvel comics from this era are collected in
Essential
and
Omnibus
volumes.

The Marvel Age

For information on Marvel Comics in the 1960s, see
Tales to Astonish: Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and the American Comic Book Revolution
by Ronin Ro,
Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book
by Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon, as well as any book about comic history that mentions the 1960s at all … Marvel will come up.

Marvel’s first new series,
Fantastic Four
…
First appeared in
Fantastic Four
#1 (November 1961), created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

soon followed by
The Incredible Hulk
…
First appeared in
The Incredible Hulk
#1 (May 1942), created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

Lee and Ditko created Spider-Man …
First appeared in
Amazing Fantasy
#15 (August 1962), created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.

the X-Men, a group of powerful …
First appeared in
The X-Men
#1 (September 1963), created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

Iron Man, a millionaire …
First appeared in
Tales of Suspense
#39 (March 1963), created by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, Don Heck, and Jack Kirby.

Doctor Strange, master of the occult …
First appeared in
Strange Tales
#110 (July 1963), created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.