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glaurungSo, I came across a post about queer themes in Wonder Woman, Wonder Woman's war-era sidekick Etta Candy, and Dr Wertham. Which was so riddled with errors that I just had to write a post of my own (because comments were not enough).
Wonder Woman started out as feminist propaganda. Kinky, queer, bondage-obsessed, with a very different from modern ideas 19th century kind of feminism (women are not equal but different from men and women should be in charge because they will do a better job), but nonetheless, feminist propaganda. The queer kinkiness was filtered and coded of course by being published in comic books for children in the 40's, but it was still undeniably there.
Wonder Woman's sidekicks and Diana Prince's friends were Etta Candy and the girls of Beeta Lambda sorority at Holliday college. They were part of that propaganda message - promoting women's colleges, women's education and independence, and the idea that any woman can be a heroine like Wonder Woman if she puts her mind to it. Etta and her girls were also (coded, filtered) gay or bi characters, modelled on women that Marston's bisexual partners had known in the women's colleges they attended and the women's college sororities they had belonged to.
However, Etta was never Wonder Woman or Diana's girlfriend, even in subtext. From day one, the Wonder Woman comic adopted a genderswapped version of the Superman-Lois Lane dynamic, with Diana infatuated with Steve Trevor, who was infatuated with Wonder Woman.
Marston and his female partners co-created Wonder Woman and co-wrote each story, but sold them under Marston's name. When Marston died, the editors at DC refused to hire his uncredited women co-writers, and instead handed the comic over to Robert Kanigher, a typically sexist man who had no truck with all this feminist stuff.
Kanigher jettisoned the feminist messages that had appeared in every story, jettisoned most of the bondage themes, and jettisoned Etta and her sorority sisters. He kept (and enhanced) the eclectic, magic-meets-sf-meets-mythology-meets-fairy tales setting of Paradise Island, and kept the Diana-Steve-Wonder Woman love triangle. Because the love triangle was boring as fuck, he set a lot of his stories on Paradise Island. Without Etta and company, and without queer women co-writing behind the scenes, the comic became completely heterosexual, despite being often set on an island populated only by women.
Fast forward to 1953, when psychiatrist Fredric Wertham published a screed against violence and sexuality in comic books (expanded into a book the following year), which he felt were the root cause of juvenile delinquency and of the sexual irregularities of his child patients. Wertham's primary targets were crime and horror comics, but he did devote a little space to superhero comics like Batman ("a wish dream of two homosexuals living together") and Wonder Woman ("for boys... a frightening image. For girls... a morbid ideal"). Wertham's book states that it's based on seven years of research, which might explain why he called out the Holliday girls in Wonder Woman, as "gay party girls, gay girls" - despite the fact that Holliday college had been dropped from the comics for six years by the time his book was published.
Wertham was successful in virtually exterminating crime and horror comics, but he didn't actually have all that much effect on superhero comics - Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson continued sleeping in twin beds in the same room together long after Wertham, and in the case of Wonder Woman, the censoring of gay themes had already been done several years before he came along.
Sources: Seduction of the Innocent, The Secret History of Wonder Woman (both on my shelf), various comic nerd web sites, and my own personal knowledge from having read tons of Wonder Woman comics, including reprints of dozens from the war years and a few from the post-war, post-Marston era.
Wonder Woman started out as feminist propaganda. Kinky, queer, bondage-obsessed, with a very different from modern ideas 19th century kind of feminism (women are not equal but different from men and women should be in charge because they will do a better job), but nonetheless, feminist propaganda. The queer kinkiness was filtered and coded of course by being published in comic books for children in the 40's, but it was still undeniably there.
Wonder Woman's sidekicks and Diana Prince's friends were Etta Candy and the girls of Beeta Lambda sorority at Holliday college. They were part of that propaganda message - promoting women's colleges, women's education and independence, and the idea that any woman can be a heroine like Wonder Woman if she puts her mind to it. Etta and her girls were also (coded, filtered) gay or bi characters, modelled on women that Marston's bisexual partners had known in the women's colleges they attended and the women's college sororities they had belonged to.
However, Etta was never Wonder Woman or Diana's girlfriend, even in subtext. From day one, the Wonder Woman comic adopted a genderswapped version of the Superman-Lois Lane dynamic, with Diana infatuated with Steve Trevor, who was infatuated with Wonder Woman.
Marston and his female partners co-created Wonder Woman and co-wrote each story, but sold them under Marston's name. When Marston died, the editors at DC refused to hire his uncredited women co-writers, and instead handed the comic over to Robert Kanigher, a typically sexist man who had no truck with all this feminist stuff.
Kanigher jettisoned the feminist messages that had appeared in every story, jettisoned most of the bondage themes, and jettisoned Etta and her sorority sisters. He kept (and enhanced) the eclectic, magic-meets-sf-meets-mythology-meets-fairy tales setting of Paradise Island, and kept the Diana-Steve-Wonder Woman love triangle. Because the love triangle was boring as fuck, he set a lot of his stories on Paradise Island. Without Etta and company, and without queer women co-writing behind the scenes, the comic became completely heterosexual, despite being often set on an island populated only by women.
Fast forward to 1953, when psychiatrist Fredric Wertham published a screed against violence and sexuality in comic books (expanded into a book the following year), which he felt were the root cause of juvenile delinquency and of the sexual irregularities of his child patients. Wertham's primary targets were crime and horror comics, but he did devote a little space to superhero comics like Batman ("a wish dream of two homosexuals living together") and Wonder Woman ("for boys... a frightening image. For girls... a morbid ideal"). Wertham's book states that it's based on seven years of research, which might explain why he called out the Holliday girls in Wonder Woman, as "gay party girls, gay girls" - despite the fact that Holliday college had been dropped from the comics for six years by the time his book was published.
Wertham was successful in virtually exterminating crime and horror comics, but he didn't actually have all that much effect on superhero comics - Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson continued sleeping in twin beds in the same room together long after Wertham, and in the case of Wonder Woman, the censoring of gay themes had already been done several years before he came along.
Sources: Seduction of the Innocent, The Secret History of Wonder Woman (both on my shelf), various comic nerd web sites, and my own personal knowledge from having read tons of Wonder Woman comics, including reprints of dozens from the war years and a few from the post-war, post-Marston era.
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Date: 2020-12-27 06:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-27 08:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-27 09:41 pm (UTC)