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Tweak says, "Badger, badger, badger, badger"

mosellegreen (mosellegreen) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-06-14 16:33:00

Entry tags:

char: etta candy, char: wonder woman/diana of themyscira, creator: william moulton marston, era: golden age, publisher: dc comics

Golden Age Wonder Woman Bondage Seance Crack
This is one of my favorite WW stories ever. It was in the collection I got when I was 8 and read about a hundred thousand times. It's the first appearance of Dr. Psycho, and features two of Marston's obsessions: the occult and bondage. This was originally published in Wonder Woman #5 in the summer of 1943.

Dr. Psycho was ridiculed by all his classmates in college. His fiancee Marva rid herself of him by conspiring with the hot guy she really wanted to frame Psycho for a crime he didn't commit. Whatever happened to just giving back the ring? Why did she get engaged to him in the first place?

This, apparently, is how seances are conducted.

Dr. Psycho invites, "Ladies and gentlemen! To see that the medium commits no fraud, will some of you come up on the platform and bind Marva in her cabinet?" Naturally, Wonder Woman isn't about to miss a chance to tie someone up!

The spirit of George Washington predicts that women will cause a huge explosion at a munitions plant. It happens as he predicts, and the Army top brass, apparently unaware that Psycho has a criminal record, goes to him for another seance. Wonder Woman is invited to attend, because someone has to tie the medium up.

Really. I know this was before Women's Lib, but come on!

Even in her astral form, Wonder Woman gets tied up.

I love this picture. Steve doesn't seem to mind it either.

Years later when I read a bunch of stuff about ectoplasm and ghosts and psychic powers, I couldn't help picturing ectoplasm as this marshmallowy white stuff.

And now after several pages of women being tied up, we hear the feminist moral Marston has been promoting with all these stories about women being tied up:

(Post a new comment)

	crinosg 2009-06-14 04:27 pm UTC (link)
	Is it me, or did Psycho's head keep changing sizes throughout that comic; at some times it looked normal, but other times he looked like he was a midget in a mardi gras costume. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	psychop_rex 2009-06-15 04:59 am UTC (link)
	You ain't seen nothin' yet. There are some stories where his head is actually larger than his body. He was a WEIRD little bugger. (Reply to this) (Parent)

tavella
2009-06-14 07:11 pm UTC (link)

This is pretty damn awesome! And that last panel is a nice slap in the face for people like Grant Morrison who like to claim Marson's Wonder Woman wasn't feminist. Abusive husband? Get strong, leave him and earn your own living. And hey, women can fight for their country too.

Sure, Marston had kinks out the wazoo, but at the heart of it he did believe in strong, independent women.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

bknut
2009-06-15 12:47 am UTC (link)

Marston was no feminist, read some of his statements and work especially when he was interviewed about WW, the man did not believe women were equal to men, he believed they were superior to men. Marston espoused that men to truly be happy in life needed to submit to the loving authority of a woman and all would be well in business, government, even life.

Sad that all most remember was the bondage aspect. The Marston WW and Etta Candy and the Holliday girls said so much more about female empowerment than the bondage and spanking stuff let on. Most can't seem to get past it and so they miss the truly subversive aspects of the concept.

The biggest mistake in the current WW mythos is that her powers come from the Gods...read the Golden Age stuff and it was all them, it was all about the training and the power of the female. Great Stuff!! C'Mon Gail get some of that back into the book.

Mary

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

psychop_rex
2009-06-15 04:58 am UTC (link)

Don't mean to get up on a soapbox here, but there are some extremist feminists who believe PRECISELY that women are superior to men. They haven't said it in so many words, but it's pretty obvious if you listen closely. Like that stuff a few years ago about how all sex between a man and a woman was automatically rape, because of the inherent imbalance of the system in man's favor - that's pretty close to 'all men are pigs, bah phooey', if you ask me. (I should state at this point that I'm not anti-feminist, just anti-extremist - I applaud the goals of feminism, but it has attracted its fair share of nuts over the years.)

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	psychop_rex 2009-06-15 05:02 am UTC (link)
	I love how Psycho keeps saying 'Z-z-zut!' It's just so weird. Also, the bit about separating the spirit from the body and chaining it to the wall is really very interesting - it has interesting spiritual implications when a spirit is shown to be solid, not immaterial. (Reply to this)

meatwhichdreams
2009-06-15 09:57 pm UTC (link)

"Remember -- the better you can fight, the less you'll have to!"

A surprisingly sophisticated concept to end this story on. I mean, I agree but -- whu? Where did that come from? Of course, if Golden Age Wonder Woman didn't have at least three separate flavors of crack crammed and stuffed lovingly into each little panel, it wouldn't be written by Marston. :D

I love these bizarre storylines where the science flips out and gets all epic and mystical</i> and people are holding seances and using lie detectors and radium torture techniques and people's frigging ASTRAL BODIES are floating around and next thing you know it they're hopping a SPECTRAL KANGA to MARS to visit the MARTIAN BEAUTIES.

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