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: