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Tweak says, "OHHH! What a beauty!"

mosellegreen (mosellegreen) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-07-07 14:16:00

Entry tags:

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

Golden Age Wonder Woman Crack
These are from Wonder Woman #2, 1942. Marston was very into astral projection and that kind of thing and he used it in his stories all the time. This is one of those. Steve Trevor's injured and in a coma, his astral self is imprisoned by the war-god Mars, and Wonder Woman astrally projects herself to Mars to find him.

Interestingly, according to Marston, being incorporeal is no reason not to get tied up.

Someone told me that in the Rodney Dangerfield movie Back To School, a professor asked his girlfriend, also a professor, what a man who'd been talking to her wanted. "Oh, just what every man wants from every woman," she said. The male professor said, "He wanted you to dress up as Wonder Woman, tie him up with a golden rope, and force him to tell the truth?"

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http://pics.livejournal.com/mosellegreen/pic/000dfy38
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fredneil.livejournal.com
2009-07-07 07:00 pm UTC (link)

That bit about listening through the chain attached to the wall and "bone conduction" is actually kind of clever.

"One woman can beat you with her hands tied..."
"He said 'Wonder Woman,' not 'one woman.' I can tell that was Steve because he mentioned my hands being tied. Steve knows I prefer it that way."

And that's the last bit of subtext I'll point out, just because I think Golden Age Wonder Woman and Steve were such an AWWWWWW couple. She was calling Steve "the man I love" and getting really worried over him when Superman was still looking Lois and thinking "ewwww, a girl."

She probably broke Etta's heart, though. Etta's got her arms around WW, but all she does is talk about Steve.

Ok, that's the last bit of subtext I'll point out.

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psychop_rex
2009-07-08 08:18 am UTC (link)

Jules Feiffer, in his book 'The Great Comic Book Heroes' (which is well worth looking up; it's frequently hilarious and often very insightful) put it thusly (and just for context, this is how he saw the situation as a young boy back in the midst of the Golden Age):

"...Clark Kent acted as the control for Superman. What Kent wanted was just that which Superman didn't want to be bothered with. Kent wanted Lois, Superman didn't - thus marking the difference between a sissy and a man. A sissy wanted girls who scorned him; a man scorned girls who wanted him. Our cultural opposite of the man who didn't make out with women has never been the man who did - but rather the man who could if he wanted to, but still didn't. The ideal of masculine strength, whether Gary Cooper's, Li'l Abner's, or Superman's, was for one to be so virile and handsome, to be in such a position of strength, that he need never go near girls. Except to help them. And then get the hell out. Real rapport was not for women. It was for villains. That's why they got hit so hard."

Here's some of what he had to say about Wonder Woman:

"...I can't comment on the image girls had of Wonder Woman. I never knew they read her - or any comic book. That GIRLS had a preference for my brand of literature would have been more of a frightening image to me than any number of men being beaten up by Wonder Woman.

(That, by the way, is in reference to a quote from Dr. Frederick Wertham in the previous paragraph saying that Wonder Woman is a 'frightening image' for boys because she is 'antimasculine'.)

Whether Wonder Woman was a lesbian's dream I do not know, but I know for a fact she was every Jewish boy's unfantasied picture of the world as it really was. You mean men weren't wicked and weak? You mean women weren't badly taken advantage of? You mean women didn't have to be STRONGER than men to survive in this world? Not in my house!"

And while we're on the subject (and because this IS Scans Daily), here's some of what Feiffer has to say about Batman and Robin being gay:

"Wertham cites testimony taken from homosexuals to prove the secret kicks received from the knowledge that Batman and Robin were living together, going out together, adventuring together. But so were the Green Hornet and Kato (hmm - an Oriental) and the Lone Ranger and Tonto (Christ! An Indian!) - and so, for that matter, did Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers hang around together an awful lot, but God knows, I saw every one of their movies and it never occurred to me they were sleeping with each other. If homosexual fads were certain proof of that which will turn our young queer, then we should long ago have burned not just Batman books, but all Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and Judy Garland movies."

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	rab62 2009-07-07 11:24 pm UTC (link)
	"She's asleep -- looks like she's dead! Woo woo!" is more disturbing than one imagines Marston intended it to be. That WW exchange is one of my favorite bits in Back to School -- it's a great movie in general and well worth seeing as soon as you have the opportunity. (Reply to this)