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mosellegreen (mosellegreen) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-07-23 11:37:00

Entry tags:

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

Golden Age Wonder Woman
These are from Sensation Comics #4, 1942. Remember that these can be bought in the Archive Edition reprints; thus far there are five Wonder Woman volumes. And they have them of other Golden Age comics too; I also have the Black Canary volume.

This issue introduces Wonder Woman's enemy Baroness Paula von Gunther, whom she later reformed, probably by spanking her.

My first name is Eve, so this one especially amuses me. This is the same "Eve Brown" from tomorrow's post. These are the earliest issues and Reformation Island hasn't been introduced to the mythos yet, so Wonder Woman just turned Eve Brown over to the Holliday Girls' sorority to be, ah, whipped into shape.

Just imagine, there was a time when "And then in his secret identity, the hero goes to a costume party dressed as himself, and everyone is fooled! Ha, ha!" was fresh and original.

Wonder Woman takes advantage of the party to do a bit of snooping through the Baroness's mansion.

Again, I really love the Holliday Girls' cheerful approach to adventure.

Yeah, Diana, any excuse will do.

And here is the first mention of Wonder Woman's "Kryptonite". You know, given her inclinations, it's gotta put a real damper on her love life.

Psychology. Marston just had to stick that in.

Also, let me take this opportunity to be pedantic and clear up a misconception about this. A few fanficcers have gotten the idea that any time a man ties Wonder Woman up, she loses her power. I don't recall her own series ever using that interpretation, though it's possible I missed something and it was about 15 years ago that I read most of her original series. I do know that this idea was suggested in the very first issue of The Teen Titans; Robin lassoed WW and she exclaimed, "I've been bound - BY A MAN!" Robin replied, "And they still call me the Boy Wonder." After that she came along quietly, so the writer must have believed this would make her lose her strength. But that's not really how it's supposed to work! A man has to chain her bracelets together!
/pedantry

The Holliday Girls to the rescue!

Wonder Woman and Steve are put before a firing squad, and:

Why comment? No snark is equal to it.

Yeah, these Man's World men are constantly trying to weld my bracelets together too. You'd think I'd just stop wearing heavy iron bracelets all the time, seeing as how all the men out here carry welding kits and chains around with them at all times just in case the situation comes up.

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	aaron_bourque 2009-07-23 11:31 pm UTC (link)
	. . . . White robed people beating slaves(?) with sticks. . . . . Not happy. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	dr_hermes 2009-07-24 12:41 am UTC (link)
	Imagine Marston writing a book about the American Civil War... all that unpleasantness could have been avoided if the slaves had learned to submit to loving authority and find real happiness. He had a twisted outlook. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	fredneil.livejournal.com 2009-07-24 02:06 am UTC (link)
	The key word there is "loving." Somehow, I can't think of the slaveowners of that era as being loving or having the best interests of their slaves in mind. ("Keeping them alive so they work enough for me to make a profit," doesn't count) (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

dr_hermes
2009-07-24 02:27 am UTC (link)

The masters' concept of "loving" is whatever they want it to be. "I'm doing this for your own good," "you need that rebelliousness beat out of you." Very few people ever think of themselves as cruel or abusive, they're just doing what needs to be done.

In the real world and not Marston's fantasies, "loving authority" figures would be corrupted unless they themselves were supervised. I notice he never has a message of young women becoming independent, thinking for themselves, making their own decisions... traits we see as desirable.

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fredneil.livejournal.com
2009-07-24 02:57 am UTC (link)

Actually, he does have that message fairly frequently.

Whether the masters would say they were being loving or not is irrelevant, they wouldn't actually BE loving. That's the difference. However they rationalized it, they still would be acting in their own interest and not that of the slaves. Marston makes that distinction, he doesn't simply say that all submission is good. In his version of things, the masters exist to make the slaves happy as much or more than the slaves exist to make the masters happy, so I really doubt that he would apply his theories about "loving submission" to the civil war. I suspect he'd be horrified if anyone did so and, if they did so in a Woody Allen movie, he'd tell them "you know nothing about my work."

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dr_hermes
2009-07-24 03:19 am UTC (link)

I'd say the flaw in his philosophy is that people could be trusted to be "loving authority" without being watched themselves, and do what was in the best interest of slaves they had power over. That's as much a fantasy as anything else in the comic. And it's just such an awful message to be sending to impressionable young readers, submit and give up independence and you'll be happy. Are there any Marston stories where Wonder Woman encourages someone to think for themselves, are we just getting all these posts about subjugation?

It reminds me so much of the ending of CS Lewis' THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH where the Pendragon enlightens a young woman that her marriage has been troubled because she never seriously tried to "obey" as in her wedding vows.

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psychop_rex
2009-07-24 05:27 am UTC (link)

I think what he met was that people who were already loving should practice loving authority, while those who were hateful and full of aggression should submit to it, thereby spreading the love, as it were. This would seem to be backed up by the fact that it never seems to be a good thing when the villains chain people up, but when the Amazons do it, it's the bee's knees.

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dr_hermes
2009-07-24 09:06 am UTC (link)

That might be one way to read it. But it sure looks like a message of Dis-Empowerment. "Obey. Submit. Do what you're told. The people in charge know best."I'm surprised more readers don't see it as a form of oppression. That scene with Etta on her throne supervising corporal punishment sure looks like a scene with the villain abusing captives and you expect the hero to crash in and rescue the victim.

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fredneil.livejournal.com
2009-07-24 06:26 pm UTC (link)

It looks that way to you (I'm guessing, since I don't know a thing about you) since that's your frame of reference. While not knowing anything about Marston's private life, either, I'd also guess that his personal experiences with being submissive were of a kind when it was to "loving authority" who really did have his best interests in mind, rather than despotic authority who wanted to use him as tool for their own interests. More mistresses than slaveowners, in other words.

As for messages of empowerment in Wonder Woman, I think some scenes like that were posted recently.

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dr_hermes
2009-07-24 08:54 pm UTC (link)

It's also possible that Marston felt a lot of guilt over something or enjoyed being humiliated for whatever reason (he "deserved" it). Or possibly this was all his fantasy written out and nothing like this really went on in his life-- an awful lot of escapist fiction is like that.

I'm sure there have been many messages of empowerment and self-realization in WONDER WOMAN since at least the 1970s (however well done or not). And maybe all these scans focussing on imprisonment and punishment are giving a wrong impression.

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psychop_rex
2009-07-24 09:16 pm UTC (link)

Well, except in this case, Marston had the 'people in charge' be the people who were decidedly NOT in charge back then - women. From what I've read, Marston preached submission to women as a form of feminism - he saw it as an extension of obeying your mother, courting your girlfriend, keeping a harmonious relationship with your wife; all things which were ultimately to the benefit of both sides. Those, he was saying, are some of the more meaningful influences on men's lives, and if we'd just learn to accept them as such, to submit to those who genuinely have our best interests at heart, we'd be a far less dysfunctional society. (Of course, he was also a genuine bondage freak; there's no doubt about it - but at least he had a solid psychological underpinning for it.)
As for Etta on the throne, that's just an extension of the crazy stuff that normal sororities do - dressing up like babies, that sort of thing.

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dr_hermes
2009-07-24 09:56 pm UTC (link)

That's the clearest explanation of Marston's agenda I've seen, thanks. It's still very one-sided; the idea that submittting to those you think have your best interests in mind still rings false. There were and are plenty of mothers, wives and girlfriends with domineering selfish attitudes; giving yourself over to being controlled by those individuals would be disastrous. (Just as advising women to passively do whatever their husbands said because they were lord and master was as wrong). And women may not not have been in charge in public office or professions in 1940, but let's be honest- there were plenty of marriages where the wife was the boss and she kept it that way. The meek henpecked husband was just as real and as common as the over-controlling type.

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psychop_rex
2009-07-24 10:05 pm UTC (link)

Well, no one ever said that Marston was SUBTLE. Anyway, he was blessed, by all accounts, with a very loving relationship with both his wife and mistress, who lived together with him in a polyamorous set-up that was perfectly harmonious (the wife and mistress stayed together for the rest of their lives after his death), so his perspective on these matters may have been skewed a bit.

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dr_hermes
2009-07-24 10:37 pm UTC (link)

And to be fair, Marston isn't explaining his views in a textbook here (where he could go into depth). It was after all a Golden Age comic book that had to contain a certain amount of action and work at a level a ten year old could follow. So I shouldn't take WW II-era WONDER WOMAN as offering a full insight into Marston, any more than I could understand Jack Cole's suicide by looking for clues in PLASTIC MAN.

I'm glad the discussion has been so civil. Certainly I don't share all of the general outlook of the community here, but I do love old comics and their creators, so there's a certain overlap. In any case, it's always rewarding to learn from different viewpoints without things getting heated.

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