by Hanley, Tim
Wonder Woman #53—“Fashions of the Far East”
Wonder Woman #54—“Swing Your Partner!”
Wonder Woman #55—“Those Rings on Your Finger”
Wonder Woman #56—“Women in War”
Wonder Woman #57—“Her Crowning Glory”
Wonder Woman #58—“Those Lovely Liberty Belles”
Wonder Woman #59—“Background to Stardom”
Wonder Woman #60—“With This Ring …”
These ten essays included two about fashion, two about dancing, two about jewelry, one about hairstyles (“Her Crowning Glory” is about hair, not crowns), and one about becoming a movie star. Now, while many boys enjoy dancing and fashion and the like, these were topics aimed squarely at young girls.
Two of these essays didn’t quite fit this format: “Women in War” was about warrior queens, and “Those Lovely Liberty Belles” discussed the need for women in the armed forces. However, “Those Lovely Liberty Belles” made sure to point out that a woman in the armed services “can wear her hair in bangs or a chignon, and she can wear nail polish,” adding hairstyles and fashion to the mix.*
By and large, the essays continued in this manner from then on. There was the occasional essay on the Leaning Tower of Pisa or umbrellas, but dancing and perfume and jewelry and dolls were the types of topics that dominated the feature. This isn’t to say that those topics were bad; there’s nothing inherently wrong with learning about different hairstyles throughout history. There’s just a stark juxtaposition between “Wonder Women of History” telling the reader about the first female doctor or Nobel Prize–winning scientist and “Your Favorite Color” offering readers some tips on what colors of clothing best matched their hair and complexion. The subtext couldn’t be more different.
A close look at May 1954’s Wonder Woman #66, the last issue where “Wonder Women of History” appeared, gives us a sense of the extra features in this era:
The inside cover featured a strip from the National Social Welfare Assembly called “Binky Says: Welcome Amigo!” that taught children to be kind and welcoming to Mexican immigrants.
There was a half-page strip titled “Broken Engagements!” that showed superstitions about what could break off an engagement, like a woman putting cream in her coffee before the sugar or sitting on a table while talking to her fiancé.
A full-page strip called “Clothing of Fortune!” was also about superstitions. The reader learned how doing up your buttons wrong would lead to bad luck all day, and that it’s important for a girl to take off a garment when a tear needs to be mended “lest she lead a threadbare existence the rest of her life.”
Another full-page strip, “Wedding Forecast,” provided some “sooth-saying” suggestions for how to tell when and who you’ll marry, such as pulling out enough strands of your hair to match your age, and then burning them one by one until you see a vision of your future husband.
The next strip was “Romantic Notions …,” and it provided even more marriage-related superstitions. For example, you shouldn’t marry someone whose last name starts with the same letter as yours because “If you change the name and not the letter, you change for the worse and not the better.”
There was a two-page essay on “The Dazzling Dolls,” a history of doll collecting from ancient Rome to Belgium and China. It said that “psychologists tell us that little girls love dolls because of an innate mother instinct” and suggested that this desire to play with dolls and pretend to be a mother “is nature’s way of preparing them for their future roles in life.”
Buried at the very back of the book was the one-page “Wonder Women of History” strip on Gail Laughlin. We very succinctly learn how Laughlin earned a law degree, met President Coolidge to argue for equal rights, fought for women’s suffrage, and argued a case before the Supreme Court. There were no tips on how to get a man, though.*
If you take out “Wonder Women of History,” which they did the very next issue, you can see that marriage and children were the main focus of the extra features by the mid-1950s. The informative essays became pro-domesticity propaganda, and the humor strips disappeared entirely. Interestingly, these new romance-centric strips had the same style as “Wonder Women of History,” with realistic art and more narration than speech balloons, giving the superstition-laden strips the appearance of the same weight and factual value as the tales of women’s historical achievements. As the Silver Age began, these random strips evolved into regular features that dominated the extra materials in Wonder Woman.
The Silver Age
The Silver Age of superhero comic books began around 1956, and by that time the essay feature of Wonder Woman was nearly out the door. It lasted for a few more years, discussing stereotypically “girly” topics, but its page count dropped from two to one, and it made a final appearance in Wonder Woman #115 in July 1960. The title was “Maids of the Manor,” and the essay discussed the amusements available to ladies in eleventh-century France and the hard working conditions for the wives and daughters of serfs. From the timing, it seems that the essay section was cut in favor of the series’ new letter column, which had just premiered in the issue previous. Once the essays were gone, superstitious strips ruled the extra features in Wonder Woman.
They premiered in Wonder Woman #52 in March 1952, with the half-page strips “Leap Year Proposals” and “Ancient Beauty Secrets.” In their early appearances they seemed like filler, short pieces to take up half a page while an advertisement filled the rest. There weren’t any regular strips initially, though thematically they were all similar, dealing with traditions and superstitions surrounding marriage and romance, fashion, jewelry, or beauty. After they began, every issue of Wonder Woman for over a decade contained at least one of these strips.
Soon each strip was an entire page, and some became semi-regular features. One of the first regular strips began with “Strange Beliefs About Wedding Gowns” and continued with this motif. “Strange Beliefs About Gloves,” “Strange Romantic Beliefs,” and “Strange Romantic Customs” followed. The first feature with a regular title was “Gems of Destiny,” which was about various precious stones and historical pieces of jewelry. It first appeared in Wonder Woman #68 in August 1954, with information about moonstones, diamonds, pearls, and opals. While both the “Strange” strips and “Gems of Destiny” appeared sporadically, at most once a year, soon there was another strip that became a constant presence in the book: “Marriage a la Mode.”
“Marriage a la Mode” was published consistently after its first appearance in October 1954’s Wonder Woman #69. The first strip was a full page and described several marriage traditions and superstitions, including the fact that “one of the important duties of the best man at a wedding in Wales was to give the bride a daintily cut piece of bread and butter, with the expectation that it would induce her children to have pretty and small mouths.” The feature appeared in fifty-four of the next seventy-two issues of Wonder Woman, sharing wedding folklore from all over the world.
For all intents and purposes, “Marriage a la Mode” was the new “Wonder Women of History.” It premiered three issues after “Wonder Women of History” ended, had a similar art style and format, and was the only regular feature in Wonder Woman after the essays ended. The layout for “Marriage a la Mode” was very consistent: each strip contained four panels that showed four different wedding traditions. Ultimately, that added up to well over two hundred different bits of wedding folklore. They covered a wide range of marriage-related topics, from traditions about proposals, ceremonies, and attire to superstitions concerning the success of the marriage, wealth, and children. “Marriage a la Mode,” along with “Marriage Charms,” “Lucky Brides,” “Hope Chest,” “Wedding Notions,” “Future Mates,” “Dream Sweetheart,” “Romantic Rings,” and scads of other strips placed a strong focus on love, marriage, and starting a family.
An issue that well captured this era is Wonder Woman #116, the first issue without an essay and thus th
e first issue where strips accounted for all of the book’s extra features:
First up was “Marriage a la Mode.” We learned about the silver compote of sweets that “Moslem” couples enjoy on their wedding night, how on Borneo a Dyak boy initiates courtship by carrying a load of wood for a girl, that in ancient Japan the bride shaved off her eyebrows “to symbolize her subservience to her husband,” and finally that two suitors wrestle for the right to marry a woman on “Mombasa Island, Somaliland.”
The next strip was “New Moon Superstitions,” with a tip for women who have just moved into a new house: when she first sees a new moon, she needs to rush to the bedroom and make up the bed with fresh sheets. This keeps misfortune from her home.
The only thing that stopped the dominance of these marriage-centric strips was the National Social Welfare Assembly’s public service strips. In “Superman Says: Lend a Friendly Hand,” we learn that it’s important to be a good neighbor to refugees, even if they don’t speak English and don’t know how to play ball.
Though there were fewer extra features by the 1960s due to lowered page counts and increased advertisements, there was nothing to counterbalance the marriage and domesticity messages that dominated the strips. Not even Wonder Woman offered much of a different perspective.
By 1963, “Marriage a la Mode” and the other strips appeared less frequently. When Wonder Woman was revamped in 1968, these strips had become sporadic at best, down to just three or four appearing every year, and the revamp ended them for good. “Marriage a la Mode” appeared twice after the mod revamp and made its last appearance in Wonder Woman #191 in November 1970, discussing how in Madagascar the bride’s father performed the marriage ceremony by cracking a coconut on the groom’s head. The Bronze Age marked the end of extra features in DC Comics’ series as a whole, and the main story and advertisements became the sole content of their books.*
*“Code Pluto No. 8” simply means to go back eight letters, so A is S, B is T, C is U, etc. This message translates to: “Your first line of defense is the line at the window selling stamps and bonds!”
*According to her posthumously published autobiography, she became a spy. Her former lover was a Swiss banker, and she used him to track down Nazi financial data until she was eventually shot by a Nazi agent. She survived and recovered from that too.
*Greene was one of the few African American artists working in comics during the Golden Age. He drew nine strips for “Wonder Women of History.”
†QUIZ INTERLUDE: Try to guess all twenty women based on the professions listed here, and the full list will be in a footnote later on in the chapter. Some are more obvious (the sharpshooter, the saint, and the aviator) while others are tough (the missionary, any of the astronomers).
*The bizarre ending of the article reads: “Those of us who love a parade will love it just a little bit more to view column after column of those lovely Liberty Belles smartly marching down the street.” Apparently, the author was looking forward to ogling female military officers.
*The feature was near an advertisement for a FREE set of ten stamps featuring portraits of Adolf Hitler, which promised that if you ordered them, “your friends will envy you for it and want to buy the set from you.” Why they were having trouble selling Hitler stamps is hard to say … you’d think they would fly off the shelves. Wonder Woman #66 was a weird issue.
*The “Wonder Women of History” quiz answers: Astronomers (3): Annie Jump Cannon, Caroline Herschel, Maria Mitchell. Authors (3): Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Fanny Burney, Hannah Adams (though if you guessed Hannah More, give yourself a point). Aviators (2): Amelia Earhart, Harriet Quimby. First Ladies (2): Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison. Lawyers (2): Gail Laughlin, Myra Colby Bradwell. Nobel Laureates (2): Jane Addams, Marie Curie. Journalist: Nelly Bly. Missionary: Mary Slessor. Opera Singer: Jenny Lind. Saint: Joan of Arc. Sculptor: Vinnie Ream Hoxie. Sharpshooter: Annie Oakley.
PART 2
The Silver Age
4
A Herculean Task
The Golden Age Wonder Woman was ahead of her time, much like Rosie the Riveter in presenting a symbol of what women could become but weren’t allowed to be. The masses of women who entered the workforce during World War II got a taste of a different life, but it was only temporary. While surveys showed that 80 percent of female wartime workers wanted to continue working in their new field once the war was over, nearly all of them were let go when the men returned. The world returned to the status quo, with a renewed focus on domestic roles for women. Wonder Woman, Rosie the Riveter, and women workers ultimately became important touchstones for women’s rights, but in the immediate postwar era their strength and independence had little lasting effect. The young girls who grew up with these role models eventually launched the women’s liberation movement, but they had to get through the 1950s first.
After Marston’s death in 1947, the writing duties of Wonder Woman and Sensation Comics went to Robert Kanigher. Before he worked in comics, Kanigher had written for various media, even publishing a book entitled How to Make Money Writing in 1943. He joined DC Comics in 1945 as both an editor and a writer and created new characters like Black Canary, Rose and Thorn, and the Harlequin while writing for Hawkman, Green Lantern, and other books. Kanigher also filled in for Marston a few times when he was ill, writing a handful of Wonder Woman stories.
Once he took over the book, Kanigher edited and wrote Wonder Woman for over twenty years, but until 1958, Kanigher’s work on Wonder Woman was basically a poor Marston impression.* He didn’t continue Marston’s feminist or fetishist themes with any detail, but his stories were clear attempts to ape Marston’s style. H. G. Peter stayed on the book for several years as well, continuing his distinctive look. It wasn’t until Wonder Woman #98 that Kanigher made the book his own, along with the series’ new penciller, Ross Andru, and inker, Mike Esposito.
Andru and Esposito’s modern style was a big change from Peter’s old-fashioned art. Peter’s work was compact and uniform, and it felt very flat, especially toward the end of his run when Peter was getting old and the art was churned out by committee. Andru and Esposito used different perspectives and angles to communicate the action of a scene, and their work more resembled contemporary comic book art than Peter’s unique but dated style.
Wonder Woman #98 marked a clear break from the Marston-influenced run on the book. It was followed seven issues later by Kanigher’s brand-new origin story for Wonder Woman. Aspects of Kanigher’s new Wonder Woman were very much a product of DC Comics’ Silver Age approach to superheroes, and this approach was born out of the ashes of this chaotic decade.
Prelude to the Silver Age
When World War II ended, so too did the superhero boom. After Superman premiered in 1938, superhero comics had dominated the comic book industry, but the end of the war also meant an end to the desire for costumed heroes. Many books were canceled, and superheroes began to disappear. At DC Comics, Flash Comics and Green Lantern both ended in 1949, and the last adventure of their superhero team, the Justice Society of America, was published in 1951. Timely Comics’ Human Torch and Namor the Sub-Mariner both ended in the late 1940s, and attempts to revive the characters throughout the 1950s routinely failed. Even Captain Marvel, who regularly had the top-selling comic book during the war, faced a staggering drop in sales. The decreasing profitability of the character was a major factor in Fawcett’s decision to settle DC Comics’ copyright infringement lawsuit and shut down its comic book division in 1953.
By 1954, only three superheroes still had comic books. Superman and Batman both survived the superhero collapse and starred in two books each, as well as costarring in a third, World’s Finest. Wonder Woman also survived, but only with her self-titled series. Comic Cavalcade changed its format in 1948 and ended a few years later, and Sensation Comics was canceled in 1952.
Nothing better exemplifies the shift in the comic book market than the fate of Captain America. He had been hugely popular during the war but ran int
o the same sales decrease that rocked the genre in the late 1940s. Just before his series, Captain America Comics, was canceled, Timely Comics changed the name to Captain America’s Weird Tales and tried to salvage the book as a horror series. The revamp failed and the series was canceled in 1950; Captain America didn’t even appear in its final issue. Throughout the industry, horror, crime, and suspense comic books became the new hot genres.
Coincidentally, the most infamous publisher of horror and crime comics had direct ties to Wonder Woman. In 1944, National Comics officially merged with All-American Publications to form DC Comics, and Harry Donenfeld bought out All-American’s publisher, Max Gaines. Gaines left the publisher, taking only Picture Stories from the Bible with him, and formed a new company he called Educational Comics. When Gaines died in a boating accident in 1947, his son, William, took over.
Bill Gaines, as he was better known, had a very different vision for the company. He changed the name to Entertaining Comics and found a slew of writers and artists with distinctive styles and a taste for the macabre. EC Comics began to publish several horror comic books, most famously Haunt of Fear, Tales from the Crypt, and Vault of Horror, all of which featured gruesome and frightening artwork.* EC also had a strong stable of crime and suspense series, including Crime SuspenStories, Shock SuspenStories, Two-Fisted Tales, and Weird Stories. They were all luridly illustrated and presented shocking tales of horrific crimes, revenge, and violence.
EC Comics wasn’t the only publisher of such series; nearly every company still in the business in the early 1950s had some horror or suspense comic books on the newsstands, but no one did it quite like EC. Despite its numerous imitators, EC remains the gold standard for horror and suspense comic books to this day. In fact, the art of EC Comics is often heralded as some of the most innovative and influential art to ever appear in comic books. However, in the 1950s these sensationalistic comic books faced a slew of very powerful critics.
