The Secret History of Wonder Woman

by Jill Lepore

  In 1920, Peter began working for the commercial art firm Louis C. Pedlar, Inc., with offices at 95 Madison Avenue. “He has been added to our staff because of his wide experience as a black and white artist, and a colorist of infinite imagination,” the company announced.17 By 1925, Peter and Fulton were living in a house they’d bought on Staten Island. It doesn’t seem as though they ever had any children, nor is it certain whether Adonica Fulton Peter continued to work as an artist.18 In the 1930s, commercial art, like every other business, fell slack. Hard times led Peter to comic books. To Wonder Woman he brought, among other things, experience drawing suffrage cartoons.

  Harry G. Peter, “House Cleaning Day,” Judge, February 6, 1915, from Judge’s suffrage page (illustration credit 23.6)

  Right when Marston and Peter must have been meeting with Gaines and Mayer to talk about what Wonder Woman ought to look like, a new superhero made his debut. Captain America.19 He quickly became Timely Comics’ most popular character.

  Captain America Comics #1 (March 1941) (illustration credit 23.7)

  Marston wanted his comic book’s “under-meaning,” about “a great movement now under way—the growth in the power of women,” to be embodied in the way Wonder Woman carried herself, how she dressed, and what powers she wielded. She had to be strong, and she had to be independent. Everyone agreed about the bracelets (inspired by Olive Byrne’s): it helped Gaines with his public relations problem that she could stop bullets with them; that was good for the gun problem. Also, this new superhero had to be uncommonly beautiful; she’d wear a tiara, like the crown awarded at the Miss America pageant. Marston wanted her to be opposed to war, but she had to be willing to fight for democracy. In fact, she had to be superpatriotic. Captain America wore an American flag: blue tights, red gloves, red boots, and, on his torso, red and white stripes and a white star. Like Captain America—because of Captain America—Wonder Woman would have to wear red, white, and blue, too. But, ideally, she’d also wear very little. To sell magazines, Gaines wanted his superwoman to be as naked as he could get away with.

  Peter got his instructions: draw a woman who’s as powerful as Superman, as sexy as Miss Fury, as scantily clad as Sheena the jungle queen, and as patriotic as Captain America. He made a series of sketches. Then he sent them to Marston.

  “Dear Dr. Marston, I slapped these two out in a hurry,” Peter wrote, sending along sketches, in color pencil, of Wonder Woman wearing a tiara; bracelets; a short skirt, blue with white stars; sandals; and a red bustier with an American eagle spread across her breasts. He explained, “The eagle is tough to handle as when in perspective or in profile he doesn’t show up clearly—the shoes look like a stenographer’s. I think the idea might be incorporated as a sort of Roman contraption. Peter.”

  Marston wrote back, adding his notes to the drawing. “Dear Pete—I think the gal with hand up is very cute. I like her skirt, legs, hair. Bracelets okay + boots. These probably will work out.” Drawing an arrow to the fussy, delicate sandals, he added, “No on these!” Eyeing her bare midriff, he asked, “Don’t we have to put a red stripe around her waist as belt?”20

  A Fourth of July Varga Girl, Alberto Vargas, Esquire, July 1942 (illustration credit 23.8)

  Later, it seems, Marston made another suggestion. What if Wonder Woman were to look more like a Varga girl, one of the pin-up girls drawn by Alberto Vargas that appeared every month in Esquire (a magazine Marston regularly wrote for). The Varga girl, introduced in Esquire in October 1940, was long-legged, slender, and open-mouthed. She wore her hair down, her nails polished, her legs bare, and barely any more clothing than what a swimsuit covers. Wonder Woman, with her kinky boots, looks as though she could have been on a page of Esquire’s annual pin-up calendar. The Varga girls were just this side of allowable, by the standards of the 1940s: in 1943, the U.S. Post Office declared that Esquire contained material of an “obscene, lewd, and lascivious character.”21 Wonder Woman would run into the same kind of trouble.

  Harry G. Peter, Wonder Woman design, 1942 (illustration credit 23.9)

  Peter sent Marston another drawing, in pen, ink, and watercolor. Wonder Woman, carrying her lasso, wears red boots instead of sandals, blue short shorts instead of a skirt, a tight-fitting red halter top with white lapels, and a belt marked “WW.” Marston liked the boots and the short shorts. But he had doubts about the top. “This collar may become dated,” he wrote on the drawing.22 Her costume is very close to that worn by the Fourth of July Varga girl from 1942.23 Wonder Woman, as Peter eventually drew her, looks very unlike any of his earlier drawings of women. She’s less a Gibson girl than a Varga girl, with a great deal of Lou Rogers added in: the suffragist as pin-up.

  From “The Origin of Wonder Woman,” Wonder Woman #1 (Summer 1942) (illustration credit 23.10)

  Peter worked under Marston’s direction. Marston’s control over the final product is suggested in the scripts themselves. Marston dictated page layouts, panels, and color choices. Below a caption to read, “Captain Steve Trevor, brilliant young officer in the Army Intelligence Service, crashes while flying over lonely seas and disappears in a smother of mist and foam,” Marston explained what Peter should draw: “Trevor’s plane nose diving into a sea covered with heavy mist, a fountain of water splashes up where the plane hits. Trevor’s figure thrown clear of the plane, is falling head down, arms and legs waving helplessly, beside the plane into the sea.” The final panel shows exactly that. (Marston suggested that Trevor should cry out, as he falls, “No hope of rescue here—this is the end!” That was cut, either by Peter or by Mayer.)24 Marston’s scripts include instructions, too, for the other artists working with Peter, letterers and colorists, like this one: “W.W. is tossing him a purple bottle of tablets—color artist take note!”25

  Once Marston and Gaines agreed on Wonder Woman’s look and Mayer approved the script, Peter set to work drawing a nine-page story called “Introducing Wonder Woman.” From the start, she was a woman of mystery: “With a hundred times the ability and strength of our best male athletes and strongest wrestlers, she appears as from nowhere to avenge an injustice or right a wrong! As lovely as Aphrodite—as wise as Athena—with the speed of Mercury and the strength of Hercules—she is known only as Wonder Woman, but who she is, or whence she came, nobody knows!” (Marston hid his own identity, too, publishing Wonder Woman under the name “Charles Moulton,” a pseudonym made up of Maxwell Charles Gaines’s middle name and his own.)

  In “Introducing Wonder Woman,” Marston and Peter covered their character’s backstory in a two-page spread. To the kids who read comic books, it was an entirely new story. But it came straight out of the pages of the feminist utopian fiction of the 1910s. Hippolyte recounts for her daughter, Diana, the history of the female race:

  In the days of Ancient Greece, many centuries ago, we Amazons were the foremost nation in the world. In Amazonia, women ruled and all was well. Then one day, Hercules, the strongest man in the world, stung by taunts that he couldn’t conquer the Amazon women, selected his strongest and fiercest warriors and landed on our shores. I challenged him to personal combat—because I knew that with my MAGIC GIRDLE, given to me by Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, I could not lose.

  Hercules, defeated, contrives to steal Hippolyte’s magic girdle, and all of the Amazons become the slaves of men, shackled and fettered, until, with Aphrodite’s aid, they escape, flee Greece, and settle on Paradise Island. “For it was Aphrodite’s condition that we leave the man-made world and establish a new world of our own!” Hippolyte tells Diana. “Aphrodite also decreed that we must always wear these bracelets fashioned by our captors, as a reminder that we must always keep aloof from men.”

  Their peace is interrupted when Captain Steve Trevor crashes his plane onto the island. “Danger again threatens the entire world,” Aphrodite tells Hippolyte. “The Gods have decreed that this American army officer crash on Paradise Island. You must take him back to America—to help fight the forces of hate and oppression.” Athena, the go
ddess of wisdom and war, agrees. “Yes, Hippolyte, American liberty and freedom must be preserved! You must send with him your strongest and wisest Amazon—the finest of your wonder women!”

  Hippolyte stages a tournament to find the strongest and wisest Amazon. Diana wins. “And so Diana, the Wonder Woman, giving up her right to eternal life, leaves Paradise Island to take the man she loves back to America—the land she learns to love and protect, and adopts as her own!” Her mother stitches for her a red, white, and blue costume.26

  In Wonder Woman, Marston created a character to answer every one of the comic-book critics’ objections. She’s strong, but she’s not a bully: “At last, in a world torn by the hatreds and wars of men, appears a woman to whom the problems and feats of men are mere child’s play.” She hates guns: “Bullets never solved a human problem yet!” She’s relentless, but she always spares her victims. “Wonder Woman never kills!” Above all, she believes in the United States: “America, the last citadel of democracy, and of equal rights for women!”27 Wonder Woman left Paradise Island to fight fascism with feminism.

  Wonder Woman made her debut in “Introducing Wonder Woman” in All-Star Comics #8, which appeared on newsstands in the fall of 1941 and stayed there through the end of its cover date of December 1941–January 1942, just when the United States was entering what would become the most fatal war in the history of the world. On December 12, 1941, five days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Marston wrote a letter to FDR. “Dear Sir,” he began. “I have the honor to offer you my services in any military or civilian capacity where my training and experience as a lawyer and psychologist may be of use, for the duration of the war.” He felt he could contribute in a number of ways: “I respectfully suggest that my most useful qualification in the present emergency is that of an expert in lie detection.” Marston, who had conducted research for the army during the First World War, wanted to sign up to serve in the second. He enclosed with his letter to the president a copy of his 1938 book, The Lie Detector Test, along with his entry in Who’s Who. He added, “I am also a lawyer, writer, public speaker, advertising and personnel adviser and am experienced in writing and directing publicity.” He didn’t mention that he was the creator of Wonder Woman. He signed off: “With my personal pledge of loyalty and devotion to the greatest cause on earth.”28

  The White House forwarded Marston’s letter to the FBI. No one ever called on Marston to serve. Instead, Leonarde Keeler and his commercial polygraph were put to use in the war effort, first in the interrogation of POWs and then in the screening of American staff and scientists working on the atomic bomb. During the Second World War, passing a lie detector test became an essential step in obtaining U.S. national security clearance, a de facto loyalty oath. Between police interrogation, employee fidelity tests, prisoner-of-war interrogations, and security clearances, deception tests were given to millions of people in the United States over the course of the war, despite the fact that the test wasn’t used anywhere else in the world and doesn’t actually detect deception, as had been the conclusion of a study conducted by the National Research Council as early as 1941.29

  Marston fought the war not with his lie detector but on the pages of his comic books. In “Who Is Wonder Woman?,” published in Sensation Comics in January 1942, Wonder Woman leaves Paradise Island and flies to the United States in her invisible plane, bringing the injured and bandaged Steve Trevor along in a stretcher. In Washington, she fights off gangsters and outraces automobiles. To keep an eye on Steve, she trades places with a nurse in a military hospital. The nurse, “drab Diana Prince,” happens to look exactly like her. (In another version of this backstory, Wonder Woman complains about being a nurse: “In Amazonia, I’m a doctor.”)30 Then Diana Prince leaves off nursing and becomes a secretary at U.S. military intelligence. She takes excellent dictation and is an extremely fast typist. “Diana types with the speed of lightning!”31

  Olive Byrne was a super-fast typist, too. Wonder Woman wore her bracelets. And in the big, noisy house at Cherry Orchard, it was Olive Byrne who pounded out Marston’s early scripts.

  “Typed article for Bill,” she wrote in her diary in 1941. “Super woman 48 pages!!!”32

  She is known only as Wonder Woman, but who she is, or whence she came, nobody knows!

  THE JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA

  IT SEEMED TO CHARLIE GAINES like so much good, clean, superpatriotic fun. But in March 1942, the National Organization for Decent Literature put Sensation Comics on its blacklist of “Publications Disapproved for Youth.” The list was used in local decency crusades: crusaders were supposed to visit news dealers and ask them to take titles off their shelves.1 Wonder Woman was banned.

  Censoring children’s literature, like banning the discussion of contraception, had been among the many crusades waged by Margaret Sanger’s nemesis, Anthony Comstock. In 1884, when Comstock was campaigning against obscenity, he also attacked dime novels in a book called Traps for the Young. “Our youth are in danger,” Comstock warned. “Mentally and morally they are cursed by a literature that is a disgrace to the nineteenth century.”2 In the 1930s, in much the same spirit, a committee of Catholic bishops had formed the Legion of Decency to protest sex, nudity, and violence in motion pictures, printing lists of church-approved films. But just as one evil was suppressed, another cropped up: comic books, a medium that borrowed its forms of storytelling from cinema. In 1938, the committee of Catholic bishops founded the National Organization for Decent Literature, whose position was that comic books were a disgrace to the twentieth century.3

  In 1942, when the latest list came out, Gaines wrote a letter to Bishop John F. Noll. “While I am pleased to see that comic magazines as a whole have been eliminated from this N.O.D.L. list,” Gaines wrote, “I am, of course, rather concerned that ‘Sensation Comics’ was included.” He reminded the bishop of the impeccable credentials of the members of his editorial advisory board. He had just one question.

  “Would you be good enough to advise me, at your earliest convenience, which of the five points in your ‘Code for Clean Reading’ has been violated by anything which appears in ‘Sensation Comics’?”4

  “Practically the only reason for which ‘Sensation Comics’ was placed on the banned list of the N.O.D.L. was that it violates Point Four of the Code,” the bishop wrote back. “Wonder Woman is not sufficiently dressed.”5

  Gaines didn’t much mind that objection; nor did it require much of a response. He wasn’t about to put more clothes on Wonder Woman. And he was determined not to abandon her. Instead, he had plans for her to join the Justice Society.

  The Justice Society of America, a league of superheroes, held its first meeting in All-Star Comics #3, in the winter of 1940, with nine founding members: the Flash, Hawkman, the Spectre, the Sandman, Doctor Fate, Hourman, Green Lantern, and the Atom. “Each of them is a hero in his own right, but when the Justice Society calls, they are only members, sworn to uphold honor and justice!”6

  The Justice Society was a good way to both promote established superheroes and try out new ones before giving them more pages or their own titles. Superman and Batman were honorary members; they didn’t have to show up unless the situation was dire. In the summer of 1941, in All-Star Comics #6, the Flash was promoted to honorary Justice Society membership, too, making way for Johnny Thunder to become a regular.7 Wonder Woman’s debut, “Introducing Wonder Woman” in All-Star Comics #8, came in an issue that included a Justice Society story in which Green Lantern became an honorary member; Hourman took a leave of absence; Dr. Mid-Nite and the Starman became members; and Hawkman was elected chairman.8

  There was a lot of turnover at the Justice Society, but there had never been a female member. As soon as Wonder Woman made her debut, Gaines ordered his writers and artists to find a place for her in the next adventure of the Justice Society. Wonder Woman makes her first appearance not as an elected member but “as a guest star in a national emergency,” in All-Star Comics #11. The national emergency is
, of course, the entry of the United States into the war: once the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, all the members of the Justice Society decided to join the armed services.

  “I’m going to enlist in the U.S. Army!” announces Hawkman. “You’ll have to get another chairman!”

  Hawkman enlists as his alter ego, an archaeologist named Carter Hall. Eventually, though, he decides to reveal himself to his commanding officer. “I’m the Hawkman and part of your squadron!” Then he flies to a steamship en route to the Philippines, where he meets Diana Prince; he recognizes her instantly.

  “Diana Prince—why, you must be Wonder Woman!”

  “Why, how did you know?”

  “The Justice Society manages to learn many things!”

  Diana changes into her Wonder Woman costume and joins the fight. “Wonder Woman reporting for duty, sir!” she tells a U.S. Army officer after capturing some enemy soldiers. “Here are some Japs I caught!”9

  Gaines had more plans for his girl star. In Sensation Comics #5, he included a special offer: free copies of the next issue of the magazine to the first thousand readers who filled out a ballot and mailed it to the editor. Influenced by the rise of public-opinion polling, Gaines conducted this sort of survey all the time, both to gauge his audience and to promote his comics. The survey asked which of six superheroes ought to be part of the Justice Society: Wonder Woman, Mr. Terrific, Little Boy Blue, the Wildcat, the Gay Ghost, or the Black Pirate?10

  The results of the Justice Society readers’ poll, taken in 1942