Creation

In an October 25, 1940, interview conducted by former student Olive Byrne (under the pseudonym 'Olive Richard') and published in Family Circle, titled "Don't Laugh at the Comics", Marston described what he saw as the great educational potential of comic books (a follow up article was published two years later in 1942.[5]) This article caught the attention of comics publisher Max Gaines, who hired Marston as an educational consultant for National Periodicals and All-American Publications, two of the companies that would merge to form the future DC Comics.

In the early 1940s the DC line was dominated by superpowered male characters such as the Green Lantern, Batman, and its flagship character, Superman. According to the Fall 2001 issue of the Boston University alumni magazine, it was his wife Elizabeth's idea to create a female superhero:

"William Moulton Marston, a psychologist already famous for inventing the polygraph (forerunner to the magic lasso), struck upon an idea for a new kind of superhero, one who would triumph not with fists or firepower, but with love. 'Fine,' said Elizabeth. 'But make her a woman.'[6]"

Marston introduced the idea to Max Gaines, cofounder (along with Jack Liebowitz) of All-American Publications. Given the go-ahead, Marston developed Wonder Woman with Elizabeth (whom Marston believed to be a model of that era's unconventional, liberated woman).[7] In creating Wonder Woman, Marston was also inspired by Olive Byrne, who lived with the couple in a polygamous/polyamorous relationship.[8] Marston's pseudonym, Charles Moulton, combined his own and Gaines' middle names.

In a 1943 issue of The American Scholar, Marston wrote:

"Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don't want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman."

Development

Marston used a pen name that combined his middle name with that of Gaines to create Charles Moulton. Marston intended his character, which he called "Suprema", to be "tender, submissive, peaceloving as good women are," combining "all the strength of a Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman." His character was a native of an all-female utopia who became a crime-fighting U.S. government agent, using her superhuman strength and agility, and her ability to force villains to tell the truth by binding them with her magic lasso. Her appearance, including her heavy silver bracelets (which she used to deflect bullets), was based somewhat on Olive Byrne.

Editor Sheldon Mayer replaced the name "Suprema" with "Wonder Woman", and the character made her debut in All Star Comics #8 (December 1941). The character next appeared in Sensation Comics #1 (January 1942), and six months later, Wonder Woman #1 debuted. Except for four months in 2006, the series has been in print ever since, and now appears bi-monthly. The stories were initially written by Marston and illustrated by newspaper artist Harry Peter. During his life Marston had written many articles and books on psychological topics, but his last six years of writing were devoted to his comics creation.

William Moulton Marston died of cancer on May 2, 1947 in Rye, New York. After his death, Elizabeth and Olive continued to live together until Olive's death in the late 1980s; Elizabeth died in 1993, aged 100.

Themes

Marston's Wonder Woman is often cited as an early example of bondage themes entering popular culture: physical submission appears again and again throughout Marston's comics work, with Wonder Woman and her criminal opponents frequently being tied up or otherwise restrained, and her Amazonian friends engaging in frequent wrestling and bondage play (possibly based on Marston's earlier research studies on sorority initiations). These elements were softened by later writers of the series. Though Marston had described female nature as submissive, in his other writings and interviews he referred to submission to women as a noble and potentially world-saving practice, leading ideally to the establishment of a matriarchy, and did not shy away from the sexual implications of this:

"The only hope for peace is to teach people who are full of pep and unbound force to enjoy being bound ... Only when the control of self by others is more pleasant than the unbound assertion of self in human relationships can we hope for a stable, peaceful human society. ... Giving to others, being controlled by them, submitting to other people cannot possibly be enjoyable without a strong erotic element".[9]

About male readers, he later wrote: "Give them an alluring woman stronger than themselves to submit to, and they'll be proud to become her willing slaves!"[10]

Bibliography

Doctoral Dissertation: "Systolic blood pressure symptoms of deception and constituent mental states." (Harvard University, 1921)

Books

* (1999; originally published 1928) Emotions of Normal People. Taylor & Francis Ltd. ISBN 0-415-21076-3

* (1930) Walter B. Pitkin & William M. Marston, The Art of Sound Pictures. New York: Appleton.

* (1931) Integrative Psychology: A Study of Unit Response (with C. Daly King, and Elizabeth Holloway Marston).

* (c. 1932) Venus with us; a tale of the Caesar. New York: Sears.

* (1936) You can be popular. New York: Home Institute.

* (1937) Try living. New York: Crowell.

* (1938) The lie detector test. New York: Smith.

* (1941) March on! Facing life with courage. New York: Doubleday, Doran.

* (1943) F.F. Proctor, vaudeville pioneer (with J.H. Feller). New York: Smith.

Journal Articles

* (1917) "Systolic blood pressure symptoms of deception." Journal of Experimental Psychology, Vol 2(2), 117–163.

* (1920) "Reaction time symptoms of deception." Journal of Experimental Psychology, 3, 72–87.

* (1921) "Psychological Possibilities in the Deception Tests." Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 11, 551–570.

* (1923) "Sex Characteristics of Systolic Blood Pressure Behavior." Journal of Experimental Psychology, 6, 387–419.

* (1924) "Studies in Testimony." Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 15, 5–31.

* (1924) "A Theory of Emotions and Affection Based Upon Systolic Blood Pressure Studies." American Journal of Psychology, 35, 469–506.

* (1925) "Negative type reaction-time symptoms of deception." Psychological Review, 32, 241–247.

* (1926) "The psychonic theory of consciousness." Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 21, 161–169.

* (1927) "Primary emotions." Psychological Review, 34, 336–363.

* (1927) "Consciousness, motation, and emotion." Psyche, 29, 40–52.

* (1927) "Primary colors and primary emotions." Psyche, 30, 4–33.

* (1927) "Motor consciousness as a basis for emotion." Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 22, 140-150.

* (1928) "Materialism, vitalism and psychology." Psyche, 8, 15–34.

* (1929) "Bodily symptoms of elementary emotions." Psyche, 10, 70–86.

* (1929) "The psychonic theory of consciousness—an experimental study," (with C.D. King). Psyche, 9, 39–5.

* (1938) "'You might as well enjoy it.'" Rotarian, 53, No. 3, 22–25.

* (1938) "What people are for." Rotarian, 53, No. 2, 8-10.

* (1944) "Why 100,000,000 Americans read comics." The American Scholar, 13 (1), 35-44.

* (1944) "Women can out-think men!" Ladies Home Journal, 61 (May), 4-5.

* (1947) "Lie detection's bodily basis and test procedures," in: P.L. Harriman (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Psychology, New York, 354-363.

* Articles "Consciousness," "Defense mechanisms," and "Synapse" in the 1929 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.