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marinessWilliam Moulston Marston was many things: a psychologist who took credit for inventing the lie detector machine, a failed academic who kept bouncing from school to school, a supporter of women's rights, a man who ended up in a happy triad, a man who insisted that his bondage activities were strictly scientific, and the creator of Wonder Woman.
Jill Lapore's recent book delves into a lot of this, and also into the history of the U.S. feminist and birth control movements. The third member of Marston's triad, Olive Byrne, happened to be a niece of birth control advocate Margaret Sanger. Byrne's mother went on hunger strikes to support the movement; this, and watching Marston write her books, made quite an impression on her. Much of the imagery of the early Wonder Woman comics - the breaking out of chains, the ropes, the lassos - came in part from early feminist cartoons, and in part from Olive Byrne. The bracelets Wonder Woman wears are hers.
That's all the nice scholarly part so that you can feel good about reading the book and that you learned something. The fun stuff is all of the gossipy stuff about Marston, his wife Elizabeth Holloway, his lover Olive Byrne, and the triad they set up and concealed. This includes great stuff about the way Marston used both of them to write little articles saying how amazing Marston was, the trials of running their household, since generally speaking only Holloway earned a reliable income, their kids, and oh yes, the bondage. Holloway, in many ways, took over the traditional role of the husband, Byrne functioned in the more traditional "wife" roles, while working as a freelance writer, and Marston continued to have issues. And Wonder Woman joined the Justice League as a secretary. (Reading that I became much more resigned to the current new 52 Wonder Woman/Superman relationship.)
It's a fascinating and lavishly illustrated read, if, somehow, a little sparse, especially once Marston died, and Wonder Woman was passed to other authors. Part of the problem is, as Lapore acknowledges, it's not really all that easy to figure out who wrote various issues of Wonder Woman - although the issues that featured a lot of chained up women tend to be Marston's. It's also fascinating to see the reactions of DC editors to all of this sort of stuff, and the way Marston left specific information in his scripts explaining just how long all of the chains had to be. (It was his thing.) Unfortunately, after Marston's death, we get a lot less of this behind the scenes creative stuff, which is a disappointment, but then again, Wonder Woman's later creators don't seem to have been as interesting, or as influential.
Jill Lapore's recent book delves into a lot of this, and also into the history of the U.S. feminist and birth control movements. The third member of Marston's triad, Olive Byrne, happened to be a niece of birth control advocate Margaret Sanger. Byrne's mother went on hunger strikes to support the movement; this, and watching Marston write her books, made quite an impression on her. Much of the imagery of the early Wonder Woman comics - the breaking out of chains, the ropes, the lassos - came in part from early feminist cartoons, and in part from Olive Byrne. The bracelets Wonder Woman wears are hers.
That's all the nice scholarly part so that you can feel good about reading the book and that you learned something. The fun stuff is all of the gossipy stuff about Marston, his wife Elizabeth Holloway, his lover Olive Byrne, and the triad they set up and concealed. This includes great stuff about the way Marston used both of them to write little articles saying how amazing Marston was, the trials of running their household, since generally speaking only Holloway earned a reliable income, their kids, and oh yes, the bondage. Holloway, in many ways, took over the traditional role of the husband, Byrne functioned in the more traditional "wife" roles, while working as a freelance writer, and Marston continued to have issues. And Wonder Woman joined the Justice League as a secretary. (Reading that I became much more resigned to the current new 52 Wonder Woman/Superman relationship.)
It's a fascinating and lavishly illustrated read, if, somehow, a little sparse, especially once Marston died, and Wonder Woman was passed to other authors. Part of the problem is, as Lapore acknowledges, it's not really all that easy to figure out who wrote various issues of Wonder Woman - although the issues that featured a lot of chained up women tend to be Marston's. It's also fascinating to see the reactions of DC editors to all of this sort of stuff, and the way Marston left specific information in his scripts explaining just how long all of the chains had to be. (It was his thing.) Unfortunately, after Marston's death, we get a lot less of this behind the scenes creative stuff, which is a disappointment, but then again, Wonder Woman's later creators don't seem to have been as interesting, or as influential.