World Famous Comics: Wonder Woman: The Complete History
Wonder Woman: The Complete History
By: Les Daniels Publisher: Chronicle Books Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Chronicle Books Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 208 Publication Date: April 06, 2004
Product Description: Follow the Amazon Princess as she evolves from curiosity to feminist icon in the Eisner Award-winning Wonder Woman: The Complete History. This book is filled with enough archival comic book art, photographs, and in-depth history to satisfy the most demanding fan -- and is now priced to appeal to the most casual reader.
Amazon.com Review: There can't be many people who haven't heard of Wonder Woman, arguably the first female superhero and one of the "big three" (the others being Batman and Superman). She was created by Dr. William Moulton Marston, who also invented the lie detector, as an antidote to masculine comic book adventures, drenched in violent testosterone-fueled imagery and portraying women as helpless weaklings who had to rely on the men to untie them from the train tracks in the nick of time. Wonder Woman was certainly no weakling. Dressed in stars and stripes, armed with bullet-deflecting bracelets and a magical lasso, and flying around in an invisible jet, she had no qualms about saving her boyfriend Steve Trevor from certain doom each issue while dealing a swift blow to the odd Nazi soldier as well. However, most people who aren't die-hard comic fans will have only memories of the camp and kitschy 1970s TV show, starring the leggy and beautiful Lynda Carter (who also contributes the book's foreword). As compelling and faithful as this small-screen adaptation was, there is so much more to the WW mythology than that, as Les Daniels admirably proves in this gorgeous hardback volume. It features lots of covers and extracted scenes from the comic books, from her earliest appearance to her latest 1990s image changes, and plenty of photographs of the plethora of WW merchandise created over the years. And for those of you old enough to remember the TV show, the lyrics of the infamous theme song are also here in all their star-spangled glory. This is a wonderful, nostalgic journey through the life and times of the first lady of superheroes and a real appreciation of WW's staying power and campy cult status. Beautifully packaged, absorbingly written, and wonderfully illustrated, this is a must-have for comic fans. --Jonathan Weir, Amazon.co.uk
"The Complete History of Wonder Woman" an Excellent Comic Book History Book "The Complete History of Wonder Woman" by Lee Daniels was a great book. It gives the full history of the character from the beginning up to the present when the book was written a few years ago. Of course, the newly started current "Wonder Woman" series is not covered in this book.
This book also gives a history of the creator of Wonder Woman, Dr. William Moulton Marsdon who went by the pen name "Charles Moulton." which used to appear at the beginning of each "Wonder Woman" story in the 1940's and early 1950's when Dr. Marsdon was writing the series.
Dr. William Moulton Marsdon was a psychologist graduated from the Harvard School of Psychology. He was writing a newspaper column at the time and wrote an article taking about the negative influence and negative effects comic books can have on the psychological development of children reading them.
Max Charles Gaines (M.C. Gaines, publisher of the then DC Comic's subsidiary comic book publishing company, "All American Comics" read this article and contacted Dr. Marsdon. He offered Dr. Marsdon a position at the company to review the comic books they were going to publish to look for anything that may be considered or looked at as being psychologically detrimental for children to read.
Later M.C. Gaines asked Dr. Marsdon if he would like to try creating a comic book series and writing it. Dr. Marsdon agreed. Wonder Woman was first introduced in "All Star Comics" in the Justice Society of America, a group of mystery men/superheroes who each appeared in their own series in the various comic book titles put out by "All American Comics." Wonder Woman was introduced as a new member who was gong to be the secretary for the Justice Society of America. This was to act as an introduction to the original "Wonder Woman" comic book series which began as the lead feature in "Sensation Comics." Soon after, Wonder Woman was given her own full title comic book.
Dr. Marsdon went under the pen name "Charles Moulton" that appeared in the title page at the beginning of each Wonder Woman story back then. "Charles" was M.C. Gaines middle name and "Moulton" was Dr. Marsdon's middle name."
Dr. Marsdon was still writing his newspaper column and did not want his real name to appear on the Wonder Woman stories.
Dr. Marsdon was a proponent of Women's Rights believing that one day women will indeed come to lead the world. Also back then, due to the war (World War II) with the men off at war, women were now being urged to join the work force to help the war effort in working in factories to produce war time products and others things that the country needed. "Rosie the Riveter" became a character used on posters to promote the cause.
"Wonder Woman" was also an attempt to tap into the young female comic book readers of the time, howeever, young boys and the G.I.'s in the military at the time during World War II were the majority of the readers of Wonder Woman.
You can read the original stories of "Wonder Woman" written by the creator Dr. William Moulton Marsdon going under the pen name "Charles Moulton" in DC Comics hardcover volumes of "Wonder Woman Archives": Wonder Woman Archives, Vol. 1 (DC Archive Editions) and Wonder Woman Archives, Vol. 2 (DC Archive Editions) and Wonder Woman Archives, Vol. 3 (DC Archive Editions) and Wonder Woman Archives, Vol. 4 (DC Archive Editions) and Wonder Woman Archives, Vol. 5 (DC Archive Editions). In addition, you can also look into "Wonder Woman: Teh Complete First Season" TV series DVD set that stared Linda Carter and Lyle Wagner: Wonder Woman - The Complete First Season . The first season is based on the original Wonder Woman series created and written by Dr. William Moulton Marsdon which take place in the 1940's during World War II. The second and third seasons put Wonder Woman in present day times working secretly as Special Agent Diana Prince for the U.S. Government under her superior Steve Trevor.
It is interesting to know that Dr. Marsdon was married and also had a mistress. All three lived together with the kids Dr. Marsdon had from both women.
Dr. Marsdon also did studies on sadomasochism. He claimed that dark hair women seem to have more of a tendency to be dominant, as opposed to blonde women who were more apt to lean towards being of a submissive nature. Ironically, later on in the 1950's Dr. Fredrick Werthan, a psychologist who crusaded against comic books and their adverse influence on the youth of America who read them. He convinced U.S. Estrus Trafalgar to hold a Senate Committee to study and inquire into the threat of comic books on the youth of America. Dr. Wertham wrote in his book, "Seduction of the Innocent" that Wonder Woman tended to foster sadomasochistic behavior in children.
Anther interesting fact is that later on Dr. Marsdon and his son went on to create the polygraph machine, the lie detector. This is considered ironic in that one of the properties of Wonder Woman's magic lasso is to compel people who are ensnared in it to tell the truth.
Dr. Marsdon continued to work on writing Wonder Woman until his death from cancer.
After Marsdon's death, Publisher M.C. Gaines gave over Wonder Woman to Editor Robert Canniger who totally had no idea what to do with the character or the series. M.C. Gaines was supposed to have helped him, however, that weekend, he died in a boating accident.
What also happened is that the conservative element in this country companied about the feminist bent of the Wonder Woman stories and so that was done away with or no longer talked about.
Canniger decided to try to appeal to young female comic book readers and so introduced more romance and aspects from romance/love comic books with regards to the relationship between Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor.
Steve Trevor wanted to marry Wonder Woman, but she would tell him that she could not at the moment because of her mission in the world as Wonder Woman. As Diana Prince, she began to experience doubts and insecurities wondering if Steve Trevor was attracted to her just because of being Wonder Woman and wondered if Steve Trevor would love her if she was just plain Diana Prince to which Steve Trevor never paid attention to Diana Prince in that way.
Robert Canniger also introduced monster, dinosaurs and elements of science fiction in which were at the height of their popularity in movies and comic books some of the Wonder Woman stories.
As with Superboy which were "The Adventure of Superman When He Was a Boy" and the Superbaby stories, the adventures or misadventures of Superman when he was a baby, Canniger decided to do stories featuring "Wonder Girl," the adventures of Wonder Woman when she was a girl, and also "Wonder Tot," the adventures of Wonder Woman as a baby. That's right Wonder Girl originally began as being Wonder Woman when she was younger. A young Steve Trevor would also occasionally appear in the stories. Throwing off the original continuity of the series. Later on "Wonder Girl" and "Wonder Tot" were became beings of their own, Wonder Woman's younger sisters.
If you would like to read the stories of Wonder Woman done under Editor Robert Canniger at DC Comics durng the later 1950's and earlly 1960's, you acn look into the paperback volumes of DC Comics "Showcase Presents Wonder Woman": Showcase Presents: Wonder Woman, Vol. 1 and Showcase Presents Wonder Woman Vol. 2 (Wonder Woman (Graphic Novels)) and Showcase Presents: Wonder Woman Vol. 3 .
"The Complete History of Wonder Woman" also goes on to talk about how in the late 1950's due to dropping sales figures, writer Denny O'Neil was brought in to take over Wonder Woman to revamp the character and the series. The Amazons call Wonder Woman to return to Paradise Island to inform her that they are shifting the island into another dimension where they can rest and recuperate their tired and worn Amazon powers. However, with Steve Trevor in trouble again, Wonder Woman tells them that she cannot go with them. Wonder Woman then has to give up her Amazon powers along with her costume, magic lasso and bracelets, and her invisible plane. She is brought back to the U.S. as plain Diana Prince. She meets this blind elderly Asian man named I-Chang who mystically senses as to who she really is. He offers her to train her in the ways of martial arts to compensate for eh loss of her Amazon powers. Diana Prince basically becomes a sort of take off on the character "Emma Peal" from the 1960's TV series, "The Avengers." Feminist Gloria Stynum wrote a letter to DC Comics to express her disapproval of this.
Steve Trevor was also later killed off at this point of the series.
If you would like to look into the stories of this new revamped version of "Diana Prince: The New Wonder Woman" by Denny O'Neil from the late 1950's and early 1970's, you can look into the volumes of these DC Comics trade-backs: Diana Prince: Wonder Woman - Volume 1 (Wonder Woman (Graphic Novels)) and Diana Prince: Wonder Woman VOL 2 (Wonder Woman (Graphic Novels)) and Diana Prince: Wonder Woman Vol. 3 (Wonder Woman (Graphic Novels))Diana Prince: Wonder Woman Vol. 4 (Wonder Woman (Graphic Novels)).
There is a lot more in this book. I highly recommend that you read this book on the complete history of Wonder Woman.
Les Daniels is no fan of Wonder Woman I have always enjoyed Les Daniels and his carefully researched books of comics history, but everyone has a blind spot. Wonder Woman is obviously his. This book, beautifully designed as it is, fails to capture what has made Wonder Woman such an enduring character and icon. It's clear on almost every page, Daniels is unimpressed by her. It's fine if he doesn't like her -- no one character can be everyone's favorite -- but it does make for a frustrating read at times when one wishes to celebrate Wonder Woman's unique place in comics history. His fascination with her creator is evident to the point that it seems clear Daniels would much rather write about Marston than Diana. His heavy emphasis on the bondage subtext of the Golden Age incarnation undercuts the more postive surface elements of those stories. Indeed, he sneers at Gloria Steinem's endorsement of those early years, casting great disbelief that there could be anything of substance taken from them.
Also, as another reviewer points out, Daniels gives short shrift to George Perez's post-Crisis revamp. Widely acknowledged by fans as the high point of her modern career, it's strange to see Daniels blandly note the support Perez got from female collegues in overhauling Wonder Woman's character and deride it by calling the later issues akin to ADVENTURES OF MENOPAUSAL MOM (I'm paraphrasing but only slightly). Daniels here suffers from the same fanboy syndrome that infuses the industry these days -- the idea that if HE doesn't appreciate it, it must be terrible. Meanwhile, Mike Deodato's art is viewed favorably, despite that being universely considered a lower point in the post-Crisis stories.
At the end of the book, it really seems as if Daniels only reluctantly churned it out because of a contractual obligation. His Superman and Batman books are excellent and filled with total respect for the characters and their appeal. If only he could've retained enough objectivity for the Wonder Woman assignment. Despite it all, it is a beautiful book and the history is thorough and still fascinating if somewhat subjective. Good for historical nuts, not so good for WW fans.
Mostly Wonderful Les Daniels' Wonder Woman: The Complete History is the third book in a 3-volume series (the first two addressed Superman and Batman). While not without its flaws, it's overall a well-researched and enjoyable treatment of the character.
Wonder Woman first appeared in 1941, the brainchild of Dr. William Moulton Marston (writing under the pen name Charles Moulton), by any standard a bit of a weirdo who's remembered today for two things: (1) he invented the polygraph, (2) Wonder Woman, of course.
I could pick a few nits with Daniels' text. In places he does reveal an ignorance on certain topics. For instance, when speaking of Marston's World War I U.S. Army service, he states Marston "rose to the rank of second lieutenant." False. No officer (and I can't imagine someone of Marston's high educational level ever being an enlisted man) "rises" to Second Lieutenant because that's the absolute lowest officer rank.
Daniels is extremely opinionated. How much space is allocated to any of Wonder Woman's creative teams over the decades is very much controlled by how much Daniels likes their work. Obviously the Marston stories, with artwork by Harry G. Peters, are his favorites thus receive the most attention, though he devotes surprising time and positive comment to the generally despised stories written by Robert Kanigher. This is fine. Half the fun of a book like this is getting the writer's likes and dislikes on the character and her creators. Where I part company with Daniels is his low opinion of the George Perez stories of the mid-1980s thru early '90s. Daniels devotes an entire chapter to Kanigher's creation of such fascinating (hah!) characters as Glop (a "shapeless mass of grinning goo from outer space [which] absorbed everything in its path including 100 rock 'n' roll records"), Wonder Tot ("Mommy be proud to see me now!"), and Egg Fu (a Chinese Communist agent inexplicably shaped like an egg the size of a house, who used his mustaches as weapons and had a Charlie Chan speech pattern). After that, it was more than a little disappointing to have the Perez stories, considered by many Wonder Woman fans including myself the character's finest hour (especially the stories on which Perez did the artwork in addition to scripting) dealt with in a mere seven text pages, much of that explaining how they weren't really all that hot.
The only truly major flaw in this book involves its layout. These days, book publishers are terrified of the Internet. And well they should be. However, instead of focusing their efforts on what books do better that the 'net - provide one, continuous, uninterrupted stream of information - publishers' response has been to make their book pages look as much as possible like web pages. Lots of bright colors, lots of sidebars. I hate sidebars. I don't appreciate having to flip back and forth between pages, sometimes reading blocks of text in four or five different locations, to get all the info. More to the point in this particular book, choice of color on some of the sidebars is extremely poor, so much so it's difficult to read the text. Black lettering against a dark blue or dark red background just doesn't make it.
With those few negatives out of the way, this book is a delight. It's all here: a biography of Marston, on to the creation of Wonder Woman, all the creative teams of note and their storylines up til this book's publication date (2000), the Cathy Lee Crosby made-for-television movie, the Lynda Carter TV show, Wonder Woman merchandise, her appearance on the cover of Ms. magazine's first issue, etc. This book is a must-have for fans of one of the 20th/21st Century's most fascinating fictional creations.
Fun book but a couple mistakes... First off, loved the book. It was nice to read the comments from Lynda Carter and see the multitude of changes that WW has gone through. But I did notice two things, the actress that played Wonder Woman's mother in that tiny demo in the 60's was named Maudie Pricket and the photo of Ms. Carter's costume says it is from the first season and it's not, it's from the CBS years as are the bracelets and tiara on the following page. I know Ms. Carter preferred the CBS years updated costume but the original on worn while fighting Nazis in the more humorous years will always be my absolute favorite! Thanx...
Excellent and enlightening Wonder Woman: The Complete History is a delightful book for fans of the character, even if you only know her from the old TV show. The background of her creation by a clinical psychologist was very enlightening.
The illustrations throughout are excellent and all in all, it's terrific book, exceptionally well written by Les Daniels.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Trevor
