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A review by barrybj
Wonder Woman: The Golden Age Omnibus, Volume 1 by Various
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
slow-paced
3.75
i have no clue how to rate this. I've had a real fascination this past year for golden age comics, mostly reading them online as they arent exactly accessible, but I found this collection at the library and had to pick it up. Wonder Woman is probably the one of the main three that I know the least about, shes probably the least utilized (for no reason i'm sure) and has limited appearances in film (I wonder why) and didn't get her own show like batman and superman (a mystery!) which kind of left her and her deeper lore out in the cold.
This was definitely fascinating, watching the comic shift. It starts with a pretty strong identity in issue 1, with minor changes to lore and art and some recurrent characters joining over time. They really had a formula down by just a handful of issues in, by the end you could almost feel Marston growing bored with it as he does these strange "future stories" three or four issues in a row. The issues on paradise island or centered around Marstons version of greek mythology were always the most fun and interesting.
The fetish content was...WAY more than I was told of. There's the heavy BDSM imagery, heavy on bondage and submission and definitely a fixation on femdom and female domination over man. what I did not know about was the heavy roleplay (lots of animal costumes) and heavy hypno stuff and a few hints of foot fetishism. Its presence isnt unique to wonder woman, but its in-your-faceness and the variety shown is definitely something I haven't seen to this level in my other golden or silver age dives. You can tell that Marston was deeply involved with the scene because one or two issues felt more that he was venting about kink scene politics and his personal beliefs around submission rather than writing an actual story, i would kill to know who he was vagueing.
Another fact about this book and golden age comics in general is the intense and extremely casual racism, particularly anti asian/anti japanese racism. The art is particularly revolting, but the writing is just...revolting. The anything goes attitude towards treatment of any country that is seen as an "enemy of the us" is not something that has changed even a little bit, cape comics are actually a great way of following the flexible hatred of america as they're such an exaggerated medium that are centered around american militarism and violence. Chinese characters are not portrayed kindly here, but they are shown as allies and as capable and kind in a way that you are not likely to see today as the US has spent the last 20 years building an enemy out of china. This stuff, the nasty stuff, doesnt just go away either. To understand the characters, you can't just dismiss things like this as "of their time" because their impact, especially at such an early time in the world of cape comics, will and has stuck around as the formulaic and cyclical nature of comics never really lets anything die.
This was definitely fascinating, watching the comic shift. It starts with a pretty strong identity in issue 1, with minor changes to lore and art and some recurrent characters joining over time. They really had a formula down by just a handful of issues in, by the end you could almost feel Marston growing bored with it as he does these strange "future stories" three or four issues in a row. The issues on paradise island or centered around Marstons version of greek mythology were always the most fun and interesting.
The fetish content was...WAY more than I was told of. There's the heavy BDSM imagery, heavy on bondage and submission and definitely a fixation on femdom and female domination over man. what I did not know about was the heavy roleplay (lots of animal costumes) and heavy hypno stuff and a few hints of foot fetishism. Its presence isnt unique to wonder woman, but its in-your-faceness and the variety shown is definitely something I haven't seen to this level in my other golden or silver age dives. You can tell that Marston was deeply involved with the scene because one or two issues felt more that he was venting about kink scene politics and his personal beliefs around submission rather than writing an actual story, i would kill to know who he was vagueing.
Another fact about this book and golden age comics in general is the intense and extremely casual racism, particularly anti asian/anti japanese racism. The art is particularly revolting, but the writing is just...revolting. The anything goes attitude towards treatment of any country that is seen as an "enemy of the us" is not something that has changed even a little bit, cape comics are actually a great way of following the flexible hatred of america as they're such an exaggerated medium that are centered around american militarism and violence. Chinese characters are not portrayed kindly here, but they are shown as allies and as capable and kind in a way that you are not likely to see today as the US has spent the last 20 years building an enemy out of china. This stuff, the nasty stuff, doesnt just go away either. To understand the characters, you can't just dismiss things like this as "of their time" because their impact, especially at such an early time in the world of cape comics, will and has stuck around as the formulaic and cyclical nature of comics never really lets anything die.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism