Comics expert Noah Berlatsky takes us on a wild ride through the Wonder Woman comics of the 1940s, vividly illustrating how William Marston's many quirks and contradictions, along with the odd disproportionate composition created by illustrator Harry Peter, produced a comic that was radically ahead of its time in terms of its bold presentation of female power and sexuality.
William Marston was an unusual man—a psychologist, a soft-porn pulp novelist, more than a bit of a carny, and the (self-declared) inventor of the lie detector. He was also the creator of Wonder Woman, the comic where he expressed two of his greatest passions: feminism and women in bondage. Noah Berlatsky takes us on a wild ride through the Wonder Woman comics of the 1940s, showing how Marston and illustrator Harry Peter came together to create a fictional universe that celebrated female empowerment and queer sexualities.
