Sad News out of Connecticut tonight as family members confirm that Moulton “Pete” Marston, son of Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston and one of the last living links to one of the twentieth century’s most fascinating pop culture creations, passed away on Wednesday, January 18, at the age of 87.
He was the eldest of four children fathered by Marston, who had another child with Pete’s mother, Elizabeth, as well as two children with their common-law wife, Olive Byrne. The four kids grew up together although Pete was unaware that two of his playmates were actually his half-siblings. Byrne insisted that the children, and anyone else who asked, be told that she was a widow. Nevertheless the truth started to trickle out over the years and growing up Pete and his siblings were often ostracized by their peers over their parents polyamourous lifestyle. Despite this he remained on good terms with his parents and would often serve as a steadying force in an eccentric household–he would often chauffeur guests home from one of his father’s wild parties when they’d had too much to drink. After his father’s death in 1947, his mother tasked him with delivering the obituary to the New York Times, and following Byrne’s death in the 1980s he lived with his mother until her passing in 1993.
In 1999 he discovered Ebay and became an avid collector of Wonder Woman merchandise, eventually opening a museum in his home in Bethel where he hosted fans from around the world. He also made occasional appearances at fan conventions and participated in Wonder Woman related documentaries. He is survived by his daughter, Christine Marston Holland.
Some sad news for Wonder Woman fans, it appears he was the last of Marston’s kids left alive which means that Joye Murchison is the last living link to Wonder Woman’s early original run as the golden age of comic books recedes further into memory.
Christmas came early this year! DC Rebirth Holiday Special references the kinky “Diana’s Day” story from Wonder Woman #3 of William Moulton Marston’s original run, it also happens to be the single greatest Wonder Woman story ever published! True fact.
I’m taking this as canon confirmation that Rebirth Diana is just as into lesbian bondage as her Golden Age counterpart. Nobody can tell me otherwise!
In honor of Wonder Woman’s 75th Anniversary here is a summary of the key people responsible for creating the world’s most beloved superheroine, and some facts about their own fascinating lives. (Click on a photo to put names to faces.)
Top Photo–The Marston Family
William Moulton Marston: He was an anomaly among the great comic creators, where they were typically young he was well into his forties when he created Wonder Woman, they were Jewish he was Protestant, their families were new to America where his had been among the Puritan settlers who arrived in the 17th century. He was born into an old New England family, and like all the good sons of old New England families did in those days, he went to Harvard. His freshmen year was marred by a severe depression that eventually left him contemplating Suicide. Only by chance did he discover the passion for psychology that reinvigorated him. It was also during this time that he discovered a passion for feminism.
At Harvard he devised an early version of the lie detector that he spent the next few decades of his life promoting. He also used the lie detector to research human emotions with his wife, Elizabeth, and their common law wife, Olive Byrne. Through this research he formed the psychological theories that became the bedrock of his comic books. He theorized that women had more submissive natures than men and that this in turn made them more compassionate and peaceful. He saw the future of the world as depending on women gaining complete political, social, and economic control over the world. His radical beliefs and living arrangements got him laughed out of academia, but by chance he was hired by one of the publishers that would become DC Comics. At first he was to serve as an editorial adviser to the comics but eventually he got a chance to write his own comic, and the rest is history.
Marjorie Wilkes Huntley: She first met Marston during his brief stint in the army during WWI. She became a frequent presence in his life as well as Elizabeth and Olive. She later said that she, Marston and Elizabeth formed a “threesome,” and when she visited the family after Marston’s death she often shared a bed with Elizabeth. (She was never as close to Olive, who considered her “a lunatic.”) In the 1920s Huntley introduced the Marston threesome to a New Age religion built around notions of free love and women’s sexual power. Meetings were conducted in the nude and focused on ideal sex practices between the Mistress and her submissive partner. Even after the cult broke up she continued to visit the Marstons, burning incense in their attic and assisting with production of the comic books. An ardent feminist until her dying day, in her nineties she moved into a nursing home and hung a poster on her wall that read “When God made man She was only joking.” She passed away in 1986.
OK then without further ado I’m out. Got off to a bit of a late start because I forgot last night that I had my birthday dinner today. Anyway, if you’re reading this it means I’ve logged out of this account and I’m not coming back. Real life has simply become to busy for me to maintain this blog.
In case it wasn’t clear, I am NOT deleting. Everything will be here, it just won’t be updated and messages won’t be answered (or even read).
For any new visitors–The search bar is your best bet to find anything. If that isn’t helping then you should try looking for a specific issue, they’re tagged by the following format:
Wonder Woman #9 is tagged as ww 9
Sensation Comics #1 = sc 1
Comic Cavalcade #12 = cc 12
etc. etc.
Hopefully you’ll find what you’re looking for, and thanks for stopping by. I’ve put a lot of work into this blog and I’m proud of the results, I hope you enjoy it.
William Moulton Marston is a really interesting character there’s a lot of dramatic potential in his story. On the one hand his living arrangements necessitate secrecy but at the same time he’s constantly chasing the spotlight even as it damaged his career and reputation. It’s easy to laugh at his theories about women ruling the world but he really believed in them otherwise he would’ve abandoned them. On some level I think he always just wanted people to admit he wasn’t a freak for living the way he did or having the desires he had. Hence why his psychological manifesto is called Emotions of Normal People.
Elizabeth and Olive are really interesting too. Like Olive was the unwanted child of Ethel Byrne and her aunt was Margaret Sanger, both of them were birth control activists. So in other words, Olive was the unwanted child of a woman who dedicated her life to making sure there were no more unwanted children–how do you think that affected her psyche? Her mother eventually came back into her life and introduced her to her social circle which was primarily composed of communists, homosexuals, and other Greenwich Village radicals. Then at college she began an affair with a professor and eventually moved in with him and his wife even though it meant essentially removing herself from history since their living arrangements would have to be secret.
And Elizabeth was this liberated career woman who was often the family’s sole breadwinner. According to family legend, she’s the one who told her husband the new superhero he was creating would have to be a woman. But at the same time when she learned her husband was cheating on her she had to decide if she was willing to share her life with his mistress, and trust her to raise her child so she could go to work, and then eventually she developed her own special bond with said mistress.
There’s a lot of potential in this movie, I can’t wait to see how it turns out.
Robinson is a lesbian[1] and frequently deals with gay and lesbian topics in her films.
So after my first bout of excitement faded I got worried that the movie would be exploitative of Marston and his family because of the poly thing. I got a little calmer when I saw a woman’s name for the director but still worried because straight women are just as bad as straight men when it comes to queer issues so I looked up the director and lo and behold my prayers were answered.
I’m so relieved, this story really does demand a gay or queer woman to tell it best, Elizabeth and Olive will be treated with the respect they deserve.
Angela Robinson is directing the drama, which has begun production.
According to the announcement, the logline is as follows:
In a superhero origin tale unlike any other, this is the true story of 1940s Harvard psychologist Dr. William Moulton Marston, the inventor of the lie detector and creator of the iconic Wonder Woman, who defends his feminist superhero against charges of ‘sexual perversity’ while at the same time maintaining a secret that could have destroyed him. Unknown to others, Marston’s inspiration for Wonder Woman was his wife Elizabeth Marston and their lover Olive Byrne, two empowered women in the field of psychology who defied convention, building a secret life together with Marston that rivaled the greatest of superhero disguises.
SEE I TOLD YOU IT WAS THE GREATEST MOVIE NEWS EVER!!!! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA OF HOW LONG I’VE DREAMED OF THIS?!?!?
OK then without further ado I’m out. Got off to a bit of a late start because I forgot last night that I had my birthday dinner today. Anyway, if you’re reading this it means I’ve logged out of this account and I’m not coming back. Real life has simply become to busy for me to maintain this blog.
In case it wasn’t clear, I am NOT deleting. Everything will be here, it just won’t be updated and messages won’t be answered (or even read).
For any new visitors--The search bar is your best bet to find anything. If that isn’t helping then you should try looking for a specific issue, they’re tagged by the following format:
Wonder Woman #9 is tagged as ww 9
Sensation Comics #1 = sc 1
Comic Cavalcade #12 = cc 12
etc. etc.
Hopefully you’ll find what you’re looking for, and thanks for stopping by. I’ve put a lot of work into this blog and I’m proud of the results, I hope you enjoy it.
So as I’ve said before, that review was my last post for this blog. It’s been great but I just don’t have the time anymore or the materials to post. I’ll be back on this account one more time tomorrow night around 7 ET to get a few things in order and then I’ll be logging out for good. So if there are any questions or clarifications you have this is the last chance to send them in.
So as I’ve said before, that review was my last post for this blog. It’s been great but I just don’t have the time anymore or the materials to post. I’ll be back on this account one more time tomorrow night around 7 ET to get a few things in order and then I’ll be logging out for good. So if there are any questions or clarifications you have this is the last chance to send them in.
The first time the DC Trinity appeared together was in an advertisement for Wonder Woman’s upcoming newspaper strip. In the ad Superman and Batman (the only other heroes with such a strip) stand over a newspaper welcoming the Amazon as she leaps into frame. Few superheroes at the time made the leap from comic books to other media, no woman hero had ever done it. The deal with the prestigious King Features Syndicate (part of William Randolph Hearst’s media empire) was a major victory for William Moulton Marston and his psychological theories. The strip would broaden his readership considerably, especially with readers who were too old to buy comic books.
Unfortunately, the triumph was short lived. The strip would be cancelled after less than two years, running in only a single paper by its end. The reason for its failure is not clear. It’s possible King Features didn’t know how to sell Wonder Woman (Batman and Superman’s strips were handled by McClure Syndicate, it’s not known why Wonder Woman wasn’t as well). New readers may have found her origin too dated. When she first appeared in late 1941 the idea of a mythical Amazon coming to help America win the war would have been very timely, but things had changed by 1944. While the allies were storming the beaches of Normandy, the Wonder Woman of the newspaper strip was still fighting the competition to bring Steve back to America. To readers just encountering the Amazon she might’ve seemed less a savior and more like that dinner guest who shows up two hours late. The most likely reason though may be the simplest--the newspaper strip wasn’t very good.
Much of Marston’s signatures--bondage, matriarchy, supervillains, lesbianism--are absent here. The format of a daily strip is limited and doesn’t allow for panel space to be utilized on anything that isn’t strictly necessary to advancing the plot, and plotting has never been Marston’s strong suit. While there is, of course, some bondage Marston doesn’t linger on it like he does in his comics. Occasionally Marston would lift a storyline from his comics and rework it for the strip, a process which only emphasizes how restrained everything is. A reworking of Wonder Woman #11 leaves Hypnota so toothless the character comes and goes without making any impression. When not lifted form the comics, stories typically focus on love triangles and racketeers, hardly the sort wild plots that make Marston’s comic books such delights. The one exception to this slump is a story adapted from Cheetah’s origin, which is reworked to include an elaborate sequence where Cheetah brainwashes the Holiday Girls into thinking they’re animals and forces them to dress up like them. It’s weird, it’s kinky, (it presents a strong possibility Wonder Woman was created by a Fury) it’s everything you could ask for from Marston.
The art fares a bit better. As the introduction notes, HG Peter got his start in newspaper and magazine illustration before getting into comics, so this marked something of a homecoming for the artist. His experience shows, as even with the limited panel space his art is always good and occasionally even excellent. Although you do miss the coloring from the comics, Peter does experiment with adding tones to some of the strips.
Also deserving praise is the book itself. It comes with a nice informative introduction laying out a brief history of the character and the strip. The strips themselves are presented clear and neat, three per page with each page indexing the dates the strips originally appeared in print.
Unfortunately, a good presentation doesn’t mean a whole lot if it doesn’t have anything worth presenting. The writing just isn’t there for these strips. Fans of Marston or Wonder Woman would be better off saving their money for the Golden Age Omnibus, or any of the other collections of Marston’s comics that have been published over the years.
