Number 629


Guilty pleasure


The original Wonder Woman is a real guilty pleasure for me. I like it for the very reasons others probably hate it. It was one of a kind. No one could imitate this strip and its grotesque artwork by Harry G. Peter. (Max Gaines, the original WW publisher, tried it with the character Moon Girl, drawn by Sheldon Moldoff, without much success.) Wonder Woman and her friends and enemies inhabit a bizarre universe. The closest I can come to it is Chester Gould's Dick Tracy, a strip which also existed in its own grotesque reality. Both the early writing on Wonder Woman by William Moulton Marston and the art by H. G. Peter, who outlived Marston, are eccentric enough that even if you hate it, you've got to call Wonder Woman a unique comic.

This story was originally to be published in Sensation Comics, but didn't see print until 1974 with its appearance in The Amazing World Of DC Comics #2. Marston, under his pen-name, Charles Moulton, isn't credited. Marston died in 1947 and I believe both editing and writing chores were taken over then by Robert Kanigher.