Godly Attributes of Wonder Woman

Hi everybody!
I have already mentioned that the personal life of William Moulton Marston was closer to Charles Lindburgh's than to Amelia Earhart's. Moulton's unwavering focus on bondage in his WONDER WOMAN stories is his self-proclaimed legacy for that character. His position as a scientist, scholar and published author in an industry driven by adolescent drop-outs gave him unprecedented creative control over WONDER WOMAN comics.
Editor Sheldon Mayer gave Moulton a long leash that Moulton tugged-upon every issue. Moulton submitted his stories in typewritten full-script, including panel descriptions. This is a practice used by such comics masters as Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman or Alan Moore, but remains the rare exception and not the rule.
Moulton was well-schooled in mythology, having written a book on the subject, which explains his comfort with giving WONDER WOMAN a mythological origin. Compared to SHAZAM!, WONDER WOMAN was a completely mythological person wholly divorced from American qualities.
The gods that Moulton chose were a curious gang of four. HERCULES, who had killed his 3 children and his wife, and had raped Hippolyta and enslaved the Amazons. Really?
HERMES, god of trickery and of speed. What is heroic about that?
APHRODITE, goddess of beauty and sexual desire, material in starting the Trojan War. Sexy? Yes. Heroic? Not in the least!
What, exactly, was Moulton thinking in choosing these three?
I suspect that Moulton was going for the lowest common denominator!
WONDER WOMAN had to be strong enough to not be out-muscled by any man, HERCULES is strong, so there you go.
WONDER WOMAN had to be fast enough to chase down an automobile, HERMES is fast, problem solved.
WONDER WOMAN had to be attractive enough to not need to wear a mask, APHRODITE is beautiful, so instant Amazon supermodel. Come on!
But Moulton also subverted his choices of gods just as bluntly. Once her bracelets are bound, WONDER WOMAN lost her strength. After getting her Invisible Plane, who cares how fast that WONDER WOMAN was? By putting on a pair of glasses when Diana Prince, WONDER WOMAN hid her extraordinary beauty.
Every superhero with staying power needed more than one power, anyway. THE HULK is not only stronger than Hercules, he is invulnerable and can cover miles in one big leap. THE FLASH is not only faster than Hermes, he can also catch a bullet and race back into time. IVANKA TRUMP is not only as beautiful as Aphrodite, her father The Donald can fire anybody: now that's a superpower we could all use! Nyuk, nyuk!
So, WONDER WOMAN did not have powers of any particular distinction. To this day, WONDER WOMAN's powers are not very well-defined.
However, Moulton snuck in one god who gave WONDER WOMAN all the power that she needed. ATHENA has the power of peace, wisdom and of military strategy. Once you have the power of ATHENA, you've got it all. Of course, no one in the 1940s really knew who ATHENA was, so Moulton could not make ATHENA the sole sponsor of WONDER WOMAN's powers. Moulton was enough of an entertainer that he knew he had to play to the cheap seats, so he did, by throwing in the better-known Hercules, Hermes and Aphrodite. But Moulton was only gilding the lilly with those three, the only god who mattered was ATHENA.
Of course, by including Hercules, Moulton completely muddied WONDER WOMAN's mission on earth. Hercules was known as the "savior of mankind" after his twelve labors, but Moulton made him the instrument of the Amazon's downfall.
Since bondage was Moulton's primary message in WONDER WOMAN, by having Hercules as both villain of the Amazons and sponsor of WONDER WOMAN's powers, Moulton was having it both ways. But enough about Moulton's personal life.
My point is, Moulton did not have a fully-dimensional origin for WONDER WOMAN, and he was happy enough to allow those contradictions to remain for as long as he controlled the comic book. However, it are those same contradictions that have hobbled all subsequent efforts to keep WONDER WOMAN relevant as well as popular.
In our WONDER WOMAN movie, Hercules (Hugh Jackman) is the bad guy, period. Aphrodite (Catherine Zeta-Jones) remains the patron goddess of the Amazons. Hermes has basically been replaced by Amelia Earhart (Cate Blanchett). But the goddess with the mostest is Athena (Lena Olin).
When I said that we were simplifying the origin of the Amazons, I did not mean that we were throwing out the baby with the bath water. But we have to be careful.
When the origin of Krypton was conflated in the SUPERMAN movie with Marlon Brando, it pushed Superman almost completely out of the first movie. It wasn't until SUPERMAN II that Christopher Reeve really showed his stuff.
When the first BATMAN movie had the origin of the Joker being that Jack Nicholson was the thief who killed Bruce Wayne's parents, it turned Michael Keaton into a cypher, not the Dark Knight.
When SPIDER-MAN III had the Sandman be the robber who killed Uncle Ben, it threatened to turn Peter Parker into a deranged revenge killer.
These were all mistakes that the movies could have avoided, but they chose symmetry over simplicity.
A superhero origin is one part derangement (Thomas and Martha Wayne are shot in a meaningless street crime, leaving their son Bruce orphaned and rich), one part dumb luck (a bat flies into Bruce's window, so he decides to become a bat), and one part dedication (Because criminals are a superstitious, cowardly lot who will freak out when they see a man dressed as a bat... as a BATMAN!) .
We will simply her origin in the WONDER WOMAN movie to clarify her mission and get her into costume before the second reel. That's how we keep it reel in WONDER WOMAN! Woo woo!
By the way, a shout out to PMOY Tiffany Fallon for her great series of photos as Wonder Woman! Kiss your baby goodnight, for me!
Tomorrow, more goodies! Be good!
Brad