Friday Night Fights: "Free to Destroy...Like a Man!"

As I've observed many times before, the Wonder Woman comics of the 1940's were essentially a vehicle for the assorted theories and wacky fetishes of her creator, eccentric psychologist William Moulton Marston. 

Hardly an issue went by without Marston circling back to his creepy preoccupation with physical submission, girl-on-girl wrestling, spanking and bondage. A recurring element in these surreal psychodramas revolved around the bracelets worn by Wonder Woman. You see, due to a long-standing Amazonian curse, Wonder Woman would lose all her power whenever her bracelets were bound together....which (under Marston) happened with alarming frequency.

One of these bizarre bracelet incidents took place in Sensation Comics #19 (1943). Storming a Maine logging camp secretly occupied by Nazi saboteurs, Wonder Woman was captured by their leader...a Nazi provacateur named Mavis (who had recently escaped from the Amazons' Reform Island). Keeping Wonder Woman captive through the weakening effect of the bound bracelets, Mavis wondered aloud what would happen if she actually cut them off using a special acid-tipped dagger (click on the panels for a larger view)...

Little did Mavis know that removing Wonder Woman's bracelets wouldn't make her weaker, but quite the opposite. According to the agonized Amazon's thought balloon below, the absense of her bracelets would increase her strength, remove her self-control, and make her "free to destroy like a man"...which meant a devastating headstand body-slam for Mavis!

 

After upside-down strangling Mavis into submission (another Marston buzz word), a psychotic Wonder Woman swatted the Nazi villainess straight through the window!...

Later, in a panel the psychologists might describe as "fraught with meaning", Kink-meister Marston characterized Wonder Woman's man-like destruction as "an orgy of unleashed power" while she bludgeoned cabins with a giant log! 

 

The Nazi camp in ruins, the rampaging Wonder Woman was approached by her best friend Paula, who commanded her to "stop this mad orgy of strength". Later, with her restored bracelets "tighter than ever", Wonder Woman proclaimed how happy she was to be bound...because "power without self-control tears a girl to pieces"!

A lesson lost on Bahlactus, who always destroys like a man!

Comments

[John Nowak]

You know... that's actually an interesting plot point. There's probably a whole slew of hero characters who have a level of power they never use because it "taps into a side of themselves they don't want to go."

Heck, the classic green Hulk is almost always there.

So right away the removal of the bracelets serves as a can-o-Spinach that lets the hero wipe out an otherwise impossible boss villain, opens up the possibility of a hero-on-hero fight scene, and serves as a powerful metaphor about the abuse of power, if you're into that.

Sure, it's creaky, but it's a 60 year old comic.