IN case you've been away 40 years, Wonder Woman is still fine and 20.
Her invisible plane has disappeared. But the enlightened emissary from the testosterone-free Isle of Paradise, who entered our violent dimension to combat the aggression of history's males through the Amazon philosophy of love and strength, is still the most powerful, determined brunette in a star-spangled strapless swimsuit to educate three generations of comics readers.
After 50 years and more than 600 hair-curling episodes, Wonder Woman has dumped Steve Trevor, who'll soon marry Etta Candy. But Ms. Woman remains determined to prevail over the forces of crime and/or evil, sexism, war, brutality, hatred, racism, The Cheetah, Deathstroke and any who dare challenge The Power of Love.
Having destroyed European Communism without acquiring a single gray hair, she is prepared to pit her bulletproof bracelets and Lasso of Truth against the ruthless demons who seek to re-enslave the liberated lands as early as the April issue.
But, wait! What's that? Like the crash of thunder from the sky above comes a new menace, The Wrath of Wonder Woman's Mom.
Ever since Wonder Woman materialized, readers thought the Amazing Amazon was daughter to Hippolyte, a 1,000-year-old queen. But now Our Towns reveals the true identity of Wonder Woman's real Mom. She is Elizabeth Holloway Marston. She's not 1,000; she's 99, come Thursday. She's darned proud of it, if you'd like to know. (And you had better.)
And if Mrs. Marston's nonfiction children are wondrously wise, they'll get in some butter-pecan ice cream for the first party. (Through some unearthly powers, she also commands her family to hold a second birthday party outdoors in warm weather.)
Mrs. Marston is the widow of William Marston, a psychologist who gained more fame for a comic character than his other evil-fighting tool, the lie detector. One dark night as the clouds of war hovered over Europe again, Mr. Marston consulted his wife and collaborator, also a psychologist. He was inventing somebody like that new Superman fellow, only his character would promote a global psychic revolution by forsaking Biff! Bam! and Ka-Runch! for The Power of Love. Well, said Mrs. Marston, who was born liberated, this super-hero had better be a woman.
SHAZAM!
Wonder Woman was created and written in the Marstons' suburban study as a crusading Boston career woman disguised as Diana Prince, who could dash into a ladies' room (the lines were shorter in those days) and emerge in her eagle-festooned, red-white-and-blue crime-fighting culottes. As powerful as a man and as loving as a woman, she was also properly patriotic. But instead of vaporizing evildoers, her magic lasso forced them to look into their own hearts, where some good always resides.
The world was ready. Wonder Woman's first adventure involved bank robbers whose fedoras kept flying off in surprise, and Steve, who was handsome but required regular rescuing. Millions were sold. Eventually, W. W. became a TV series starring Lynda Carter, which many fathers volunteered to watch with their children. According to DC Comics, Wonder Woman's monthly adventures enjoy steady popularity among readers (90 percent of them men), though they have never surpassed the Man of Steel's weekly exploits.
Meanwhile, in a small Connecticut town, Wonder Woman's Mom has disguised herself as a retired editor who lives in postwar housing with Bear, the Wonder Shih Tzu who can sleep and snore at the same time; a black cat named Sylvester, who can sleep, and a dedicated son, Pete, who can sell real estate. If Pete ever finishes the addition, Mrs. Marston says, giving him The Stare of Truth, she will have her own bathroom.
Wonder Woman Sr. was born on the Isle of Man, the first female in three generations of Holloways, later immigrating to Boston. Mrs. Marston's regal Victorian mother encouraged early independence. "You can do anything you want," said the Mom of Wonder Woman's Mom. (Does this sound familiar yet?) So, after psychology at Mount Holyoke, Mrs. Marston applied to law school. "Those dumb bunnies at Harvard wouldn't take women," she recalls, "so I went to Boston University."
After keeping an ardent Mr. Marston suitably waiting, she married him. She kept her writing career. Mrs. Marston is still writing, an autobiography as it happens. Next comes a history of the Magic Maiden. Actually, Mrs. Marston doesn't write; she dictates "any damned thing I want." Somebody else can do the typing.
The Marstons made quite a household -- an inventor testing inventions on his wife, four children who could not fly, one super-heroine, assorted do-badders like Prince Pagli and the Seal Men and a psychologist using psychology on her husband to "throw in my 2 cents." In one early episode Wonder Woman advises girls on escapes: "It's easy to break bonds if you know you can."
Except those to Mom.