Wonder Woman: The Golden Age Omnibus Vol. 1

Wonder Woman: The Golden Age #1

by William Moulton Marston

Wonder Woman, arguably the best-known female superhero in the world, and star of her own monthly comics, was introduced in the early 1940s in these quirky tales written by the inventor of the lie detector, psychologist William Moulton Marston. In these stories, Wonder Woman travels from Paradise Island to Man's World, where she serves as an emissary of peace, using her bracelets and lasso of truth to stop injustice. These stories introduce the mythology of Wonder Woman as she battles the powers of evil--from crooked business owners to Nazi spies.

Collects ALL STAR COMICS #8, SENSATION COMICS #1-24 and WONDER WOMAN #1-7.

Genres: Comics, Dc Comics, Graphic Novels, Wonder Woman, Superheroes, Fiction, Collections

776 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1943

About the author

Dr. William Moulton Marston (May 9, 1893 – May 2, 1947), also known by the pen names Charles Moulton and William Marston, was an American psychologist, feminist theorist, inventor, and comic book writer who created the character Wonder Woman. Two women, his wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston and Olive Byrne (who lived with the couple in a polyamorous relationship), served as exemplars for the character and greatly influenced her creation.

He was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2006.

Reviews

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Actual Book

At 776 pages in a large format hardback this book is a monster...and that's the biggest problem. The story needs to be thumbed through. You need to be able to curl up in bed or on a recliner and read it without getting an ache and that's just not possible.

It's too beautiful for grubby hands so reading it is torture....sitting at a desk carefully turning the pages. I'm hoping I can find a second copy in a large format paperback, or perhaps an eBook so I can give this book the love it deserves. Until then it's on the shelf and protected.

The Actual Contents

I want female super heroes. I want Tank Girl and Squirrel Girl and Kamala Khan. Well it all started with Wonder Woman on TV in the 1970s. And finally this book gives me the entire origin story as it was first published way back in 1940.

I love it! Everyone should read it! If you're a woman, a man, a child, it doesn't matter Wonder Woman is important and not given the kudos she deserves. It's not high literature, it's much more important than that.

[Little Timmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice collection of these rare stories from the beginning of the Golden age. Nice reads. Recommended

[Maven_Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonder Woman: The Golden Age Omnibus Vol. 1 by William Moulton Marston

Wonder Woman: The Golden Age Omnibus Vol. 1 details the earliest adventures of the Amazon princess Diana Prince as penned by psychologist William Moulton Marston and brought to vivid life in comic form by artist Harry G. Peter. This expansive hardcover collects All Star Comics #8, Sensation Comics #1-24, Wonder Woman #1-7, and related tales from Comic Cavalcade, charting Wonder Woman’s debut in the early 1940s as she leaves Paradise Island to champion justice in Man’s World with her lasso of truth, indestructible bracelets, and fierce compassion. These stories introduce her origin, allies like Steve Trevor and Etta Candy, and an assortment of villains from crooked profiteers to wartime spies, all steeped in the spirited storytelling of comics’ Golden Age.

Despite the sometimes dated writing and artwork that reflect their era and Marston’s unique worldview, I found this omnibus fascinating in how it captures Wonder Woman’s early identity as a feminist symbol and peace emissary, her blend of strength and empathy feeling genuinely bold for its time. Some moments of plot and dialogue feel quirky or uneven to modern eyes, yet the warmth of her friendships and the idealism woven through these pages stayed with me, reminding me why Diana continues to resonate so deeply across generations.

Rating: 4 out of 5
Because it is a rich, historically compelling collection that celebrates the roots of an iconic heroine even as it shows its age.

[Williesun · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25 stars

I had a rough start with this monster of a collection of the very first Wonder Woman comics. You're thrown into the middle of WW2 and the constant reiteration of how great a democracy the US is and the onslaught of Nazi stories was a lot. And I struggled a bit but every once in a while the story of the months wasn't about Nazis or Japanese spies but about Paradise Island or something else that wasn't about the war and those stories were my favourite. And the more I learned about Wonder Woman, the more I enjoyed it over all.

What annoyed me, and yes I understand this was written during WW2, was the way Germans or Japanese people were portrayed graphically. They lost a good deal of their humanity and instead often appeared more like animals in human clothing than actual humans. I should, of course, take it all with a grain of salt, and I tried to do that but ugh, it was difficult.
When they incorporated German into the speech of german spies it tremendously annoyed me that they only translated "the" with "der" which doesn't work in German. This should only be a minor gripe but when it's repeated over 700+ pages, it becomes so grating.

My favourite of this omnibus was discovering Paula and the way her character evolved. And oh boy do I ship Paula and Wonder Woman. Of course there is nothing queer going on as the fact that this is a series about a female superhero capturing the world with her mighty strength and love is already revolutionising enough for the 1940s and, it seems, still this time.

All in all, it was very interesting to see Wonder Woman's origins and get a glimpse into what the greater had originally intended to create.

[Steven "Steve" · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is where it all began. The comics are organized by publication date, and Wonder Woman was so popular she was in several different places: All-Star Comics, Sensation Comics, Big All-American Comic Book, Comic Cavalcade, and of course Wonder Woman. Beautiful art that complements the intriguing stories. Dated, but still excellent.

[Rachel McKenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished the beast! 800 pages of original Wonder Woman = lots of nazi punching good times. There are problematic elements here too, but over all I enjoyed these zany adventures.

[Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

This needs one of those Disney+ disclaimers about outdated cultural references, but this goes beyond Siamese cats and jive-talking crows. Early Wonder Woman leaves no group unoffended. The Germans and Japanese were easy targets since we were at war with them and every story is about WWII in some way. But this also does wrong the Chinese, Mexicans, overweight people, Indians, indigenous people, the French, the ugly and -- oh, yes -- women. It's pretty amazing, really.

Outside of that, I just don't think these hold up. They're all the same, pretty juvenile, often nonsensical. I get that it was a different time and the start of something big, but... I dunno, "historical interest" only sustains for the first 100 pages or so. I kept going hoping for some sort of evolution, but they just got weirder. The supernatural ones were the worst.

Gorgeous book, though. It weights 90 pounds and I am literally wearing a wrist brace right now because I read 200 pages of it last night all in a row, but it's published beautifully on nice, clay-coated pages. Really nice. Shame about the racism.

[Sean Sexton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This massive tome collects the earliest Wonder Woman comics, from 1941 through 1943. It includes gorgeously reproduced copies of original comics from Sensation Comics, where Wonder Woman first appeared, as well as issues of All-Star Comics, Comic Cavalcade, and the Wonder Woman series.

Wonder Woman burst on the scene in 1941, in an issue of All-Star Comics, but soon headlined both Sensation Comics and her own Wonder Woman series. Wonder Woman came on the scene just a few years after Superman and Batman, but quickly became a fan favorite and an early feminist icon.

Created by a psychologist who invented an early version of the lie detector, Wonder Woman demonstrated to readers that women could be strong and independent, but still loving and compassionate. Still a powerful icon 76 years later, Wonder Woman's earliest appearances and stories are comic book gold for fans.

[Liss Carmody · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an 775-page tome of the earliest Wonder Woman comics, which I read over the course of several months. A substantial chunk of the time that elapsed between the start date and the end date was a period when the book was returned to the library and I was waiting for it to be put on hold for me again, though, so in actuality I really did mostly read these issues back to back. This did them a disservice: comic books were written to be digested episodically, and they are wildly tropey and repetitive when read in quick succession. I'm not at all displeased that I read this, because it's extremely interesting to see exactly how the character and the stories of Wonder Woman were originally conceptualized and executed. At the same time, I'm every glad to be done with this book and able to move on to something else for reading material.

I had loads of thoughts while reading through these comics, and no one to really discuss them with, so I'm just going to dump some opinions onto the page in the rest of this review. If you really came for a review itself, let me just summarize my thoughts by saying: Wonder Woman is innovative for its time but also flawed in all the ways you can expect for a vintage piece of work. In the vintage fashion community they like to say "vintage style not vintage values" and a lot of that idea holds validity here. Wonder Woman is a new 'ideal woman,' a very different model of femininity than the effete, helpless damsel idealized by much of cinema and other pulp literature. She's wholesome (no femme fatale or vamping here), but competent to the core - much more competent than Steve Trevor, her erstwhile love interest. In fact, one of the amusing riffs of the earliest issues is that Trevor gets credit for all the things she does, despite his protesting that it wasn't him at all.

Wonder Woman is strong, she's smart, she's cheerful, she's courageous. She comes from her home on Paradise Island, an enclave of Amazons and female empowerment, to help America in the war effort (and to get her man...). Her big-picture goal, assuming the war is won, is to help usher in an age of female world domination, in which women will rule the world through love and understanding, rather than violence and aggression, as men do. Obviously there is a lot of gender essentialism tied up (get it!?) in all this. Amazons are simultaneously brave and powerful but also gentle and kind, and not at all given to warmaking or misusing their own power. Not only is it a fantasy, but it's a fantasy that is based on assumptions that don't really bear up under much scrutiny. But although Wonder Woman is a man's fantasy, just a different kind than we're used to seeing, it is enjoyable and refreshing to watch her take apart evil schemes, toy with and ultimately disarm her enemies, and do it all pretty much on her own terms. This extends even to the way she is drawn. Although her skimpy costume got a lot of flack back in the day, the way she is drawn is athletic and distinctly unsexualized, at least when compared to more modern female superheroes. You get effectively sinuous twisting, showing off both the ass and the breasts at the same time. She is basically never drawn like a pin-up girl, and it's kind of nice.

What's less nice is the pervasive racial and national stereotyping. You get plenty of Nazi characters with their butchered German dialogue and ugly soldier faces, which is not great, but you also get a great many Japanese enemy soldiers and spies, who are routinely drawn with ugly 'monkey' faces, awful pidgen English, etc. The same goes for Mexicans, Arabs, or anyone African-American. It's WWII propaganda, obviously, but it's also obviously and uncritically placing white Americans at the top of a racial hierarchy, and this is the number one reason I wouldn't give this material to children in 2020. There's also a certain amount of unconscious sexism, though for obvious reasons given the subject matter and major themes this is less pervasive than the rest and is sometimes undermined to good effect.

So, moving on to random musings. First off, the plot. I know, it was written piecemeal over years and I shouldn't expect too much, however, I do feel that despite this the central plot started off pretty strongly and then sort of wandered away as Marston got farther and farther into it. In his quest to present new and engaging scenarios, I think he let himself get carried away, which is how you have nonsense like Diana having completely unhindered telepathy skills that she is able to use and share with anyone she wants, a magic sphere that she can visit on Paradise Island that reveals anything at all about the past or the future, and an entire sorority girl army on call at any moment. There is also the unceasing tension of trying to conceal her double personality from Steve Trevor, which grows more and more precarious the longer it goes on, only.... it doesn't really make any sense, the longer it goes on? She took up the secret identity of Diana Prince in the first place in order to have an excuse to stay close to Steve early on when he didn't know who she was, but in later installments it becomes this bizarre love triangle in which Diana is in love with Steve but Steve is in love with Wonder Woman, and he doesn't realize they're the same person. However, instead of sensibly observing that the double persona has run its course and just acknowledging to Steve that she loves him (she wouldn't even have to tell him that she was Diana Prince if she didn't want to... she could just let Diana Prince stay dead one of the dozen of times she nearly dies and then disappears for ages while Wonder Woman is saving the day), she instead gives him the cold shoulder. Repeatedly. Forever. I realize that allowing them to have a real relationship would ruin the dramatic will-they-won't-they tension, but it becomes sort of ridiculous after awhile.

Right, the bondage thing? I started this reading (after having read a biography of William Moulton Marston) with the opinion that the chaining, shackling, and tying up of Wonder Woman was more symbolic than a BDSM thing. Because she always breaks her chains, right? Often in the very next frame? The symbology clearly points to her being tied up SO SHE CAN ESCAPE.

Well, reading this has caused me to amend my opinion somewhat. I still do think that the 'breaking the chains that bind you' imagery is very important. But it's also become obvious to me after reading (how many are there in this book? Sixty. I read sixty Wonder Woman comics, you guys.) SIXTY of these things, that yeah, there are some serious BDSM undertones too. Like, there is the tying up, and then there is the complete hogtie, wrapped in chains, etc. There's even one issue where Wonder Woman is literally zipped into a gimp suit, then chews her way free. But aside from the literal bondage imagery, there is some intense domination/submission material being explored as a central theme of the work. It's perplexing to me because it never seems to quite settle on a central tenet - Marston clearly feels strongly about women having agency and ruling the world with the power of love, but it's not clear whether he thinks women should dominate men, men should dominate women, the strong should dominate the weak, or what. It's certainly a topic for exploration, though. I assume some better scholars than I have taken stabs at this and I'd be interested in reading their work.

But yeah! Interesting stuff, empowering in some ways and cringeworthy in others. More BDSMy than I gave it credit for. The end.

[Nuffy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Publishers: “We need this comic to be pro-America propaganda in this WWII society. But don’t be too obvious about it. Make it subtle.”

Writers: “Say no more!”

Aphrodite: “You must deliver [this American Army officer] back to America — to help fight the forces of hate and oppression.”
Athena: “Yes, Hippolyte, American liberty and freedom must be preserved! You must send with him your strongest and wisest Amazon — the finest of your Wonder Women! — for America, the last citadel of democracy, and of equal rights for women, needs your help!”**

Then

*a whole storyline about Nazis buying up the milk supply chain, so they can overcharge, and American families won’t be able to afford it (26 cents a quart!!), so in a few decades American youths will be too frail to stand a chance against the Nazis! But Wonder Woman saves the day & declares, “there’s nothing in the world so dear as children — I love every one of them and they all need milk. The perfect food! Strong, healthy children today means a safe, happy America tomorrow!”*

Writers: “nailed it!”


Honestly, I just had a lot of fun reading this. Some of it doesn’t really hold up to the test of time (most notably some racism), but some of what doesn’t hold up is just hilarious. I had a great time!


**a little bit of a gut punch to read in today’s climate, but…what can you do?

[Ariel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great! Loved it

[Katherine R]

Just a note here, I started reading this after getting into a video game featuring Wonder Woman as a mentor (DCUO) and then became kind of obsessed with learning about the original characters and the world into which they came about, the two Jewish kids who created Superman and the original version of Batman (who killed without hesitation, sometimes the same person twice). I continued reading this one because I was seeing in the writing, not only the young artist but also a whole world of prejudices and ignorance and propaganda of an era now nearly a century behind us. The actual comic is not educational so much as highly racist, xenophobic, full of propaganda and trolling the Nazi's. I got about a third of the way and felt like I'd gotten enough.

While I laughed at some of the amazingly simple dialogue and contrived situations (was he trying to bring Vaudeville back when he wrote these?) I cringed hard at the caricaturing of every race and nationality and the bluntly racist treatment of Japanese and Pacific Islanders and Native Americans and Germans and Irish and Africans (from the country of Africa--that's the level of smarts we're starting with here)...yeah, just, a certain point comes when it's time to come back to present and sigh that despite better geography, things aren't exactly better.

This original start of Wonder Woman doesn't exactly reflect on the varied Wonder Women of today but it was an experience meeting the original character and the world into which she spawned between the pages of a war time comic.

[h · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a mammoth of a book. Though I read the digital version, it felt incredibly dense and took me more time than I would have imagined to get through. And, now that I've finished it, I have what can only be described as mixed feelings. It's interesting to go back and reflect on the origins of wonder woman and see how much the character has evolved over time and grown into the iconic character so many know and love. I'm truly curious to learn more about the creator's personal life, because I can't quite decide where his mind was when writing this. Some of the issues are genuinely enjoyable in a fun, campy way, but as a whole they lack cohesion and continuity in a way that made the collection feel disjointed and difficult to get into. And, more notably, many of the issues are simply chock full of racism, sexism, and nationalism that are difficult to overlook. I understand that much of this is simply because of its time, for example the consistent reminder and encouragement to buy war bonds and stamps, however it still makes the issues less enjoyable to read. Overall, I was surprised to see the level of thought that went into creating the original character, and am glad to have been able to learn more about her origins, but I don't think I will be picking up the next volume any time soon.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5. and fair warning, Golden Age WW can be an acquired taste — the stylized art of HG Peters, the running themes of bondage and dominance ... But obviously I've acquired it. And Peters' art looks so much better in this massive volume than in any of the reprints I have.
Following Steve Trevor's crash landing on Paradise Island (as probably everyone knows) Princess Diana goes with him back to "Man's World" to fight against the Axis as Wonder Woman. In this volume we get most of her original Rogue's Gallery, including the memorable Axis spy Paula von Gunther and Dr. Psycho, a bitter forerunner of the incel movement. Others include the Cheetah, Dr. Poison and the Crimson Flame.
If you can get into Marston's odd mix of myth, feminism and bondage, this is definitely worth reading.

[Sabra Kurth · Rating 3 out of 5]

This omnibus edition of the original Wonder Woman comics is just repetitive—how many times can the Baroness be captured and then escape. Or, how many Japanese and Nazi agents were living in the US during World War 2? And, Etta and her friends certainly had more to do than wait for Wonder Woman’s call. I read the Jill LePore book on Wonder Woman that feature William Moulton Marston and tried to read his comics. One volume was enough.

[Ellison · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is her origin story as a resident of a 'no boys allowed island, until a pilot crash lands there. she loves the pilot and he loves her! she wins a competition to return him to where he came from. first she is a nurse, then, a secretary. she assists the united states in various ways durning wwii.

once she get her own title her story is rebooted. much to tie up.

[Isabel]

An interesting read if you want to know Wonder Woman’s early mythos, read some early feminist quips, and if you are a fan of Dr. Marston’s psychological scholarship and want to see its application.

[L. · Rating 3 out of 5]

So much bondage, and spanking, with a touch of furries and... headstands? There were several headstands in this collection, enough to notice. Is this a kink? Asking for a friend.

[Abby Frye · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good Omnibus. If you don't know more of Wonder Woman's story maybe skip this as characters come and go without introduction or explanation.