Creator Profile: William Moulton Marston

William Moulton Marston’s legacy in comics is quite different from most other creators. Primarily a psychologist, self-help author, and writer, working in comics wasn’t his main career path. Though his comics résumé is somewhat limited he is known for one very important thing: he created Wonder Woman.

Marston earned a PhD in psychology from Harvard in 1921 and sold his first script for The Thief while he was still a student. He taught at the American University in Washington, DC, at Tufts in Medford, Massachusetts, and at the University of Southern California.

He was married to Elizabeth Holloway Marston and they had a relationship with Olive Byrne. Together they had four children. Both women are considered as influence on the creation of Wonder Woman.

One of his greatest scientific contributions was creating the systolic blood pressure test, which became a part of the modern polygraph lie detector test, invented by John August Larson. He was an essayist who was published in scientific journals and he wrote Emotions of Normal People on sexual taboos. He also wrote about how people behave passively or actively in favorable or antagonistic situations resulting in dominance, inducement, submission, or compliance.

Seeing the educational potential in comics, Marston discussed the topic in an interview in The Family Circle. As a result, comic publisher Max Gaines hired him to be an educational consultant for National Periodicals and All-American Publications.

In the early 1940s superheroes were almost exclusively male, with DC dominated by Superman, Batman, and Green Lantern. Noting that most superheroes used aggression to stop villains he suggested creating a new hero who could fight with love. With Gaines’ approval, Marston developed Wonder Woman to be like liberated women of the time.

As a new kind of hero, she attracted both male and female readers who were intrigued by the concept of such a powerful superheroine. Over the course of 80 years, Wonder Woman has continuously grown in popularity as a dominate force in DC comics.