COMIC DETAILS
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Comic Description:
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Wonder Woman 49 Universal
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Grade:
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7.0
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Page Quality:
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OFF-WHITE TO WHITE
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Certification #:
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0304047013
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Owner:
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GAM
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SET DETAILS
Owner's Description
Wonder Woman #49 is referenced in Fredric Wertham’s “Seduction of the Innocent” (SOTI) in the text on pages 234 and 236.
From Wertham’s perspective, characters such as Wonder Woman portrayed an unhealthy ideal of womanhood to young girls. He uses several examples from the story “Little Miss Wonder Woman”, contained in Wonder Woman #49, to underscore his point. In this story, Wonder Woman adopts a girl who is suddenly orphaned when her parents are lost at sea during a plane crash. On page 234, Wertham provides the following account to describe elements of this story “Even when Wonder Woman adopts a girl there are Lesbian overtones. They are either superwoman flying through the air, scantily dressed or uniformed, outsmarting hostile natives, animals, or wicked men, functioning like Wonder Woman in a fascistic-futurist setting, or they are molls or prizes to be pushed around and sadistically abused. In no other literature for children has the image of womanhood been so degraded”.
On page 236, Wertham again references elements from the Wonder Woman adoption story to illustrate the dysfunctional family life that comics depict “In vain does one look in comic books for seeds of constructive work or of ordinary home life. I have never seen in any of the crime, superman, adventure, space, horror, etc., comic books a normal family sitting down at a meal. I have seen an elaborate, charming breakfast scene, but it was between Batman and his boy, complete with checkered tablecloth, milk, cereal, fruit juice, dressing-gown and newspaper. And I have seen a parallel scene with the same implications when Wonder Woman had breakfast with an admiring young girl, with checkered tablecloth, cereal, milk, toast and the kitchen sink fill with dishes draining in the background”.
For additional reference, I have attached a scan from the story in Wonder Woman #49 that contains the breakfast scene that Wertham describes.
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