This being the DC multiverse, their identities are available to any one reading their comic book adventures in another universe...

Good to see you around again, Mr. Jupiter!

Well, even if you didn't know about Marston and just read the Golden Age stories; you'd get a much different picture than from the Silver. Bronze or Modern Age stories.  Wertham targeted her pretty heavily, as did others and DC pretty much neutered her after that.  The closest she got back to some of that was, ironically, during the Diana Prince Wonder Woman era, including the story, "Them, " plus, with more psychotic characters like Dr Cyber.  That didn't last long either, and her stuff mostly turned back to bland superheroics (with occasionally great stories) until Perez worked his magic and reinfused her with a lot of mythology and more modern sensibilities.

I still remember as a kid, discovering the Michael Fleischer Wonder Woman Encyclopedia, at the library and reading through it.  It came out right after the tv show debuted and my experience with Wondy consisted of a few DP stories, more in JLA and a few of her own title (back in costume) and the Brady Kids appearance, the Super Friends, and the Cathy Lee Crosby pilot movie.  Flipping through that book revealed a whole 'nother WW.  It looked wild as heck, especially compared to what happened in her modern comic.  I also started noticing a heck of a lot of ropes and chains, on just about every page of the book.

Personally, the kinky elements notwithstanding, her GA adventures were a heck of a lot more lively and interesting than pretty much anything, until Perez (apart from some of the DP, WW stories).

It's time for someone to get a grant to identify and survey golden age WW readers to see how that worked out.

I would pay to read those!

And on top of that, GA WW is just fun. It's about a young woman who really (and without angst) enjoys being a superhero. I'm not sure that has ever been done as well since.

And it has Etta Candy! Best supporting character ever. Woo! Woo!

Let's just say that a lot of those readers seemed to dovetail with the fanbase of Bettie Page, a few years down the road.

Thing of it is, WW wasn't the only source of bondage imagery in the Golden Age.  Those comics are littered with it; a carryover from the pulps.  It was a common staple of newspaper adventure strips, as well.  Some of it got downright gruesome, with whipping and torture.  In looking at the old MLJ comics, some of those strips were heavy with that stuff, plus a lot of hangings, and not just in the Hangman strip.  Hillman and Fox were noted for it, especially the jungle comics and the aviation stories.  Timely had it's fair share.

The big difference, really, is that Marston actually did promote the idea of women as tough, capable members of society.  At the same time, those strips weren't quite as graphic as some of the others, like Lev Gleason (especially when Charles Biro started doing the crime stuff) and were a bit more inventive with the peril.


It was a regular part of drama of the era:  in the pulps, the movie serials, radio dramas, films, melodramas, comics strips and comic books.  There was a newspaper strip, for some years, called Hairbreadth Harry, that was a melodrama, with a lot of characters tied to tracks and logs headed into buzzsaws and whatnot, years before Snidely Whiplash was chasing after Nelle Fenwick.  Though I have to say, not many of them had the damsel in distress chew their way out of a leather hood, like Marston.


 

My dad had one from his fraternity.

I have a paperback from the 70s that was my first real exposure GA WW stories. In one, there's an athletic contest that includes the line, "The next event will be a girl-roping contest." I thought that was odd.