crime-comics

"Mr. Fantastic: Thank heavens!! You're all right, my darling!"

"Invisible Girl: Johnny! What is it? What's happening to you?"

"Human Torch: You've turned into monsters both of you!! It's those rays! Those terrible cosmic rays! Now I know why I've been feeling so warm! Look at me!! They've affected me, too! When I get excited I can feel my body begin to blaze! I'm lighter than air!!I can fly!! Look...I can fly!!"

"The Thing: If you want to fly to the stars, than you pilot the ship! Count me out! You know we haven't done enough research into the effect of cosmic rays! They might kill us all out in space!"

"Fantastic Four No. 1 arrived as a comic book on newsstands exactly 54 years ago this Saturday, August 8th. Written by Stan Lee and drawn by Jack Kirby, the comic book —priced at $0.10 — now looks hopelessly goofy. A dozen exclamation points punctuate the cover alone, which depicts a green monster bursting up through a street in "Central City," because Lee and Kirby had not yet decided to locate their super-team in the nonfictional borough of Manhattan. "I-I can't turn invisible fast enough!!" cries the half-transparent blonde struggling to escape the creature's grasp. But in its time, Fantastic Four was revolutionary. Its heroes wore no uniforms (though they would later). They had no secret identities. They bickered among themselves like any family. Most intriguingly, they often regarded their superpowers as a curse. Reed "Mr. Fantastic" Richards could stretch his body like taffy. Sue "Invisible Girl" Storm could vanish from sight, but also developed telekinesis and the ability to project force fields. Her brother Johnny turned into the The Human Torch, a flying fireball, just by saying "Flame on!" You probably wouldn't want to sit next to him on the bus, but at least Johnny could flame-off when he wanted. Poor Ben Grimm, the blue-collar kid on the team, was permanently transmogrified into giant orange rock monster. Pitifully christened "The Thing," his yearning to be made flesh again gave the early Fantastic Four stories an undercurrent of pathos."

"Category:Marvel Comics"

"Mr. Fantastic: Listen to me, all of you! That means you' too, Ben! Together we have more power than any humans have ever possessed!"

"Category:Fantasy comics"

"Category:Science fiction comics"

"Mr. Fantastic: Somehow the cosmic rays have altered your atomic structure...making you grow invisible!"

"Category:Crime comics"

"Daredevil (thinking): No! I should have known he'd try that! He can't stand being handicapped! He's got to prove to himself that he can cope! But he's swinging in too low an arc!"

"Spider-Man: I wont take anymore! I'I'd rather be dead than..."

"Spider-Man: I'm no good to anyone--now--not to myself...not to anyone! I'm a joke! A sick, pitiful--pathetic--joke..."

"Daredevil (thinking): I should have expected this! He's starting tocome apart-- lashing out at me as his guts tear him inside-out! I could dodge his blows until he exhausts himself! -- But that's not going to bring him to grips with his blindness!"

"Andras: You ask alot of questions, bitch. Too bad the rules say we gotta answer 'em. Goetia means howling. It's the chittering of a billion insects in the night. It's what it sounds like where we live."

"Promethea: Don't worry, some symbols always means the same thing...and the archetype of wisdom is eternal."

"I am Promethea, the child who stands Between fixed earth and insubstantial air, a dream thought who yet treads matter's rain-swept strands, And mortals are the sandals that I wear. I am Promethea. From Mind’s pure light I stoop into Earth's dark gloom, From Fables’ day Descending into Facts’ cold weighty night, From lyric atmospheres to mammal clay. I am Promethea, the rumored one, The mythic bough that Reason strains to bend. I am that voice left, once the book is done... I am the dream that waking does not end."

"Mayor Sonny Baskerville is currently stalling any investigation by demanding separate hearings for each of his forty two personalities. This is TEXTure."

"If we had all read more about Wonder Woman and less about Dick and Jane the new wave of the feminist revolution might have happened less painfully and sooner."

"Throughout the [Marston] period...she accomplished her remarkable feats without any apparent definition in her biceps or thighs. Her calf muscles, highlighted by the red boots, are developed only to-but not beyond-the point required for "nice legs" in the pinup sense."

"Wonder Woman emerged in the 1940s just as American entered World War II. As women entered the war production in various capacities, the image of Wonder Woman spoke to the promise of the future for women strong, independent and career-minded. When the war ended, Fredric Wertham fought to contain that image of the strong, independent, career-minded woman or he felt it threatened the American family and American society. His attempts to contain Wonder Woman forced her, like so many women during the 1950's, to struggle with the tension between family and career. In the end, Wertham may have contained the symbol of the 1940s Wonder Woman - strength and independence - but the 1950s Wonder Woman - having to choose between marriage and career - spoke to and inspired another generation."

"Normal men retain their childish longing for a woman to mother them. At adolescence a new desire is added. They want a girl to allure them. When you put these two together, you have the typical male yearning Wonder Woman satisfies."

"Marston’s Diana was a doctor, a healer, a scientist."

"Wonder Woman was from the start a character founded in scholarship."

"Men, (Greeks) were captured by predatory love-seeking females until they got sick of it and made the women captive by force. But they were afraid of them (masculine inferiority complex) and kept them heavily chained lest the women put one over as they always had before. The Goddess of Love comes along and helps women break their chains by giving them the greater force of real altruism. Were upon men turned about face and actually helped the women get away from domestic slavery - as men are doing now. The New Women thus freed and strengthened by supporting themselves (on paradise Island) developed enormous physical and mental power. But they have to use it for other people’s benefit or they go back to chains, and weakness."

"The focus [of the U.N.] was on her feminist background, being the first female superhero in a world of male superheroes and that basically she always fought for fairness, justice and peace."

"Some heroes get tied up more than others."

"If you need to stop an asteroid, you call Superman. If you need to solve a mystery, you call Batman. But if you need to end a war, you call Wonder Woman."

"[Wonder Woman's] creator has...seen straight into my heart and understood the secret fears of violence hidden there. No longer did I have to pretend to like the "pow!" and "Crunch" style of Captain Marvel or the Green Hornet. No longer did I have nightmares after reading ghoulish comics filled with torture and mayhem, comics made all the more terrifying by their real-life setting in World War II....Here was a heroic person who might conquer with force, but only a force that was tempered by love and justice."

"Frankly, Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who, I believe, should rule the world."

"When Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston died in 1947, they got rid of the pervy elements, and instantly sales pummeted. Wonder Woman should be the most sexually attractive, intelligent, potent woman you can imagine. Instead she became this weird cross between the Virgin Mary and Mary Tyler Moore that didn't even appeal to girls."

"Ong has no quarrel with the old-style comics like Mr. & Mrs., The Gumps, Gasoline Alley, and he seems to have a sneaking admiration for Li'l Abner ("sexy and synthetic pastoralism" done with "manifest cleverness.") But, he says, "there seems to be nothing in the good comics which keeps readers from liking the others." He saves his sharpest slings for Superman's female counterpart, a four-year-old character named Wonder Woman, who is described by her creator as "the girl from Paradise Isle, beautiful as Aphrodite, wise as Athena, stronger than Hercules and swifter than Mercury." Wonder Woman swears "By Zeus!" and regularly prays to Aphrodite—which Ong says is Hitlerite paganism."

"The iconic Wonder Woman fictional character was named an Honorary Ambassador for the Empowerment of Women and Girls on 21 October 2016, in support of Sustainable Development Goal 5 – to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. The designation ceremony coincided with the 75th anniversary of Wonder Woman's first appearance in a comic book in 1941. Wonder Woman has since then been depicted in movies and TV series. She is a global citizen and universally recognized for her commitment to justice, peace and equality and is seen as a model of strength, fairness and compassion becoming a symbol of empowerment for women and girls in much of the world. Women and girls represent half of the world’s population and therefore also half of its potential. But today, gender inequality persists everywhere and stagnates social progress. In many parts of the world women endure physical and sexual violence, face barriers to opportunities for leadership and education and receive less pay than men for equal work among other forms of discrimination."

"Wonder Woman and her sister Amazons have to wear heavy bracelets to remind them of what happens to a girl when she lets a man conquer her. The Amazons once surrendered to the charm of some handsom Greeks and what a mess they got themselves into. The Greeks put them in chains of the Hitler type, beat them, and made them work like horses in the fields. Aphrodite, goddess of love, finally freed these unhappy girls. But she laid down the rule that they must never surrender to a man for any reason. I know of no better advice to give modern women than this rule that Aphrodite gave the Amazon girls."

"A male hero, at best, lacks the qualities of maternal love and tenderness which are as essential to a normal child as the breath of life. Suppose your child's ideal becomes a superman who uses his extraordinary power to help the weak. The most important ingredient in the human happiness recipe still is missing-love. It's smart to be strong. It's big to be generous. But it's sissified according to exclusively masculine rules, to be tender, loving affectionate, and alluring. "Aw, that's girls stuff!" snorts our young comics reader. "Who wants to be a girl?" And that's the point. Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don't want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman."

"As to chains and bonds - my whole strip is aimed at drawing the distinction in the minds of children and adults between love bonds and male bonds of cruelty and destruction.""

"Marston was a scholar, a professor, and a scientist; Wonder Woman began on a college campus, in a lecture hall, and in a laboratory. Marston was a lawyer and a filmmaker; Wonder Woman began in a courthouse and a movie theater. The women Marston loved were suffragists, feminists, and birth control advocates. Wonder Woman began in a protest march, a bedroom, and a birth control clinic. The red bustier isn’t the half of it. Unknown to the world, Margaret Sanger, one of the most influential feminists of the twentieth century, was part of Marston’s family."

"On one hand, said Lepore, the character has solid feminist roots. She was invented in 1941 by William Moulton Marston, a Harvard-trained Ph.D. psychologist-cum-advice columnist for Family Circle magazine. Marston had been brought on board by the company that eventually became DC Comics to help deal with a public relations problem. The company's first two superheroes, created in the late 1930s, had become controversial. "Superman looked a bit like a fascist — he's an ubermensch. Batman carried a gun and was quite violent," explained Lepore."

"We look at the strong, healthy character for some of the same reasons recent psychologists now charge psychology with a criticism her creator made long ago. Too much of psychology has focused on that which is abnormal without exploring that which is normal-hence Marston's classic book, Emotions of Normal People. Whereas other psychologists and other fictional characters might views humankind pessimistically, William Moulton Marston and Wonder Woman look for the best in us all and hope for our world. In the twenty-first century, a psychologist best known for studying the causes and consequences of learned helplessness promotes positive psychology on the belief that psychology has overemphasized the worst parts of human nature to the neglect of trying to understand the best."

"Wonder Woman: Priscilla’s hobby is collecting chains – mine is breaking them! (111)"

"Who needs consciousness-raising and equal pay, when you’re an Amazon with an invisible plane?"

"A lot of people started to say, 'Why is she the symbol of women's power? She's just so obviously made for men to look at and ogle,'" said Lepore. So it's no surprise that she continues to raise conflicting feelings to this day. "Part of the richness of this character is that there are many layers to understanding her. Wonder Woman is always going to have a mixed legacy."

"In the comic book — and now in the new movie — Wonder Woman is a princess of the Amazons of Greek mythology, living on an island where there are no men. That story, said Lepore, "comes not from science fiction but from feminist utopian fiction" popular with Sanger and other early feminists of the progressive era."

"Wonder Woman breaks the bonds of those who are slaves to evil masters but she doesn't leave the freed ones free to assert their own egos and uncontrolled self-gratification. Wonder Woman binds the victims again in love chains - that is, she makes them submit to a loving superior ... Wonder Woman is trying to show children - who understand this far better than adults - that it's much more fun to be controlled by a loving person that [sic] to go ranting round submitting to no one."

"...exhorted women to become physically and mentally strong, promoted paid female employment, and critiqued over-masculinized aspects of American culture."

"Oh yes, but not until women control men. Wonder Woman – and the trend toward male acceptance of female love power, which she represents, indicates that the first psychological step has actually been taken. Boys, young and old, satisfy their wish thoughts by reading comics. If they go crazy over Wonder Woman, it means they’re longing for a beautiful, exciting girl who is stronger than they are. These simple, highly imaginative picture stories satisfy longings that ordinary daily life thwarts and denies. Superman and the army of male comics characters who resemble him satisfy the simple desire to be stronger and more powerful than anybody else. Wonder Woman satisfies the subconscious, elaboratedly disguised desire of males to be mastered by a woman who loves them."

"I have given Wonder Woman this dominant force but have kept her loving, tender, maternal and feminine in every other way."

"This my dear friend is the one truly great contribution of my Wonder Woman strip to moral education of the young. The only hope for peace is to teach people who are full of pep and unbound force to enjoy being bound--enjoy submission to kind authority, wise authority, not merely tolerate such submission. Wars will only cease when humans enjoy being bound."

"Wonder Woman isn’t only an Amazonian princess with badass boots. She’s the missing link in a chain of events that begins with the woman's suffrage campaigns of the 1910s and ends with the troubled place of feminism fully a century later. Feminism made Wonder Woman. And then Wonder Woman remade feminism, which hasn’t been altogether good for feminism. Superheroes, who are supposed to be better than everyone else, are excellent at clobbering people; they’re lousy at fighting for equality."